Tag: iraq

Dick Cheney and Joe Biden square off on the various Sunday talk shows, a preview from Raw Story. The mere fact that one is accused by the government is not reason to "believe" or have "faith" in the guilt of people held without benefit of evidence, an essay by Glen Greenwald at Salon. The Utah House of Reps decides to stand firmly behind junk science and flat Earth theory at Firedog Lake and some great cartoons from McClatchy in today's picks.

Across southern Afghanistan, including the Marjah district where coalition forces are massing for a large offensive, the line between peaceful villager and enemy fighter is often blurred, the Wall Street Journal reports. The commander of the US unit responsible for Pashmul estimates that about 95% of the locals are Taliban or aid the militants.

Posted by Nick Turse at TomDispatch Once is an anomaly; twice is the beginning of a pattern. Right now, we’re seeing the same sequence of...

Secretary of State Clinton's effort on CNN to conflate the "threat" from Iran with that from nuclear-armed North Korea was "just bizarre," writes Juan Cole on his Informed Comment blog. Iran allows UN inspections of its nuclear facilities; there is no dispositive evidence of a weapons program. President Ahmadinejad made headlines by directing Iran's (regularly inspected) nuclear research establishment to begin attempting to enrich uranium to 19.75% so that that country will eventually have the ability to supply its own fuel for its sole reactor that produces medical isotopes for treating, e.g., cancer.

Mr. Turner is a literal foot soldier in what might be called the well-written war: a recent outpouring of memoirs, fiction, poetry, blogs and even some readable military reports by combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldier-writers have long produced American literature, from Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs about the Civil War to Norman Mailer’s World War II novel, “The Naked and the Dead,” to Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” about Vietnam.

NORTH/SOUTH OR BLACK/WHITE? I HAVE MY OWN IDEAS AND SOME AREN'T GOING TO LIKE IT VERY MUCH. By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor I am simply done...

A group of ex-Taliban officials have prepared a "road map" to promote a political settlement between the Taliban and the Karzai government, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service. The first step would be an agreement between Karzai and the Taliban about no killing of doctors and no damage to roads by the Taliban, in return for no night raids and detention by the United States.

While U.S. officials prefer to focus on low-level fighters while hoping that an additional 30,000 troops can pummel the Taliban into a weaker negotiating position, President Karzai's government has stressed the need to reach out to the Islamist movement's leadership, the Washington Post reports. "It's questionable why the United States just wants to reintegrate the low level of the Taliban and not the leadership," said Karzai's policy chief. "That's something they are concerned about, but from the Afghan side, we are trying to include everyone in negotiations." In public statements, the Taliban has predicated any negotiation on the departure of foreign troops.

The Fundraising Congress What vets need from the prez How to Get Our Democracy Back The death penalty -- it's unworkable To win Afghan war, isolate the...

Robert Scheer writes that if Glass Steagal worked for 60 years, it probably ain't broken. A book on evolution to help kids get through the confusion caused by the flat Earthers. Where's all that damn oil? is the quetion at Tomgram. Vets urge close of Gitmo at Huff Post, Objectivity is not the Holy Grail at Truthdig and the sad news of our losses in Pakistan in today's picks.

Mounting budget deficits for the foreseeable future may "greatly hamper" the U.S.' ability to wage pointless wars, a leading Pentagon general says. According to Gen. Blanton Creegan, "The days of our invading a country for no reason whatsoever may be at an end." Gen. Creegan adds, "In the past, we were able to start a war with a country simply because we said they might have WMD - now, we may actually have to check first."

GOP AND CORPORATE PRESS HAVE ONE GOAL:  KEEP BUSH AND HIS CABAL OUT OF PRISON By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Ask any American, or, in...

America has got to learn two things: First, if you keep slapping your neighbor and picking his flowers, eventually he's going to hit you back. And secondly, if you break into your neighbor's home and wipe out his family, then you get caught with a pocketful of his valuables, trying to plead self-defense won't fly. Any court in the world will convict you of being a murderer and a thief.

Shades of Watergate in Louisiana, from Informed Comment, Whats this Pelican stuff? at TPM, America's fictional Democracy, from Chris Hedges, Big Surprise, another lie from the CIA, and Garrison Keillor says "let the uninsured die?" These and other stories in today's picks.

The Real News' take on Pat Robertson's Hait1 and the Devil BS, A NYT Editorial on Reforming the criminals in the financial industry, and an "Informed Comment" from Juan Cole on the latest bin Laden tape: "First, I do not think it is genuine. Second, I think it demonstrates that Bin Laden, whether he is dead or alive, is now irrelevant" are among the stories in today's picks.

