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Latest Articles: War, War, War
The Pentagon Is the President's Private Army
Post Date: 2008-11-04 11:13:01 by christine
1 Comments
The Pentagon, methinks, is out of control. We no longer have a military in service to the state, but a state in service to the military. Few notice (I suspect) because of two ingrained habits of mind. First, we think of the President as just that, the President, the country’s civilian governor who, oh yeah, is technically the Commander-in-Chief. “Technically,” because he isn’t really in the military and doesn’t strut about in a uniform with ribbons and feathers. He seems more a CEO than a general. Second, we tend to think of the military as a federal department under civilian control. The Pentagon carries out policy, we believe, but doesn’t make it. Would it ...
The amazing, endless, bioterror pork conveyor
Post Date: 2008-11-04 06:08:41 by Ada
1 Comments
The war on terror as corporate welfare... Comment As the final days count down to the US election one can look at the past few years and be deeply disappointed at the country's approach to national security. Rather than count off every single well-publicized major gaffe and fiasco, it's possible to list more minor things which, when taken together, indicate the country essentially as leaderless and adrift at sea as it is in everything else. The first example is in the use of the war on terror as a continuous conveyor belt delivering corporate welfare. As part of this stream, the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency recently tossed $158 million dollars at a management and ...
Robert Fisk: Scandal of six held in Guantanamo even after Bush plot claim is dropped
Post Date: 2008-11-02 20:20:34 by richard9151
1 Comments
No evidence that men living in Bosnia plotted attack on Sarajevo embassy Friday, 31 October 2008 In the dying days of the Bush administration, yet another presidential claim in the "war on terror" has been proved false by the withdrawal of the main charge against six Algerians held without trial for nearly seven years at Guantanamo prison camp. George Bush's assertion in his 2002 State of the Union address – the same speech in which he wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had tried to import aluminium tubes from Niger – was that "our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy [in Sarajevo]." Not ...
No charges but US may never release Guantánamo Chinese
Post Date: 2008-11-02 20:15:41 by richard9151
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Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Saturday November 1 2008 Seventeen Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantánamo Bay will be informed on Monday that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed. No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations. The men's lawyer, Sabin Willett, is flying to Guantánamo Bay this weekend to break the news to the men, who are members of ...
Wars are the Jew's Harvest
Post Date: 2008-11-02 08:19:20 by Hypocrisy Cop
6 Comments
“Get hold of fifty of the wealthiest Jewish financiers and you will put an end to all wars” By Michael Santomauro August 11th, 2006 “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” — Mel Gibson Was He Drinking? “Get hold of fifty of the wealthiest Jewish financiers, the men who are interested in making wars for their own profit. Control them, and you will put an end to it all.” — Henry Ford, father of the automobile industry, the Cleveland News, 20th September 1923. Are These Jews Anti-Semitic? “We are at the bottom, not merely of the latest Great War, but of nearly all your wars; not only of the Russian, but of every other major ...
Why Are We Still in Iraq?
Post Date: 2008-10-30 06:24:16 by Ada
3 Comments
The central characteristic of sixties liberalism (at least in the remembered national indictment) was one of moral superiority. A liberal would chat you up on civil rights, Vietnam and soybean recipes in a manner aimed less at honest proselytizing and (judged by exasperate liberal segues like The point you can’t seem to understand is… ) more at sending one away with a new sense of self as a racist, warmongering junk food addict. The common people didn’t respond well to such labels. It’s not to be assumed that conservatives of the time were in much better shape. By the seventies the American people, exhausted by Watergate and the failed war in Vietnam, held conservatives ...
Intelligence agencies spent $47.5 billion this year, $4 billion more than last year
Post Date: 2008-10-29 23:13:07 by richard9151
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Intelligence agencies spent $47.5 billion this year, $4 billion more than last year By PAMELA HESS | Associated Press Writer 10:59 AM CDT, October 28, 2008 WASHINGTON (AP) _ U.S. spy agencies spent $47.5 billion in fiscal year 2008, $4 billion more than in the previous budget year, according to National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell. Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence spending for the Project on Government Secrecy, called the increase "big news." "A multibillion budget increase would be significant at any time," he said. "It's even more remarkable today coming after several years of sharp growth in intelligence spending." Congress in 200 ...
Guantanamo guards struggle with hunger striker
Post Date: 2008-10-29 23:07:55 by richard9151
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Oct 24, 5:31 PM EDT Guantanamo guards struggle with hunger striker By BEN FOX Associated Press Writer SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Three years ago, the man known as Internment Serial Number 669 stopped eating. Ahmed Zaid Zuhair, a father of 10 children in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, had been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 without charges and decided to join a mass hunger strike in protest. The U.S. military was determined not to let him succeed. Since then, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, guards have struggled with him repeatedly, at least once using pepper spray, shackles and brute force to drag him to a restraint chair for his twice-daily dose of a ...
1980's CIA Manual: Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (I wonder how much is used on us?)
