450 Bases and It’s Not Over Yet
By Nick Turse,   Tom Dispatch

In late December, the lot was just a big blank: a few burgundy metal shipping containers sitting in an expanse of crushed eggshell-colored gravel inside a razor-wire-topped fence.  The American military in Afghanistan doesn’t want to talk about it, but one day soon, it will be a new hub for the American drone war in the Greater Middle East.

Next year, that empty lot will be a two-story concrete intelligence facility for America’s drone war, brightly lit and filled with powerful computers kept in climate-controlled comfort in a country where most of the population has no access to electricity.  It will boast almost 7,000 square feet of offices, briefing and conference rooms, and a large “processing, exploitation, and dissemination” operations center -- and, of course, it will be built with American tax dollars. 

Nor is it an anomaly.  Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating.  In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan.  Today, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs tells TomDispatch, the number tops 450.

The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan.  While some U.S. bases are indeed closing up shop or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing or ending next year, as well as a withdrawal of American combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram airfields. The same is true even of some smaller camps, forward operating bases (FOBs), and combat outposts (COPs) scattered through the country’s backlands.  “Bagram is going through a significant transition during the next year to two years,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gerdes of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bagram Office recently told Freedom Builder, a Corps of Engineers publication.  “We’re transitioning... into a long-term, five-year, 10-year vision for the base.” 

Whether the U.S. military will still be in Afghanistan in five or 10 years remains to be seen, but steps are currently being taken to make that possible.  U.S. military publications, plans and schematics, contracting documents, and other official data examined by TomDispatch catalog hundreds of construction projects worth billions of dollars slated to begin, continue, or conclude in 2012. 

While many of these efforts are geared toward structures for Afghan forces or civilian institutions, a considerable number involve U.S. facilities, some of the most significant being dedicated to the ascendant forms of American warfare: drone operations and missions by elite special operations units.  The available plans for most of these projects suggest durability.  “The structures that are going in are concrete and mortar, rather than plywood and tent skins,” says Gerdes. As of last December, his office was involved in 30 Afghan construction projects for U.S. or international coalition partners worth almost $427 million.  

The Big Base Build-Up

Recently, the New York Times reported that President Obama is likely to approve a plan to shift much of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan to special operations forces.  These elite troops would then conduct kill/capture missions and train local troops well beyond 2014.  Recent building efforts in the country bear this out.   

A major project at Bagram Air Base, for instance, involves the construction of a special operations forces complex, a clandestine base within a base that will afford America’s black ops troops secrecy and near-absolute autonomy from other U.S. and coalition forces.  Begun in 2010, the $29 million project is slated to be completed this May and join roughly 90 locations around the country where troops from Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan have been stationed.

Elsewhere on Bagram, tens of millions of dollars are being spent on projects that are less sexy but no less integral to the war effort, like paving dirt roads and upgrading drainage systems on the mega-base.  In January, the U.S. military awarded a $7 million contract to a Turkish construction company to build a 24,000-square-foot command-and-control facility.  Plans are also in the works for a new operations center to support tactical fighter jet missions, a new flight-line fire station, as well as more lighting and other improvements to support the American air war.

Last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered that the U.S.-run prison at Bagram be transferred to Afghan control.  By the end of January, the U.S. had issued a $36 million contract for the construction, within a year, of a new prison on the base.  While details are sparse, plans for the detention center indicate a thoroughly modern, high-security facility complete with guard towers, advanced surveillance systems, administrative facilities, and the capacity to house about 2,000 prisoners.        

At Kandahar Air Field, that new intelligence facility for the drone war will be joined by a similarly-sized structure devoted to administrative operations and maintenance tasks associated with robotic aerial missions.  It will be able to accommodate as many as 180 personnel at a time.  With an estimated combined price tag of up to $5 million, both buildings will be integral to Air Force and possibly CIA operations involving both the MQ-1 Predator drone and its more advanced and more heavily-armed progeny, the MQ-9 Reaper.

The military is keeping information about these drone facilities under extraordinarily tight wraps.  They refused to answer questions about whether, for instance, the construction of these new centers for robotic warfare are in any way related to the loss of Shamsi Air Base in neighboring Pakistan as a drone operations center, or if they signal efforts to increase the tempo of drone missions in the years ahead. The International Joint Command’s chief of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) operations, aware that such questions were to be posed, backed out of a planned interview with TomDispatch.

