The 'good war', Obama? US bombs another wedding party, kills another 60 civilians in Afghanistan

"I believe war is the crime of our times," Blake Ivey, a specialist in the US Army, said over the phone in a slow, deliberate voice to Sarah Lazare of AlterNet. Ivey, currently stationed in Fort Gordon, Georgia, is publicly refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. The 21-year-old soldier filed for conscientious objector status in July but was ordered to deploy while his application was being processed. He is facing harsh punishment but is determined not to go.
Ivey is just one of hundred of US war resisters who are speaking out against the US-led war on Afghanistan, a war where another 60 civilians were killed in two airstrikes in the first week of November 2008.

23 children, 10 women,4 men killed, 35 injured

As many as 37 civilians were killed in a US airstrike on November 3 which hit a wedding party in a village in Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province. This is not the first Afghan wedding party to be attacked by the US-led occupation forces.
Haji Roozi Khan, owner of the mentioned house, told a Xinhua reporter on the spot that the air bombing and firing meant to retaliate on militants who hit the wedding gathering, killing 10 women, 23 children, and four men, all civilians.

"The foreign forces' firing lasted until late that night and left another 35 people including the bride wounded."

"The foreign forces' firing lasted until late that night and left another 35 people including the bride wounded," he said.
The Xinhua reporter saw many locals there were searching the debris for their relatives' dead bodies.
US-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai was forced to protest the rising attacks on civilians in his message of congratulations to US President elect Barack Obama. Karzai said that his "first and main demand" of the next US administration will be "to stop civilian casualties" in Afghanistan.
A statement issued by Afghanistan president's office Wednesday said 40 people were killed and 28 others injured in a coalition forces' airstrike in Shah Wali Kot district.

Second airstrike on civilians in a week

Another US airstrike in northwestern Afghanistan in the early hours of November 6 and left up to 30 civilians dead, according to officials in Badghis province.
Quqnoos.com reported that provincial council leader Dawlat Mohammad Osamani said US warplanes bombed the Ghormach district after fierce fighting erupted between American soldiers, the Afghan army and the Taliban the previous day. Many of the dead were women and children, Osamani said.
According to CNN, the US military said it was aware of possible civilian casualties and was investigating the incident jointly with NATO's International Security Forces (ISAF) and the Afghan government.
"If we find that innocent people were killed in this incident, we apologize and express our sincere condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan," Colonel Greg Julian, a spokesman for the US forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement. After a US airstrike in August that killed dozens of civilians in the western province of Herat, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Kabul to apologize to the Afghan people.
Afghan and United Nations officials said that airstrike killed 90 civilians. The US military initially denied such a large number of civilians were killed. But when cell phone pictures were later provided to the US military showing dozens of bodies at the scene of the strike, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, asked US Central Command to review the initial investigation.
However, the civilian-killing US airstrikes have continued unabated and, over the last few months, have spilled over the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, sparking growing street protests in Pakistan and even a formal protest from the Pakistan government.
The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that civilians deaths from US-led occupation forces air strikes had nearly tripled between 2006 and 2007 and the Afghan Children Protection Organization (ACPO), local child protection agency, said in a September 2008 statement that among 700 civilians killed in the past six months in conflict, 40 per cent were children and women.
The "good war", Obama? Don't think so.

Sources: AlterNet, RAWA News, Quqnoos.com