Portside

At the end of 2014, President Obama announced the "responsible conclusion" of the longest war in U.S. history, leaving behind an Afghanistan that everyone acknowledges is still a very "dangerous place." Despite more than 130,000 U.S. and NATO troops, the effort to eliminate the Taliban has ended in total failure. Year 2014 was the worst of America’s 13-year war, and a weak, divided, and vulnerable government in Kabul faces severe challenges in 2015.

The New York Times editorial - in the paper of record - demanded that those responsible for the vicious torture policies be brought to trial. Any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington; the former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered.

It came from the top and that's never been a secret. The president authorized the building of those CIA "black sites" and the use of what came to be known as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and has spoken of this with a certain pride. The president's top officials essentially put in an order at the Department of Justice for "legal" justifications that would, miraculously, transform those "techniques" into something other than torture. - Tom Engelhardt

There are numerous, obvious solutions to problems in Afghanistan which NATO countries could consider, could even attempt if the alliance wasn’t there for the mineral wealth.

Is the US is really allowing an illicit multi-billion dollar industry to flourish right under its nose (without involvement of any kind) or is there a part of this story that’s missing from the headlines? Of course, that leads us to an area of speculation that the media considers taboo, the prospect that US intel agencies are somehow implicated.

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The liberation of Afghanistan women was one of the Bush Administration's prime selling points for the U.S. invasion in 2001. But for more than a decade the U.S. has repeatedly sided with the most ultraconservative undemocratic forces in Afghanistan to the detriment of the rights of Afghan women. Today, after 13 years of war, and 13 years of U.S. promises, the women of Afghanistan "have been shut out, shut down, and silenced by fear."

Federal watchdog report "calls into question" US efforts to stamp out opium production.

When Zekerullah's teacher, a teacher accustomed to beating pupils, asked the class elementary questions about the environment, Zekerullah had definitely done his homework. But among his recent studies were the history of nonviolent movements, led by people like Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, to resist oppressive forces.