Post Date: 2008-10-29 12:10:49 by bluegrass
3 Comments
During Nicaragua's civil war in the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commissioned a manual for the rebel contras of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (Operaciones sicológicas en guerra de guerillas). Its public revelation in October 1984 created a firestorm of controversy. The manual was written by a CIA contract employee who used the alias John Kirkpatrick. He based his work off of existing US Army manuals, particularly the Green Berets' Lesson Plan 643, Armed Psyop (April 1968). Field Manual 30-104, Handbook on Aggressor Insurgent War (September 1967), was another source. These manuals were in turn ...
In Afghanistan, the Loudest Sound Is the Clock Ticking
Post Date: 2008-10-28 23:53:19 by richard9151
19 Comments
GINIA BELLAFANTE Published: October 27, 2008 In early September Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the difficulties American forces face in Afghanistan. “It is my professional opinion that no amount of troops, in no amount of time, can ever achieve all the objectives we seek in Afghanistan,” he said. “Frankly, we’re running out of time.” To watch “The War Briefing,” a “Frontline” documentary to be shown on Tuesday on most PBS stations, is to feel vividly the ticking of the clock. Rigorously reported and somberly produced, “The War Briefing” is both a ...
Pentagon Panel: Biden Was Right, Prep for 'Crisis'
Post Date: 2008-10-28 12:16:36 by christine
16 Comments
The McCain campaign pounced the other day, when Joe Biden said that his running mate would be tested by an international crisis at the start of his White House tenure. But the chairman of a key Pentagon advisory panel is sounding a similar warning, telling the next administration to "prepare for a likely first-270-days crisis." Veteran Pentagon consultant Michael Bayer, chairman of the Defense Business Board, told his fellow panelists that the new president's inner circle should "set aside time in transition to identify the planning, gravitas and interagency process necessary to respond to a likely first-270-day crisis." From Kennedy (Bay of Pigs) to Johnson (Gulf ...
Syria Halts Diplomacy After U.S. Military Strike
Post Date: 2008-10-28 10:51:48 by tom007
25 Comments
WASHINGTON -- Damascus largely froze high-level diplomatic efforts with the U.S. after an American strike inside the country, a move that threatens support for broader peace initiatives in the Middle East. Syrian officials on Monday sent a demarche to the American Embassy in Damascus in response to what it claimed was a U.S. cross-border helicopter attack inside eastern Syria on Sunday that killed eight people. President Bashar Assad's government said it was largely freezing high-level diplomatic engagement with the Bush administration for its remaining three months in office. Syrian diplomats said that before the raid they had been considering inviting to Damascus the State ...
Alexander Cockburn: Obama, the first-rate Republican
Post Date: 2008-10-28 05:55:20 by Ada
10 Comments
Is there anything the front-runner will not say to become President? No progressive cause would have a chance with him in charge As a left-winger I might be expected to be supporting Barack Obama. And indeed, in these last days I've been scraping around, trying to muster a single positive reason to encourage a vote for Obama. Please note my accent on the positive, since the candidate himself has couched his appeal in this idiom. Why vote for Obama-Biden, as opposed to against the McCain-Palin ticket? Obama invokes change. Yet never has the dead hand of the past had a "reform" candidate so firmly by the windpipe. Is it possible to confront America's problems without ...
"Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War": Interview with Anthony Teolis, Veterans For Peace
Post Date: 2008-10-28 00:26:38 by richard9151
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"Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War": Interview with Anthony Teolis, Veterans For Peace By Mike Whitney October 27, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Mike Whitney--I have a nephew who is finishing up at Quantico after graduating from the Naval Academy last June. He's bright and talented and wants to serve in the Marines. Naturally, his parents and relatives are worried that he will be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. What advice would you give someone like this who is extremely patriotic and may be asked to sacrifice his life in one of these wars? Would you give the same advice to your own son? Anthony Teolis, Veterans For Peace (VFP)---I would ask that your ...
The Torturer's Tale
Post Date: 2008-10-28 00:21:38 by richard9151
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The Torturer's Tale Tony Lagouranis was trained by the US Army to torture Iraqis. This is why he stopped By Jolyon Jenkins October 27, 2008 "The First Post" -- -Tony Lagouranis never expected to become a torturer. He didn't even really want to be a soldier. But at 30, he was bored and broke. He had a facility with languages, fancied learning Arabic, and figured the US army would teach him for free and help him clear his student debts. When he started his training, the Twin Towers were still intact and no one expected the US to go to war in Iraq. Even when Lagouranis chose to specialise as an interrogator, his army instructors implied that the Iraqis he questioned would ...
Surging Into Syria: American Incursion Opens New Front in Quagmire
Post Date: 2008-10-27 15:46:40 by christine
5 Comments
Taking a page from the new bipartisan strategy now being employed in Afghanistan -- waging cross-border military raids into sovereign countries in order to protect a failing military occupation in a neighboring country -- the United States has apparently launched its first known incursion into Syria: the usual assault from on high with the usual tally of children as "collateral damage." The BBC reports that American forces launched a small ground-air attack on the border village of Sukkiraya on Sunday, with military helicopters disgorging a squad of troops who attacked a building and killed "a man, his four children and a married couple." Officially, the Pentagon has ...
