'You've got blood on your hands'

This father of a dead British soldier obviously just hates his country. And Blair was shocked - SHOCKED - that this impudent slave had the gall tell him where to put his handshake. The global elite are cowards who are so used to us prostrating ourselves to their greatness that if we got in their faces they wouldn't know what to do with themselves.

Daily Mail UK -

A father’s grief and anger boiled over yesterday when he came face to face with the man he blames for his son’s death.

Tony Blair offered his hand to Peter Brierley during a reception following a service at St Paul’s to commemorate the dead of the Iraq war.

‘Don’t you dare,’ roared Mr Brierley. ‘You have my son’s blood on your hands.’

Three of the former Prime Minister’s bodyguards sprang into action, ushering away a visibly shocked Mr Blair, who had earlier been criticised during the service by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But 59-year-old Mr Brierley, whose son Shaun died in the run-up to Iraq, was not finished.

He told the Daily Mail: ‘As far as I am concerned that man is a war criminal. I can’t bear to be in the same room as him. I cannot believe he’s been allowed to come to this reception.

‘I sat through that service listening to people preaching to me about tolerance but I don’t think anyone should be forced to tolerate being in the same room as him.

‘He has made £14million on the back of taking us to war and they are now talking about making him president of the EU.

‘But I believe he’s got the blood of my son – and all of the other men and women who died in that war – on his hands.’

AfPak troops depressed and deeply disillusioned

Maybe they're slowly figuring out the truth, that we're not there to destroy al Qaeda or kill Usama bin Laden, who's already dead. They may not realize they're there to protect the opium crop from the Taliban, but surely they must know the Taliban are no threat to Americans, except the ones illegally occupying their land.

In addition to troops in the field losing morale, American soldiers are committing suicide at record levels. Alcoholism is on the rise. Drug use is becoming a problem. One in eight returning soldiers sufffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. As morale continues to deteriorate, these issues will continue to worsen. These men and women are fighting, dying, and going crazy, over a lie. Bring them home. Join an anti-war protest. Not a fake anti-war group, who only hated war when Bush the so-called conservative was in office, but love it now; a real anti-war group which opposes war no matter what the letter is next to the puppet who runs it. Expose the Federal Reserve, the root cause of every American war of the last 100 years. Stop this madness.

Times of London -

American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.

Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.

“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.

“They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.

The base is not, it has to be said, obviously downcast, and many troops do not share the chaplains’ assessment. The soldiers are, by nature and training, upbeat, driven by a strong sense of duty, and they do their jobs as best they can. Re-enlistment rates are surprisingly good for the 2-87, though poor for the 4-25. Several men approached by The Times, however, readily admitted that their morale had slumped.

“We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”

Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”

The only soldiers who thought it was going well “work in an office, not on the ground”. In his opinion “the whole country is going to s***”.

The battalion’s 1,500 soldiers are nine months in to a year-long deployment that has proved extraordinarily tough. Their goal was to secure the mountainous Wardak province and then to win the people’s allegiance through development and good governance. They have, instead, found themselves locked in an increasingly vicious battle with the Taleban.

They have been targeted by at least 300 roadside bombs, about 180 of which have exploded. Nineteen men have been killed in action, with another committing suicide. About a hundred have been flown home with amputations, severe burns and other injuries likely to cause permanent disability, and many of those have not been replaced. More than two dozen mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) have been knocked out of action.

Living conditions are good — abundant food, air-conditioned tents, hot water, free internet — but most of the men are on their second, third or fourth tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, with barely a year between each. Staff Sergeant Erika Cheney, Airborne’s mental health specialist, expressed concern about their mental state — especially those in scattered outposts — and believes that many have mild post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “They’re tired, frustrated, scared. A lot of them are afraid to go out but will still go,” she said.

Lieutenant Peter Hjelmstad, 2-87’s Medical Platoon Leader, said sleeplessness and anger attacks were common.

A dozen men have been confined to desk jobs because they can no longer handle missions outside the base. One long-serving officer who has lost three friends this tour said he sometimes returned to his room at night and cried, or played war games on his laptop. “It’s a release. It’s a method of coping.” He has nightmares and sleeps little, and it does not help that the base is frequently shaken by outgoing artillery fire. He was briefly overcome as he recalled how, when a lorry backfired during his most recent home leave, he grabbed his young son and dived between two parked cars.

