Will The Up Or Down Vote Coming This Week On Funding The War Be Impacted By Massive Intelligence Leaks?

There's a short version to this post: war is hell and our occupying forces in Afghanistan are causing Afghans to hate us and look for revenge. End the war now. Nick Davies and David Leigh posted an eye-popping, and for Obama, inconvenient, account of what's been going on in Afghanistan based on a huge cache of once secret military files, 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports that have been leaked to the media. It provides, in their words, "a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency... Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama's 'surge' strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US navy sailors captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday." Among the details:

• How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.

• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of its roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

Most of the information pertains to the Bush years-- the logs date from 2004-2009. Bush was president when this happened, for example, but Obama is implicit in covering it up. And the Obama Administration is condemning the leakers, of course. It's very inconvenient. Especially this week with the another 33 billion dollar war supplemental coming up for a vote in the House.

Remember, the Senate rejected the House's version-- with all the sweeteners to save the American economy the GOP wants to see collapse for their own partisan reasons-- and passed a bill just for war. So the ball is back in House Democrats' court. Will they go along-- or, should I say, how many will go along with a weird coalition of war-monger Republicans, Blue Dogs and Obama to keep the war churning along disastrously? Do we have to continue shoveling billions of tax dollars into sewers like Pakistan so they can finance our enemies in Afghanistan? This is really sick. My guess-- enough for the bill to pass. Watch Kucinich talking about congressional responsibilities for wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan and how to end those wars.