And here I was thinking they hated us because we unleashed thousands of Jersey Shore clones into the world:

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of “trophy” photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

Senior officials at Nato’s International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

[...]

In one incident in May last year, the article says, during a patrol, the team apprehended a mullah who was standing by the road and took him into a ditch where they made him kneel down.

The group’s leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, then allegedly threw a grenade at the man while an order was given for him to be shot.

Afterwards, Gibbs is described cutting off one of the man’s little fingers and removing a tooth.

[...]

In a statement, the army said it apologised for the distress caused by photographs “depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States”.

Holy fucking shit. These assholes tossed a grenade at an unarmed man, shot him in the head, cut off a finger, ripped out a tooth and the only thing the army can say is “Sorry”?

Why aren’t these assholes being held at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia? Why aren’t they being held as a “maximum custody detainee” and held under a “Prevention of Injury” assignment? Why aren’t they being held in a 6 x 12 foot cell with no windows, a bed with no sheets and no pillow?

Oh that’s right, these guys only killed brown people for sport. They didn’t allegedly pass classified information to Wikileaks that embarrassed the government.

Silly me.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAh-poOy7uM

Could we take a time out on killing poor brown people? Please?

Our home away from home.

Change we can believe in:

U.S. special operations forces in Iraq will remain at current levels even as the number of American troops there is nearly halved over the next five months, the top special operations commander said today.

As the 98,000-strong force in Iraq is reduced to 50,000 by Aug. 31 in accordance with a U.S.-Iraqi agreement, roughly 4,500 special operations forces will maintain a presence there, military officials said.

“The special operations forces are not experiencing a drawdown in Iraq,” said Navy Adm. Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. “Supporting them is a continuing mission of the rest of the force.”

[...]

As of last week, he said, special operations forces were engaged in 79 countries globally, including six “at-risk” countries where danger is probable, if not imminent. The number of forces engaged around the world was about 12,000 — about 10,000 of which were assigned to U.S. Central Command, an area of operations that includes Afghanistan, Iraq and the greater Middle East.

This is what I think is going to happen. Obama will tout the Iraq withdrawal during the next presidential election. He will talk about how he delivered on his promise of bringing home the troops. Then once he gets reelected, BOOM, he’ll send the troops back to Iraq.

Don’t believe me? Ask General Odierno.

Does Petraeus own anything that doesn't have camo on it?

Democrats are the new Republicans.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces, began a campaign on Sunday to convince an increasingly skeptical public that the American-led coalition can still succeed here despite months of setbacks, saying he had not come to Afghanistan to preside over a “graceful exit.”

In an hourlong interview with The New York Times, the general argued against any precipitous withdrawal of forces in July 2011, the date set by President Obama to begin at least a gradual reduction of the 100,000 troops on the ground. General Petraeus said that it was only in the last few weeks that the war plan has been fine-tuned and given the resources that it required. “For the first time,” he said. “we will have what we have been working to put in place for the last year and a half.”

In another in a series of interviews, on “Meet the Press,” General Petraeus even appeared to leave open the possibility that he would recommend against any withdrawal of American forces next summer. “Certainly, yes,” he said when the show’s host, David Gregory, asked him if, depending on how the war was proceeding, he might tell the president that a drawdown should be delayed. “The President and I sat down in the Oval Office, and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice.”

Unpopular war, General Petraeus, midterm elections. Where have I heard all of this before?

Such voices are mostly muted now, if only because so much is riding on his mission. Petraeus rarely fails to tell Iraqis that it was the president who appointed him: “When the president personally tells you something is important—and I was still a two-star at the time—you know he’s serious about it and we’re serious about it.” Both the president and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz met with Petraeus before he was sent back to Iraq with his third star. “They told me, ‘Whatever you need, you’ve got it’.”

[...]

