AFGHAN WOMEN'S SEX LAW

"Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands...the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work."It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/14/afghanistan-womens-rights-rape

45,000 MORE US TROOPS NEEDED

"... Anthony Cordesman, an influential American academic who is a member of a team that has been advising General Stanley McChrystal... (said) The United States should send up to 45,000 extra troops to Afghanistan... This would bring the total American military presence in Afghanistan to about 100,000..."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6789142.ece

KHALILZAD TO BE KARZAI'S CEO AGAIN?

"Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. envoy to both Afghanistan and Iraq... (is) angling for a job as a sort of “chief executive officer” of Afghanistan... Afghan President Hamid Karzai brought the subject up during meetings with President Barack Obama... Khalilzad... (was) U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan... between 2003 and 2005... (and was) the real power behind the scenes... U.S. diplomats described his role as the country’s chief executive — with Karzai as the figurehead chairman — for the 19 months of his ambassadorship..."
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/diplos-heart-afghanistan-ceo-khalilzad-not/

AFGHAN LAWMAKERS WANT RESTRICTIONS ON FOREIGN FORCES

"Afghan lawmakers... demanded legal restrictions on foreign forces fighting in their country, to prevent further civilian deaths... they had given the government one week to come up with a way of regulating foreign fighters... The U.S. military has conceded that civilians were killed in its attack aimed at the Taliban... civilian toll from the strikes could be as high as 130, but the head of the lower house of parliament, Mohammad Younus Qanuni put it even higher, at 140... A deputy... said 95 of the victims were children under 18 years old. "When a foreign soldier acts contrary to the law of Afghanistan, he should be prosecuted according to Afghanistan's law."
http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSISL367759._CH_.2400

U.S. STRIKE: TRACTOR TRAILERS FULL OF BODY PARTS

"... The US military now seem to have dropped their previous suggestion that Taliban gunmen had run through the village streets lobbing grenades into houses because villagers had failed to give them a cut of the profits from the opium crop. No evidence was produced for this unlikely tale. Witnesses saw no signs of grenade blasts or machine gun fire. A US official source in Washington eventually admitted that the claim was "thinly sourced".
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-these-killings-will-only-strengthen-the-taliban-1685705.html

"... a US bombing massacre... may have killed as many as 130 Afghans... After US Strikes, Afghans Describe "Tractor Trailers Full of Pieces of Human Bodies"... the International Committee of the Red Cross has stated bluntly that US airstrikes hit civilian houses and revealed that an ICRC counterpart in the Red Crescent was among the dead. “We know that those killed included an Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family who had been sheltering from fighting in a house that was bombed in an air strike”... the Pentagon was seeking to blame the Taliban for “staging” the massacre to blame it on the US..."
http://rebelreports.com/post/104594733/after-us-strikes-afghans-describe-tractor-trailers

CHRISTIAN KNIGHTS TEMPLAR ON CRUSADE
Extremists seek war of civilizations

"... efforts of fundamentalist Christian churches... (seek to) turn our armed forces into a modern-day Knights Templar, fighting infidels on behalf of the Church... (But)... When an armed man seeks to share his beliefs with you, it is not about spreading enlightenment, but about domination and control. To go into other countries with a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other, can only create fear, resentment and backlash... Even worse, the image of the soldier-preacher fits directly into Al-Qaeda's meme that Americans are engaged in a new Crusade to destroy Islam. And to the extent that these fundamentalist churches are allowed to exert influence in our military, our enemies are proven right. Both Muslim extremists and their Christian counterparts seek to ignite a war of civilizations, a zero-sum game in which their ideology will ultimately destroy their adversaries completely..."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kamran-pasha/bible-and-guns-why-soldie_b_195973.html

SOLDIERS FOR JESUS IN AFGHANISTAN
Hunting for Muslims to convert...



"... US military forces in Afghanistan have been instructed by the military’s top chaplain in the country to “hunt people for Jesus” as they spread Christianity to the overwhelmingly Muslim population... In a video obtained by Al Jazeera... Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him"... Soldiers also have imported bibles translated into Pashto and Dari... On the tape... one soldier describes how his church in the US helped raise money for the bibles..."

"Trying to convert Muslims to any other faith is a crime in Afghanistan... It is likely to add more credence to the perception that the US is engaging in a war on Islam with neo-crusader forces invading Muslim lands..."

"The broadcast of this video comes just days after a new poll of White Americans found that, in the US, church going Christians are more likely to support the use of torture than other segments of the population..."

http://rebelreports.com/post/103330614/us-soldiers-in-afghanistan-told-to-hunt-people-for