GUARDIAN– The wedding feast was finished and the women had just led the young bride and groom away to their marriage tent for the night when Haleema Shihab heard the first sounds of the fighter jets screeching through the sky above.

It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended. As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab, 30, was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night.

“The bombing started at 3am,” she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. “We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one,” she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.

She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. “I left them because they were dead,” she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell.

“I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn’t kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me.”

Mrs Shibab’s description, backed by other witnesses, of an attack on a sleeping village is at odds with the American claim that they came under fire while targeting a suspected foreign fighter safe house.

She described how in the hours before dawn she watched as American troops destroyed the Rakat villa and the house next door, reducing the buildings to rubble.

Continue reading about the US Massacre of an Iraqi Wedding Party.

© GUARDIAN, 2004

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WASHINGTON EXAMINER– A former Marine arrested for killing a puppy by squeezing it, throwing it against a wall and kicking it has pleaded guilty and will serve five years probation, court records show.

Jordan Darbyshire, 22, was sentenced in Montgomery County Circuit Court to three years of supervised probation and two years unsupervised for two counts of animal abuse. Two 90-day prison sentences were suspended, except for one day in jail that Darbyshire already served.

When he was arrested in the summer, Darbyshire was a lance corporal stationed at the Marine Corps Barracks on Capitol Hill. A Marine Corps spokeswoman said Darbyshire left the Marines in the fall with a discharge “other than honorable” because of a variety of infractions.

Continue reading about the Marine Squeezing a Puppy to Death.

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© WASHINGTON EXAMINER, 2010

NY TIMES– Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

Continue reading about the Brother of Afghan Leader on CIA Payroll.

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© NY TIMES, 2009

CNN– President Obama rallied U.S. troops and pledged continued partnership with Afghanistan during a previously unannounced trip to the country Sunday.

Speaking to about 2,000 U.S. and allied troops at the major U.S. base in Afghanistan, Obama said, “Those folks back home are relying on you.”

“I know it’s not easy,” he said. “You’re far away from home. You miss your kids, you miss your spouses, your family, your friends.” But he added, “If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away.”

Earlier, Obama met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the Presidential Palace to discuss progress by the Afghan government in strengthening its ability to run the country and provide security for its people.

After the 30-minute meeting, Obama said he wanted to send a strong message that the partnership between the nations would continue. Obama also invited Karzai to Washington, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the planned date for that visit is May 12.

Karzai said he wanted to “express the gratitude of our people for the help that America has given us for the last eight years,” and he specifically thanked U.S. taxpayers for their aid in helping rebuild his country.

However, Obama made clear that his main reason for the trip was to visit with some of the roughly 80,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country. After changing from a suit to an Air Force One flight jacket, Obama told the troops they were making progress against al Qaeda and its allies in the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist militia that ruled most of Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks.

Continue reading about Obama Saying the Afghan War Remains Absolutely Essential.

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© COPYRIGHT CNN, 2010