An American soldier has pleaded guilty to being part of a "kill team" who deliberately murdered Afghan civilians for sport last year.
Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 23, told a military court he had helped to kill three unarmed Afghans. "The plan was to kill people, sir," he told an army judge in Fort Lea, near Seattle, after his plea.
The case has caused outraged headlines around the world. In a series of videotaped confessions to investigators, some of which have been broadcast on American television, Morlock detailed how he and other members of his Stryker brigade set up and faked combat situations so that they could kill civilians who posed no threat to them. Four other soldiers are still to come to trial over the incidents.
The case is a PR disaster for America's military and has been compared to the notorious incidents of torture that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This week the German magazine Der Spiegel published three pictures that showed American soldiers, including Morlock, posing with the corpse of a young Afghan boy as if it were a hunting trophy.
Some soldiers apparently kept body parts of their victims, including a skull, as souvenirs. In a statement issued in response to the publication of the photos the US army apologised to the families of the dead. "[The photos are] repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States army," the statement said.
Morlock has told investigators that the murders took place between January and May last year and were instigated by an officer in his unit, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs. He described how elaborate plans were made to pick out civilian targets, kill them and then make their deaths look like they were insurgents. In his confession Morlock described shooting a victim as Gibbs tossed a grenade at him. "We identify a guy. Gibbs makes a comment, like, you know, you guys wanna wax this guy or not," Morlock said in the confession.
Morlock now stands to be sentenced to at least 24 years in jail but with eligibility for parole after seven years. That has come about because Morlock struck a plea bargain that will see a lighter sentence in return for testifying against his fellow soldiers.
http://uruknet.info/?p=m76142&fb=1
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The Middle East.
Showing posts with label United states. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United states. Show all posts
3.4.10
Warm U.S.-Israel relations cool
Some 40 centuries of history are recalled when Jews celebrate Passover in their calendar and what this history of exile, persecution and the flight to freedom from Egypt to Canaan (Palestine) means for each passing generation of Jews.
Passover this year coincided with an ominous chill in relationship between the Obama administration and Israel.
There have been, in the past, difficult moments between American presidents and Israeli leaders when the two countries’ interests appeared at odds. President Eisenhower, for instance, leaned heavily on Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion after the 1956 Suez War to withdraw Israeli forces from Sinai.
It was, however, President Truman — when he supported the partition of Palestine and, soon after Ben-Gurion announced Israel’s independence in May 1948, extended diplomatic recognition to the new country over his State Department’s objection — who set the tone and substance of what is meant by America’s embrace of the Jewish state.
When the survival of Israel, surrounded by Arab enemies, hung in precarious balance and there was no glimmer of how this little patch of earth squeezed between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea could be of strategic importance to the United States, what mattered to Truman was the moral imperative in affirming the right of Jews to have sovereignty over a part of Palestine that was their ancestral home.
Moral imperative
It is this moral imperative that has guided every president since Truman up to George W. Bush — Jimmy Carter was the exception — to keep America’s embrace of Israel generous in private and firm in public.
This embrace was also meant for Israel’s foes to note America’s weight will favour the Jewish state in holding the balance between Jews and Arabs.
Carter equivocated between Arabs and Jews as he still does, and he gave heart to the legions of Israel’s mortal enemies.
Now sits in the White House another president who has taken Carter’s equivocation to new lengths, and views Israel as a liability for America in accommodating the Arab-Muslim world.
Obama is America’s first African-American president, and he is also the first American president emotionally representative of Third World sentiments. For two decades without a whimper, Obama soaked in the racially toxic prejudices of his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and his treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House recently barely masked his scorn for the Jewish state.
There is terrible irony in all of this since an overwhelming majority of American Jews voted for Obama. It could be said that this one-sided vote was indicative of how Jews remain open to embrace the other in their longing for peace.
Any distance
Israeli leaders since Yitzhak Rabin have shown their willingness to go any distance for securing peace with their neighbours without weakening their country’s security.
