NATO general asks Canadians to continue supporting 'just war' in Afghanist

[tuvor]

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan is pleading with Canada to stay the course in Afghanistan despite suffering its heaviest losses so far in the war-torn country.

Canada and other NATO countries owe Afghans a debt of gratitude for helping to topple the former Soviet Union, said Lt.-Gen. David Richards, a British general in charge of NATO forces in Afghanistan. "I bitterly regret the loss of life," Richards said Tuesday as the last of five Canadian soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan last week was being returned home.

"But I believe that ... if ever there was a 'just war,' this is it."

Four Canadians were killed in attacks by Taliban insurgents last Thursday and a fifth died in a traffic accident Saturday while travelling with a military resupply convoy. Another 13 Canadian soldiers were injured, some seriously.

http://www.news1130.com/news/international/article.jsp?content=w080851A

[muryan]

1. I think the war in afghanistan is just

That was the right decision to make. Its definitely not going perfectly there either, but in comparison i would rather be in afgahnistan than iraq.

[Crunchy Frog]

2. It's really not your country's war.

You just got left holding the bag for us, since all of our resources are committed to our war of choice in Iraq. There likely wouldn't still be soldiers dying in Afghanistan if this had been handled by competent leadership.

If I was a Canadian I'd be royally pissed right now.

[tuvor]

3. But our arms weren't twisted.

(At least not that I'm aware of.)

Our government chose to send troops to Afghanistan, just as it chose to wait for proof before considering helping deliver everyone from WMDs in Iraq.

Thanks for the kind thoughts, though.

[CHIMO]

4. So Nice

To learn that we are at war now.

Just how the f... did this happen?

And just how the F... did we join into a war with no authority! We have not a g.. d.. word to say.

Boy if I was in the military I would be really pissed off at being a colony! Especially after the Canadian military stood up for Canada after the first world war so they wouldn't be cannon fodder. But never mind, we are told that is what they wanted.

[daleo]

5. The west will eventually give up, just like the Russians did

A lot of people have been killed in Afghanistan in revenge for the people killed in New York and Washington. We might as well leave it at that and go home. Nobody is going to change the Afghanistan culture much, and certainly not instill some great love for secular democracy. Their civil war isn't our business.

[CHIMO]

7. Afghanistan Culture?

Bit mixed up on that relationship? What kind of culture, if one has any, starts without having ones own country.

They fought off quite a few invaders and then the culture is a problem?

[daleo]

8. We claim our mission is to bring them secular democracy

Or something like that. That's my impression of what the mission is, according to Harper and the media. In my opinion that amounts to an effort to fundamentally change their politics and culture.

I don't think it can be done by force of arms. Traditional peacekeeping can be of some use, perhaps establishing a model for a slow transition to a more modern political culture. But going out to "kill scumbags", as Hillier put it, is not going to achieve anything except get us mixed up in a civil war that is none of our business.

[Spazito]

6. I had no problem when our troops were in Afghanistan under NATO

for peacekeeping and reconstruction as was their original mission. I have a BIG problem with the change of mission to one of combat. bush chose to pull his troops from Afghanistan in order to illegally invade and occupy Iraq and it is our soldiers that are supposed to replace them, NO THANKS.

[JohnyCanuck]

9. 911 was an INSIDE JOB

Screw the bogus war on terror in all its aspects and the PNACer shills and "useful-idiots" that promote it.

THE TOP 40
REASONS TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001

... An outline in simple talking points ...


Version of May 22, 2006: This overview is in development. If you use the search function with key words, you will discover that 911Truth.org is home to articles backing virtually every point made below. Much of the basic research is available at the Complete 9/11 Timeline (hosted by cooperativeresearch.org), the 9/11 Reading Room (911readingroom.org), and the Spitzer petition and complaint (Justicefor911.org). For physical evidence discussion, see Point 7.


THE DAY ITSELF - EVIDENCE OF COMPLICITY

1) AWOL Chain of Command
a. It is well documented that the officials topping the chain of command for response to a domestic attack - George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Myers, Montague Winfield - all found reason to do something else during the actual attacks, other than assuming their duties as decision-makers.
b. Who was actually in charge? Dick Cheney, Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta and the 9/11 Commission directly conflict in their accounts of top-level response to the unfolding events, such that several (or all) of them must be lying.

2) Air Defense Failures
a. The US air defense system failed to follow standard procedures for responding to diverted passenger flights.
b. Timelines: The various responsible agencies - NORAD, FAA, Pentagon, USAF, as well as the 9/11 Commission - gave radically different explanations for the failure (in some cases upheld for years), such that several officials must have lied; but none were held accountable.
c. Was there an air defense standdown?

3) Pentagon Strike
How was it possible the Pentagon was hit 1 hour and 20 minutes after the attacks began? Why was there no response from Andrews Air Force Base, just 10 miles away and home to Air National Guard units charged with defending the skies above the nation's capital? How did Hani Hanjour, a man who failed as a Cessna pilot on his first flight in a Boeing, execute a difficult aerobatic maneuver to strike the Pentagon? Why did the attack strike the just-renovated side, which was largely empty and opposite from the high command?

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041221155307646

This war on terrorism is bogus

The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination

Michael Meacher
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

SNIP

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."

Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1036571,00.html#article_continue

www.911blogger.com

www.st911.org

www.911truth.com

[MrPrax]

10. Withdraw NOW...

There never was a just war in Afghanistan and there never will be one...