Here is a simple yet moving video which helps to express the sense of futility & despair of US troops in Iraq & that their only goal is just to survive another day -
Soldier in Iraq sings Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower - Dave Mathews style -
makes one sad for these poor bastards used as tools or pawns by the Neocons & the elite to fight their wars -Gord
NATO confirms civilian casualties in Afghanistan
liveleek
Downer defends coalition operations in Afghanistan
US forces kill 50-80 MORE Afghan civilians in air-strikes fromLIVELEEK
Hamid Karzai Condemns Nato use of force in Afghanistan
For more on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan & Iraq check out the following stories :
US criticised over Afghan deaths, July 2, 2007 at Media With Conscience MWC
Recent air raids by the US-led coalition and Nato have killed more civilians than Taliban fighters, an Afghan human rights group has said.
The claim by the Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission came after at least 45 civilians reportedly died in an attack at the weekend in southern Helmand province.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) acknowledged that there were some civilian casualties but said the death toll was much lower.
The rights group said on Monday that the US and Isaf should deploy more foot soldiers against suspected Taliban rather than using air raids.
"Air operations have killed more civilians than Taliban," Nader Nadery, a commissioner with the human rights group, told Reuters news agency.
"Certainly, reduction of air operations decreases civilian deaths for it is difficult to distinguish between military and non-military people."
And :
"Up to 80 Civilians Dead" After US Air Strikes in Afghanistan
By Jason Burke,The Observer UK, Sunday 01 July 2007TruthOut
Witnesses claim a village in British-run Helmand was bombed for three hours after the Taliban attempted to ambush a US-Afghan army convoy.
Air strikes in the British-controlled Helmand province of Afghanistan may have killed civilians, coalition troops said yesterday as local people claimed that between 50 and 80 people, many of them women and children, had died.
In the latest of a series of attacks causing significant civilian casualties in recent weeks, more than 200 were killed by coalition troops in Afghanistan in June, far more than are believed to have been killed by Taliban militants.
The bombardment, which witnesses said lasted up to three hours, in the Gereshk district late on Friday followed an attempted ambush by the Taliban on a joint US-Afghan military convoy. According to Mohammad Hussein, the provincial police chief, the militants fled into a nearby village for cover. Planes then targeted the village of Hyderabad. Mohammad Khan, a resident of the village, said seven members of his family, including his brother and five of his brother's children, were killed.
'I brought three of my wounded relatives to Gereshk hospital for treatment,' he told the Associated Press news agency by phone. The villagers were yesterday burying a 'lot of dead bodies', Khan said.
He spoke as American forces in Iraq also found themselves heavily criticised over civilian deaths when eight people died, apparently caught in crossfire from a gunfight between insurgents and soldiers in Baghdad's Sadr City yesterday. But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused US forces of firing blindly on innocent people. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault on a district where he has barred American operations in the past.
In Afghanistan, the civilian deaths caused by US and Nato-led troops have infuriated local people and prompted President Hamid Karzai to publicly condemn foreign forces for careless 'use of extreme force' and for viewing Afghan lives as 'cheap'. The increasingly fragile President has urged restraint and better co-ordination of military operations with the Afghan government, while also blaming the Taliban for using civilians as human shields.
Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, raised the issue of civilian casualties on a four-hour visit to Afghanistan on Friday on which he met the senior Nato commander there, the American General Dan McNeill.
Iraqi faction alleges 350 dead in US military operation
Sunday 01 July 2007 JOUNALO
The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political faction in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet, published a statement on Sunday alleging that more than 350 people have been killed by a US military operation in Baquba to hunt down al-Qaeda-affiliated members.
They termed the operations "collective punishment" in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province which lies 57 kilometres north-east of Baghdad.
"Neighbourhoods in western Baquba have witnessed, since last week, fierce attacks by occupation forces within Operation Arrowhead Ripper," the party said in a statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq.
"The forces shelled these neighbourhoods with helicopters, destroying more than 150 houses and killing more than 350 citizens, their bodies still under wreckage, in addition to arresting scores of citizens," the statement added.
take care ,
GORD.
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