Worst Taliban Attack or Worst NATO Blunder?

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.”

A Step Up for Haiti?

Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, the new Haitian prime minister, is having some trouble getting ratified by parliament — and the Haitian Constitution is no help in pointing the way to a resolution. It’s about time Haiti had a female kleptocrat — it’s quite progressive. No but seriously, Ms. Pierre-Louis seems a lot better than former president Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who hoodwinked the significant and comparatively wealthy Florida Haitian community into rooting for him, only to pull off the angelic democrat mask and reveal his true diabolic dictator face. He’s now in exile in Central African Republic, one of the only places on earth worse than Haiti. Pierre-Louis split with Aristide’s party seemingly over its promotion of mob violence. Not a fan of the Père Lebrun, I guess.

Here’s to hoping Haiti, that could-be Caribbean paradise, can finally liberalize and knock it off with the mud-eating crap already. Communist Cuba has a better standard of living, to give you an idea of how wretched Haiti is.

UPDATE: I have picked the wrong blog for flippance. I don’t have the time or inclination to debate with most of the offended commenters, mostly because I actually agree with most of you. I was not placing all the blame on the Haitian people for the centuries of political tragedy that continue to befall them, just making silly observations in poor taste. I simply wish to apologize for any misunderstandings and hurt feelings and promise to be more serious and substantive in my future contributions here.

Justin Raimondo vs. Christopher Hitchens on al-Jazeera

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:

An Apology to Cynthia McKinney and Chuck Baldwin

On Friday August 15, Antiwar.com featured a front page template with the images of John McCain, Barack Obama, Bob Barr and Ralph Nader below the caption, We are holding their feet to the fire: Without fear or favor. Some of our readers expressed a concern that by not including Cynthia McKinney we were deliberately ignoring a prominent woman of color.

If you note, we did not include Chuck Baldwin either. The reason is simple. Former Representative McKinney and the Reverend Baldwin are unequivocally antiwar.

We apologize if that was not explicit.