The chaplains said soldiers were seeking their help in unprecedented numbers. “Everyone you meet is just down, and you meet them everywhere — in the weight room, dining facility, getting mail,” said Captain Rico. Even “hard men” were coming to their tent chapel and breaking down.

The men are frustrated by the lack of obvious purpose or progress. “The soldiers’ biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It’s hard to catch someone you can’t see,” said Specialist Mercer.

“It’s a very frustrating mission,” said Lieutenant Hjelmstad. “The average soldier sees a friend blown up and his instinct is to retaliate or believe it’s for something [worthwhile], but it’s not like other wars where your buddy died but they took the hill. There’s no tangible reward for the sacrifice. It’s hard to say Wardak is better than when we got here.”

Captain Masengale, a soldier for 12 years before he became a chaplain, said: “We want to believe in a cause but we don’t know what that cause is.”

The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. “You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they’re still going to lie to you. They’ll tell you there’s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,” said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia.

Captain Rico told of the disgust of a medic who was asked to treat an insurgent shortly after pulling a colleague’s charred corpse from a bombed vehicle.

The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their backs. “They’re a joke,” said one. “You get shot at but can do nothing about it. You have to see the person with the weapon. It’s not enough to know which house the shooting’s coming from.”

The soldiers joke that their Isaf arm badges stand not for International Security Assistance Force but “I Suck At Fighting” or “I Support Afghan Farmers”.

To compound matters, soldiers are mainly being killed not in combat but on routine journeys, by roadside bombs planted by an invisible enemy. “That’s very demoralising,” said Captain Masengale.

The constant deployments are, meanwhile, playing havoc with the soldiers’ private lives. “They’re killing families,” he said. “Divorces are skyrocketing. PTSD is off the scale. There have been hundreds of injuries that send soldiers home and affect families for the rest of their lives.”

The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan. “All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,” said Captain Masengale.

“If we make it back with ten toes and ten fingers the mission is successful,” Sergeant Hughes said.

“You carry on for the guys to your left or right,” added Specialist Mercer.

The chaplains have themselves struggled to cope with so much distress. “We have to encourage them, strengthen them and send them out again. No one comes in and says, ‘I’ve had a great day on a mission’. It’s all pain,” said Captain Masengale. “The only way we’ve been able to make it is having each other.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Kimo Gallahue, 2-87’s commanding officer, denied that his men were demoralised, and insisted they had achieved a great deal over the past nine months. A triathlete and former rugby player, he admitted pushing his men hard, but argued that taking the fight to the enemy was the best form of defence.

He said the security situation had worsened because the insurgents had chosen to fight in Wardak province, not abandon it. He said, however, that the situation would have been catastrophic without his men. They had managed to keep open the key Kabul-to-Kandahar highway which dissects Wardak, and prevent the province becoming a launch pad for attacks on the capital, which is barely 20 miles from its border. Above all, Colonel Gallahue argued that counter-insurgency — winning the allegiance of the indigenous population through security, development and good governance — was a long and laborious process that could not be completed in a year. “These 12 months have been, for me, laying the groundwork for future success,” he said.

At morning service on Sunday, the two chaplains sought to boost the spirits of their flock with uplifting hymns, accompanied by video footage of beautiful lakes, oceans and rivers.

Captain Rico offered a particularly apposite reading from Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Taliban pose no threat to the West

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. - George Orwell

How appropriate the above quote is, because we live in a world, eight years after 9-11, where, through careful and persistent media and government propaganda, what was once just a band of goat herders whose only crime was flogging women who let their burkas slip and the unforgivable sin of banning the growing of opium, is now synonymous with terrorism and al Qaeda. And how conveniently we ignore the fact that Afghanistan is their homeland, and that we are the invaders, and we call them terrorists just for having the nerve to refuse to bow down and lick the boots of a foreign occupation. I'm not saying the Taliban are good people, but, being over there, slaughtering innocent men, women and children, American troops aren't behaving any better, even if they are just following orders.

