The Hollywood Liberal

‘ Obama to Support Feingold-Reid Bill

Bob Geiger.com
Excerpt
linois Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama today announced that he will support the Feingold-Reid bill to end funding for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq in March of 2008.

“Today, 1518 days after it began, the war in Iraq rages on, with no sign of a resolution,” said Obama in a statement. “The Iraqi people appear no closer to the settling their differences. The Iraqi government is more divided and dysfunctional than ever. The Iraqi parliament speaks of adjourning for the summer, without addressing the major issues standing in the way of a ceasefire. And our brave young servicemen and women are still fighting and dying to police someone else’s civil war.”

“I opposed this war from the start for all the reasons that are now clear.”

Here’s the rest of the statement:

‘Appropriate’ force used in civilian death incident: US

AP
Excerpt
A US military commander used “appropriate level of force” during a battle last month in western Afghanistan in which dozens of civilians were reported killed, a senior US military official said Wednesday.

Brigadier General Perry Wiggins defended the actions of the commander on the scene as necessary and appropriate to protect his unit, which came under attack April 27 and 29 in the remote Zerkoh valley in Herat province.

Air strikes were called in by the US special operations forces during the fighting, and Afghan and UN officials later said as many as 50 civilians, including women and children, were killed.

“The on scene commander demonstrated sound judgement throughout the engagement,” Wiggins told reporters here.

“All targets were positively identified as hostile, (and) were under observation at the time of the engagement,” he said. “The on scene commander used appropriate level of force to respond to the continuous enemy threat and protect his unit.”

Wiggins said he did not know whether the US military had established how many, if any, civilians were killed in the fighting.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who protested after the event that civilian casualties had reached “unacceptable levels,” visited the Zerkoh valley on Wednesday and told villagers he had told foreign forces to take more care.

The commander of the unit was not identified.

Wiggins, the deputy operations director of the Joint Staff, said the legal findings made no mention of civilian casualties.

The coalition initially denied there had been civilian casualties, saying 136 Taliban fighters were killed. It said later it was investigating.

HLs Take
No, no civilians were killed I swear….oh they were…well thats ok it was appropriate anyway, no need to investigate

Report says soldiers were not protected

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON – Three U.S. soldiers slaughtered in a grisly kidnapping-murder plot south of Baghdad last June had been left alone for up to 36 hours in a poorly planned mission, a military investigation concluded. Two officers have been relieved of their commands.

Neither of the officers faced criminal charges as a result of the litany of mistakes that left the soldiers exposed, a military official familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

A report on the investigation said the platoon leader and company commander — whose names were not released — failed to provide proper supervision to the unit or enforce military standards.

A seven-page summary of the investigation provided to the AP also said it appears insurgents may have rehearsed the attack two days earlier, and that Iraqi security forces near the soldiers’ outpost probably saw and heard the attack and “chose to not become an active participant in the attack on either side.”

“This was an event caused by numerous acts of complacency, and a lack of standards at the platoon level,” said the investigating officer, Lt. Col. Timothy Daugherty, in the summary.