Two short pieces on the news page of the Wichita Eagle this morning are noteworthy follow-ups to my recent Afghanistan post. They show once again how the US cannot fight "terrorism" without screwing up worse. First, from Afghanistan:

Nine Afghan police killed by mistake

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces killed nine Afghan poice Sunday, calling in airstrikes and fighting on the ground for four hours after each side mistook the other for militants, Afghan officials said.

In a separate incident, NATO said it accidentally killed at least four Afghan civilians Saturday night. A NATO soldier also was killed in the east.

Then, from Iraq:

U.S. forces kill son, nephew of Iraqi governor

BAGHDAD -- American Special Operations forces shot to death the son and nephew of the governor of Salahuddin province on Sunday during a raid in the northern city of Bayji.

The governor, Hamed al-Qaisi, threatened to resign in protest and said he would suspend cooperation with U.S. officials.

Iraqi and U.S. officials offered sharply different accounts of the attack, though the deputy provincial governor said U.S. officials had already apologized.

The governor's son and nephew appeared not to have been the targets of the raid. Instead, the U.S. military command in Baghdad said the house had been raided to capture a "suspected al-Qaida in Iraq operative."

Not sure whether to put any special weight in the fact that these stories managed to get reported at all. Most such stories don't get reported, and even when they do they come slathered with spin. Nobody questions the appropriateness of calling airstrikes against "militants" or "suspected al-Qaida in Iraq operatives," but such airstrikes almost invariably add to the collateral damage, undermining US political credibility (if such a thing even exists).

Big story on the page was "Most food aid not reaching Haitians": only 2 percent of 16,000 tons of aid food reaching Haiti's harbors have been distributed to the people who need it. Article doesn't explain why.