Putting the Pentagon on the Auction Block
Post Date: 2008-10-27 06:02:54 by Ada
0 Comments
Back in September 1989 – almost a lifetime ago – I published an article in The Progressive magazine under the title "Star Wars Won't Die." Star Wars was, of course, the movie-inspired nickname for Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), his vision of putting an "impermeable shield" against nuclear weapons in space. ("The Force is with us," he joked at the time – and when it came to high-tech R&D weapons research, he wasn't wrong.) I wrote then that SDI would never be canceled, no matter how many of its prospective parts failed. ("The loss of any particular [weapons] system," I indicated, "can only lead ...
U.S. Army Says Blogging Site 'Twitter' Could Become Terrorist Tool
Post Date: 2008-10-27 00:27:42 by freepatriot32
3 Comments
The U.S. Army is flagging the popular blogging service Twitter as a potential terrorist tool, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported Sunday. A recently released report by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion contains a chapter entitled “Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter,” which expresses concern over the increasing use of Twitter by political and religious groups, the AFP reported. “Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” ...
US helicopters attack Syrian village (what will Obama and McCain have to say about this?)
Post Date: 2008-10-26 14:53:40 by Jethro Tull
9 Comments
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syria's state-run television and witnesses say U.S. military helicopters have attacked an area along the country's border with Iraq, causing casualties. The report quoted unnamed Syrian officials and said the area is near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. It gave no other details on Sunday's attack. Local residents told The Associated Press by telephone that two helicopters carrying U.S. soldiers raided the village of Hwijeh, 10 miles inside Syria's border, killing seven people and wounding five. The U.S. military in Baghdad had no immediate comment.
Poster Comment:You can bet both O and Mc will green light the operation.
Final Text of Iraq Pact Reveals a U.S. Debacle
Post Date: 2008-10-25 19:51:23 by richard9151
0 Comments
Final Text of Iraq Pact Reveals a U.S. Debacle Analysis by Gareth Porter WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (IPS) - The final draft of the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces agreement on the U.S. military presence represents an even more crushing defeat for the policy of the George W. Bush administration than previously thought, the final text reveals. The final draft, dated Oct. 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by 2011 but makes it extremely unlikely that a U.S. non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces. Furthermore, Shiite opposition to the pact as a ...
THE WAR IN IRAQ COSTS AMERICA
Post Date: 2008-10-22 21:25:49 by Itisa1mosttoolate
0 Comments
www.nationalpriorities.or...of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html THE WAR IN IRAQ COSTS AMERICA $475,311,365,378 +
US airstrike kills 9 Afghan soldiers at checkpoint
Post Date: 2008-10-22 10:29:45 by richard9151
2 Comments
Oopsee! US airstrike kills 9 Afghan soldiers at checkpoint By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 19 mins ago KABUL, Afghanistan – A U.S.-led coalition airstrike hit an Afghan army checkpoint Wednesday, killing nine soldiers, Afghan officials said, and the American military acknowledged that its forces may have "mistakenly" killed allied troops. The U.S. acknowledged that its forces "may have mistakenly killed and injured" Afghan soldiers in what may have been a case of mistaken identity "on both sides." The deaths come as Afghan President Hamid Karzai presses international forces to avoid airstrikes in civilian areas. Arsallah Jamal, the ...
On Al-Qaeda Web Sites, Joy Over U.S. Crisis, Support for McCain
Post Date: 2008-10-22 09:53:28 by bush_is_a_moonie
0 Comments
Al-Qaeda is watching the U.S. stock market's downward slide with something akin to jubilation, with its leaders hailing the financial crisis as a vindication of its strategy of crippling America's economy through endless, costly foreign wars against Islamist insurgents. And at least some of its supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to continue that trend. "Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," ...
The torture time bomb
Post Date: 2008-10-22 00:29:33 by richard9151
1 Comments
The torture time bomb The Bush administration's approval of the abuse of detainees is a toxic legacy for the next US president Philippe Sands The Guardian, Saturday October 18 2008 As the US presidential election reaches a climax against the background of the financial crisis, another silent, dark, time bomb of an issue hangs over the two candidates: torture. For now, there seems to be a shared desire not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in which the Bush administration allowed the US military and the CIA to embrace abusive techniques of interrogation - including waterboarding, in the case of the CIA - which violate the Geneva conventions and the 1984 UN torture ...
Pentagon Pay $46,900 For Portrait of Don Rumsfield
Post Date: 2008-10-21 18:46:24 by tom007
8 Comments
Pentagon Spends $50K for 2nd Rummy Portrait By Noah Shachtman EmailOctober 21, 2008 | 3:23:00 PMCategories: Military Life Speaking of the government's silly wall art, the Washington Post has a rather hilarious feature on the massive sums federal agencies pay to get their chiefs' portraits painted. The Coast Guard in August awarded a $12,000 contract for a portrait of Adm. Thad W. Allen, a sharp drop from the $23,500 it spent in 2005 for a likeness of Allen's predecessor as commandant... At the upper end of the scale, the Defense Department awaits the expected February completion of a $46,790 portrait of controversial former secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. It will grace a ...
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