Author: mara.ahmed

Pulling his shirt up, Hasan reveals torture marks that remain visible after four years. His front teeth are missing due to heavy beating and he informs that his left hand remains numb. ‘They kept asking me, what do you know about the 9/11 attackers? Who do you know in Al Qaeda? How much money did you send to the terrorists? What are your plans for bombing the nuclear plants in the US?’ Hasan also recalls being chastised for marrying a white woman and being told by a federal agent that he would ‘make a career’ on Hasan’s case. ‘I kept pleading with them that you’ve got the wrong guy, but they never stopped,’ he adds. Full article.

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compel…led me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot. Full article.

US troops broke down doors and tied up visitors and hospital staff. Impeding operations at medical facilities in Afghanistan directly violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly forbids attacks on emergency vehicles and the obstruction of medical operations during wartime. Full article.

a pakistani student, sarmad khurram, refused to accept an award from american ambassador ann patterson as a protest against u.s. air strikes inside pakistan which result in large numbers of civilian deaths. this was back in 2008. now if only zardari had the same courage…

“It’s Constitution Day in the US today, marking the 222nd anniversary of the day that the members of the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787. And yet I almost missed it, so low was it on the US media’s radar. Is this confirmation that the shredding of the Constitution under the Bush adminstration was so successful that it is now some sort of museum piece?” Andy Worthington

It’s now apparent that the biggest sham in American politics is Barack Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo and, more generally, to dismantle the Bush/Cheney approach to detaining accused Terrorists. In August, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantanamo detainees — people abducted from around the world and shipped to our prison in Cuba — have the constitutional right to habeas corpus (a court review of their imprisonment). Yesterday, the Obama DOJ — as expected — filed a legal brief which adopted the arguments originally made by the Bush DOJ to insist that detainees whom they abduct from around the world and then ship to Bagram (rather than Guantanamo) lack any constitutional rights whatsoever, including habeas review. Full article.

Ten infantrymen in his brigade have been arrested and accused of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter since 2006. Others have committed or attempted suicide. What is happening to the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team is true of literally hundreds of thousands of veterans across the US. There are numerous instances of veterans attempting to kill themselves after they return from their deployments. Some of these incidents seem to be an effort to avoid redeployment. Many more look like desperate bids to stop, once and for all, the internal pain that many veterans experience. Full article.

In many ways Afghanistan is worse than Vietnam. So, it is increasingly hard to fathom why a seemingly intelligent American administration seems determined to hitch itself to this disaster in the making. Full article.

Amy Goodman: “Peace activists have launched a new petition calling for a near-term withdrawal of US and NATO troops. The petition is called “Take Action to End the War in Afghanistan.” PLS SIGN THE PETITION.

Afghanistan – A Petition to Take Action Against the War – video, produced by CODEPINK, featuring the words of Democratic Congress member Barbara Lee, the only lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to vote against the resolution authorizing the use of force in the so-called war on terror.

Al-Zeidi said: “At the time that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on television that he could not sleep without being reassured on my fate, I was being tortured in the worst ways, beaten with electric cables and iron bars.”

He said his guards had also used simulated drowning – the technique of water-boarding used by the Americans on suspects arrested over the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Full article.

They were polite, George said, and asked why he studied Arabic, why he’d been in the Middle East, whether anyone had ever asked him to join a terrorist group, whether he was “Islamic,” whether he’d joined any Islamic or Communist (yes, Communist) groups on campus. Full article.

barsamian is one of the few people in the WORLD who can talk about pakistan and afghanistan intelligently. a must see.