Can we please quit bombing shit

[globalvillage]

unless we're certain of the target?
Jesus. We killed 18 civilians, including women and children.

Related, but not the point, I can't wait for the Senator to get back to the states.
His work there is important, but he's making me nervous.

[Island Blue]

1. Jeez I hate these people.

Have I mentioned that before? I could put on the tin hat for this one, but I won't even go there.

I'm with you GV, I can't wait until JK is home safe and sound.

[globalvillage]

3. I've been there and back, IB

But I'll just settle for being pissed at the obvious right now. We need to quit fucking up.

The Pakistani government has filed a complaint with the U.S. embassy over a purported CIA air strike that killed at least 17 people in a village near the Afghan border.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/01/14/zawahiri060114.html

[_dynamicdems]

2. Me too. I worry as much as if a member of my own family were going

to Iraq. I've been upset about Iraq to begin with, but JK going there scares me to death. I'll be happy to see him back home and kicking ass in the Senate.

I'm also very sensitive about how senseless this war is right now because I just found out a young woman I work with is in the Army National Guard and is being deployed to Iraq in a few months. She and her husband were planning to start a family before she got the "news."

Wasn't there once a time when the news wasn't filled with death and bombings? Oh yeah, there was: it was called the Clinton Administration.

:sarcasm:

[kerrygoddess]

4. My post on this subject on Dem Daily

U.S. Airstrike in Pakistan Based on False Info — Pakistani’s Protest

Yesterday, a deadly U.S. missile strike hit a residential compound in Pakistan — they were acting on information that al Qaeda’s Zawahiri was in the village. U.S. officials both CIA and Defense Department are declining to talk about the airstrike, which took the lives of “nine women and six children.” Apparently, Zawahiri was not in the village.


CIA officials declined to comment on the report. A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, the military organization in charge of the region, said last night that the mission was not a Central Command operation. He added that there was no “operational reporting” of the incident through military channels. A Pentagon official said he could not comment on any “alleged airstrike.”

Pakistan has condemned the airstrike and said it “was protesting to the U.S. Embassy over the attack that killed at least 17 people.”

Citing unidentified American intelligence officials, U.S. news networks reported that CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike because al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant, was thought to be at a compound in the village or about to arrive.

MORE - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1658

[TayTay]

5. Oh god, those poor people.

I wonder if this was an honest mistake or if the bombers were played into hitting a spot that housed opposition people. Either choice is terrible.

This is what war does. Mistakes get made. However, you still mourn it. It horrible.

[ProSense]

6. Bush's war sure has been rounding up those dangerous terrrist

:sarcasm:

In stead of focusing, the Clown in Chief went after an old broken down despot who was surrounded by people ready to stab him in the back, in charge of a broken down army. Now he's bogged down in a unwinnable situation and the only strategy he has is to go bombing shadows and killing innocent people in the process.

Recap of recent actions since CIC turned his back on the real objective for the fake one (Mission Accomplished):

'Dr. Germ,' Others Released From Iraq Jail
'Dr. Germ' Among 24 Detainees Released From Jail in Iraq; Iraqis Protest Fuel Price Hike
By JASON STRAZIUSO
The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - About 24 top former officials in Saddam Hussein's regime, including a biological weapons expert known as "Dr. Germ," have been released from jail, while a militant group released a video Monday of the purported killing of an American hostage.

The first results of Thursday's parliamentary election were released, with officials saying the Shiite religious bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, got about 58 percent of the votes from 89 percent of ballot boxes counted in Baghdad province.

Across Iraq, meanwhile, demonstrations broke out to protest a government decision to raise the price of gasoline, heating and cooking fuel, and the oil minister threatened to resign over the development.

An Iraqi lawyer said the 24 or 25 officials from Saddam's government were released from jail without charges, and some have already left the country.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1420459&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

A Harvest Of Treachery
Afghanistan's drug trade is threatening the stability of a nation America went to war to stabilize. What can be done?

By Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai
Newsweek


Jan. 9, 2006 issue - In the privacy of his sparsely furnished house in Kabul, a veteran Afghan Interior Ministry official says the situation may already be hopeless. Although he has no authorization to speak with the press, and he could be in personal danger if his identity became known, he's nevertheless too worried to keep silent. "We are losing the fight against drug traffickers," he says. "If we don't crack down on these guys soon, it won't be long until they're in control of everything."

His pessimism is spreading. Despite the recent fanfare over the convening of Afghanistan's first elected Parliament in more than three decades, the rule of law is under attack by a ruthless organization of warlords and drug smugglers that spans the country and transcends its ethnic divisions. Narcotics trafficking isn't merely big, it's more than half the economy—amounting to $2.7 billion annually, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)—that is, 52 percent of the country's entire GDP. And many of the underground industry's most important figures are said to be senior government officials in Kabul and the provinces. Amanullah Paiman, a newly elected member of Parliament from the far northern province of Badakhshan, has studied the country's drug problem and says Afghan government officials are involved in at least 70 percent of the traffic. "The chain of narcodollars goes from the districts to the highest levels of government," he says.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10683996/site/newsweek/

Family appeals for Pope's help to get sick Aziz freed

Associated Press
Saturday January 14, 2006
The Guardian

The family of former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz has asked Pope Benedict XVI to intervene with US authorities so the detainee can be released to receive medical care abroad.

Mr Aziz's son, Ziad Aziz, said lawyers had sent a letter addressed to the pope to the Vatican's embassy in Baghdad. Mr Aziz, a Chaldean Catholic, met with the late Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in February 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, in a bid to head off the conflict. Mr Aziz was arrested after the overthrow of Saddam's regime in 2003 but has not been formally charged.

The Vatican declined to comment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1686360,00.html

I'm convinced that without a war, Saddam would have been out of power in a few years and his two lunatic sons dead, anyway.

[jillan]

7. I feel like everything this administration does, they screw up

Bsh is making sure we are hated all over the world...

And John Kerry has to go travel to these places to keep the peace, to show the world that not all Americans are like the power hungry assholes in charge.

Be safe Senator:hug:

[TayTay]

8. I agree. Godspeed Senator

Go see what's up in Afghanistan and Iraq and then get home. (I worry so when they are away. Then again, I worry about all the Americans over there. It's so unstable and dangerous.)

I do hope to see some pics of JK with the Mass troops. I love those pics. He has, in the past, just looked both serious and reassuring for his constituents in harms way in those conversations.

[ginnyinWI]

9. and they don't screw up only because the chimp is in charge--

the fact is there for all to plainly see: conservative policies just don't work! They really don't, no matter who is in charge. Time to get a new playbook.

We have to keep saying this during any upcoming campaigns: conservative (and neoconservative) policies don't work, they fail.