[Peace-discuss] Obama's thugs & liars

[C. G. Estabrook]

..."Shouting 'Death to America' and 'Death to the Government,' thousands of 
Afghan villagers hurled stones at police ... as they vented their fury at 
American air strikes that local officials claim killed 147 civilians," Patrick 
Cockburn reported last week in the U.K.'s Independent.

Cockburn added that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking in Kabul, 
suggested that the dead -- some of them, anyway -- may have been the victims of 
Taliban grenades for failing to pay an opium tax. Eyewitnesses and photos of 
bomb craters in the three destroyed villages in Farah Province said otherwise, 
however, and Gates ultimately "expressed regret for the incident but did not go 
so far as to accept blame," Cockburn wrote.

In Mosul, Iraq, last week, American soldiers turned machinegun fire on a 
12-year-old boy after their convoy had been hit with a grenade. Because the boy 
had Iraqi currency on him worth about nine U.S. dollars, a military spokesman 
told McClatchy Newspapers, "We have every reason to believe that insurgents are 
paying children to conduct these attacks."

...A man in his 20s had tossed the grenade, witnesses said. But, "When attacked, 
the Americans just open fire, whether on the gunman or just randomly," Mosul 
member of Parliament Usama Al Nujaifi later said, according to the McClatchy 
account. "The American presence in the cities is wrong. We urged them to stay 
outside from the beginning."

And, oh yeah, the shooting is still under investigation, according to an 
American military statement. As far as I know, no such investigation is under 
way into the allegation by human rights groups that some of the civilian 
injuries in the Farah Province battles -- "unusual" and serious chemical burns 
-- were the result of the U.S. use of white phosphorus, which sticks to the skin 
of victims as it burns and is banned for use as a weapon by a treaty the U.S. 
has signed...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/goliaths-vulnerability-is_b_203564.html