At Least 37 Dead In Afghan Suicide Attack During Eid Prayers

*Source: RT

At least 37 dead in Afghan suicide attack during Eid prayers

At least 37 people were killed and 50 more injured after a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Afghanistan’s northern city of Maymana, local officials reported. Worshipers had gathered at the mosque to celebrate the Eid al-Adha Islamic holiday.

The bomber was reportedly wearing a police uniform when he detonated his explosives in front of the Mosque.

The local authorities said that over half of those killed were police officers. The provincial governor and police chief were in attendance at the prayer service and narrowly escaped with their lives.

“There was blood and dead bodies everywhere,'' said Khaled, a doctor who happened to be in the mosque at the time of the blast to AFP. “It was a massacre.” 

The attack follows Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s appeal to insurgent to cease “the destruction of our mosques, hospitals and schools.”

In his Eid message Karzai urged the Taliban “to stop killing other Afghans.”

Joe Rogan - The System Is Not Your Friend.

That about sums it up!

Bush Planned Afghan Invasion BEFORE 9/11, Condoleezza Rice Testimony.

*Real News @ http://RevolutionNews.US — Condoleezza Rice tells the 9/11 commission Bush ordered invasion of Afghanistan on September 4th 2001. A WEEK BEFORE 9/11. Taken from Rice's testimony at the ninth public hearing of the 9/11 commission on April 8th 2004.

You can see a transcript and video of her entire testimony here:

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing9/index.htm

THIS VIDEO IS RAW BECAUSE IT SOMETHING IN IT WAS DEEMED OFFENSIVE BY THE FASCISTS AT YOUTUBE :(

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http://www.patriotsquestion911.com

http://ae911truth.org

http://firefightersfor911truth.org

http://wearechange.org

http://infowars.com

9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB!

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Afghan Drug War Debacle: Blair Said Smashing Opium Trade Was A Major Reason To Invade But 10 Years On Heroin Production Is Up From 185 Tons A Year To

*Source: Daily MailM

The West is losing the heroin war in Afghanistan – ten years after Tony Blair pledged that wiping out the drug was one of the main reasons for invading the country.

Despite spending £18billion and a conflict which has so far cost the lives of almost 400 British troops, production of the class-A drug by Afghan farmers rose between 2001 and 2011 from just 185 tons to a staggering 5,800 tons.

It increased by 61 per cent last year alone.

Broken pledge: Then prime minister Tony Blair meets British troops in Afghanistan in 2006

Thriving: An Afghan farmer collects raw opium from poppies in Balkh province, Afghanistan. Heroin production in the country has increased by 61 per cent in the last year

Such has been the failure to combat the problem that more than 90 per cent of the heroin sold on Britain’s streets is still made using opium from Afghanistan.

he United Nations yesterday warned that the situation was out of control.

Declaring that the West had lost its war against the drug, a glum UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon added: ‘Time is not on our side.’

The UN figures make grim reading for those who backed the invasion.

Cutting the supply of heroin was one of the prime reasons given by then-prime minister Tony Blair in 2001 for sending in British troops.

Three weeks after the attack on America’s Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, Mr Blair said: ‘The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for by the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets. This is another part of their regime we should seek to destroy.’

Warning: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said the drug problem in Afghanistan threatens the entire country with organised crime and trafficking

But ten years later, the UN figures reveal how the outcome has been so dramatically different.

Some 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s Gross National Product now comes from drug-related exports – a business worth up to £1.6billion each year, it was claimed.

Officials say there is clear evidence that the opium trade is being orchestrated by the Taliban, with vast profits used to buy weapons and fuel the insurgency.

The warning came at a meeting in Austria of more than 50 countries.

Britain alone has spent an estimated £18billion – a further £4billion is said to have been earmarked for this year – in Afghanistan, where 398 of its troops have died and thousands have been injured.

The most recent was Senior Aircraftman Ryan Tomlin, from 2 Squadron RAF Regiment, who was fatally wounded by small arms fire during an insurgent attack on Monday in Helmand Province – the heart of the opium industry.

Ironically, the Taliban had overseen a significant fall in heroin production in the months before the invasion. Their leader Mullah Mohammed Omar – collaborating with the UN – had decreed that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world’s most successful anti-drug campaigns.

As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91 per cent from the previous year’s estimate of 82,172 hectares.

The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this production, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.

However, with the overthrow of the Taliban opium fields returned, despite the destruction of crops by coalition forces and initiatives to persuade farmers to switch to other produce.