We don't belong there. Al Qaeda is (was) a database of CIA mercenaries. Bin Laden isn't even wanted for 9-11, and is dead regardless. Face facts: our troops are there to keep the Taliban from burning the opium crops. If that's difficult for you to stomach, consider that the more we spend to supposedly combat the heroin trade, the more heroin flows out of the country - the heroin trade sets fresh records every year now. This money of course funds the Taliban. It also makes a lot of money for the banksters funding this war to begin with. If we really wanted to stop the heroin trade, do you really think we're incapable of burning the opium fields? If we were there with the objective to defeat the Taliban, why would we allow the heroin trade which funds them to continue? The answer of course is, the objective is not victory, it is sustainability. So the Taliban are terrorist al Qaeda, and a massive threat to the West, even though they never were before we invaded. Whatever.

Reuters -

The Afghan Taliban pose no threat to the West but will continue their fight against occupying foreign forces, they said on Wednesday, the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that removed them from power.

U.S.-led forces with the help of Afghan groups overthrew the Taliban government during a five week battle which started on October 7, 2001, after the militants refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted by Washington for the September 11 attacks on America.

"We had and have no plan of harming countries of the world, including those in Europe ... our goal is the independence of the country and the building of an Islamic state," the Taliban said in a statement on the group's website www.shahamat.org.

"Still, if you (NATO and U.S. troops) want to colonize the country of proud and pious Afghans under the baseless pretext of a war on terror, then you should know that our patience will only increase and that we are ready for a long war."

U.S. President Barack Obama has said defeating the militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a top foreign policy priority and is evaluating whether to send thousands of extra troops to the country as requested by the commander of NATO and U.S. forces.

In a review of the war in Afghanistan submitted to the Pentagon last month, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, in charge of all foreign forces, said defeating the insurgents would likely result in failure unless more troops were sent.

There are currently more than 100,000 foreign troops in the country, roughly two-thirds of who are Americans.

Bring the boys back home

I didn't mention this Olympics debacle, because it's a distraction, and that's exactly what it's intended to be. Now as the press fawns over the Obamas as this glamorous and glitzy celebrity couple paint the town on their anniversary, our troops have suffered through the deadliest day of the war.

Without trying to cheerlead for American deaths, the fact is that our troops are invaders in a foreign land, with no clear purpose and no clear objective. The neocons will say the objective is victory, but victory is completely undefined. Will victory come when the Taliban are defeated? After 8 years they're stronger than ever. Like Vietnam, this war has no objective except to reap maximum profits for the banksters who fund it and the military industrial complex that makes the weapons. And of course to facilitate the heroin trade which the Taliban had banned in the years before our arrival.

With this perspective, the longer Obama wastes time, the more the media tries to distract us from what's happening over there, the more troops that die, the more the political will to sustain this war erodes. Any new commitment of troops would temporarily boost confidence and support for the war - the majority of Americans being oblivious to the real purpose of it - and push its inevitable end further into the future. Call your congressmen, call the White House, and demand they bring the boys back home.

Afghanistan: 'Vietnam without napalm'

That's not my opinion, or the opinion of some idiot talking head or politician. It's the assessment of someone who's there in the middle of it all.

And like Vietnam, we are not there to achieve anything other than profits profits profits for the banksters and the military industrial complex. And to secure the heroin trade, which has an output now 12 times what it was before we invaded. Bin Laden is dead, isn't even wanted for 9-11 anyway, and was a CIA asset, just like the rest of "the database", aka al Qaeda.

McClatchy Newspapers -

JELAWUR, Afghanistan — The men of Bravo Company have a bitter description for the irrigated swath of land along the Arghandab River where 10 members of their battalion have been killed and 30 have been wounded since the beginning of August.

"Like Vietnam without the napalm," said Spc. Nicholas Gojekian, 21, of Katy, Texas.

A prime agricultural area of vineyards and pomegranate orchards, the 18-miles of valley that the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment patrols includes Taliban insurgents, booby traps and buried explosives. The troops call the area the "green zone," but unlike Iraq, where it's a fortified area in the heart of Baghdad, this green zone can be a hellish place.

The soldiers have one of the toughest tasks in Afghanistan: improving security and winning the support of villagers in an area where the Taliban have been gaining power.

The battalion arrived in southern Afghanistan this summer as part of a brigade of more than 3,800 soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash. The unit took its heaviest losses in August, when it had the highest casualties in what was the deadliest month so far in America's eight-year war here.

So far, the Army mission here has been an uneasy mix of trying to woo elders with offers of generators, roads and other improvements while fighting a nasty war with an often-unseen enemy.

