War Glance
Starting in late 2005, U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan began turning detainees over to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), despite its well-known reputation for torture.
Interviews with former U.S. and NATO diplomats and other evidence now available show that United States and other NATO governments become complicit in NDS torture of detainees for two distinctly different reasons.
Why the US and NATO Fed Detainees to Afghan Torture System
Tunnel under prison wall in Afghanistan sees 500 inmates escape
Some 500 inmates made a mass prison break via a hand-dug tunnel from a penitentiary in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar early on Monday, regional deputy police chief Nasrallah Yusufzai said.
Yusufzai told RIA Novosti by phone that the inmates had dug a tunnel under one of the prison walls and reached an ancient underground irrigation network that was built during the time of Alexander the Great. The tunnel the prisoners dug to the underground irrigation network was nearly 400 meters in length, he added.
2 US soldiers killed in southern Iraq
The U.S. military says two American soldiers have been killed while conducting operations in southern Iraq. In a statement, released on Saturday, the military says the deaths occurred Friday.
No further details about how they died were released. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense.
Iraqi interpreters seek punishment of contractor they say sexually harassed them
The Iraqi women all took nicknames — Linda, Susan, Kathy, Mary, Angel — to make it easier for the American soldiers to remember them. They had college educations and spoke English well enough to work as interpreters with U.S. combat units, jobs that came with a high mortality rate even off the battlefield: insurgents targeted them for assassination as collaborators.
Because of the lingering dangers for Iraqis who had allied themselves with the Americans, the State Department created a special visa to allow interpreters and other workers into the United States. For most of the women, the Special Immigrant Visa became a lifeline.
U.S. to deploy armed drones in Libya
President Obama has authorized the use of armed Predator drones against loyalist forces in Libya, a significant expansion of U.S. military involvement aimed at addressing a deteriorating humanitarian situation.
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles was disclosed at a news conference Thursday by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. “The president has said that where we have some unique capabilities, he is willing to use those,” Gates told reporters, adding that the first armed Predator mission had taken place in Libya earlier in the day.
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show. The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
Anarchy, civilian casualties and terrorism... just some of the things that DIDN'T happen in Iraq (according to Rumsfeld memo)
n mid-2004, after U.S forces had been fighting in Iraq for just over a year, the then Defense Secretary ordered the Pentagon to draw up a list of potential catastrophes that had been avoided.
The document - dubbed the 'What did not happen' memo - was drawn up to make the embattled politician feel better.
It outlines 29 eventualities that Pentagon officials had apparently planned for, but which had not yet happened - like 'Saddam uses WMD against U.S. or allied forces'.
But it also listed ten things that did eventually happen, and for which the invasion forces were clearly not prepared, including:
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