Nobody seems neutral. His fans believe he’s a new-style officer for a new type of warfare, where battles can be won with superior technology and firepower, but true victories can be secured only by good peacemaking and politics. They say he proved himself—and his methods—in the aftermath of the war last year. (It’s widely accepted that no force worked harder to win Iraqi hearts and minds than the 101st Air Assault Division led by Petraeus.) These boosters include many in the White House. “People’s body language shifts” when they talk about Petraeus there, says one official. Yet critics regard Petraeus as one of a type they call “perfumed princes,” a derisive term for officers who have advanced from one staff job to another, essentially working as efficient courtiers to the four-stars. They say he won a short-term peace in Mosul at the expense of allowing insurgents to organize themselves mostly unmolested. They rankle at Petraeus’s penchant for self-promotion and PR.

[...]

Petraeus’s strategy now is to rebuild the Iraqi forces from the top down—”to support, assist and enable good Iraqi leaders.” Instead of rushing to build up the numbers of foot soldiers, training programs have been changed to concentrate on officers and noncoms. Separately, Petraeus is pushing to get body armor and good weapons to the Iraqis. Money is not an issue: a billion dollars has already been spent on Iraqi forces, and an additional $2.4 billion is in the pipeline for the rest of the year. In just the last week, 13,500 Gluck pistols, 850,000 rounds of ammunition, 900 vehicles, 50,000 flak vests and 60,000 Kevlar helmets were delivered. “It’s really flowing in now,” Petraeus said.

This push to stay in Afghanistan by the White House shouldn’t surprise anyone since the White House hates their base.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkXtWwNDSdA

I don’t know about you but I love how my tax dollars are funding a war where we’re fighting the guys we supported and trained in the 1980s. I also love how we’ve replaced a general that ran secret torture prisons with a general that authorized the use of white phosphorus in a battle that killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.

McChrystal doesn't like getting his ass kicked by the Taliban.

Psyche:

The US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting of military progress only three months ago, confessed last week that “nobody is winning”. His only claim now is that the Taliban have lost momentum compared with last year.

[...]

Equally worrying for the American and British governments is the failure so far of General McChrystal’s strategy of using his troops to seize Taliban strongholds and, once cleared, hand them over to Afghan forces. He sold this plan, under which he was promised an extra 30,000 US troops, last November but all the signs are that it is not working. Starting in February, 15,000 US, British and Afghan troops started taking over the Taliban-held area of Marjah and Nad Ali in Helmand province. Dozens of embedded journalists trumpeted the significance of Operation Moshtarak, as it was called, as the first fruits of General McChrystal’s new strategy which was meant to emulate the supposed success of the “surge” in Iraq in 2007.

[...]

Lack of success in Marjah is feeding doubts about the promised US-led offensive in Kandahar, parts of which are under Taliban control. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned against destroying the city in order to save it. There has been an attempt by the US military to rebrand the attack “Co-operation for Kandahar”. Local elders have lobbied against it on the grounds that it will bring nothing but ruin to their city.

So far the much-heralded attempt to turn the tide in Kandahar has simply terrified local people about what is to come. US and Nato supply columns thunder through the narrow streets, the soldiers guarding them gesturing menacingly to Afghan vehicles not to get too close. “An atmosphere of terror is hanging over Kandahar,” Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president’s much-criticised brother who is also head of the local council, is quoted as saying. “People are breathing terror here.”

[...]

Part of the US and British lack of success may be rooted in a failure to understand what happened in Iraq. The US media swallowed the official version that an alliance with the Iraqi tribes combined with new military tactics aimed at defending the civilian population had turned the tide against the Sunni Arab insurgency. There is something in this but not much. The main reasons why the Sunni Arabs ended their insurgency against the US occupation was that they were being slaughtered by the Shia-dominated government and the Sunni have been largely driven from Baghdad.

[...]

