The Guardian: The already dire plight of women in Afghanistan risks deteriorating further as the US and its allies take steps to turn around the war against the Taliban, according to a report by Human Rights Watch today. Eight years after the Taliban were ousted from power, rapists are often protected from prosecution, women can still be arrested for running away from home, and girls have far less access to schools than boys, the report says.      Full news...

Global Research: The Bush administration never had any intention of liberating Afghanistan or establishing democracy. The real aim was to remove the politically-intractable Taliban and replace them with a puppet regime run by a former-CIA asset. The rest of Afghanistan would be parceled-off to the warlords....      Full news...

ABC News via Global Research: As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama's description Tuesday of the al Qaeda "cancer" in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.      Full news...

The government won this round. 30,000 more troops is a clear loss for us and more importantly the people of Afghanistan. .... Obama is a war president and we are a peace movement. As long as we’re moving, Obama, and you refuse to be governed, we’ll refuse to be governed. Your racist wars will end and this world will know peace in our lifetimes. Until that day, rest assured that WE WILL BE YOUR INSURGENCY!      Full news...

The Associated Press: A senior British military commander says roads in Afghanistan were safer when the Taliban ran the country. Maj. Gen. Nick Carter told the BBC on Thursday that before the 2001 invasion, women could travel alone in the southern part of Afghanistan. He says "you could put your daughter on a bus in Kabul sure in the knowledge that she would get in one piece to Kandahar."      Full news...

The Progressive: If you closed your eyes during much of the President’s speech on Afghanistan Tuesday night and just listened to the words, you easily could have concluded that George W. Bush was still in the Oval Office. Or, at the very least, that Obama had stolen his speechwriters. Because, like Bush, Obama had barely cleared his throat when out came the first mention of September 11, along with the Bushian line: “We did not ask for this fight.”      Full news...

MichaelMoore.com: Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused former President George W. Bush of “intentionally” letting Osama bin Laden escape during the American invasion of Afghanistan. “Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away,” Hinchey said during an interview on MSNBC.      Full news...

The Guardian: I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences.      Full news...

Examiner.com: It is truly astonishing to watch the cataclysmic implosion of the Obama administration. No one had ever been ushered into the White House with such pomp and enthusiasm. No one had spent so many hundreds of millions of dollars to convince people to vote. No one had garnered such global adoration. And no one had assumed the office with less experience.      Full news...

Sri Lanka Guardian: It is now very clear that the US and NATO have achieved nothing of substance in their adventure into Afghanistan and are sinking in the quagmire deeper every day. The US now desperately needs an exit strategy that looks like a win for two reasons: First its reputation as a mighty military power that can’t be beaten, and especially by tribal clansmen. Second if it withdraws empty-handed, how does it explain the rising number of troop deaths and the billions that are still being poured into a narco-state that is corrupt, in the middle of an economic down-turn at home.      Full news...

ww4report.com: Authentic Afghan voices for democracy, secularism and women's rights oppose the US/NATO occupation precisely because the US has connived with fundamentalist war criminals from the day it arrived in Afghanistan. Foremost among these voices is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), who maintained clandestine schools for girls under Taliban rule at the ultimate personal risk.      Full news...

Press TV: Two Afghan teenagers held in a prison in northern Kabul say they have been abused by US forces in Afghanistan, The Washington Post has reported. In an article published on Friday, the newspaper said the Afghan teens had been held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The military's inspector general asked to be relieved of his duties after a newspaper reported the military knew civilians had died even as German ministers were denying the allegation.A Nato inquiry has since said up to 142 people including civilians died in the September 4 bombing of two hijacked fuel tankers in Kunduz province.      Full news...

EricMargolis.com: Truth is war’s first casualty. The Afghan War’s biggest untruth is, `we’ve got to fight terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home.’ Politicians and generals keep using this canard to justify a war they can’t otherwise explain or justify. Many North Americans still buy this lie because they believe the 9/11 attacks came directly from the Afghanistan-based al-Qaida and Taliban movements.      Full news...

PAN: Sixty civilians were killed and 102 others wounded in various violence-related incidents over the past one week, the Ministry of Interior has said. Most of the civilian casualties occurred in volatile southern provinces of Ghazni, Helmand and Kandahar as a result of roadside bombs, rocket attacks, ambushes and suicide attacks, the ministry added.      Full news...

National Post: In Afghanistan ruling politicians have publicly called Malalai Joya a "prostitute," "infidel," "traitor" and "communist." Some, whom he calls "criminals," "killers," "warlords" and "mafia drug lords," have threatened to rape her and, on four occasions, tried to kill her. But overseas, the tiny 31-year-old political activist and former school teacher has been hailed as "the bravest woman in Afghanistan" and compared to Burma's jailed democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.      Full news...

The Times: “People hate the Americans from the bottom of their hearts,” Haji Akhtar Mohammed Shinwari said as he recalled how the US military had brought death to his homeland. For residents of Shinwar, a village in distant Nangahar province, the message from President Karzai’s address yesterday that the Americans would hand over security over the next five years was disappointing.      Full news...

McClatchy: President Hamid Karzai began his second term Thursday ... On one side of the cavernous room sat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who's warned that the international community is losing patience with Karzai. On the other side was Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Afghan warlord who's become a symbol of cronyism and government corruption.      Full news...

TomDispatch.com: Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses dispatching these trucks are two extremely well connected companies -- Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid -- that helped to swell the election coffers of President Hamid Karzai as well as the family business of his running mate, the country's new vice-president, warlord Mohammed Qasim Fahim.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry denied all kinds of government intervention in the one-year contract of renting out 31 armored vehicles (each car costing $500 per day) for high-ranked officials of Defense Ministry.... Jangul Karger, the representative of Parwan province in the parliament gave this report to PAN according to which each armored Land Cruiser is rented out for $500 each day.      Full news...

The Guardian: Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex–military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort. In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting.      Full news...

Democracy Now!: In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack.      Full news...

Morning Star: Anti-war Lance Corporal Joe Glenton has been arrested and faces 10 years in jail for bravely honouring his moral responsibility to speak out against the illegal occupation of Afghanistan. The serving soldier faces up to seven charges after he defied orders to address 10,000 demonstrators last month in Trafalgar Square and told the media that he did not believe the war was legitimate or in the nation's interest.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Warlords helped drive the Russians from Afghanistan, then shelled Kabul into ruins in a bloody civil war after the Soviets left. Now they are back in positions of power, in part because the U.S. relied on them in 2001 to help oust the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Hamid Karzai later reached out to them to shore up his own power base as America turned its attention to Iraq after the Taliban's rout.      Full news...

South Asia News: A US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while television footage showed Taliban insurgents sorting and transporting what appeared to be US military ammunition sized by militants in two remote outposts in October. The US soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the US military said in a statement without giving more details.      Full news...

PAN: Artillery and mortar shelling by the NATO-led international troops killed nine civilians in southern Afghanistan, locals said. People, who brought bodies of their slain relatives to Lashkargah, said the dead included three children and six men. They died as a mortar shell landed in the fields covered with maize crop, said the locals.      Full news...

FPIF: As President Obama and his advisors debate future troop levels for Afghanistan, a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan's drug production. The report, entitled "Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium," gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug production.      Full news...

The Gargoyle: Last month, Barack Obama became the third U.S. president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. But unlike the countless followers of the lunatic Glenn Beck who think our 44th president is turning our country into Stalinist Russia, there is a more rational argument to be made against Obama’s recent award. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to a man who, like a character in a George Orwell novel, kills in the name of peace.      Full news...

The Independent: Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.      Full news...

Foreign Policy In Focus: While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it's because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There's no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war.      Full news...