The Real World News - Breaking Texas Insurance news, US news and more

Karzai’s brother shot dead by bodyguard - (Read Full Story)

Ahmed Wali Karzai, a younger brother of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, and one of the country’s most powerful men, has been shot dead by one of his bodyguards, according to a provincial official.

Mr Karzai was head of the provincial council in the southern Kandahar province, focus of last year’s US troop surge, and widely regarded as among the key-power brokers in southern Afghanistan.

One of his bodyguards shot him on Tuesday at his house, a heavily-fortified compound in Kandahar city, Zalmay Ayoubi, spokesperson for the governor of Kandahar province said.

“A guard of Ahmed Wali Karzai named Sardar Mohammad opened fire and killed him. The other guards shot and killed Sardar Mohammad,” Mr Ayoubi said. The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear.

Paul Craig Roberts: Bin Laden “Assassination” Has Odor of Staged Event - (Read Full Story)

If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans.

Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?

Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalism US media celebrating bin Laden’s death, that “bin Laden used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, sending ‘holy warriors’ to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia.” That’s a lot of activity for mere millions to bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the most recent. Why not bin Laden’s? Was he carrying around with him $100 million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute payments to his far-flung operations?

This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event. The smell reeks from the triumphalism news reports loaded with exaggerations, from celebrants waving flags and chanting “USA USA.” Could something else be going on?

U.S. Intel Reports Doubt Afghan War Success

Two new classified U.S. intelligence assessments on the war in Afghanistan reportedly say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.

The National Intelligence Estimates offer a more negative assessment than a review of the U.S. war strategy that the Obama administration is set to unveil on Thursday.

The intelligence reports -- one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan -- say that although there has been progress in the war, Pakistan's unwillingness to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle, The New York Times reported late Tuesday.

Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

Up to $1 Billion in U.S. Aid Winds Up In Taliban Coffers

As much as $1 billion in U.S. aid has been diverted from programs meant to stabilize Afghanistan and has wound up in the hands of the Taliban and other insurgency groups, war analysts and government auditors say.

In fact, they say, graft has gotten so bad that the U.S. government estimates that only about 10 percent of the aid budget actually reaches the people in Afghanistan who need it.

Cpl. Jeremy Morlock's chilling description of how U.S. soldiers killed Afghan civilians for fun

The Obama administration on Saturday invoked the state secrets privilege which would kill a lawsuit on behalf of U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged terrorist said to be targeted for death or capture under a U.S. government program.

In a court filing, the Justice Department said that the issues in the case are for the executive branch of government to decide rather than the courts.

Afghan Deadline Is Cutting Two Ways

When President Obama announced a new strategy for Afghanistan in December, he argued that by setting a deadline of next summer to begin drawing down troops he would create a sense of urgency for the Afghan government to take the lead in the fight, while acknowledging the limits of America's patience with the longest war in its history.

But over the past two weeks ? on Capitol Hill, in Kabul and even in conversations with foreign leaders ? Mr. Obama has been reminded how the goal has become what one senior American military commander called a "double-edged sword," one that hangs over the White House as surely as it hangs over President Hamid Karzai...