The semi-official Pakistani view is that the US, Britain and Nato forces have become entangled in a civil war in Afghanistan between the Pashtun community, represented by the Taliban, and their Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara opponents who dominate the Kabul government. They expect the Pashtun to go on fighting until they get a real share in power. One Pashtun, a former colonel in the Pakistani army, said: “It will be difficult for the Americans and British to win the hearts and minds of the people in southern Afghanistan since at the centre of Pashtun culture is a hatred of all foreigners.”

You mean to tell me our military can’t defeat a bunch of cave dwelling, uncultured, barbaric people? Even with 6.7 billion dollars a month in funding? And McChrystal has the balls to say nobody is winning this war?

Somebody needs to punch this sore loser in the dick.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned of “severe consequences” if a terror attack against the US would ever be traced back to Pakistan.

She told CBS while Pakistan had become more helpful in tackling extremists, co-operation could still be improved.

[...]

Earlier, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the US was prepared to increase military assistance to Pakistan.
“We’re willing to do as much… as they are willing to accept,” he told reporters. “We are prepared to do training, and exercise with them. How big that operation becomes is really up to them.”

[...]

“We’ve made it very clear that if – heaven-forbid – an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences,” she warned.

Finally, after beating around the bush for so long – air drone attacks, using Blackwater mercenaries for secret assassinations, giving billions of dollars in “aid” – we’re preparing to officially declare war on Pakistan. And it’s about time too. I was getting bored with the MSM’s Iraq/Afghanistan Al-Qaeda propaganda. I can’t wait to hear them tell us how the real threat to our freedom/safety/way of life is the Taliban.

Goddammit, I’m so excited I just creamed my pants.

Update: Hillary cannot wait to fuck up some more brown people.

These people are about to get shot the fuck up.

And not killing them:

American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar on Monday morning, killing and wounding civilians, and igniting angry anti-American demonstrations in a city where winning over Afghan support is pivotal to the war effort.

The shooting, which killed as many as five civilians and wounded 18, occurred on the eve of the most important offensive of the war. In coming weeks thousands of American, NATO and Afghan troops are expected to try to take control of the Kandahar region, the spiritual home of the Taliban.

What if the air drone attacks, the killings of pregnant women, and the checkpoint shootings are a ploy by the military to cause civil unrest in the Kandahar region and use that as an excuse to justify using illegal weapons during this offensive like they did in the Falluja offensive in 2004?

Naw, that’s crazy talk. Our military doesn’t need an excuse to use illegal weapons. They’re the goddamn military. They can do whatever the fuck they want.

Damn, I really need to stop reading the news stoned.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

This video is not as shocking as the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the lies that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, the 9 billion dollars that disappeared in Iraq, the trillions of dollars being wasted fighting in these two wars, the torture at Gitmo, the torture at Abu Ghraib, the torture at Bagram, the 5 Blackwater contractors getting away with murdering 14 innocent Iraqi civilians, the Second Battle of Fallujah being fought in order to avenge the deaths 4 Blackwater contractors, Blackwater getting billions in no-bid contracts, KBR getting billions in no-bid contracts even though they’re responsible for the electrocution of a dozen soldiers, the thousands of innocent Pakistani civilians murdered by unmanned drones, the millions of Iraqis displaced by the war, the hundreds of thousands of homeless vets in America, and the lack of a public outcry about all of these horrific things being done in our name.

One bomb at a time:

At least 27 civilians died in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan cabinet says, revising downwards a prior statement that 33 were killed.

Nato said it hit a suspected insurgent convoy, but ground forces later found “a number of individuals killed and wounded”, including women and children.

I’m amazed at the lack of terrorist attacks we’ve had because of these bombings. I mean, I would strap myself down with enough explosives to give Michael Bay a permanent hard-on and blow up a Walmart on Sunday afternoon if someone I loved was one of the 27 people killed in this bombing, or one of the 140 people killed in the September 2009 bombing, or one of the 97 people killed in the May 2009 bombing, or one of the 90 people killed in the August 2008 bombing, or one of the 47 people killed in the July 2008 bombing.

But that’s just me.