Another video says about itself:
The main challenger to President Hamid Karzai is urging action to prevent a repeat of the fraud that tarred Afghanistan‘s presidential election, as preparations began for a run-off poll next month. Security, voter apathy and corruption are the main challenges facing organisers of a credible second round.
The “action” asked for by Karzai’s rival, Abdullah, did not happen. So, Abdullah decided to boycott the runoff election.
And then … from the BBC:
Hamid Karzai has been declared president of Afghanistan, after election officials scrapped a planned second round of voting.
By Tom Engelhardt in the USA:
Taliban propagandists couldn’t make it up. Afghanistan‘s comically fraudulent election is won by the fraudster! With foreigners visibly involved in the process, the words “occupation,” “puppet government,” and the like undoubtedly ring ever truer in Afghan ears. You don’t have to be a propaganda genius to exploit this sort of thing.
An international scramble to congratulate Hamid Karzai on his “re-election” as Afghan president has demolished western claims that the war was about bringing democracy: anti-war campaigners have said: here.
What a joy it must have been for Hamid Karzai to receive a congratulatory phone call from Gordon Brown on his re-election as leader of the wholly US-owned subsidiary known as the Afghan government: here.
The protracted and fraudulent Afghan election process ended Monday with incumbent Hamid Karzai decreed the winner. The end of this farcical exercise has set the stage for Washington to escalate its eight-year-old war: here.
Tomgram: Afghanistan as a Bailout State: here.
The US government has no precise figure for how many contractors are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, inviting the risk of fraud and security threats, a US commission warned on Monday: here.
British lance corporal Joe Glenton, facing court martial for refusing to return to Afghanistan, reports that fellow soldiers have expressed support for his position: here.
Chomsky condemns ‘immoral’ Afghan war: here.
Defence ministers in the Nato alliance are to meet in Edinburgh on Saturday 14 November to discuss the continued occupation of Afghanistan. The Stop the War Coalition is organising to ensure that they get a “warm welcome” to the Scottish capital: here.
How the U.S. Is Destroying, Not Helping, Democracy in Afghanistan: here.
Military prosecutors have brought charges against six Polish officers for claiming they had gone on patrols in Afghanistan when in reality they did not leave their base, the daily Rzeczpospolita reported Monday: here.
A Call for Clarity on the Afghanistan War: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Posted by: “Richard Frager” science@zzz.com falseflagusa
Mon Nov 2, 2009 2:38 am (PST)
Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not
only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a
Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of
contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history
of the United States. On a superficial level, the shift means that
most of those representing the United States in the war will be
wearing the scruffy cargo pants, polo shirts, baseball caps and other
casual accouterments favored by overseas contractors rather than the
fatigues and flight suits of the military. More fundamentally, the
contractors who are a majority of the force in what has become the
most important American enterprise abroad are subject to lines of
authority that are less clear-cut than they are for their military
colleagues.
What is clear, the report says, is that when contractors for the
Pentagon or other agencies are not properly managed — as when civilian
interrogators committed abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or members of the
security firm Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad
— the American effort can be severely undermined. As of March this
year, contractors made up 57 percent of the Pentagon’s force in
Afghanistan, and if the figure is averaged over the past two years, it
is 65 percent, according to the report by the Congressional Research
Service. A copy of the report was posted online by Secrecy News, a
publication of the Federation of American Scientists.
The 68,197 contractors — many of them Afghans — handle a variety of
jobs, including cooking for the troops, serving as interpreters and
even providing security, the report says. The report says the
reliance on contractors has grown steadily, with just a small
percentage of contractors serving the Pentagon in World War I, but
then growing to nearly a third of the total force in the Korean War
and about half in the Balkans and Iraq. The change, the report says,
has gradually forced the American military to adapt to a far less
regimented and, in many ways, less accountable force.
The growing dependence on contractors is partly because the military
has lost some of its logistics and support capacity, especially since
the end of the cold war, according to the report. Some of the
contractors have skills in critical areas like languages and digital
technologies that the military needs. The issue of the role of
contractors in war has been a subject of renewed debate in Washington
in recent weeks with disclosures that the Central Intelligence Agency
used the company formerly known as Blackwater to help with a covert
program, now canceled, to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda. Lawmakers
have demanded to know why such work was outsourced.
The State Department also uses contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan,
although both the department and the C.I.A. have said they want to
reduce their dependence on outside workers. Responding to the
Congressional research report, Frederick D. Barton, a senior adviser
to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
said it was highly questionable whether contractors brought the same
commitment and willingness to take risks as the men and women of the
military or the diplomatic services. He also questioned whether using
contractors was cost effective, saying that no one really knew whether
having a force made up mainly of contractors whose salaries were often
triple or quadruple those of a corresponding soldier or Marine was
cheaper or more expensive for the American taxpayer. With contractors
focused on preserving profits and filing paperwork with government
auditors, he said, “you grow the part of government that, probably,
the taxpayers appreciate least.”
Congress appropriated at least $106 billion for Pentagon contractors
in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 through the first half of the 2008
fiscal year, the report says. The report said the combined forces in
Iraq and Afghanistan still had more uniformed military personnel than
contractors over all: 242,657 contractors and about 282,000 troops as
of March 31.
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I think, as do some other media outlets, that it will be interesting to watch how the Obama administration and the US in general handles the relationship between the US and Afghanistan now that Karzai has been re-elected. http://www.newsy.com/videos/karzai_s_triumph_puts_u_s_on_the_spot
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