“Unfortunately our ISR chief here in the International Joint Command is going to be unable to address your questions,” Lieutenant Ryan Welsh of ISAF Joint Command Media Outreach explained by email just days before the scheduled interview. He also made it clear that any question involving drone operations in Pakistan was off limits. “The issues that you raise are outside the scope under which the IJC operates, therefore we are unable to facilitate this interview request.”

Whether the construction at Kandahar is designed to free up facilities elsewhere for CIA drone operations across the border in Pakistan or is related only to missions within Afghanistan, it strongly suggests a ramping up of unmanned operations.  It is, however, just one facet of the ongoing construction at the air field.  This month, a $26 million project to build 11 new structures devoted to tactical vehicle maintenance at Kandahar is scheduled for completion.  With two large buildings for upkeep and repairs, one devoted strictly to fixing tires, another to painting vehicles, as well as an industrial-sized car wash, and administrative and storage facilities, the big base’s building boom shows no sign of flickering out.

Construction and Reconstruction

This year, at Herat Air Base in the province of the same name bordering Turkmenistan and Iran, the U.S. is slated to begin a multimillion-dollar project to enhance its special forces’ air operations.  Plans are in the works to expand apron space -- where aircraft can be parked, serviced, and loaded or unloaded -- for helicopters and airplanes, as well as to build new taxiways and aircraft shelters.

That project is just one of nearly 130, cumulatively valued at about $1.5 billion, slated to be carried out in Herat, Helmand, and Kandahar provinces this year, according to Army Corps of Engineers documents examined by TomDispatch.  These also include efforts at Camp Tombstone and Camp Dwyer, both in Helmand Province as well as Kandahar’s FOB Hadrian and FOB Wilson.  The U.S. military also recently awarded a contract for more air field apron space at a base in Kunduz, a new secure entrance and new roads for FOB Delaram II, and new utilities and roads at FOB Shank, while the Marines recently built a new chapel at Camp Bastion.

Seven years ago, Forward Operating Base Sweeney, located a mile up in a mountain range in Zabul Province, was a well-outfitted, if remote, American base.  After U.S. troops abandoned it, however, the base fell into disrepair.  Last month, American troops returned in force and began rebuilding the outpost, constructing everything from new troop housing to a new storage facility.  “We built a lot of buildings, we put up a lot of tents, we filled a lot of sandbags, and we increased our force protection significantly,” Captain Joe Mickley, commanding officer of the soldiers taking up residence at the base, told a military reporter.

Decommission and Deconstruction

Hesco barriers are, in essence, big bags of dirt.  Up to seven feet tall, made of canvas and heavy gauge wire mesh, they form protective walls around U.S. outposts all over Afghanistan.  They’ll take the worst of sniper rounds, rifle-propelled grenades, even mortar shells, but one thing can absolutely wreck them -- the Marines’ 9th Engineer Support Battalion.

At the beginning of December, the 9th Engineers were building bases and filling up Hescos in Helmand Province.  By the end of the month, they were tearing others down. 

Wielding pickaxes, shovels, bolt-cutters, powerful rescue saws, and front-end loaders, they have begun “demilitarizing” bases, cutting countless Hescos -- which cost $700 or more a pop -- into heaps of jagged scrap metal and bulldozing berms in advance of the announced American withdrawal from Afghanistan.  At Firebase Saenz, for example, Marines were bathed in a sea of crimson sparks as they sawed their way through the metal mesh and let the dirt spill out, leaving a country already haunted by the ghosts of British and Russian bases with yet another defunct foreign outpost.  After Saenz, it was on to another patrol base slated for destruction.

Not all rural outposts are being torn down, however.  Some are being handed over to the Afghan Army or police.  And new facilities are now being built for the indigenous forces at an increasing rate.  “If current projections remain accurate, we will award 18 contracts in February,” Bonnie Perry, the head of contracting for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Afghanistan Engineering District-South, told military reporter Karla Marshall.  “Next quarter we expect that awards will remain high, with the largest number of contract awards occurring in May.”  One of the projects underway is a large base near Herat, which will include barracks, dining facilities, office space, and other amenities for Afghan commandos.

Tell Me How This Ends

No one should be surprised that the U.S. military is building up and tearing down bases at the same time, nor that much of the new construction is going on at mega-bases, while small outposts in the countryside are being abandoned.  This is exactly what you would expect of an occupation force looking to scale back its “footprint” and end major combat operations while maintaining an on-going presence in Afghanistan.  Given the U.S. military’s projected retreat to its giant bases and an increased reliance on kill/capture black-ops as well as unmanned air missions, it’s also no surprise that its signature projects for 2012 include a new special operations forces compound, clandestine drone facilities, and a brand new military prison.