There was some success but, commanders said, the ‘reality’ was that forces were too thinly stretched to focus on crop destruction – a move that, anyway, turned farmers against the troops.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that the 2006 harvest was around 6,100 tons, 33 times its level in 2001, a 3,200 per cent increase in five years.

Cost: A British soldier stands guard as a Chinook helicopter lands supplies. Britain has spent £18billion on curbing heroin production in Afghanistan and it was the main justifications for the country's involvement in the war when it stated in 2001

Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban. This fell in figures for 2010 because of crop disease, but the UN figures show that it increased sharply again last year when 131,000 hectares were under cultivation, producing some 5,800 tons of opium.

The rise came even though the Afghan government and Nato have boosted crop eradication measures by 65 per cent and made significant seizures in recent months. The UN says there are now 17 provinces in Afghanistan affected by poppy cultivation, up from 14 a year ago.

Experts say the Taliban’s involvement in the drugs trade ranges from direct assistance – such as providing farmers with seed, fertiliser and cash advances – to distribution and protection.

In his opening address to the Vienna conference, the UN Secretary General warned that the problem extends beyond those who abuse drugs and is threatening Afghanistan itself.

‘Drug trafficking and transnational organized crime undermine the health of fragile states, (and) weaken the rule of law,’ he said, ‘Above all, the Afghan government must prioritise the issue of narcotics.’

A report by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime said revenue from opium production in Afghanistan soared by 133 per cent last year to about £900million after the crop recovered from a 2010 blight and approached previous levels.

Ban Ki-moon, in his opening comments, cited a 2011 UN survey saying that poppy cultivation has increased by 7 per cent and opium production by 61 per cent in the past year.

Zarar Ahmed Moqbel Osmani, the Afghan minister, said his country understood international concerns but noted that ‘95 per cent of poppy cultivation takes place in nine insecure provinces’.

He urged the international community to work hard in preventing the components needed to turn opium into heroin from entering Afghanistan from neighbouring countries.

Afghan Woman’s Choice: 12 Years in Prison or Marry Rapist and Face Death.

*Source: TheBlaze

An unspeakable atrocity, an unthinkable choice.

It is difficult to imagine what it feels like to be Gulnaz. She was only 19-years-old when she was raped and impregnated by her cousin’s husband in Afghanistan. If that were not bad enough, Gulnaz, along with her baby, are serving a 12-year prison sentence for her “crime” — the crime of being raped — or, as the authorities put it: dishonoring her family by having sexual intercourse out of wedlock.

“He had filthy clothes on as he does metal and construction work. When my mother went out, he came into my house and he closed doors and windows. I started screaming, but he shut me up by putting his hands on my mouth,” Gulnaz said of her rapist.

Now, the only hope for Gulnaz if she wishes to escape prison is to marry her rapist. The move would purportedly restore her honor. An unattractive choice made all the more fruitless by the fact that, if freed, Gulnaz could still face an honor killing by either her rapist’s family, or her own.

“I was asked if I wanted to start a new life by getting released, by marrying this man,” she told CNN in an interview. “My answer was that one man dishonored me, and I want to stay with that man.”

“My daughter is a little innocent child. Who knew I would have a child in this way. A lot of people told me that after your daughter’s born give it to someone else, but my aunt told me to keep her as proof of my innocence.”

Hero Soldiers 'Thrown in the Trash': Military Dumped Body Parts of Dead Servicemen Killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in LANDFILL

*Source: DailyMail

* THIRD scandal over how the Army treats its dead
* Bodies at Arlington National Cemetery put in WRONG graves
* Military lost body parts and shipped fetal remains in cardboard boxes

Body parts belonging to U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were routinely cremated and then dumped in a landfill site.

For five years, between 2003 and 2008, staff at the Dover Air Force base mortuary, Delaware, disposed of parts that could not be identified or were later recovered from the battlefield.

Family members were not told what happened to their relatives - and the company running the landfill site was not even informed what was being thrown away.

A damning new report reveals the military mishandled the remains of soldiers returning through Dover Air Force Base

It is the third scandal engulfing the Army in its treatment of its dead.

Gari-Lynn Smith, portions of whose husband’s remains were disposed of in the landfill after his 2006 death in Iraq, told the Washington Post she was 'appalled and disgusted' by the way the Air Force had acted.

She said: 'My only peace of mind in losing my husband was that he was taken to Dover and that he was handled with dignity, love, respect and honour.

