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Category: War

CIA abuse was ‘closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history,’ says military jury

CIA abuse was ‘closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history,’ says military jury

The New York Times reports: Seven senior U.S. military officers who sentenced a terrorist to 26 years in prison last week after hearing graphic descriptions of his torture by the C.I.A. wrote a letter calling his treatment “a stain on the moral fiber of America.” The rebuke of the U.S. government’s treatment of Majid Khan, a suburban Baltimore high school graduate turned Qaeda courier, was contained in a two-page handwritten letter urging the senior Pentagon official overseeing the war court…

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Detainee ‘was raped at the hands of the U.S. government,’ court is told

Detainee ‘was raped at the hands of the U.S. government,’ court is told

The New York Times reports: A suburban Baltimore high school graduate turned Al Qaeda courier, speaking to a military jury for the first time, gave a detailed account this week of the brutal forced feedings, crude waterboarding and other physical and sexual abuse he endured during his 2003 to 2006 detention in the C.I.A.’s overseas prison network. Appearing in open court, Majid Khan, 41, became the first former prisoner of the black sites to openly describe, anywhere, the violent and…

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Top U.S. general confirms ‘very concerning’ Chinese hypersonic weapons test

Top U.S. general confirms ‘very concerning’ Chinese hypersonic weapons test

Reuters reports: The top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, has provided the first official U.S. confirmation of a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses. The Pentagon has been at pains to avoid direct confirmation of the Chinese test this summer, first reported by the Financial Times, even as President Joe Biden and other officials have expressed general concerns about Chinese hypersonic weapons…

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As Afghanistan sinks into destitution, some sell children to survive

As Afghanistan sinks into destitution, some sell children to survive

The Wall Street Journal reports: Desperate to feed her family, Saleha, a housecleaner here in western Afghanistan, has incurred such an insurmountable debt that the only way she sees out is to hand over her 3-year-old daughter, Najiba, to the man who lent her the money. The debt is $550. Saleha, a 40-year-old mother of six who goes by one name, earns 70 cents a day cleaning homes in a wealthier neighborhood of Herat. Her much older husband doesn’t have…

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The Taliban’s campaign to rob villagers of their land

The Taliban’s campaign to rob villagers of their land

Der Spiegel reports: The narrow, unpaved road winds though a world of rock for hours on end, navigable only at a snail’s pace. Rocky, weathered crags line the horizon, their color ranging from a pale ochre to dark granite in the glistening sun, as though all life here was extinguished long ago. Only a couple of crows can be seen rising on the thermals along the cliff walls. This makes what appears far below all the more intense as we…

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U.S. troops have been deployed in Taiwan for at least a year

U.S. troops have been deployed in Taiwan for at least a year

The Wall Street Journal reports: A U.S. special-operations unit and a contingent of Marines have been secretly operating in Taiwan to train military forces there, U.S. officials said, part of efforts to shore up the island’s defenses as concern regarding potential Chinese aggression mounts. About two dozen members of U.S. special-operations and support troops are conducting training for small units of Taiwan’s ground forces, the officials said. The U.S. Marines are working with local maritime forces on small-boat training. The…

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‘Everyone here hated the Americans’: Rural Afghans live with the Taliban and a painful U.S. legacy

‘Everyone here hated the Americans’: Rural Afghans live with the Taliban and a painful U.S. legacy

The Washington Post reports: The white flags flutter in the apple orchards of this serene hamlet ringed by oatmeal-colored mountains. They mark the precise spots where U.S. airstrikes killed Afghans. In the village center lies the destroyed shell of a building that once housed shops; down the road is a mangled, rusted car. There are white flags there, too. Together, they’re reminders of the legacy the United States has left in many rural areas across Afghanistan. “Everyone here hated the…

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Pentagon’s ‘righteous strike’ turned out to be a ‘tragic mistake’ killing 10 civilians in Kabul

Pentagon’s ‘righteous strike’ turned out to be a ‘tragic mistake’ killing 10 civilians in Kabul

  When journalism forces government to admit mistakes. The @nytimes Visual Investigation team once against defy official stories and prove unnecessary targeting of civilians. Outstanding work from @heytherehaIey ,@trbrtc ,@whitney_hurst ,@ckoettl and othershttps://t.co/ffSt1mPVUm — Rasha Al Aqeedi (@RashaAlAqeedi) September 18, 2021 Almost everything senior defence officials said publicly in the hours, days and weeks after the August 29 drone strike turned out to be false. The car posed no threat at all. https://t.co/MHie1f8EbT — Louisa Loveluck (@leloveluck) September 18, 2021…

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Will Biden’s Anglo anti-China alliance increase the risk of war?