Bravo Company arrived in Afghanistan with 24 Strykers, the first of the eight-wheeled combat vehicles outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance gear to arrive in Afghanistan. A third of the vehicles are now out of service due to bomb attacks or maintenance.

The bomb threats are so pervasive that Stryker drivers have abandoned some stretches of road in favor of driving through the deserts on different routes. The road to one smaller outpost has so many homemade bombs that the soldiers usually arrive on foot, a treacherous hike due to buried land mines.

"We have had enemy contact almost every day," said Lt. Col. Jon Neumann, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment. "Until we do clearing, we can't hold or build here right now," a reference to the U.S. counter-insurgency tactic of "clear, hold and build."

Neumann said that a "perfect storm" of factors has bolstered the Taliban in the Arghandab. They include a successful spring insurgency campaign, the death of a strong tribal leader who supported the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the wounding of a charismatic police chief.

The Americans are up against a foe who's adept at creating unforeseen hazards. Often the Taliban fill large yellow water jugs with explosives — packing some underneath road culverts and burying others in the sandy desert soil.

Some battalion solders perished when their Strykers hit roadside bombs — known as IED's or improvised explosive devices — and others were killed by bombs that exploded while they patrolled on foot. On a single deadly day in August, a Bravo Company 1st lieutenant on a patrol had both his legs blown off by a mine, and explosions killed two soldiers temporarily attached to the unit as they walked through the green zone.

Civilian casualties also have climbed. IED's set by insurgents have blown up many. Villagers claim that other civilians have died or been injured in crossfires when U.S. forces and their Afghan allies fight insurgents.

Bravo Company is responsible for an area that's considered a key staging point for Taliban as they organize forays into Kandahar, a major southern city where the insurgents rule by night and set off bombs by day.

The Arghandab valley is starkly divided between a flat, barren desert and the fertile stretch of irrigated orchards, vineyards and cornfields along the river. In the 1980s, Soviet troops spent more than a month in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat U.S.-backed mujahedeen forces that took refuge in the orchards.

From the green zone, the Taliban fan out to villages, which consist largely of mud brick homes inside mud-walled compounds that sprout out of the ground in the same dun colors of the surrounding desert.

The Taliban presence is strong enough in some areas that children are afraid to go to school, even abandoning a large school built in 2004 with the aid of Japanese funds. "If we send our children to school during the day, then the Taliban will come kill the parents at night," said one elder in a meeting with Bravo Company soldiers in the village of Adirah. McClatchy isn't using the elder's name to protect his security.

In the nearby village of Jelawur, the U.N. was able to complete a rebuilding project a few years after the fall of Taliban, an effort marked with a plaque on a wall. Seven years later, however, several dozen Bravo Company soldiers found a walk down the main street to be a tense one this week.

The soldiers were in full battle gear, scanning culverts for IED's and checked their gun sights to search the surrounding fields for signs of a Taliban attack. Some soldiers stripped off their shoulder patches to make themselves less of a target.

Villagers warily monitored their passage. A soldier threw out a piece of candy, and a shopkeeper quickly admonished a young boy to leave it alone.

The company had 152 soldiers when it arrived, which was more than a dozen short of its authorized strength. Since then, some platoons have been depleted by injuries, including concussions from bomb blasts.

"I don't have enough troops for everything they want me to do here," said Capt. Jamie Pope, the company commander, a West Point graduate from Sherrills Ford, N.C.

One platoon authorized to have more than 40 soldiers is now trying to get by with fewer than 32 soldiers. After guard duty is assigned, a platoon may be at less than full strength for patrols.

"We may go with 10 to 11 guys, when we like to have 14 to 21," said Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Dimico, a 1st platoon soldier from Yakima, Wash. Another platoon that arrived with 39 soldiers was operating this week with 22, according to Sgt. 1st Class Zalman Dass from Renton, Wash..

The tempo was set on one of the first patrols back on Aug. 10 as Bravo Company soldiers trekked through a cornfield and were attacked at close range by nearly a dozen fighters who fired from the edge of some orchards.

Spc. Richard Thiebault was one of the lead soldiers. He heard the slam of a rifle bolt, and then went down with a bullet in his chest from an RPK machinegun about 60 feet away. His ballistic vest probably saved his life: The bullet left a half-dollar sized dent in the armor, but it didn't penetrate.

"I'm still shook up to this day," said Thiebault. "I don't like going near the orchards."

(Bernton reports for The Seattle Times.)