'That was completely shattered for me when I was told that he was thrown in the trash.'

Lt Gen Darrell G Jones, the Air Force’s deputy chief for personnel, said the body parts were cremated, then incinerated, and then taken to a landfill by a military contractor.

He likened the procedure to the disposal of medical waste. The Dover mortuary changed its policy to burying the parts at sea in June 2008.

Dover's mortuary processed over 4,000 sets of remains from 2008 to 2010, most of which were Iraq and Afghanistan war dead

It is not known how many body parts were disposed of, during the five years, at the King George County site, operated by Waste Management Inc.

The scandal is the latest to hit the military base which receives all America's war dead and prepares them for burial.

Earlier this week it was revealed that body parts belonging to deceased soldiers were lost or sawed off without the family’s permission.

An 18-month probe into Dover's mortuary, pictured here, revealed one soldier had his arm cut off by staff without the family's permission

A damning report found that an arm bone belonging to a dead marine was hacked off without asking his parents by staff at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

An ankle and some soft tissue went unaccounted for due to ‘gross mismanagement’ and may have been mixed in with the remains of other soldiers.

Whistleblowers also claimed that the fetal remains of dependents of military personnel were shipped from Germany back to the U.S. in cardboard boxes that had already been used.

Three officials have been disciplined at Dover - but none have lost their jobs.

The scandal at Dover Air Force base began after complaints by three whistleblowers - civilians who worked as embalmers or technicians - who sparked an 18-month investigation by the Air Force Inspector General.

A separate probe was carried out by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency which looks into claims by whistleblowers.

Among the most egregious instances was when the family of one marine asked to see his dead body one more time - so staff at Dover hacked his arm bone off.

The heat from a bomb attack in Afghanistan had caused the soldier’s arm to fuse at 90 degrees to his body so he was unable to fit into his uniform or his casket.

But instead of speaking to his family to see what was for the best, staff went ahead and trimmed it anyway.

The investigation found the two body parts that went missing were a piece of an ankle belonging to a soldier killed by a bomb in Afghanistan in April 2009.

The investigation found two body parts went missing entirely, including a piece of an ankle belonging to a soldier killed by a bomb in Afghainstan and a small piece of flesh belonging to an airman who died in plane crash in Afghanistan

The second was a small piece of flesh belonging to an airman who died in plane crash in Afghanistan in July 2009.

The investigation did not discover what happened to them - but raised the possibility they fell out of the plastic bags where they were being stored in the morgue refrigerator and got mixed in with the remains of others.

The whistleblowers also drew attention to shipping of fetal remains belonging to relatives of military personnel back to the U.S.

Instead of being transported in the more dignified aluminium cases they were shipped in re-used cardboard boxes.

In a statement accompanying her report Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said the findings were ‘deeply troubling’.

She said: ‘The mortuary for the United States military should boast the best conditions and best practices of any mortuary.’

The report added that there was a ‘pattern of the Air Force’s failure to acknowledge culpability for wrongdoing relating to the treatment of remains of service members and their dependents.

The Dover scandal comes just months after it was revealed Arlington National Cemetery had 211 graves either mislabelled or containing the wrong person's remains

It said: ‘While the report reflects a willingness to find paperwork violations and errors, with the exception of the cases of missing portions, the findings stop short of accepting accountability for failing to handle remains with the requisite ‘reverence, care and dignity befitting them and the circumstances’’.

Among the other findings was a chilling insight into the chaos at Dover including one incident in July 2009 when the remains of two airmen killed in in Afghanistan were brought in.

One unnamed employee admitted that it was ‘hard to keep track of everything’ and that the medical examiners were ‘messing with the bags a bit’.

He said: ‘And then they would walk to the back, and then they’d come back and - it was - it was a really hectic day.’

Earlier this year a report by the Army Inspector’s Office found that at least 211 graves at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, had been incorrectly labelled or had the wrong body in them.

There were also cases of remains being moved without families' consent or graves left empty when they should have remains in them.

The cemetery is considered sacred ground and has been the final resting place of the nation's veterans since 1864.

More than 300,000 servicemen and women are now buried there.

General Norton Schwartz, the chief of staff of the Air Force, apologised for the mistakes made at Dover.

He said: ‘We understand the obligation of this work, the sanctity of this work, the need for reverence, the need for dignity and respect of our fallen, just as if these were our sons and daughters’.

An Army and FBI probe is still investigating the outrage at the nation’s most hallowed military graveyard.