There’s little doubt Bagram Air Base will exist in five or 10 years.  Just who will be occupying it is, however, less clear.  After all, in Iraq, the Obama administration negotiated for some way to station a significant military force -- 10,000 or more troops -- there beyond a withdrawal date that had been set in stone for years.  While a token number of U.S. troops and a highly militarized State Department contingent remain there, the Iraqi government largely thwarted the American efforts -- and now, even the State Department presence is being halved. 

It’s less likely this will be the case in Afghanistan, but it remains possible.  Still, it’s clear that the military is building in that country as if an enduring American presence were a given.  Whatever the outcome, vestiges of the current base-building boom will endure and become part of America’s Afghan legacy.   

On Bagram’s grounds stands a distinctive structure called the “Crow’s Nest.”  It’s an old control tower built by the Soviets to coordinate their military operations in Afghanistan.  That foreign force left the country in 1989.  The Soviet Union itself departed from the planet less than three years later.  The tower remains. 

America’s new prison in Bagram will undoubtedly remain, too.  Just who the jailers will be and who will be locked inside five years or 10 years from now is, of course, unknown.  But given the history -- marked by torture and deaths -- of the appalling treatment of inmates at Bagram and, more generally, of the brutality toward prisoners by all parties to the conflict over the years, in no scenario are the results likely to be pretty.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com.  An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. This article is the sixth in his new series on the changing face of American empire, which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation.  You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook.

U.S. Army Pfc. Shawn Williams is evacuated after being injured by a roadside bomb in Kandahar Province on June 17, 2011.

Credit:DoD photo

WASHINGTON, Feb 11, 2012 (IPS) - An analysis by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, which the U.S. Army has not approved for public release but has leaked to Rolling Stone magazine, provides the most authoritative refutation thus far of the official military narrative of success in the Afghanistan War since the troop surge began in early 2010.

In the 84-page unclassified report, Davis, who returned last fall after his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, attacks the credibility of claims by senior military leaders that the U.S.-NATO war strategy has succeeded in weakening the Taliban insurgent forces and in building Afghan security forces capable of taking primary responsibility for security in the future.

The report, which Davis had submitted to the Army in January for clearance to make it public, was posted on the website of Rolling Stone magazine by journalist Michael Hastings Friday. In a blog for the magazine, Hastings reported that "officials familiar with the situation" had said the Pentagon was "refusing" to release the report, but that it had been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House.

Hastings wrote that he had obtained it from a U.S. government official.

Open: PDF.

By Yasmeen Ali

Pakistan parliamentarians should promptly table a resolution calling for efforts to carve the state of New Mexico away from the United States and to either make it independent, or restore it to its status prior to the Mexican-American War (1846-48), when it was a part of Mexico. 

MRFF Demands that Marine Corps Leadership Immediately Investigate Usage of Nazi SS Flag by Marines in Afghanistan

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org) is absolutely sickened by the disgusting images of members of the U.S. Marine Corps 1st Recon Battalion, Charlie Company, proudly posing in front of the U.S. flag juxtaposed alongside a symbol associated with the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, the genocide of religious minorities throughout Europe, and the forces of white supremacist racial hatred.

The fact that United States service personnel were caught proudly posing with the emblem of the Nazi SS, which symbolizes the vile ideology of Hitlerian fascism, sends a menacing signal to religious minorities within the United States Armed Forces. The symbol's usage conveys a message that the U.S. Military is an organization within which white supremacists can feel at home, free to espouse their murderous ideology and proudly don their symbols of hatred.

This brazen display of a symbol which is synonymous with death squads, gas chambers, and brutal occupation reflects a sociopathic, marauding attitude which violently jars with the supposed "nation-building" efforts which the NATO forces have embarked upon. It exacerbates the anti-Americanism felt by the people of the region who we claim to be helping in the context of a UN-mandated, NATO-led security mission.

In short, this shameful display of SS "lightning bolts" by U.S. service personnel enrages our regional allies, emboldens the extremist Islamist forces with whom we are contending, and eviscerates good order, morale, and discipline within the U.S. Marine Corps. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation immediately calls for the leadership of the United States Military to condemn this stomach-turning display without equivocation or delay and severely punish ALL of those responsible.

