Charity Group: U.S. Troops Stormed Afghan Hospital
A Swedish charity accused American troops Monday of storming through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants, The Associated Press reports. The U.S. military said it was investigating the allegation. The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan accused the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division of entering the hospital without permission to look for insurgents in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, according to the charity’s country director, Anders Fange. Fange said Monday that the troops’ actions were a violation of the sanctity of medical facilities in combat zones. “This is simply not acceptable,” he told AP. The U.S. troops entered the hospital looking for Taliban insurgents late at night last Wednesday, Fange said. He said they kicked in doors, tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients, and forced patients out of beds during their search. When they left two hours later, the unit ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded militants were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated, Fange said. Navy public affairs officer Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker confirmed that the hospital was searched last week but had no other details. She said the military is looking into the incident. “We are investigating and we take allegations like this seriously,” she told AP. “Complaints like this are rare.”

90 Arrested in British Racial Clash
Authorities arrested 90 people after racially charged violence erupted between a group protesting Islamic extremism and counter-demonstrators in the central English city of Birmingham, police said Sunday. The clashes erupted Saturday when a rally by the English Defense League ran into counter-demonstrators including anti-fascists and youths of South Asian descent, West Midlands Police said. About 200 people were involved in the clashes in downtown Birmingham, police said. Television footage showed masked or hooded youths throwing projectiles and running from riot police through the diverse city’s downtown area. Police said the 90 people detained — all males aged 16 to 39 — were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and violent disorder. It was not immediately clear how many were protesters and how many were counter-demonstrators. Clashes also erupted last month at a similar demonstration in Birmingham, a diverse city of about 1 million where nearly a third of the population is non-White. The English Defense League blames counter-demonstrators for inciting violence at its rallies. It has planned protest marches in other cities, including one next month in Manchester.

As many as 90 people – many of them civilians – were killed early Friday after NATO forces launched an airstrike in a normally peaceful region of northern Afghanistan, NATO officials acknowledged. Although the airstrike on two fuel tankers in the tiny village of Omar Kheil had targeted insurgents, many civilians were killed as they siphoned gasoline from trucks, Afghan leaders told The New York Times. “Eighty to 90 people were killed,” said the district governor of Ali Abad, Haji Habibullah. “Some of them were civilians and some of them were Taliban fighters.” Part of the Ali Abad district is controlled by Taliban commanders. On Thursday, several Taliban guerrillas hijacked the two tanker trucks and took them to Omar Kheil, NATO officials said. Scores of villagers came out carrying all sorts of containers, writes the Times. “The air attack exploded the tankers, and people close to the trucks were blown to bits,” the paper reports, citing Gen. Razag Yaqoobi, police chief of the Kunduz Province. “Some of those farther away died from severe burns.” He said he saw a dozen badly burned men in their 20s and 30s. Local people said they did not believe them men were from the area. “After assessing that only insurgents were in the area, the local International Security Assistance Force (the NATO-led military alliance in Afghanistan) commander ordered an airstrike, which destroyed the fuel trucks, and a large number of insurgents were reportedly killed and injured,” press officer Lt. Cmdr. Sam Truelove of the British Royal Navy said. “I.S.A.F. has received information that civilians were killed and injured in this attack, and in conjunction with Afghan officials are currently conducting an investigation.”

U.S. military officials said Thursday that they are exhausting all resources to find an American soldier who was captured by militants in Afghanistan on Tuesday. “We are not providing any further details at this time, in order to protect the welfare of the soldier,” a military statement said. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for abducting the unidentified soldier, who was kidnapped along with three Afghan soldiers, Taliban Commander Mulvi Sangeen said. The soldier apparently had gotten drunk at a military post in the Yousaf Khel district, Sangeen said. As he returned to his car, he was ambushed and taken to a safe place, he said.

In a move that would inflate the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a whopping $947 billion, the Obama administration is seeking another $83.4 billion for military efforts over the next five months. Democratic congressional sources said Thursday that roughly three-quarters of the $864 billion allocated for the conflicts so far have gone to fighting in Iraq. Obama has said the situation in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan “demands urgent attention.” In submitting his funding request, Obama said in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “The Taliban is resurgent, and al Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border. There is no question of the resolve of our military women and men. Yet, in Afghanistan, that resolve has not been matched by a comprehensive strategy and sufficient resources.” Most of the money, about $75 billion worth, would go toward military operations – including $9.8 billion for body armor and protective vehicles and $11.6 billion to replace worn-out equipment. “The rest would go to diplomatic programs and development aid — including $1.6 billion for Afghanistan, $1.4 billion for Pakistan and $700 million for Iraq,” CNN reports.

Haitians Booted Out
The Obama administration says that it will not stop deporting Haitians, at least not for now. Many advocates for Haitian refugees had hoped that President Obama would have a more lenient policy toward undocumented Haitians than President Bush, but the Department of Homeland Security says it will not stop deporting the group and allow them to legally remain in the United States. “At this time, DHS intends to continue to coordinate the removal of Haitian nationals to Haiti,” wrote Susan Cullen, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Policy and Planning. Members of the south Florida congressional delegation, expressing disappointment with the administration’s position, say they will continue pushing the matter forward. “We obviously have seen that this issue has not moved forward,” said Lale Mamaux, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla).  “They’re bright people. They’re fair people,” said Randy McGrorty, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities Legal Services in Miami. “I remain optimistic the policy will change once they understand the need for change.”
 