Stories of soldiers, veterans and widows who attribute cancers and life-threatening illnesses to exposure to the burn pit are coming to light, as are more numerous reports of unexplained shortness of breath, asthma-like symptoms, respiratory issues and other problems.

Among today's picks, Reining in the Gods of the Fed, Did Obama Win the Iraq War?, Taxing Wall Street Down to Size, The crime of not "Looking Backward," Tomgram: William Astore, Going Rogue in Combat Boots, Alaska Sen. Murkowski's attempt to curb EPA draws criticism, George Will Displays Core GOP Value: Cheap, Disposable Labor # In eastern Afghan province, preview of upcoming surge strategy

Panetta admits in his own words, “In the past year we have done exceptionally heavy damage to al Qaeda. That’s why the extremists hit back.” Got that? It is extremism for al Qaeda to hit back but it is not extremism for the CIA to launch its drone aerial rocket strikes against al Qaeda---, strikes that a protesting Pakistan government has urged the U.S. halt as they are killing innocent civilians, in aggregate probably in the hundreds.

The Orwellian-named mercenary trade group, the International Peace Operations Association, didn’t waste much time in offering the “services” of its member companies like Blackwater/Xe, and Triple Canopy to swoop down on Haiti and it's eartquake stricke populace for some old fashioned humanitarian assistance disaster profiteering.

By Michael Jernigan / The New York Times I have written several pieces for Home Fires these last couple of years. I have talked...

America elected Barak Obama for one reason only. We had spent years with a government found to have become utterly corrupt, a pack of criminal gangsters no better than Pinochet in Chile or Pol Pot in Cambodia. We were going to go in, put Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice, Ashcroft, Gonzales along with 2 dozen top military leaders and more senior members of Congress in prison. When we were done, we would go thru the oil companies, banks, defense giants, insurance companies and more, doing the same. We hoped that when we were finally done, whoever was left would know that they were part of a government by and for the people, not employees of a criminal conpiracy.

We are people who had little to no opportunity to get a college education. We are people who wanted to take our children to the doctor without going bankrupt. We are people who wanted to avoid joining the masses of unemployed and underpaid. Many of us believed the lifetime of indoctrination that told us the U.S. military protects our families here at home, and helps the poor and oppressed abroad.

A group of Iraq-Afghan War veterans, some of whom I know personally, have just launched a series of web sites for booking and managing...

In Politics Daily tonight we learn in an article entitled U.S. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan Make History With Length of Service that we have just made history. These young people have been in combat longer and more often than any other troops in American history.

THERE IS ONLY ONE DEFINITION OF "BELIEF" A BELIEF IS A LIE By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor When a suicide bomber kills himself and others, generally...

Were the seven CIA employees killed in the recent terror attack at Camp Chapman in Afghanistan really CIA? Sources now tell us that some were Blackwater operatives, not CIA at all. Is the CIA and Blackwater one in the same? Are either one or both working for the United States or has the disease of privatization created a culture of greed and incompetence that has left the United States vulnerable and defenseless? Are we simply "out of our depth" in Afghanistan?

Mr. Cheney, while you and those around you were being kept safe during the Vietnam War, I was fighting in Vietnam. I wasn't fighting for you. If I had known who you were, I would have thrown you in a well in a New York minute. Like generations before me, I hoped my own children wouldn't have to sleep in mud day after day and see their friends blown apart beside them. Now I have to listen to your endless whining about how Americans should think nothing about how important it is to be safe, safe, of course, because we are sending the children we fought to protect out to die for us. If I have to be kept safe in my old age, seeing our kids and grandkids die, many of them husbands, parents, it just isn't worth it. If real killing and dying has to go on to really protect America, something some of us aren't so sure is the case, I will go right now, but I am dragging your bloated hulk with me.

My last memory of Iraq was of boarding a transport plane on the flight line at Balad Air Base in late January 2008. It had been raining and we were hoping to get out of the country before “MUDCON,” or mud conditions, turned every inch of desert not hiding below flight line or rocks into peanut butter. From the corner of my eye I saw a helicopter coming in. It was early in the morning, we’d been awake all night. And there was a Black Hawk helicopter with its generic Red Cross symbol on the nose.

9/11, THE "MOTHER OF ALL LIES" LURKS IN THE SHADOWS By Gordon Duff Our British allies, sickened by years of revelations of government corruption leading to...

All you peace activists, listen up. Today is special. You'll want to remember this day -- May 7, 2009 -- as the day when the...

MILITARY CHANNEL DEBUTS INSIDER'S LOOK                     AT THE CAPTURE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN;          ACE IN THE HOLE HAS ITS WORLD PREMIERE THURSDAY, MAY 12 Silver Spring, Md.Meet...