The destruction by US bombs of the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz – killing doctors, nurses and patients – comes as a stinging corrective to the media pretence that Russian bombs are somehow uniquely evil and destructive. The West has inflicted far more damage in recent years. But the Russians also showed just how ruthless they can be in their brutal suppression of the legitimate desire for national independence of the Chechen people. It is the Americans who today expose most starkly the evils of attempting to solve complex political questions by bombs.
Kunduz is ethnically Uzbek. I have written of it as the place where Alexander Burnes met the fierce Uzbek chief Murad Beg. Burnes was disguised as an Armenian, and would very probably had been killed if his disguise had been penetrated. Today it is very much the territory of an equally fierce Uzbek warlord, General Dostum, the narcotics kingpin, murderer and serial war criminal who has for decades been a key CIA asset and is now Vice President of Afghanistan. That Dostum can lose Kunduz to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, even temporarily, shows how weak the central authority still is. The decade long official western occupation has brought no significant progress, at a cost of billions in money and the waste of many young lives: except progress in achieving a 1200% increase in heroin production.
“If you continue to contradict me, you are calling me a liar or a fool, and your welcome on this blog will be over.”
And yet lies and abuse are the stock-in-trade of so many commentators here.
I detest war but the US war against ISIS appears to have been a phoney war. Russian air-strikes on ISIS positions has, according to this report inflicted more damage on the rebels in 1 day than the US did in 1 year. But the US seems to be a lot better at killing medical personnel in hospitals.
http://russia-insider.com/en/military/russia-inflicts-more-damage-isis-1-day-us-did-1-year/ri10165?
Shouldn’t you should have thought of the costs of war Alcyone (it must be more difficult for you than it is for us keeping track your many handles) a fraction only of which can be represented on a balance sheet, before going around calling for it, spewing hate for the enemy du jour (though always Muslim) along the way. Is funny money more important than the moral, spiritual cost? Is your guilt over-whelming. We’ve had one of your ilk crack up entertainingly already today, are you primed to burst also, could a treble be on the cards?
Is it any wonder, that the Taliban are making gains in Afghanistan, with civilian casualties such as this, and such incidents are not uncommon. US Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, said in 2009 that US aerial attacks in Afghan-Pakistan border area had killed along with 14 al-Qaida leaders, 700 hundred civilians.
It was the ex-Afghan and puppet president to the West Hamid Karzai, who said, referring to the British troops, “When they came in, the Taliban came.” It was said that the British carpeted Karzai for that comment.
It seems clear to me that the Taliban can’t be removed from Afghanistan, as they’re part of the community, reading articles about the Taliban, some claim, in 33 of the 34 Afghan provinces, the Taliban have “shadow governors.”
The West as Craig has said aren’t there to instil democracy to the people, no they are there to plunder Afghanistan’s rich mineral deposits, and lucrative profits from the drug trade.
One just has to recall the USA, and the huge quantities of drugs purchased from Laos, which were dropped on Vietnam, to try and addict North Vietnamese soldiers to them. Where do you think the colloquial term “Air America” arose.
Ironically for America, it was the fate of 70,000 US GI’s as they returned to America addicted to the drugs dropped by their own airforce.
As for Afghanistan, I wonder what William Moorcroft, George Trebeck and George Guthrie, would’ve made of Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan today. Moorcroft and Co, plotted a course to the remote but mighty river Oxus, in Afghanistan more subtlety, and reliably, than any gung ho soldier of today could.
I wouldn’t click his or her links, it’s no doubt harvesting IP addresses and referer urls.
No not your links John, before you say it. I meant Alcyone’s boldness up there ^.
“We’ve had one of your ilk crack up entertainingly already today, are you primed to burst also, could a treble be on the cards?”
Yup, you are medieval man on display alright. QED
For others, and just for the record, I reject all organised religions, products of Dark and Medieval times. As the man eloquently said, you cannot organise the truth.
While Christianity may well have killed many more than other religions over the centuries, it has, relatively to many others matured, if that’s the right word. Islam is having a rough-ride these days and clearly needs to update itself, if there is such a thing.
For the Tony come lately, please continue with your Saturday Night ‘entertainment’. Arse.
“I’ve had enough also…Good bye.”
Good riddance.
John D-D, I withdraw, sorry i misread you completely. The risk of reading comments backwards, bottom-up.
Best
“Peter Beswick”
“Good ”
____________________
Is that a promise, “Peter”?
If so, I hope it’s an adieu and not an au revoir.
“the only support you have seems to be the crackpot conspiracy sites so beloved by most of the posters here”
As I recall, the story about OBL receiving dialysis at the American Hospital in Dubai in the days leading up to 9/11, a time during which he received several visits from CIA officers, originated with that notorious crackpot conspiracy outfit known as Le Figaro.
This song, written by a 22 year-old still moves me; I could cry, we should cry at the lack of what we call ‘progress’.
And then sung by a lovely, and loving, blind man, some thirty years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZnv6qLWPy4
Lets send some decent money to MSF — bless each and every one of you at MSF and the frailly and friends of the very unfortunate victims.