But the overwhelming majority of Arabs and Muslims are fanatically committed to the destruction of Israel as laid out in the charter of the Palestinian Hamas, or as publicly declaimed by the present day leaders of Iran.
Four millennia of Jewish history teach Israelis how to contend with their foes, and on this Passover how to bear with patience an American president with a wayward sense of morals and politics.
Source
Subscribe to http://alsharkalawsat.blogspot.com/ by Email
Passover this year coincided with an ominous chill in relationship between the Obama administration and Israel.
There have been, in the past, difficult moments between American presidents and Israeli leaders when the two countries’ interests appeared at odds. President Eisenhower, for instance, leaned heavily on Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion after the 1956 Suez War to withdraw Israeli forces from Sinai.
It was, however, President Truman — when he supported the partition of Palestine and, soon after Ben-Gurion announced Israel’s independence in May 1948, extended diplomatic recognition to the new country over his State Department’s objection — who set the tone and substance of what is meant by America’s embrace of the Jewish state.
When the survival of Israel, surrounded by Arab enemies, hung in precarious balance and there was no glimmer of how this little patch of earth squeezed between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea could be of strategic importance to the United States, what mattered to Truman was the moral imperative in affirming the right of Jews to have sovereignty over a part of Palestine that was their ancestral home.
Moral imperative
It is this moral imperative that has guided every president since Truman up to George W. Bush — Jimmy Carter was the exception — to keep America’s embrace of Israel generous in private and firm in public.
This embrace was also meant for Israel’s foes to note America’s weight will favour the Jewish state in holding the balance between Jews and Arabs.
Carter equivocated between Arabs and Jews as he still does, and he gave heart to the legions of Israel’s mortal enemies.
Now sits in the White House another president who has taken Carter’s equivocation to new lengths, and views Israel as a liability for America in accommodating the Arab-Muslim world.
Obama is America’s first African-American president, and he is also the first American president emotionally representative of Third World sentiments. For two decades without a whimper, Obama soaked in the racially toxic prejudices of his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and his treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House recently barely masked his scorn for the Jewish state.
There is terrible irony in all of this since an overwhelming majority of American Jews voted for Obama. It could be said that this one-sided vote was indicative of how Jews remain open to embrace the other in their longing for peace.
Any distance
Israeli leaders since Yitzhak Rabin have shown their willingness to go any distance for securing peace with their neighbours without weakening their country’s security.
But the overwhelming majority of Arabs and Muslims are fanatically committed to the destruction of Israel as laid out in the charter of the Palestinian Hamas, or as publicly declaimed by the present day leaders of Iran.
Four millennia of Jewish history teach Israelis how to contend with their foes, and on this Passover how to bear with patience an American president with a wayward sense of morals and politics.
Source
Subscribe to http://alsharkalawsat.blogspot.com/ by Email
27.3.09
US military deaths in Iraq war at 4,262
As of Thursday, March 26, 2009, at least 4,262 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,425 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is the same as the Defense Department's tally, last updated Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The British military has reported 179 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.
Yahoo.news
The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,425 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is the same as the Defense Department's tally, last updated Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The British military has reported 179 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.
Yahoo.news
6.3.09
Clinton Accuses Iran of Intimidating
Iran wants to "intimidate as far as they think their voice can reach."
Hillary Rodham Clinton
U.S. Secretary of State was harsh with Irans positions on Wednesday, accusing its hardline leaders of making divisions in the Arab world, as well that Iran is promoting terrorism and as always posing threats to Israel
Hillary Rodham Clinton
U.S. Secretary of State was harsh with Irans positions on Wednesday, accusing its hardline leaders of making divisions in the Arab world, as well that Iran is promoting terrorism and as always posing threats to Israel
5.3.09
America targets Pakistan’s mostwanted man
The US military, which avoided hitting the forces of Pakistan’s most wanted man, Baitullah Mehsud, in 2007 and 2008 when the Taliban leader waged a campaign of suicide bombings inside Pakistan, and who has been blamed for the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has started sending unmanned aircraft to target them to pre-empt a Taliban spring offensive in Afghanistan.