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, Esq.
Founder & President
Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Ongoing News Coverage of this Scandalous Outrage:

CNN - Photo shows Marines posing with Nazi-like
symbol in Afghanistan

MOTHER JONES - Marines Sport Nazi SS Flag in Afghanistan

LOS ANGELES TIMES - Camp Pendleton Marines posed
with Nazi SS symbol in Afghanistan

MARINE CORPS TIMES - Marine scout snipers
used Nazi SS logo

THE DAILY MAIL (UK) - Fury from Auschwitz survivors as U.S. Marines sniper squad is seen in Afghanistan with 'SS' flag (but they say it refers to 'scout sniper' team NOT Hitler's henchmen)

THE BLAZE - Marines Punished for Posing with
Flag Resembling Nazi SS Symbol

MILITARY.COM - Corps Condemns Marine Units Use of SS Flag

BBC NEWS - US Marine sniper unit photographed
with 'Nazi SS' flag

THE AUSTRALIAN - Marine snipers probed over SS flag

NY DAILY NEWS - U.S. Marine snipers posed in
front of Nazi flag in Afghanistan

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES - U.S. Marine
Sniper Squad Posed with Nazi SS Flag

WASHINGTON POST - US Marines snipers go unpunished
after posing with flag bearing Nazi symbol in Afghanistan

Simon Wiesenthal Center Statement on Marine SS Flag Outrage

Many questions still remain.  While Sec. Panetta has indicated a shift towards an "training, advice and assist" role, there has been too little clarity on what this means, including whether there will be what Panetta calls “an enduring presence” in Afghanistan that could continue for years and what will be the actual timetable for the withdrawal.

In support of the Administration’s decision, a bipartisan group of six House members is circulated for signatures a letter to go to President Obama.

The 20 signers thus far as of 2/8 are (and this list will be updated daily):

Justin Amash (MI)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Lois Capps (CA)
Judy Chu (CA)
John Conyers, Jr. (MI)
Jimmy Duncan, Jr. (TN)
Sam Farr (CA)
John Garamendi (CA)
Raul Grijalva (AZ)
Janice Hahn (CA)
Martin Heinrich (NM)
Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL)
Walter Jones (NC)
Barbara Lee (CA)
John Lewis (GA)
Ben Ray Luján (NM)
Jim McGovern (MA)
Gary Peters (MI)
Henry Waxman (CA)
Lynn Woolsey (CA)

(Republicans bolded)

The letter follows:

The Honorable Barack Obama
President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

           We write to express our support for the Administration’s announcement on February 1st that the United States will complete combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of next year.

           From information reported in the media, the U.S. intends to transition from major combat operations in Afghanistan to a “training, advice and assist role” by the middle-to-latter part of 2013.  We applaud this announcement by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to accelerate the transition away from combat operations, and it provides assurance that the timeframe outlined in your 2009 speech at West Point will be carried out.  As you know, many of us support an even more rapid withdrawal of all our troops from Afghanistan.

           The majority of Americans want a safe and orderly military withdrawal from Afghanistan as quickly as possible, as recent public opinion polls indicate. The desire by the American people for an accelerated transition in Afghanistan was reflected in votes taken in Congress last year, in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate during their respective debates on amendments offered by Representatives McGovern and Jones and by Senator Merkley to the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.  These votes show there is strong bipartisan political support to take bold steps regarding U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

           The past 10 years have cost America dearly in the blood and sacrifice of our military servicemen and women and their families, and in our nation’s fiscal health and security. The United States intervened in Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda’s safe haven, remove th Taliban government that sheltered al Qaeda, and pursue those who planned the September 11th attacks on the United States; those objectives have largely been met and no longer require a large presence of combat troops in Afghanistan.  While questions remain about the details of the announced transition – when and how quickly U.S. troops will be coming home, the number and purpose of troops that might remain in Afghanistan and for how long a period, the costs and the savings of accelerating the completion of combat operations – the February 1st announcement clearly signals that now is the moment to initiate the transition, end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home.

Sincerely,
Members of Congress

By Dave Lindorff

It’s a relief to know that President Obama’s “preferred” solution to dealing with disagreements with Iran is diplomacy, as he said yesterday in an interview on NBC TV, but at the same time, it’s profoundly disturbing that he is simultaneously saying that, as an AP report on the interview put it: he would “not take options off the table to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

Charges dropped against U.S. soldier in Afghan murder

By Laura L. Myers | Reuters –

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

READ THE REST AT Armed Forces Journal

From PressTV

"These weapons are still used. In fact, a US aircraft called A-10 warthog, normally, even if it doesn't use a uranium projectile in the machine gun, every third projectile is a uranium projectile and that's the working horse of the US army in Afghanistan. They use it left and right," Dr. Mohammad Daud Miraki said in an interview with Press TV.