Love is all there is
” As I recall, the story about OBL receiving dialysis at the American Hospital in Dubai in the days leading up to 9/11, a time during which he received several visits from CIA officers, originated with that notorious crackpot conspiracy outfit known as Le Figaro. ”
The claim that OBL had kidney problems has been denied by his supporters and rather disproved by the length of time he lived after this alleged emergency dialysis, something he’d have had trouble accessing in the cave he was supposedly holed up in post 9/11. The director of the hospital is also adamant that he was never a patient there.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/kidney.asp
“The claim that OBL had kidney problems has been denied by his supporters and rather disproved by the length of time he lived after this alleged emergency dialysis, something he’d have had trouble accessing in the cave he was supposedly holed up in post 9/11”
Your quarrel is with those conspiraloons at Le Figaro. Incidentally, OBL’s death from kidney failure was confirmed by president Musharraf of Pakistan as occurring in December 2001, which would tally.
He had dealings with Omar Sheikh the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden
The get out of jail card that let the US to declare war on the planet and reenact the Mongol hoards attacks on the whole of the mid east, was made possible by Reichstag FireII/ Pearl Harbour II/9/11 but hey we don’t want to get into that now.
MJ I see where you’re coming from, but Musharaf is hardly reliable ‘witness’.
There will be no peace in Afghanistan until the Pak military/ISI stop fucking meddling.
“I see where you’re coming from, but Musharaf is hardly reliable ‘witness’”
He wasn’t a witness. He was just the highest-profile person who confirmed it. I have no views on whether it’s true or not. It’s just that the story that the US killed him in 2011 then chucked his body in the sea before anyone could identify it doesn’t strike as hugely persuasive either.
MJ, a field of all possibilities.
If OBL was eliminated by Seal Team 6 as propounded, why would Obama bury him at Sea denying the World Proof of Death?
It’s simple. Just like when Yahweh hid Moses place of death to prevent worshipful Israelites; so too, the POTUS sought to tamp down the acolytes with a monument.
Musharraf siad that he thought bin Laden was “most likely dead” based on information about his kidney disease which may well have been unfounded. Hardly conclusive. There are claims that he knew were bin Laden was hiding long before the US raid which, if true, might explain why he wanted to throw the CIA off the scent.
What “proof of death” would you have accepted? Even if they’d let people touch the body it would’ve been dismissed by the usual suspects as a look-a-like.
The circumstances of the Aug. 6, 2001 shootdown of the U.S. Army helicopter carrying 17 members of Seal Team 6 remain highly suspicious. Obama stonewalls SEAL Team 6 helicopter crash probe, watchdog says. One cannot escape the suspicion that someone wanted to prevent them from revealing what really happened during the alleged shooting of bin Laden.
Very shocking books about this shootdown are: Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six by Don Brown; and Betrayed: The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17 as told by a Navy SEAL’s Father by Billy Vaughan.
Le Figaro has a history of being closely associated with French intelligence, which was presumably the source of the paper’s story about a CIA officer visiting bin Laden in the hospital a couple of months before 9/11.
Sibel Edmonds (whom such members of the U.S. Senate as Chuck Grassley have said they find credible) has said she was exposed, in her FBI job, to evidence that the U.S. was paying bin Laden up to the time of 9/11.
Actually, the overwhelming majority of the U.S. troops who had been using drugs in Vietnam stopped using them (except for marijuana) as soon as they returned to the U.S. They were only using the drugs because of the unusually harrowing circumstances they faced in the war. Johann Hari has documented this in his book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.
Lysias the duplicitous conduct goes so far as OBL making trips to US to buy heavy machine guns and ordnance. Taliban getting invited to Sugarland Texas HQ of UNOCAL and bussed around for shopping is also a badly kept secret.
The avaricious banksters owning US have maintained their iron grip through the indiscriminate application of kinetic force (bullets and shrapnel) and they will go to any ends to maintain their grip.
I’m just now reading a book about just how harrowing the conditions were for U.S. infantrymen in Vietnam: Eleven Bravo: A Skytrooper’s Memoir of War in Vietnam by E. Tayloe Wise. Oliver Stone’s movies about Vietnam like Platoon are also consistent with what veterans of the war have told me (I was in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, but was lucky enough to be sent to Berlin instead).
Kempe
‘What “proof of death” would you have accepted? Even if they’d let people touch the body it would’ve been dismissed by the usual suspects as a look-a-like.’
Ah yes but if it was the genuine body of OBL those ‘usual suspects’ (whoever they are) would have quickly been revealed as nut cases, wouldn’t they?
It would have been very easy to establish that this was the genuine body of OBL which is precisely why they invented the preposterous burial-at-sea fairytale – so that they could find a way of explaining away the fact that they had just faked the murder of a man who had been dead for years.
This burial-at-sea story is so absurd I’m surprised even you, Kempe, can seriously believe it. According to the official Pentagon narrative the ceremony took place at noon local time aboard the USS Carl Vinson, lasted an hour (!) and not one of the 3200 ship’s complement saw it.
I put it to you that such a thing is utterly impossible. I mean, what about that guy in the crow’s nest? Didn’t he spot the highly unusual goings on? A muslim funeral on deck?
It seems that just as you could penetrate the US air defences protecting the Pentagon on 9/11 by disguising your military plane as passenger airliner so it seems 12 years later you can sneak aboard a US aircraft carrier by disguising your raiding party as an Islamic funeral.
When are you going to wake up?
Sorry, shootdown was in 2011, not 2001.
Wikipedia: 2011 Chinook shootdown in Afghanistan:
Which of course raises the question of why those Afghans were allowed onto the chopper and why the chopper would have been deliberately flown into a known hot zone.
It may have been a deliberate target but they didn’t know it was MSF – when Faluja was retaken the hospital was the first to go. Not sure what exactly the logic is, maybe they are thinking about wounded terrorists getting treatment or they could congregate there.