Details are beginning to emerge in the death of an Afghan prisoner on Sunday night. According to ISAF, a US soldier is in custody and a criminal investigation is underway. Hamid Karzai issued a short statement calling the death a killing by coalition forces. The New York Times recounts that one version of the story suggests the prisoner may have been trying to escape, but other Afghans who were present at the prison disagree on that point.

Just days after a new report (pdf) was released, providing further evidence that torture of detainees in Afghanistan continues at the “secret” site at Bagram Air Base, Reuters informs us that a detainee in NATO custody has been “found dead” in his cell.

It’s hard to imagine how the United States could heap more abuse on Pakistan. We are approaching the one year anniversary since Jeremy Scahill disclosed the extensive JSOC-Blackwater secret war effort within Pakistan and yet there is no indication that either Barack Obama or David Petraeus sees a need to shut down the rogue operators there. Despite the occasional attempt to portray the US military as providing crucial relief efforts in the massive floods in Pakistan (such as in the accompanying photo), the reality is that US military relief to Pakistan has been derided as but a tiny fraction of the military relief provided in other recent world catastrophes. Last week’s sentencing of Aafia Siddiqui to eighty-six years in jail provoked massive protests across Pakistan. And now we are learning that NATO (which really means US) helicopters have killed over 50 people in air raids on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan over the weekend.

Iranian news outlet Fars reported today that seven American troops were taken into custody inside Iran. We’re seeing denials from both Iranian and U.S. sources. The situation is ripe for disinformation since what happened is very unclear, Fars is the the sole originating source, and no other authoritative source has emerged to make a widely-publicized statement of any kind.

It now appears that Obama has taken the position that JSOC troops can go anywhere in the world that he wants them to go and he can order them to kill anyone he wants them to kill for whatever reason he decides. What would the world look like if other countries operated in this way?

BBC reports that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed the existence of a second prison site at Bagram. The presence of a second site has long been suspected, a prison the Afghans call Tor Prison, or the “Black” Prison.

For some time, I’ve been documenting the effort to present General Stanley McChrystal’s COIN strategy as a warm, fuzzy program of which we should be proud, instead of the reality of night raids that kill and imprison innocent civilians, fueling the anger of insurgents. My most recent find in that propaganda campaign is truly a sight to behold.

Despite a steady stream of warm, fuzzy stories about General Stanley McChrystal insisting that his COIN strategy is all about protecting civilians and that he spends a good portion of his time imparting this wisdom on the topic to troops, pointless killings of civilians continue.

Continued civilian deaths resulting from night raids by Special Forces in Afghanistan have prompted more spin on the reasoning behind placing these forces under McChrystal’s command.

Perhaps the most famous torture scene in world literature takes place at the end of Act III of King Lear. This post examines that scene and draws lessons for today’s society, which faces the continuation of some of the Bush Administration’s torture policies, and a failure to make accountable those involved in the torture practiced by the previous administration.