UN REPORTS CIVILIAN DEATHS IN AFGHANISTAN

Obama has decided to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This is a catastrophe to Afghan civilians. Last year, according to a BBC report on figures released by the United Nations, the number of Afghani civilian casualties rose almost 40%.

The BBC reports:

"The UN report into civilian deaths said the death toll in 2008 civilian was "the highest of any year" since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.

"The majority of the victims were killed in the south of the country - where international and Afghan forces are fighting a fierce counter-insurgency campaign.

"In one of the most-publicised incidents, US troops fighting off a Taleban ambush last November bombed a wedding party in the Shah Wali Kot area in southern Afghanistan, killing about 40 civilians - mainly women and children.

"The issue of civilian deaths at the hands of foreign troops is a hugely sensitive issue, says the BBC's Martin Patience, in Kabul, and is something that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has raised repeatedly."