I covered my thoughts on this crap already.

"37 civilians killed in Afghanistan battle, US confirms; Americans stop short of taking blame for strike" by M. Karim Faiez, Los Angeles Times  |  November 9, 2008

Although the American statement stopped short of taking direct blame for civilian casualties in a southern province that is one of the country's most active battlefields, it represented an unusually swift public response to allegations of mass casualties made by Afghan officials.

The finding was made three days after provincial officials and the Afghan president's office asserted that three dozen people had died in an errant US air strike on a wedding party in a village outside the city of Kandahar.  The city, the main population center in Afghanistan's south, was the onetime stronghold of the Taliban. Militants and coalition forces clash almost daily in the province, also known as Kandahar, which is a center of Afghanistan's drug trade....

Look at how they try to leave you with the impression it is the Taliban swimming in the drug trade!  That's a WESTERN OPERATION and the whole world knows it!!!!  And how come we don't read about those "daily clashes" in the newspapers every day?

The investigation into the deaths in Wach Baghtu village in Kandahar Province was carried out jointly by Afghan government officials, the Afghan Army, and the US coalition, the American military said in a statement. That represents a departure from practice in past years, when US officials were sometimes reluctant to involve Afghan authorities in such probes, although such cooperation has become more common of late.

In releasing the findings, the US military stressed that villagers' homes were used for cover during a firefight between militants and coalition forces Monday.  The military did not directly acknowledge having inadvertently bombed the wedding party in question, but said coalition forces used "close air support to suppress enemy fire." Compensation was paid to the families of the dead and injured, the military said without providing details. 

About what, $2500 dollars?  What is your son, daughter, or mother's life worth, American?

The prompt investigation and findings stood in sharp contrast to some recent high-profile cases involving civilian casualties. Afghans were infuriated when it took weeks for the Americans to investigate allegations by the Afghan government and the United Nations that 90 people, most of them women and children, were killed in an Aug. 22 air strike in Herat Province, in the west of Afghanistan.  After initially saying that five civilians were killed, a US investigation ultimately concluded that 33 civilians had died. But that finding took six weeks, and the high-level investigation was launched only after videos surfaced that appeared to show large numbers of civilian dead....

Translation: The U.S. got CAUGHT LYING -- that's why they backed down and admitted it.  This is why I NEVER BELIEVE the LYING, MASS-MURDERING, U.S. military anymore!!!!

And to top it off, they low-balled the death count.  Hey, Muslim lives are not important -- only Jewish ones!

Afghan weddings are traditionally large, drawn-out affairs, and wedding parties several times have been the target of errant air strikes, in part because from the air the gatherings can appear similar to concentrations of Taliban fighters.  But in Afghanistan's clan-based tribal society, civilian deaths can cause otherwise peaceable villages to declare a vendetta against people they consider responsible for killing and injuring their kin - in many cases, Western forces. 

Not like the U.S. ever has a "vendetta" against those that allegedly killed its people, right?  Oh, the bias is so blatant it makes you want to puke!

In a separate development, Afghan officials said a female Canadian TV journalist who was abducted and held for nearly four weeks in Afghanistan was freed yesterday after Afghan tribal leaders persuaded her kidnappers to release her.  Mellissa Fung, a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on her second visit to Afghanistan, was taken hostage Oct. 12. Western news organizations in Afghanistan, including the Associated Press, had been aware of Fung's abduction, but the CBC requested that her case not be publicized for safety considerations.

Fung was freed after tribal elders and provincial council members negotiated her release, said Adam Khan Serat, spokesman for the provincial governor in Wardak. It was not immediately clear who kidnapped her, but it seemed likely the Taliban were detaining her because they control the region where she was released.  --more--" 

Yeah, about the Taliban and the women, please read: How I Came to Love the Veil

Also see: 

"They sat in one girl’s home telling their story, their faces uncovered only because no man was present. But when Mohammed Matloob, the father of one of the girls, walked into the room, the other three quickly pulled their head scarves over their faces. His daughter, Nagina, 16, ordered him to leave the room, which he did, with a surprised shrug."

Well, HOW ABOUT THAT!!!??

He didn't beat her? 

And aren't the children beautiful?

Oh, what LIES we have been told about Muslims!!!!!!

And who destroyed it again:

There was a small piece by the AP in the November 2, 2006 Boston Globe about US proxy Ethiopia's concerns about Somalia.

In it, the Ethiopian PM said that the Islamists controlling parts of Somalia "are a threat to... the wider world.... represent a direct threat... to Somalia and the Somali people... to the region and Ethiopia, and... to the international community."

I wondered: what kind of threat is this? So I start digging:

The Islamists defeated warlords backed by the US in June of '06.

"Ted Dagne, Africa research analyst at the Congressional Research Service:

"The so-called Islamists provided a sense of stability in Somalia, education, and other social services, while the warlords maimed and killed innocent civilians. Somalis are secular Muslims, and the presence of so-called Islamists is not an introduction of new ideology or religion (New York Times June 6, 2006).