"Apache helicopters and Bradley vehicles also utilize these projectiles in these weapons," he added.

The activist also noted that 62.7 percent of the population of Afghanistan has been targeted by the dangerous radioactive ammunitions.

Miraki explained that a group of researchers collected urine samples of people in Afghanistan and found uranium isotopes in the urine, which was about 300 percent to 2000 percent higher than normal level.

He further said that a lot of people in Afghanistan were identified with various bizarre diseases in different Pashtun-dominated villages.

The diseases were skin lesions, sudden deaths, spontaneous abortions among females, as well as deformities and multiple cancers.

The author also said the United States used depleted uranium weapons that is against international and US laws.

Meanwhile, Miraki criticized US officials and Afghan President Hamid Karzai for not investigating the crimes committed by the US administration.

They are feeling the pressure and need to feel a lot more of it.

From WaPo:

The United States and NATO will seek to end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year and shift to a role of providing support and training to Afghan security forces, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday.

U.S. military commanders had said in recent weeks they would begin a transition this year toward taking more of an advisory role as Afghanistan’s national army and police take greater responsibility for fighting the insurgency. But Panetta’s remarks were the first time the Obama administration has said it could foresee an end to regular U.S. and NATO combat operations by the second half of next year.

Senate Joint Memorial 8014, requesting a reduction in federal military spending and ending the war in Afghanistan, will be heard in the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Tribal Relations & Elections on Thursday, February 2, at 10:00 AM in the Senate Hearing Room #2,  Cherberg Building, 

By Dave Lindorff

The Iraq war may be over, at least for US troops, but the cover-up of the atrocities committed there by American forces goes on, even in retrospectives about the war. A prime example is reporting on the destroyed city of Fallujah, where some of the heaviest fighting of the war took place.

On March 31, 2004, four armed mercenaries working for the firm then known as Blackwater (now Xe), were captured in Fallujah, Iraq’s third largest city and a hotbed of insurgent strength located in Anbar Province about 40 miles west of Baghdad. Reportedly killed in their vehicle, which was then torched, their charred bodies were strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River. 

From the NYTimes:

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report obtained by The New York Times.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy attends a ceremony to present New Year wishes to the foreign diplomatic corps at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Friday. France is suspending its training operations in Afghanistan and threatening to withdraw its entire force from the country early, after an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French troops Friday and wounded several others.

Charles Platiau/AP

At least four French troops are dead and more injured after someone wearing an Afghan military uniform turned his weapon against NATO forces. It’s the latest in an increasing number of such incidents and could further strain relations between NATO and Afghan officials.

Following Friday’s shooting, one of the most deadly for French forces over the past decade in Afghanistan, French President Nicolas Sarkozy suspended his country’s combat operations and threatened to pull out early.

“The French army stands side by side with its allies but we can't accept that a single one of our soldiers be killed by our allies,” said Mr. Sarkozy according to Radio France Internationale.  “If the conditions for security are not clearly established, the question of an early withdrawal of the French army will arise.”

Sometimes an event breaks into the mainstream media that reveals the truly brutal, oppressive nature of the armed forces of the US and the wars they are fighting. At a moment when we are being told by the oh-so-rational and humane administration of Barack Obama and Co. that we must line up behind a new aggressive war against an oil-producing Central Asian country, the recently released video of US soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses has exposed the way "our" soldiers view the entire population of the region: as subhuman.

Now we must challenge Americans to not look away from these terrible images, but absorb what these incidents tell us about the essence of what is still happening in our names: unjust, illegitimate violence unleashed by the most powerful against some of the poorest people on the planet.

19 January 2012 - A North Carolina human rights group is calling on state officials to investigate and stop alleged CIA missions originating in Johnston County that involve illegal torture.

North Carolina Stop Torture Now delivered a University of North Carolina School of Law report Wednesday to the governor, attorney general and others that claims the Central Intelligence Agency relies on Smithfield-based Aero Contractors Ltd. to provide planes and pilots to transport prisoners overseas from the Johnston County Airport for secret interrogation using torture techniques.

Typical.

From Vermont Commons:

I know it's a horrible image. No, it is an UNBEARABLE image. But as the essay that follows makes so clear, this is what war is. This is what we are when we support war and the people and institutions that wage them. So look.

