Author: Eric Garris

Charley Reese’s columns have been a staple at Antiwar.com since the early days. Back in the 90’s, we carried Charley’s columns from the Orlando Sentinel where he wrote and edited for 30 years.

Since 2001, we have featured his insightful columns regularly. Charley has had some medical problems and has decided to go into full retirement. We wish him well.

This weekend we feature his farewell column. Of course, we will continue to offer his past columns on his archive page. For those who have asked for contact information for Charley, we only have this address: Charley Reese, P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.

Goodbye Charley.

The big news yesterday was the death of 10 French soldiers in Afghanistan. They called it the worst Taliban attack on NATO forces in three years.

But hold the presses…

AFP and al-Jazeera are reporting that the French army refuses to comment on a report in Le Monde that the 10 French soldiers actually were killed by a NATO airstrike responding to the initial attack by militants.

The soldiers told the newspaper they waited for four hours for back-up after being ambushed. But when NATO planes finally arrived they hit French troops after missing their target, the newspaper quoted the soldiers as saying. The report added that Afghan soldiers sent in as backup also mistakenly targeted the French soldiers.

A NATO official said on Wednesday: “I have nothing substantive to confirm or deny this particular suggestion. “We are aware of the media reports and therefore we have to look into it.” The official said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) “would probably defer in the first instance to the French authorities,” in the investigation.

Junior Defense Minister Jean-Marie Bockel, asked to comment on Le Monde‘s report, said: “this is not the time for polemics, this is a day of compassion, of national unity around our soldiers.”

Justin Raimondo was on al Jazeera yesterday, with Christopher Hitchens and Nazar Janabi from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Riz Khan was the host.

The show was about al-Qaeda: after 20 years of existence, what is it’s future? Is it recruiting? Those were the questions we were supposed to address. And yet the idea that Al Jazeera was actually having Hitchens on – a militant atheist, who wants to invade practically every country in the Middle East, and has nothing but disdain for the religious and cultural ethos of the region – answers the question of why al-Qaeda is still around, albeit unintentionally.

Here it is in two parts:

Al-Jazeera’s report on the South Ossetia invasion and the Russian response on al-Jazeera English. The interview was conducted late last week.

I don’t think Fox News was expecting this, so they cut them off:

Antiwar.com’s editorial director Justin Raimondo was interviewed by Russia Today at his home in San Francisco.

Here is the clip on the Russia Today website.