Mother And Son, 13, Die For Delivering Laundry

<br><br> Headline reads: <br><br> <blockquote>"Mother and son, 13, die for delivering laundry"</blockquote> Yet, in the report the actual reason given for their execution is the following: <br><br> <blockquote>"When they returned home the Taleban accused them of being spies and hanged them from a mulberry tree,” Amir Muhammad Akhunzada, the deputy governor of Helmand, told The Times."</blockquote> <br><br> Was one of the victims really 13? <br><br> <blockquote> Yesterday the Taleban remained unrepentant. They insisted that the victim was 21 and repeated their warning to collaborators. </blockquote> <br><br> <blockquote>... where people are killed daily in the raging battle between the Taleban and the Nato-backed Government.</blockquote> NATO is led by the US government, and the current Afghan government was installed by the US. <br><br> <blockquote>Civilians have been caught up in the violence, with the Taleban killing teachers and local officials and threatening anyone who does not feed or provide shelter to their fighters.</blockquote> There's no mention of the many thousands of civilians killed, injured, maimed for life, and displaced by the violence due to the US led occupation forces. <br><br> <blockquote>‘Yes, we are frustrated with the lack of perceived improvement’, but they do not want to go back to the Taleban,” he said. </blockquote> The discussion stops short of mentioning if the Afghan people want to go with the US installed puppet government. It is noteworthy, but generally never mentioned, that the Taliban were once welcomed by many of the Afghan people: <br><br> From <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/spot/taliban.html">Who Are the Taliban?</a> <br><br> <blockquote>The Taliban's popularity with the Afghan people surprised the country's other warring factions. Many Afghans, weary of conflict and anarchy, were relieved to see corrupt and often brutal warlords replaced by the devout Taliban, who had some success in eliminating corruption, restoring peace, and allowing commerce to resume.</blockquote> We may not like what the Taliban are, but we are not Afghanistan. What they do to themselves is none of our buisiness. Certainly, there's no justification for us going over there to annex the country so that an oil and gas pipeline can be built, using flimsy excuses such as "morality" and the treatment of women, etc. <br><br> <blockquote>John Howard, the Prime Minister, told Parliament: “The level of violence has increased as the Taleban and other terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, seek to chip away at the credibility of the Afghanistan Government and prevent reconstruction.” </blockquote> As usual, John Howard reads straight from a script handed to him by his US handlers. The Taliban (or Taleban) are legitimately resisting a foreign invasion force. They were attacked based on flimsy and unproven evidence (almost certainly false), not the other way around. The Taliban may in fact represent only a small faction of the total resistence, as Afghanistan has a lenghty history for successfully resisting and repelling foreign occupations. Prior to the current US led invasion, there was the Soviet occupation, which claimed it was there to help the Afghan people in much the same way as the US led occupation has been doing. At the time of the Soviet invasion there was in fact no Taliban, yet a strong resistance formed anyway. As for the use of the word 'reconstruction', I think most of us already know full well what that represents.