Will Biden’s Anglo anti-China alliance increase the risk of war?

Tom McTague writes: A new world is beginning to take shape, even if it remains disguised in the clothes of the old. The United States, Britain, and Australia have announced what is in effect a new “Anglo” military alliance. The basics are these: In 2016, Australia struck a deal with France to buy a fleet of diesel-powered submarines, rejecting an Anglo-American alternative for nuclear-powered vessels. In March this year, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (or, “that fellow down under,” as…

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Drought puts 2.1 million Kenyans at risk of starvation

Drought puts 2.1 million Kenyans at risk of starvation

The Guardian reports: An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests. The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year. The crisis has been compounded by Covid-19 and previous poor rains, it said,…

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How 9/11 turned America into a half-crazed, fading power

How 9/11 turned America into a half-crazed, fading power

Michelle Goldberg writes: I’ll always remember Sept. 11 as something that happened in the evening. At the time I was living in a town in northern India, and I watched the towers fall on a TV someone had dragged into the street. Because I was so far away, I’ll never know the terror people in New York and Washington felt on that day, the fear that more attacks were coming, that the epic disaster movies so popular during the bored…

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The war on terrorism — the greatest failure in American history

The war on terrorism — the greatest failure in American history

Dylan Matthews writes: There have been no 9/11-scale terrorist attacks in the United States in the past 20 years. Meanwhile, according to the most recent estimates from Brown University’s Costs of War Project, at least 897,000 people around the world have died in violence that can be classified as part of the war on terror; at least 38 million people have been displaced due to these wars; and the effort has cost the US at least $5.8 trillion, not including…

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‘Righteous’ drone strike in Kabul killed aid worker and seven children, investigation finds

‘Righteous’ drone strike in Kabul killed aid worker and seven children, investigation finds

  The New York Times reports: It was the last known missile fired by the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan, and the military called it a “righteous strike” — a drone attack after hours of surveillance on Aug. 29 against a vehicle that American officials thought contained an ISIS bomb and posed an imminent threat to troops at Kabul’s airport. But a New York Times investigation of video evidence, along with interviews with more than a dozen…

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How mass killings by U.S. forces after 9/11 boosted support for the Taliban

How mass killings by U.S. forces after 9/11 boosted support for the Taliban

The Guardian reports: The men of Zangabad village, Panjwai district lined up on the eve of 11 September to count and remember their dead, the dozens of relatives who they say were killed at the hands of the foreign forces that first appeared in their midst nearly 20 years ago. Their cluster of mud houses, fields and pomegranate orchards was the site of perhaps the most notorious massacre of the war, when US SSgt Robert Bales walked out of a…

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After 9/11, the U.S. got almost everything wrong

After 9/11, the U.S. got almost everything wrong

Garrett M. Graff writes: On the Friday after 9/11, President George W. Bush visited the New York City site that the world would come to know as Ground Zero. After rescue workers shouted that they couldn’t hear him as he spoke to them through a bullhorn, he turned toward them and ad-libbed. “I can hear you,” he shouted. “The whole world hears you, and when we find these people who knocked these buildings down, they’ll hear all of us soon.”…

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Shot-up SUVs, teens manning checkpoints: A reporter’s return to Kabul weeks after the fall

Shot-up SUVs, teens manning checkpoints: A reporter’s return to Kabul weeks after the fall

Yaroslav Trofimov reports: Clad in body armor and helmets, Uzbekistan’s border guards took positions in the middle of the bridge spanning the wide Amu Darya river on Monday morning, examining the papers of a handful of Afghans coming their way. Beyond them, the Taliban’s new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan began. A small minivan, carrying me and three Afghan men heading home, pulled up by the customs office on the Afghan side of the river. A white Taliban flag flew above…

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