Afghanistan

[winston]

WikiLeaks says evidence of war crimes in documents

WikiLeaks founder says evidence of war crimes in 91,000 leaked Afghanistan documents

Press Writer
AP News

Jul 26, 2010 08:17 EDT

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says there appears to be evidence of war crimes in the thousands of pages of leaked U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan

The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks on Sunday posted some 91,000 U.S. military records of six years of the war, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and covert operations against Taliban figures.

Assange told reporters Monday "it is up to a court to decide really if something in the end is a crime. That said ... there does appear to be evidence of war crimes."

He said what's been reported so far has "only scratched the surface."

The White House, Britain and Pakistan have all condemned the documents' release.

Source: AP News

[winston]

So no investigation of the supposedly war crimes ?

White House urges halt to spilling of war secrets

White House pleads for end to disclosure of war secrets; accused soldier moved to brig

ROBERT BURNS
AP News

Jul 30, 2010 09:44 EDT

The White House on Friday implored the website WikiLeaks to stop posting secret Afghanistan war documents as the Pentagon pressed its investigation of the leaks, bringing a soldier charged with handing over classified video back to the U.S. for trial.

Obama administration officials said the investigation of the release of tens of thousands of classified documents could extend beyond members of the military. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said posting the war logs on the Web jeopardized national security and put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. military personnel at risk.

Asked what the Obama administration could do to stop the posting of more war secrets, Gibbs said, "We can do nothing but implore the person that has those classified top secret documents not to post any more."

"I think it's important that no more damage be done to our national security," Gibb told NBC's "Today" show Friday.

The Pentagon inquiry has been looking most closely at Pvt. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence specialist who was already charged with leaking video to the WikiLeaks website.

Manning, 22, has been moved from Kuwait to Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, where he will be held while awaiting trial on charges stemming from posting of the video on WikiLeaks, the Army said in a statement Friday.

The classified helicopter cockpit video showed a 2007 firefight in Baghdad that left a Reuters photographer and his driver dead.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview aired Thursday that WikiLeaks had contacted the White House — via The New York Times acting as intermediary — and offered to let government officials go through the documents to make sure no innocent people were identified. The White House did not respond to the approach, he said.

Assange dismissed allegations that innocent people or informants had been put in danger by the publication of the documents.

"We are yet to see clear evidence of that," he said in the Australian Broadcasting interview.

WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organization for whistleblowers, journalists and activists.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the release of the documents deeply damaging and potentially life-threatening for Afghan informants or others who have taken risks to help the U.S. and NATO war effort.

Theirs was the most sober assessment of the ramifications of the leak this past Sunday of raw intelligence reports and other material dating to 2004.

"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family," Mullen said Thursday.

Gates said the military's investigation "should go wherever it needs to go" and that he has asked the FBI to help. Gates would not rule out that Assange could be a target.

Source: AP News

[winston]

War Sheet: Afghanistan

Days 3,219
GIs Killed in Action 853 DoD
Non-Hostile GI Deaths 218 DoD
GIs Severely Wounded 3,717 DoD
Current Troop Deployment 94,000 AP
Total Cost (approved through Sept 30, 2010) $269 Bln AP
Cost Per Day (Avg) $82 Mil

* Casualty status updated July 9, 2010

[kennynah]

Days 3,219

wah ... 9 years of invasion, occupation and brutalities already hor

[winston]

WikiLeaks says it won't be threatened by Pentagon

WikiLeaks founder says group 'will not be threatened' by Pentagon over Afghan war documents

KEITH MOORE
AP News

Aug 14, 2010 09:36 EDT

WikiLeaks will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month, despite warnings from the U.S. government, the organization's founder said Saturday.

The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks' initial release of some 76,000 war documents.

"This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group," Assange told reporters in Stockholm. "We proceed cautiously and safely with this material."

In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that if U.S. defense officials want to be seen as promoting democracy then they "must protect what the United States' founders considered to be their central value, which is freedom of the press."

"For the Pentagon to be making threatening demands for censorship of a press organization is a cause for concern, not just for the press but for the Pentagon itself," the Australian added.

He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a "line-by-line review" of the 15,000 documents and that "innocent parties who are under reasonable threat" would be redacted from the material.

"It should be approximately two weeks before that process is complete," Assange told AP. "There will then be a journalistic review, so you're talking two weeks to a month."

Wikileaks would be working with media partners in releasing the remaining documents, he said, but declined to name them.

The first files in WikiLeaks' "Afghan War Diary" laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The release angered U.S. officials, energized critics of the NATO-led campaign, and drew the attention of the Taliban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.

That has aroused the concern of several human rights group operating in Afghanistan and the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which has accused WikiLeaks of recklessness. Jean-Francois Julliard, the group's secretary-general, said Thursday that WikiLeaks showed "incredible irresponsibility" when posting the documents online.

WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organization for whistleblowers, journalists and activists.

