Many people are breathing a sigh of relief to see international combat troops leaving Afghanistan. All foreign combat forces are slated to withdraw by the end-2014 deadline, and many have already gone. Deaths among foreign troops have fallen reassuringly.

A secret document obtained by the Bureau reveals for the first time the Pakistan government’s internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties.

The United States has consistently claimed only a tiny number of non-combatants have been killed in drone attacks in Pakistan – despite research by the Bureau and others suggesting that over 400 civilians may have died in the nine-year campaign.

Yesterday I had the privilege to watch Dirty Wars, an upcoming film directed by Richard Rowley that chronicles the investigations of journalist Jeremy Scahill into America's global covert war under President Obama and specifically his ever-growing kill lists. I will write comprehensively about this film closer to the date when it and the book by the same name will be released.

Two young brothers out gathering firewood died after being shot by weapons from a NATO helicopter, U.S. officials said Saturday.

The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., issued an apology, saying the killings were an accident.

First Item:

In response to the U.S. military killing three children, aged 12, 10, and 8, in an airstrike in Helmand, Afghanistan in early December, 2012, the Military Times in a December 3, 2012 article entitled “Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders,” quotes a U.S. official justifying the killings:

by Debra Sweet

One man is at the center of a story you can’t avoid in the media, since last Friday. General David Petraeus, architect of the U.S. “surge” in Iraq, pulled in to “save” Afghanistan, then bumped over to the CIA last year, was forced to resign because the FBI, we are told, found out about an affair he was having with a fawning biographer.

In May of this year NATO leaders met in Chicago – after making sure that no demonstrators would be allowed to come anywhere remotely near their meeting place, after all, they were planning peace and you can't have protestors demanding an end to wars at a peace conference – and one of the, if not the, biggest announcements coming out of it was that NATO accepted Obama’s plan to withdraw NATO and US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

by Emma Kaplan

I have been watching the coverage on Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who was targeted for assasination by the Taliban. If you are outraged by this, look at the situation in the world right now.

by Alice K. Ross

The US government must release its estimates of how many people are being killed in CIA drone strikes, to end an over-reliance on often scanty media reports, a new study on drone casualties says.

by Kevin Gosztola 

To show solidarity with the people of Waziristan in Pakistan, who have experienced and been victims of US drone strikes, thousands of Pakistanis marched in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan led the march. Thirty-one American peace activists affiliated with CODEPINK participated in the march as well.

by Debra Sweet

Plans by the U.S. to maintain a Special Forces occupation of Afghanistan until 2024 are being severely tested. But only press from other countries reports what the two main reasons why the people of Afghanistan demand that U.S. forces just leave are: