The Senate approved a $60 billion spending bill to support a “surge” in troops in Afghanistan. The vote comes as the number of US casualties in Afghanistan surpassed 1,000.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that detainees held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan cannot bring habeas corpus challenges in US courts.
US Forces-Afghanistan has launched a criminal investigation into allegations that a “small number of US soldiers were responsible for the unlawful deaths of as many as three Afghan civilians.”
Afghan opium farmers are convinced that a fungus outbreak that has damaged poppy crops is US biological warfare. The Pentagon has considered using opium-eating fungi before.
A proposed strategy document dubbed “NATO 2020” calls for an expanded readiness and capacity to operate beyond the borders of member states, and names the campaign in Afghanistan as a top priority.
US drones killed 21 presumed Taliban militants in two separate strikes in Pakistan’s tribal region of North Waziristan. Ten drones were seen hovering over the area.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed the existence of a secret US detention facility at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, where several inmates were apparently tortured.
Dozens of schoolgirls in Afghanistan were hospitalized after two apparent poisonous gas attacks on their schools, the latest in a spate of similar incidents.
The US detention center at Bagram in Afghanistan could be expanded into a military prison for terrorist suspects detained around the world to replace the Guantánamo Bay facility.
A night raid by US and Afghan forces led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity that NATO then tried to cover up, survivors told the London Times.
A controversial policy that gives US forces in Afghanistan four days to question detainees is being changed to give soldiers more time to interrogate the captives, Gen. David Petraeus said.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit demanding the US disclose information on use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings.
