(ANTIWAR) The Pentagon says it may have killed some additional civilians in its most recent airstrikes against the ISIS capital city of Raqqa, in northern Syria. They offered few details on how many civilians may have been among the slain.
(COMMONDREAMS) After 14 years of being held without charge, Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, who was subject to brutal torture and is known as the “guinea pig” for the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) “enhanced interrogation program,” made his first appearance on Tuesday before the Periodic Review Board and requested to be set free.
(ANTIWAR) Comments from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump questioning the wisdom of open-ended US military commitment to all NATO member nations should be ignored out of hand, according to Vice President Joe Biden, who today in Latvia insisted that no matter who is elected to what office, the US is permanently militarily committed to the Baltic states.
(ANTIWAR) After warning Syria not to fly planes in the Hasakeh Province or risk getting them shot down by US planes in the area, the Pentagon is struggling to convince reporters that there is some sort of distinction between this zone you can’t fly in and a “no-fly zone.”
(ANTIWAR) In a telephone interview from Baghdad, new Iraq-Syria War Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend tried to echo the boundless optimism of every other US commander when put in charge of one of the nation’s various open-ended wars, vowing to see all of ISIS dead, and virtually ousted from both countries within a year.
(ANTIWAR) The US State Department has announced their intention to transfer over 6,000 guns to the Afghan National Army, worth roughly $60 million, as proof of their “commitment to Afghanistan’s security,” and based on an “urgent need” for the Afghans to launch new offensives against insurgents.
(MEE) Moazzam Begg, a British national who was forcibly abducted in 2002 and taken to Guantanamo Bay, has filmed a meeting with his former prison guard, some 14 years after he was first jailed.
(MEE) Turkey will grant early release to 38,000 prisoners who committed crimes before 1 July, the government said on Wednesday, amid reports of prison overcrowding after the failed coup.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in a series of messages on Twitter that the move was “not an amnesty” and the convicts were not being pardoned but released on parole.
(ANTIWAR) While the Obama Administration has presented its (already-stalled) drawdown in Afghanistan as “ending” the war and bringing the number of US forces down in the country to very small levels, they rarely discuss the substantial number of American defense contractors still in the country.
