In one mission in Afghanistan the US dropped 19 bombs and fired two Hellfire missiles, 205 rockets and 500 rounds of cannon shot. Number of Taliban fighters killed? One.

"Where were the rights for these children who have been violated?" asks an Afghan MP. "Did they have rights or not? Did they have rights to live as part of the world community?"

If the public had access to these reports, says Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, they would see the gulf between what is said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes.

The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100 billion a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all.

The war in Afghanistan is lost and Afghans are coming to terms with the return of their former Taliban rulers, and might even welcome some stability and order after 10 years of Nato-induced chaos.

The Afghan army is stoned on patrol, gutless in combat, and according to a secret US-Nato report, killing in increasing numbers American and coalition soldiers who are training them.

Most sickening of all are politicians who sit in office chairs and start wars and wave flags as young men and women go off to kill and die and be psychologically and emotionally damaged for life.

It is not a "culture of abuse" that makes US soldiers commit atrocities in Afghanistan, but sending them to fight an unjustified war that has slaughtered tens of thousands.

Obama gloats over the "success" of unaccountable drone operations that wantonly kill many innocent people through either sloppiness or ignorance.

According to Christopher Hitchens, 'religion poisons everything', and is the reason for the barbarisms of today's Afghanistan, which is why the West has a moral duty to intervene.

The linchpin of the NATO 'exit strategy' is an Afghan army with massive desertion rates, heavy drug use, illiteracy, corruption, an unwillingness to fight, and an inability to act independently of the US military.

Exhausted by war and the resultant suicide terrorism within its borders, Pakistan is in a terrible mess, says Tariq Ali, worse than at any time in its recent history.

The picture painted by the British army commander in Afghanistan of an enemy ever closer to defeat and a war with some kind of victory in sight is plainly an Alice in Wonderland concoction.

Afghanistan is the testing ground for the future of warfare: special forces and spies will be joined by pilotless armed drones and cyber warriors in a new arsenal of key weapons systems.

If you look only at Afghan “culture” to explain the lack of women's rights in Afghanistan, you miss the fact that US militarism has contributed to the crisis of Afghan women.

If we were to believe the stories coming out of the Bonn conference on Afghanistan, the occupying armies are the thin blue line protecting women there from something much worse.