Backing the Islamists have been business leaders eager to end the arbitrary rule of the warlords.

Yeah, those EXTREME BUSINESS GROUPS!!! We all know how radical business is!!

The citizens of Somalia had this to say:

Ali Mohammed, a 32-year-old school teacher: "The people of Mogadishu have finally gotten some peace today. We've had war for so long, and we're tired of it (New York Times June 6, 2006)."

Fahran Gure: "We feel there is a big change, peace is in the air, no gunshots can be heard. It is calm, businesses are fully operational. People are now moving freely everywhere (Boston Globe June 7, 2006)."

[Islamists must be terrorists!!!

BRINGING PEACE TO THE CITY BY DEFEATING OUR MURDEROUS WARLORDS!

How dare the Islamists DELIVER FREEDOM!!]

Want to know another terror group in Somalia? Women!

That's right, women!!!

A June 19, 2006 report in the Washington Post (via the Boston Globe) illuminates the situation:

OUR warlords' gunmen would "slice open the tin shacks of poor families and snatch their daughters. [The girls would] return -- if they returned -- in the morning, sobbing and marked permanently as castoffs.

Anab Mohammed Isaaq, 35, a solemn, long-faced widow: "Four-year-old girls, 5-year old girls were raped."

By THOSE AMERIKA SUPPORTED, people!

Therefore, Somali women "embraced [the Islamists] as keepers of the public order... strong enough and pious enough to keep Mogadishu's daughters safe. [Militias won the support of] Mogadishu's increasingly influential women, who in recent years had joined the job market en masse to support their families... they sold vegetables, plastic jugs of gasoline, and khat, [a popular leafy drug].

Shariff Osman, 45, dean of faculty at Mogadishu University: "Women are doing what men used to do here. They were paying bills."

Khadija O. Ali, 47, and founder of a women's group here and a graduate student in conflict resolution at George Mason University: "Somalia was saved because of the Somali women. I think it is even something that the men acknowledge now. Finally."

[Those Somali women really are a bunch of extremist gals, huh?

Terrorists by defiant example!

These reports must have been all lies!

I've been trained to believe that all Muslims thrash and beat their wives to a pulp before they drink their blood.

So it is just inconceivable that an Islamic society could behave as the one described above.

Indeed, Somalia was a virus that had to be destroyed, lest it DESTROY OUR LIES about Islamists and become a "good example" for other African or Islamist nations to emulate.

So the women saved Somali, and the U.S. (with its Ethiopian proxy) wrecked it again!

And that's where we are today!

Originally posted November 4, 2006 at Rock The Truth

"The Smoking Gun
Mike Whitney

February 26, 2006 The AFP is reporting that the bombing of the Golden Domed Mosque "was the work of specialists" and that the "placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours." Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said, "Holes were dug into the mausoleum’s four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance." Clearly, the bombing was not carried out by rogue elements in the disparate Iraqi resistance. This is the work of highly-trained saboteurs and bomb-experts who were executing a precision-demolition to incite sectarian violence. The blast bears all the hallmarks of a covert Intelligence agency-operation. Who benefits from such a vicious attack on the foundations of Islamic identity and culture? --MORE--"

"I provide this piece by the esteemed reporter Yvonne Ridley to put and end to the lies about Islam, women and the Taliban.

This should be required reading for all women:

"How I Came to Love the Veil" by Yvonne Ridley/Washington Post October 22, 2006

Yvonne Ridley is political editor of Islam Channel TV in London and coauthor of "In the Hands of the Taliban: Her Extraordinary Story" (Robson Books).

LONDON

I used to look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures -- until I was captured by the Taliban.

In September 2001, just 15 days after the terrorist attacks on the United States, I snuck into Afghanistan, clad in a head-to-toe blue burqa, intending to write a newspaper account of life under the repressive regime. Instead, I was discovered, arrested and detained for 10 days. I spat and swore at my captors; they called me a "bad" woman but let me go after I promised to read the Koran and study Islam. (Frankly, I'm not sure who was happier when I was freed -- they or I.)

Back home in London, I kept my word about studying Islam -- and was amazed by what I discovered. I'd been expecting Koran chapters on how to beat your wife and oppress your daughters; instead, I found passages promoting the liberation of women. Two-and-a-half years after my capture, I converted to Islam, provoking a mixture of astonishment, disappointment and encouragement among friends and relatives.

Now, it is with disgust and dismay that I watch here in Britain as former foreign secretary Jack Straw describes the Muslim nikab -- a face veil that reveals only the eyes -- as an unwelcome barrier to integration, with Prime Minister Tony Blair, writer Salman Rushdie and even Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi leaping to his defense.

