Roger Pulvers, "Double standards fly high when it comes to bombing of civilians," Japan Times, July 5, 2009.

Sad to say, every generation for the past century has known its own war — wars that have touched so many millions through the loss or traumatization of relatives, friends or fellow citizens.

"My war" was America's in Indo-China, centered on Vietnam. Abhorrence of what my country, the United States, was doing to the region caused me, and many in my generation, to choose the life of an expatriate.

But it wasn't until years later that I came to realize exactly how masterly criminal the prosecution of that war was. I didn't know that Laos, for instance, is the country on which more bombs were dropped per capita than on any other in history. Between 1964 and 1973, 90 million cluster bomblets were rained on Laos in approximately 500,000 missions. Up to a third of those didn't detonate; and, as a result, there are now about 25 million of them lying around in that country unexploded.

If anything, civilians are brought together by terror bombing, their resolve reinforced.

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"4 Americans investigated in Afghan death," Associated Press, May 17, 2009.

KABUL - Four U.S. contractors for the private security company formerly known as Blackwater are accusing the company of holding them against their will in Afghanistan following their involvement in a shooting this month, a lawyer said Saturday. A spokeswoman for the company denied the allegation.

An Afghan died and two others were wounded in the May 5 shooting, which followed a car accident in Kabul, said Lt. Col. Chris Kubik, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul.

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Jerome Starkey, "Rumsfeld's renegade unit blamed for Afghan deaths," Independent, May 17, 2009.

Special Forces group implicated in three incidents that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians / MarSOC was set up by former defence secretary despite opposition from within the Marine Corps

A single American Special Forces group was behind at least three of Afghanistan's worst civilian casualty incidents, The Independent has learnt, raising fundamental questions about their ongoing role in the conflict.

Troops from the US Marines Corps' Special Operations Command, or MarSOC, were responsible for calling in air strikes in Bala Boluk, in Farah, last week – believed to have killed more than 140 men, women and children – as well as two other incidents in 2007 and 2008. News of MarSOC's involvement in the three incidents comes just days after a Special Forces expert, Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, was named to take over as the top commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. His surprise appointment has prompted speculation that commando counterinsurgency missions will increase in the battle to beat the Taliban.

The three-week military inquiry ultimately spared the Marine unit from criminal charges.

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Sayed Salahuddin, "Afghanistan wants law to curb foreign troops," National Post, May 11, 2009.

[According to Steven Staples at Ceasefire.ca, the Canadian military "is engaging in a lobbying campaign to have a squadron of our CF-18 Hornet fighter bombers deployed to Afghanistan." The Afghan parliament (Wolesi Jirga) is calling for an arrangement that differs from arrangements called "Status of Forces Agreements" which normally guarantee that American soldiers in foreign countries will be tried by American tribunals. Deaths of civilians caused by airstrikes have been an issue since American planes bombed a wedding in July 2002. Outrage for the same reason is has been growing in Pakistan since the Bush administration started sending drones across the border. The war has taken on an increasingly American focus since January. The northern part of Afghanistan is supposed to be relatively secure, but two mass poisonings at girls' schools in the northern town of Charikar during the last two weeks have raised questions about just how secure that may be. Police refused to comment. The war is not going well. -jlt]

KABUL -- Afghan lawmakers on Monday demanded legal restrictions on foreign forces fighting in their country, to prevent further civilian deaths, then closed for half a day to protest the latest casualties from U.S. air strikes.

The attacks on homes packed with civilians, during a protracted battle last week, have damaged ties with Washington and stoked popular anger about the presence of western troops, over rising non-combatant deaths.

"When a foreign soldier acts contrary to the law of Afghanistan, he should be prosecuted according to Afghanistan's law," Abdul Sattar Khawaasi Secretary, Wolesi Jirga

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Andrew Stroehlein, "Media: If you are not covering Sri Lanka right now, why not?" AlertNet blog, April 21, 2009.

"A mass slaughter of civilians will take place Tuesday at noon. And everyone knows it." These are the words my colleague used to describe what is happening in Sri Lanka today in his new article for Foreign Policy's online magazine. It is not an exaggeration: what's happening in Sri Lanka is a massacre in progress.

There are over 100,000 civilians trapped in a tiny area, squeezed between the Sri Lankan government forces, who are shelling them, and the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) who shoot them if they try to escape. The Army is advancing, and the death toll is rising rapidly. The situation has been compared to Srebrenica -- which many journalists reading this will remember first hand -- but the number of dead already exceeds that Balkan tragedy.

Just because journalists are not allowed into the Sri Lankan conflict zone doesn't mean we don't know what's going on there. We have satellite imagery showing large concentrations of people caught in the fighting, and we have information from reliable sources on the ground. Recent reports that significant numbers of civilians have escaped have not changed the overall figures: independent sources on the ground continue to report 100,000 people or more remain trapped, exhausted, with limited access to food and medicines, and many under fire.

What can be done? Crisis Group outlined a number of specific steps for the international community in a statement yesterday.

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Ranga Sirilal, "Sri Lanka hospital shelled, at least 9 dead - ICRC," Reuters, February 2, 3009.

COLOMBO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Artillery shells struck a hospital in Sri Lanka's northern war zone, killing at least nine people and wounding another 20, the Red Cross said on Monday.

The military says it has a policy of zero civilian casualties.

The Sri Lankan military denied it had shelled the hospital in a Tamil Tiger-held part of Mullaittivu district and blamed the rebels. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam made no comment, but a pro-rebel website accused the military of the firing.

"At least nine people were killed and at least 20 injured from the continued shelling," said Sarasi Wijerathne, a spokeswoman of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Colombo.

She said the ICRC had urged both sides to allow safe passage for scores of sick and wounded people trapped in the conflict zone.

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