Tag: afghanistan

The bill would cut the DoD's budget and use that money to make the first $35,000 each American earns tax-free. Last week, as Congress prepared to pass yet another “emergency” spending bill to cover America’s costly operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- to the tune of $159 billion this time around -- Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, introduced a bill that would force the Pentagon to pick up the tab out of its ample regular budget.

The fighting in Afghanistan this week has resulted in the deaths of Canadian Colonel Geoff Parker, 42, of Oakville, Ontario, and U.S. Colonel John McHugh, 46, of W. Caldwell, New Jersey. It also claimed the lives of Lieutenant Colonels Paul Bartz, 43, of Waterloo, Wis., and Thomas Belkofer, 44, of Perrysburg, Ohio. Other fatalities were Staff Sgt. Richard Tieman, 28, of Waynesboro, Pa., and Specialist Joshua Tomlinson, 24, of Dubberly, La.

A recent analyis has shown the 40 year old American M-16 rifle to be a failure in Afghanistan. The weapon that caused more American deaths in Vietnam than the enemy is still junk technology today, even with its Star Wars derivitives. The result is still "Palinesque" or as I would call it, "lipstick on a pig." The wrong design, the wrong cartridge, no range, no stopping power and poor reliability, 40 years of failure in the most important area of the battlefield, our combat rifle. This wasn't an accident but part of our defense tradition, fighting wars with junk, fighting wars meant to eat money, put fighting men and women under the dirt, fighting wars meant to go on forever, as long as the money flows. A new study, over 40 years late, challenges our basic infantry weapon's effectiveness:

TRIBAL LEADERS SEEING MATURITY AND CHANGE IN KARZAI US DRUG POLICY, SPENDING AND CORRUPTION STILL MAJOR FAILURES By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor "Gordon, Karzai finally quite...

By Khalil Nouri Staff Writer--Editor The United States is on a trajectory to lose the war in Afghanistan because its foreign policy has become entangled...

As Memorial Day approaches, thousands will make the pilgrimage to pay honor to loved ones lost to war. Some do not have to travel far. Others will make it an honorable effort to visit many cemeteries that bear the names and are home to our fallen military men and women.

FORGING THEIR OWN CHAINS AND SHACKLES By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Millions of illegal aliens, thousands members of dangerous drug gangs, have taken over city...

• Kabul prosecutor seeks 'outlaw militia' for killings • Hamid Karzai's brother denies link to accused group Stephen Grey in Kandahar guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 May 2010...

CAN A REAL GLOBALISM BASED ON TRUTH AND HONOR SAVE THE WORLD? By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor I was asked during an interview on Al...

In order to be in the Army Luther had to pass the various medical and psychological examinations, so his condition couldn’t possibly be pre-existing. He was kept in an isolation chamber for one month, where he was treated worse than a prisoner, until he agreed to sign a pre-existing PD discharge. The Army’s officials found a way to get away with misdiagnosing him and he was denied treatment for his disabilities. The Army’s Chapter 5-13 says that any soldier with pre-existing PD should be discharged from the army with no medical benefits.

  AFGHANISTAN:  US DRUG POLICY, TOTAL CORRUPTION OR UTTER INSANITY? By Colonel Eugene Khrushchev (ret) STAFF WRITER/Editor The new American drug policy is easy to understand.  America...

A team of exceptional athletes, many of whom are wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans representing all military branches, will depart from the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday, May 22 for World T.E.A.M. Sports’ inaugural bike trek across America called Sea to Shining Sea. The goal of Sea to Shining Sea is to honor the courage of our service men and women, recognize the strength of the American spirit and challenge perceptions of how we view athletes. The ride will conclude in Virginia Beach on July 24.

Shell shock, battle fatigue, operational exhaustion, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are all reiterations of the same condition which has been scientifically recognized since World War I. The issue itself may not be new, but we are only now realizing the extent of its influence. A recent explosion of such cases has many worried that not enough resources exist to help the returning heroes.

