AlterNet report. The New York Times report referred to in the article is here.

"We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat," McChrystal said during a recent video-conference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.

Guardian report.

The war of words between the former deputy head of the UN mission to Afghanistan and the country's president escalated last night when Peter Galbraith suggested that Hamid Karzai's "mental stability" was in question and that he has a substance abuse problem.

Galbraith, the US diplomat who worked for the UN in Kabul until last year, made his remarks live on US television. His comments come as the White House considers withdrawing an invitation for Karzai to meet Barack Obama in Washington next month.

Greenwald comments.

On February 12 of this year, U.S. forces entered a village in the Paktia Province in Afghanistan and, after surrounding a home where a celebration of a new birth was taking place, shot dead two male civilians (government officials) who exited the house in order to inquire why they had been surrounded, and then shot and killed three female relatives (a pregnant mother of ten, a pregnant mother of six, and a teenager). The Pentagon then issued a statement claiming that (a) the dead males were "insurgents" or terrorists, (b) the bodies of the three women had been found by U.S. forces bound and gagged inside the home, and (c) suggested that the women had already been killed by the time the U.S. had arrived, likely the victim of "honor killings" by the Taliban militants killed in the attack.

New York Times report.

The admission immediately raised questions about what really happened during the Feb. 12 operation -- and what falsehoods followed -- including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the true nature of their deaths.

BBC report.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused foreign election observers of fraud during last year's disputed vote.

Fraud had been widespread, Mr Karzai conceded, but he blamed foreigners for it, saying the UN was its focal point. Mr Karzai singled out Peter Galbraith, the then deputy head of the UN mission, who he said had organised the fraud.

Kathy Kelly in Pulse.

If the U.S. public looked long and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian atrocities that have occurred in Afghanistan, over the past ten months, we would see ourselves as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes committed against innocent civilians who meant us no harm.

Two reporters, Jerome Starkey (the Times UK), and David Lindorff, (Counterpunch), have persistently drawn attention to U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan. Makers of the film "Rethinking Afghanistan" have steadily provided updates about the suffering endured by Afghan civilians.

Report from Raw Story.

Evidently spooked by the collapse of the Dutch government over the country's involvement in Afghanistan, the CIA has put together a strategy proposal to prevent what it fears could be a "precipitous" collapse of support for the war in Afghanistan among European allies.

A document marked "confidential / not for foreign eyes," posted to the Wikileaks Web site, suggests strategies to manipulate European public opinion on the war, particularly in France and Germany.

Guardian report.

Public opinion in the US has turned against the war as it has in the UK. The number of US troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared with the same period last year. US officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of the 30,000 additional troops and as Nato forces prepare an offensive against the Taliban's home base in Kandahar province.

Craig Murray comments.

[...] a very concerned serving British officer of some seniority has just leaked to me that the truth is that the Afghan National Army is now over 60% Tajik, and that figure is increasing. The Pashtun figure is hovering below 20% and may have been overtaken by the Uzbeks.

In other words the "Afghan National Army" is just the Northern Alliance in very expensive NATO provided uniforms.

By carrying the northern alliance with our troops into the solid Pashtun tribal areas as an alien occupying force, we are stoking still further the ferocity of a future civil war. Karzai of course will be safe in Switzerland counting his looted cash by then.

Channel 4 News report.

Channel 4 News can reveal the Taliban insurgency against British and American forces is being supported by Iranian weapons smuggled over the border including mines, mortars and plastic explosives.

Bruce Gagnon on Global Research.

The Washington Post has introduced us to a controversy over Afghanistan war strategy. The Post reports that operations in Delaram (in the southwest) are "far from a strategic priority for senior officers at the international military headquarters in Kabul. One calls Delaram, a day's drive from the nearest city, 'the end of the Earth.' Another deems the area 'unrelated to our core mission' of defeating the Taliban by protecting Afghans in their cities and towns."

Why then are the Marines fighting in this part of the country?

[...]

When you check the maps above a clearer picture emerges. The bottom map is the proposed pipeline route to move Caspian Sea oil through Turkmenistan into Afghanistan and then finally through Pakistan to ports along the Arabian Sea where U.S. and British tankers would gorge themselves with the black gold.

From Spiegel Online.

New details are emerging about efforts by the German military and by the Defense Ministry in Berlin to conceal the full extent of the controversial Sept. 4, 2009 bombing in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which saw a German-ordered attack result in the deaths of up to 142 people, many of them civilians.

Solomon Hughes in the Morning Star.

Two arms dealers attacked Gordon Brown for not spending more on weapons. It doesn't have the same ring as "army big guns attack Gordon Brown's defence budget claims" or "Prime Minister is targeted by top brass over army funding claims." But it is true.

Admiral Lord Boyce and Lord Guthrie are publicly attacking Brown for not buying enough weapons. But Boyce and Guthrie are not merely a retired soldier and a former sailor.

Kaveh Afrasiabi in the Asia Times.

An unusual alliance has been unveiled after Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad revealed that the recent arrest of Abdulmalik Rigi, leader of the Sunni terrorist group Jundallah, was made possible with intelligence cooperation from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[...]

Learning from history, the West can do much in terms of confidence-building with Iran, by focusing on areas of mutual interest and bracketing the hopeless cause of "proxy war" with Iran that, in Jundallah's case, appears to have backfired. Although the White House does not admit it, Rigi's arrest has embarrassed the administration of President Barack Obama by reminding the outside world that the rhetoric of foreign policy change is not matched by a clean break from the addiction of Obama's predecessor to a covert war with Iran.

Counterpunch article.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.

Guardian article.

He pleaded guilty to going absent without leave in January after the more serious charge of desertion -- which carries a maximum jail term of 10 years, rather than two years for awol -- was dropped at the last minute.

Glenton, 27, had intended to deny desertion, and his legal team believe the charge was reduced to avoid a potentially embarrassing full trial at which he planned to defend himself on the grounds that the entire Afghan war was illegal under international law.