By Hamilton Nolan, reposted with permission from Gawker

A video emerges showing US Marines pissing on three Taliban corpses in Afghanistan. Theoutrage machine grinds into motion. The media bestirs itself from its slumber. Americans momentarily pay attention to the war in Afghanistan again. Politicians rush to add their names to the chorus of identical statements. All inflamed over the least bad thing that soldiers do in war.

Do you know what is worse than having your dead body urinated upon? Being killed. Being shot. Being bombed. Having your limbs blown off. Having your house incinerated by a drone-fired missile that you don't see until it explodes. Having your children blown up in their beds. Having your spouse killed. Having your hometown destroyed. Being displaced. Becoming a refugee. Having your entire life destroyed as a consequence of political forces far, far beyond your control.

more here.

Ali, Faiz and Abdulai at the Gandhi Memorial in New Delhi, India

Indian, Afghan and human poverty

Faiz, Abdulai, Ali and I are travelling in India to learn from Gandhian practitioners ( in Ekta Parishad ). We wish to learn how to mobilize people from the villages to protest non-violently.

Immediately, we’re encountering our own poverty.

Our flexible travel  itinerary :

6th Jan to 9^th Jan : New Delhi

10^th to 15^th Jan : Bhopal

15^th to 21^st Jan : Ahmedabad

23^rd to 26^th Jan : Aliabad?

27^th Jan : Return to Kabul Afghanistan

6^th Jan  : Firsts for Faiz, Abdulai, Ali

First time on plane

First time above clouds

First time having pineapples

First time on elevator, travelator

First time using standing urinal and automatic sink-tap

First time in a big city that’s green ( Delhi )

First feelings penned at Kabul International Airport :

Faiz – ‘excited’

Ali – ‘very happy’

Abdulai – ‘eager to learn’

Hakim – ‘opportunity’

Kathy Kelly – ‘relieved, open’

Maya Evans  ( UK peace activist ) – ‘discovery, adventure’

7^th Jan : Other Firsts

First time up close to a Hindu temple

First time seeing so many women with uncovered heads

First time in underground Metro

First time being a foreigner

homeless in India

8^th Jan : More Firsts

First time in multimedia memorial museum ( Gandhi Memorial )

First time seeing a lifelike statue ( of Gandhi and his wife )

First time presenting to an audience abroad ( about 100 students at Jawaharlal Nehru University ) – AYPVs spoke  about : ‘Upon awakening, do not live normally.’

9^th Jan : Lodhi Garden and Gandhi Peace Foundation

Lodhi was a Pathan

– the garden had green lawns, old ruins, swans, squirrels, parrots and other birds, smooching lovers

Gandhi Peace Foundation

-meeting held to discuss a high court case of an Indian activist charged with visiting a political prisoner, sedition included as one of the charges

-short messages to Indian human rights activists, AYPVs spoke  about : ‘Dissolving the borders of peace’

The youth with peace activists Maya Evans ( UK ),

Kathy Kelly ( USA ) , Paul and Kathrin ( Canada )

at the World Peace Gong in Gandhi Memorial

10^th Jan : Railway train to Bhopal

It was a comfortable 8-hour ride on the train from Delhi to Bhopal.

Fields, fields, fields, litter, litter, litter, cattle, cattle, cattle…

We shared a urgent feeling for human livelihoods to return to the fields.

By Dave Lindorff

I wouldn’t want to be Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, the 28-year-old former US Marine just recently sentenced to death by a court in Iran after being convicted of being an American spy.

Hekmati, who was born in Arizona to Iranian exile parents, and who grew up in Michigan, is being defended by President Obama, whose White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, declared, “Allegations that Mr. Hekmati either worked for, or was sent to Iran by the CIA are false.” The White House, not content with that denial, went on to trash the Iranian government and legal system, with Vietor adding, “The Iranian regime has a history of falsely accusing people of being spies, of eliciting forced confessions, and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons.”

By Charles Davis and Medea Benjamin

In an age when U.S. power can be projected through private mercenary armies and unmanned Predator drones, the U.S. military need no longer rely on massive, conventional ground forces to pursue its imperial agenda, a fact President Barack Obama is now acknowledging. But make no mistake: while the tactics may be changing, the U.S. taxpayer – and poor foreigners abroad – will still be saddled with overblown military budgets and militaristic policies.

Speaking January 5 alongside his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the president announced a shift in strategy for the American military, one that emphasizes aerial campaigns and proxy wars as opposed to “long-term nation-building with large military footprints.” This, to some pundits and politicians, is considered a tectonic shift.

By Tom Mellen, Morning Star

Much to Forgive: The Story of Bibi Sadia. 

By Kathy Kelly