Thursday, May 01st
Last update08:16:57 AM GMT
War Glance
An Afghan wearing a police uniform shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded two others during a joint patrol in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, Afghan officials said. The man later escaped.
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.
The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence "surge" that will make its station there among the largest in the agency's history, U.S. officials say.
When complete, the CIA's presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the agency already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan.
The Taliban's reclusive leader said in a Muslim holiday message Saturday that the U.S. and NATO should study Afghanistan's long history of war, in a pointed reminder that foreign forces have had limited military success in the country.
The message from Mullah Omar comes less than a month before the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban for hosting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Nicknamed Dr. Z, the man, who had allegedly contributed to the chemical weapons project of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, was commissioned into the Polish military. He then shared the supposed information with his new higher-ups.
Private security guards who worked for Blackwater repeatedly shot wildly into the streets of Baghdad without regard for civilians long before they were involved in a 2007 shooting episode that left at least 14 Iraqis dead, federal prosecutors charge in a new court document.
The new accusations were included in a document filed by prosecutors last week in the criminal case against five former Blackwater guards who have been charged with manslaughter in federal court in Washington in connection with the shootings in Nisour Square, in Baghdad, on Sept. 16, 2007.
The United States is close to a new peak in government-to-government arms sales, poised to top last year's record $36.4 billion, Pentagon figures showed.
With one month left in fiscal 2009, the value of such deals stood at $35.3 billion, not including any that may be wrapped up by the September 30 close of the fiscal year, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Thursday.
TVNL Comment: The US military industrial complex thrives on the wars it starts and encourages around the globe. We were warned by Dwight Eisenhower. We didn't listen.
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