"There are no easy choices for our organization," Assange said. "We have a duty to the people most directly affected by this material, the people of Afghanistan and the course of this war which is killing hundreds every week. We have a duty to the broader historical record and its accuracy and its integrity. And we have a duty to our sources to try and protect them where we can."

Assange told the AP that while no country has taken steps to shut down WikiLeaks, some have been gathering intelligence on the organization.

"There has been extensive surveillance in Australia, there has been surveillance in the United Kingdom, there has been the detainment of one of our volunteers who entered the United States a week and a half ago. But he was released after four hours," Assange said. He didn't give details of that incident.

In addition to speaking at a seminar, Assange was in Sweden to investigate claims that the website was not covered by laws protecting anonymous sources in the Scandinavian country.

Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks passes information through Belgium and Sweden to take advantage of press freedom laws there. But some experts say the site doesn't have the publishing certificate needed for full protection in Sweden.

Assange said two Swedish publications had offered their publication certificates to WikiLeaks, "but we will soon be registering our own this week."

He declined to disclose what other countries house WikiLeaks' technical infrastructure.

Source: AP News

[winston]

Afghanistan orders ban on private security firms By Paul Tait

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree on Tuesday setting a deadline of four months to disband private security companies, less than a week after Washington expressed some reservations about the plan.

The decree said the private security firms were being banned to avoid the misuse of weapons which had caused "horrific and tragic incidents."

It was issued just hours after Karzai met influential U.S. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The decree said the order to disband the companies, which employ up to 40,000 people working mainly for Western enterprises in Afghanistan, was being issued "to prevent irregularities."

"I am signing the dissolution of all local and foreign security companies within four months," said the decree, issued by the presidential palace.

The decree includes an exemption for firms whose guards work inside compounds used by foreign embassies and international non-government organizations, even though Karzai's office said last week there would be no exceptions.

Firms being disbanded could either sell their weapons to the Afghan government or take the equipment with them as they leave if the companies were properly registered. Unregistered firms would have their weapons confiscated, it said.

The visas of their employees would also be terminated.

Karzai, whose government faces September 18 parliamentary elections, has been trying to assert his independence from his Western backers and stepped up criticism of the firms last week, saying they were too costly and were "daily creating miseries."

The swiftness of the ban appeared to catch some by surprise, especially as it was issued so soon after Karzai met Kerry.

SCANDALS

Karzai has long called for the disbanding of such companies, which compete for contracts worth billions of dollars, and said last week that time was running out.

The push to scrap the firms is linked to his ambitious 2014 timetable for Afghan forces to take over all security responsibility from foreign forces, who number almost 150,000.

The decree said eligible Afghan employees of such firms could volunteer to join the Afghan security forces within the four-month period.

Private security companies, which are not accountable to the Afghan government, have long been an irritant for Afghans and for U.S. and NATO forces in the country after a series of scandals.

The U.S. military also employs some of them and the Pentagon said last week it was in talks with Karzai's government to address its concerns while at the same time ensuring the needs of the U.S. military would be met.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said last week it was his impression Karzai had not yet made a decision to scrap all such firms but acknowledged a need to do so over time.

Many Afghans see such firms, most of which are not registered, as operating with impunity, their heavily armed guards forcing their way through traffic a common sight on Afghan streets.

A senior spokesman for the NATO-led force in Afghanistan acknowledged at the weekend the firms were "a concern" and said they should be properly registered and have binding rules.

Karzai's government tried unsuccessfully last year to register the firms, find out the amount of arms they had and where they came from, and how much money the industry was worth, an Afghan security source has said.

The U.S. State Department said last year it would review its use of contractors at overseas embassies after a scandal over sexual hazing by security guards at its Kabul mission.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6 ... pnewsearly

[winston]

Idiots at work ..

NATO air strike kills 10 election workers in northern Afghanistan, provincial official says.

Source: CNN

[kennynah]

it's UN sanctioned hooliganism...backed by none other than U A*S A....

[winston]

What else is new ?

US soldiers accused of killing Afghans 'for sport'

A group of US soldiers is facing accusations of randomly targeting and killing Afghan civilians for sport, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Citing army legal documents and interviews with people involved in the case, the newspaper said the case involved rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

The game started last winter, when one Afghan man approached the soldiers in the village of La Mohammed Kalay, the report said.

As the man neared, one soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground, the paper noted. Then others opened fire, killing the man.

According to The Post, the unprovoked attack on January 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the US invasion in 2001.

Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones, the report said.

The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed, The Post said.

Military documents allege that five members of the unit staged a total of three murders in Kandahar province between January and May, the paper noted.

Seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes related to the case, including hashish use, attempts to impede the investigation and a retaliatory gang assault on a private who blew the whistle, according to The Post.

Army officials have not disclosed a motive for the killings, the report noted.

But a review of military court documents and interviews with people familiar with the investigation suggest the killings were committed essentially for sport by soldiers who had a fondness for hashish and alcohol, The Post said.

The accused soldiers deny wrongdoing, the paper noted.

Source: AFP Global Edition

[kennynah]

in time...when their time is over... they will be whacked in turn....