Afghanistan Region Continues to Claim U.S. Lives
As of Monday, March 9, 2009, at least 589 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, The Associated Press reports, citing Defense Department figures. Of those, the military reports 434 were killed by hostile action, according to AP. In areas outside of the Afghanistan region – in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen – 67 other American military personnel lost their lives to the cause of Operation Enduring Freedom, according to the Defense Department. There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death.

Spare Him or Execute Him
Did murderer William Thompson, who has been housed in Florida’s death chamber for the past 32 years, already suffer enough, or does his admittedly heinous crime and initial sentence demand execution no matter how long he’s had to endure the harsh conditions of death-row confinement? U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens believes that his “experience during the past three decades has demonstrated that delays in state-sponsored killings are inescapable and that executing defendants after such is unacceptably cruel.” But in the eyes of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “It is the crime and not the punishment imposed by the jury or the delay in execution that was ‘unacceptably cruel.’” Review the facts, then weigh in on who you think has a stronger argument. In 1976, Thompson and his co-defendant had held Sally Ivester and another woman in a motel room, demanding money from the victim’s families. The men became enraged when Ivester was only able to raise $25, instead of hundreds of dollars, as she had promised. They brutally beat Ivester, causing internal injuries and burned her with cigarettes. The other woman witnessed the savagery but was spared. The men pleaded guilty, but the Florida high court threw the sentence out because his lawyer had said his life would be spared if he accepted responsibility for the crime. Thompson pleaded guilty once again, only this time he got the death penalty. He then filed a series of appeals, all of which were rejected by one court or another. During a third penalty hearing, Stevens pointed out, five members of a state advisory jury recommended against lethal injection; still, the court imposed death. “As he awaits execution, petitioner has endured especially severe conditions of confinement,” said Stevens, “spending up to 23 hours per day in isolation in a 6- by 9-foot cell. Two death warrants have been signed against him and stayed only shortly before he was scheduled to die. The dehumanizing effects of such treatment are undeniable.”

Jury convicts five men of plotting against U.S. soldiers. A jury convicted five Muslim men Monday of plotting to kill American soldiers at For Dix military base in New Jersey last year. After six days of deliberation, the jury agreed with prosecutors that three brothers – Shain, Eljvir and Dritan Duka – and Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar were planning to attack Fort Dix and kill the base residents. However, the jury, while agreeing with the conspiracy charge, did not find them guilty of attempted murder. Among the evidence accumulated by the prosecution were hundreds of tape-recorded conversations between the defendants and FBI agents, several propagandist videos from one of the suspects’ computers, and video of an illegal purchase of several machine guns. The defense contended that the government informants were shaky and that the feds coaxed the defendants into making damning comments on government wiretaps. One of the informants is an Egyptian-born illegal immigrant on probation for bank fraud; the other has been paid about $150,000 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for making the secret recording. The five men were arrested in May 2007 after one of the government’s informants secretly videotaped them paying $1,400 for seven machine guns in the informant’s apartment, in Cherry Hill, N.J.

U.S. missiles kill eight people in Afghanistan. U.S. missiles fired from an unmanned aircraft killed at least eight people in Afghanistan Monday, sparking anger among Pakistani authorities who argue that such actions are undermining their own strategy against terror, The Associated Press reports. Four of the deaths occurred when missiles slammed into a vehicle and a house. Four others died and one was injured in the second vehicle about five miles away by a dirt track. The U.S. military has launched than 30 missile strikes since August in Pakistan’s lawless, tribal areas, targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban militants blamed for attacks in Afghanistan.

U.N., Afghan observers say scores of women and children were killed

New evidence appears to back up claims by the United Nations and Afghanis who contend that a U.S. raid killed some 90 civilians, including scores of women and children in the western Afghanistan village of Azizabad . The Associated Press reported Monday that it had obtained two grainy videos – apparently taken by cell phones – of the grisly scene. According to AP, the video shows “bodies lying side-by-side on the mosque floor, covered by floral-patterned blankets and Black-and-White checkered shawls. One young boy lay curled in a fetal position; others looked as though they were asleep. One child had half its head blown off. Turbaned men walked around, gently lifting the blankets covering the faces of the dead. At least two elderly men were among the dead. There appeared to be several dozen bodies lying on the mosque floor, though a precise count was difficult because of the poor quality of the images.” While the videos are not definitive proof that 60 children were killed in the raid, they do seem to contradict the Pentagon’s assertion that 35 militants and only seven civilians were killed in Azizabad.

The was began in 2001 following the acts of terrorism on U.S. soil

The war against terrorism has marked another grisly milestone. A U.S. sailor killed in Afghanistan Saturday marked the 500^th time an American military person lost his/her life in the country since the United States invaded it following the terrorist attacks of 2001. The sailor, Petty Officer 1^st Class Joshua Harris, of Lexington, N.C., was 36. He was the 22^nd U.S. service member to die in Afghanistan during the month of August. Over the past seven years, 940 members of the U.S. coalition force have been killed.