Analysts said this is a potentially significant development because territory controlled directly by Mehsud does not touch the Afghan border.
Source
Analysts said this is a potentially significant development because territory controlled directly by Mehsud does not touch the Afghan border.
Source
3.3.09
Three Taliban rivals join forces to fight off America surge
Three rival Pakistani Taliban groups have agreed to form a united front against international forces in Afghanistan in a move likely to intensify the insurgency just as thousands of extra US soldiers begin pouring into the country as part of Barack Obama's surge plan.
The Guardian has learned that three of the most powerful warlords in the region have settled their differences and come together under a grouping calling itself Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen, or Council of United Holy Warriors.
Nato officers fear that the new extremist partnership in Waziristan, Pakistan's tribal area, will significantly increase the cross-border influx of fighters and suicide bombers - a move that could undermine the US president's Afghanistan strategy before it is formulated.
The unity among the militants comes after a call by Mullah Omar, the cleric who leads the Afghan Taliban, telling Pakistani militants to stop fighting at home in order to join the battle to "liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces".
The Pakistani Taliban movement was split between a powerful group led by the warlord Baitullah Mehsud and his bitter rivals, Maulvi Nazir and Gul Bahadur. While Mehsud has targeted Pakistan itself in a campaign of violence and is accused of being behind the assassination of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Nazir and Bahadur sent men to fight alongside other insurgents in Afghanistan.
Source
The Guardian has learned that three of the most powerful warlords in the region have settled their differences and come together under a grouping calling itself Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen, or Council of United Holy Warriors.
Nato officers fear that the new extremist partnership in Waziristan, Pakistan's tribal area, will significantly increase the cross-border influx of fighters and suicide bombers - a move that could undermine the US president's Afghanistan strategy before it is formulated.
The unity among the militants comes after a call by Mullah Omar, the cleric who leads the Afghan Taliban, telling Pakistani militants to stop fighting at home in order to join the battle to "liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces".
The Pakistani Taliban movement was split between a powerful group led by the warlord Baitullah Mehsud and his bitter rivals, Maulvi Nazir and Gul Bahadur. While Mehsud has targeted Pakistan itself in a campaign of violence and is accused of being behind the assassination of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Nazir and Bahadur sent men to fight alongside other insurgents in Afghanistan.
Source
18.12.08
Secret Iraq Withdrawal Agreement
An agreement regarding the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq and regulating the U.S. activities during its temporary presence, between the United States and the Iraqi government
November 16th, 2008
Foreword
Iraq and the U.S., referred to here as “both sides”, affirm the importance of: supporting their joint security, participating in global peace and stability, fighting terrorism, cooperation in the fields of security and defense, and deterring invasions and threats against Iraq’s sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, and Iraq’s democratic federal constitutional regime.
Both sides affirm that this cooperation is based on mutual respect of both sides’ sovereignty in accordance with the United Nations’ goals and principles.
Both sides want to achieve mutual understanding to support their collaboration, without jeopardizing Iraq’s sovereignty over its land, water, and sky, and based on the mutual guarantees given as equal and independent sovereign partners.
Both sides have agreed on:
Check it
November 16th, 2008
Foreword
Iraq and the U.S., referred to here as “both sides”, affirm the importance of: supporting their joint security, participating in global peace and stability, fighting terrorism, cooperation in the fields of security and defense, and deterring invasions and threats against Iraq’s sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, and Iraq’s democratic federal constitutional regime.
Both sides affirm that this cooperation is based on mutual respect of both sides’ sovereignty in accordance with the United Nations’ goals and principles.
Both sides want to achieve mutual understanding to support their collaboration, without jeopardizing Iraq’s sovereignty over its land, water, and sky, and based on the mutual guarantees given as equal and independent sovereign partners.
Both sides have agreed on:
Check it
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