Having been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you that most Western male politicians and journalists who lament the oppression of women in the Islamic world have no idea what they are talking about. They go on about veils, child brides, female circumcision, honor killings and forced marriages, and they wrongly blame Islam for all this -- their arrogance surpassed only by their ignorance.

These cultural issues and customs have nothing to do with Islam. A careful reading of the Koran shows that just about everything that Western feminists fought for in the 1970s was available to Muslim women 1,400 years ago. Women in Islam are considered equal to men in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman's gift for childbirth and child-rearing is regarded as a positive attribute.

When Islam offers women so much, why are Western men so obsessed with Muslim women's attire? Even British government ministers Gordon Brown and John Reid have made disparaging remarks about the nikab -- and they hail from across the Scottish border, where men wear skirts.

When I converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf, the repercussions were enormous. All I did was cover my head and hair -- but I instantly became a second-class citizen. I knew I'd hear from the odd Islamophobe, but I didn't expect so much open hostility from strangers. Cabs passed me by at night, their "for hire" lights glowing. One cabbie, after dropping off a white passenger right in front of me, glared at me when I rapped on his window, then drove off. Another said, "Don't leave a bomb in the back seat" and asked, "Where's bin Laden hiding?"

Yes, it is a religious obligation for Muslim women to dress modestly, but the majority of Muslim women I know like wearing the hijab, which leaves the face uncovered, though a few prefer the nikab. It is a personal statement: My dress tells you that I am a Muslim and that I expect to be treated respectfully, much as a Wall Street banker would say that a business suit defines him as an executive to be taken seriously. And, especially among converts to the faith like me, the attention of men who confront women with inappropriate, leering behavior is not tolerable.

I was a Western feminist for many years, but I've discovered that Muslim feminists are more radical than their secular counterparts. We hate those ghastly beauty pageants, and tried to stop laughing in 2003 when judges of the Miss Earth competition hailed the emergence of a bikini-clad Miss Afghanistan, Vida Samadzai, as a giant leap for women's liberation. They even gave Samadzai a special award for "representing the victory of women's rights."

Some young Muslim feminists consider the hijab and the nikab political symbols, too, a way of rejecting Western excesses such as binge drinking, casual sex and drug use. What is more liberating: being judged on the length of your skirt and the size of your surgically enhanced breasts, or being judged on your character and intelligence? In Islam, superiority is achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.

I didn't know whether to scream or laugh when Italy's Prodi joined the debate last week by declaring that it is "common sense" not to wear the nikab because it makes social relations "more difficult." Nonsense. If this is the case, then why are cellphones, landlines, e-mail, text messaging and fax machines in daily use? And no one switches off the radio because they can't see the presenter's face.

Under Islam, I am respected. It tells me that I have a right to an education and that it is my duty to seek out knowledge, regardless of whether I am single or married. Nowhere in the framework of Islam are we told that women must wash, clean or cook for men. As for how Muslim men are allowed to beat their wives -- it's simply not true. Critics of Islam will quote random Koranic verses or hadith, but usually out of context. If a man does raise a finger against his wife, he is not allowed to leave a mark on her body, which is the Koran's way of saying, "Don't beat your wife, stupid."

It is not just Muslim men who must reevaluate the place and treatment of women. According to a recent National Domestic Violence Hotline survey, 4 million American women experience a serious assault by a partner during an average 12-month period. More than three women are killed by their husbands and boyfriends every day -- that is nearly 5,500 since 9/11.

Violent men don't come from any particular religious or cultural category; one in three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime, according to the hotline survey. This is a global problem that transcends religion, wealth, class, race and culture.

But it is also true that in the West, men still believe that they are superior to women, despite protests to the contrary. They still receive better pay for equal work -- whether in the mailroom or the boardroom -- and women are still treated as sexualized commodities whose power and influence flow directly from their appearance.

And for those who are still trying to claim that Islam oppresses women, recall this 1992 statement from the Rev. Pat Robertson, offering his views on empowered women: Feminism is a "socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

Now you tell me who is civilized and who is not.""

By the way, Yvonne Ridley is the brave reporter who provided the REAL STORY on the capture of Saddam Hussein.

"On December 15th, the head of the U.S. occupation in Iraq, Paul Bremer, held an early morning press conference. His first words were "Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him." This was how millions of people around the world learned of the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

A week after Bremer's announcement, a different account of Saddam's capture has emerged.

An article in last weekend's British Sunday Express, says "The full story of the fallen dictator's capture last Saturday in a "spider hole" near his birthplace of Tikrit exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete."

According to the Sunday Express, Saddam was actually captured by Kurdish forces who then drugged him and abandoned him for U.S. troops to find after brokering a deal. The article quotes unnamed British and Iraqi military intelligence officers."

Reader!!!

So they LIED ABOUT Saddam's CAPTURE, too!?!?

Then they have LIED ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!!

How can ANYONE believe ANYTHING the MSM "reports" anymore, readers?