NARCO NEXUS MAY BE MANAGING TERROR WAR By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor First we are told opium and heroin are financing world terrorism, then General...

A new GAO report found the Taliban remain a resilient fighting force and suggested many factors remain in place that will allow the Taliban to survive U.S. efforts to eradicate them, McClatchy reports. The GAO, citing an official from U.S Central Command, said the Taliban are proving resilient as a result of several factors, including "the porous nature of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, the ineffective nature of governance and services in various parts of Afghanistan, assistance from militant groups out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and continued financial support in the form of narcotics trafficking revenue and funds from outside of the region."

During her yearlong tour of duty in Iraq Maj. Elizabeth A. Condon saw all manner of horror and heartbreak, from dead bodies in the street and memorials for fallen friends to “little babies with holes in their backs.” But it was a moment of tenderness, she said, that stuck with her most. It happened when she was helping to care for a young Iraqi woman, whose belly had been left ripped open and infected from an amateur cesarean.

By Khalil Nouri Staff Writer / Editor Op-Ed Mr. Khalilzad! I don’t get it! Why should anyone on earth page you? Except for Kathleen Parker, a...

Despite Prince’s attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater.

Kat Larson recently stood with several Vietnam War veterans on the site of what was once Camp Evans, an installation that served as a base camp during the war. “They’d see these places as battlefields, and as they talked about their experiences, you could tell in their eyes and their emotions that they were going back there,” the 22-year-old college student recalled.

By Khalil Nouri Staff Writer / Editor Op-Ed Views in this article are mostly my own, few have been in conjunction with...

There is a Middle Eastern country that requires all 18-year-olds to join national service for several years. This country even has a roughly comparable health care system to America for a population of 7,233,701, according to the CIA World Factbook. The country is Israel.

NATO OPIUM "ERADICATION" GUARANTEES RECORD HEROIN PRODUCTION IN AFGHANISTAN AMERICA'S "FALSE FLAG" WAR ON DRUGS By Col Khrushchev (ret)  STAFF WRITER/Editor Monterey & Marja Right after 4/20 celebration of...

A few months ago we ran stories on two of the very few national level political candidates willing to honestly focus debate on the...

Created in the wake of the scandal in 2007 over serious shortcomings at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Warrior Transition Units were intended to be sheltering way stations where injured soldiers could recuperate and return to duty or gently process out of the Army. There are currently about 7,200 soldiers at 32 transition units across the Army, with about 465 soldiers at Fort Carson’s unit.

"CHATTER" FLOWING IN FROM EVERYWHERE "SUITCASE" NUKE SAID TO BE IN PLACE By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Rumors of an upcoming terror attack to be blamed...

DISCUSSIONS TO "ERASE THE SLATE" AND START AGAIN AMERICANS AND AFGHAN LEADERS LOOK FOR SUCCESSFUL COALITION MODEL By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor President Karzai is scheduled...

Under pressure: German troops are calling on Chancellor Angela Merkel to tell them why they're at war in Afghanistan By Daily Mail Foreign Service (UK) German...

The duplicity of dovish drug détente By Col.  Khrushchev (ret) STAFF WRITER/Editor Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, who is in charge of strategic communication & info ops...

By Khalil Nouri STAFF WRITER / EDITOR Afghanistan is to convene a grand tribal convention for a consensus with the Taliban—ones who can peel away...

94 percent of Kandaharis interviewed last December prefer negotiating with the Taliban to military confrontation, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service. Ninety-one percent supported the convening of a "Loya Jirga", or "grand assembly" of leaders as a way of ending the conflict. Interviewers conducted the survey only in areas which were not under Taliban control. An unclassified report on the survey was published in March by Glevum Associates, a "strategic communications" company under contract for the Human Terrain Systems program in Afghanistan. All this undermines the U.S. claim that the Kandahar offensive will be supported by locals, Porter notes.

Major League baseball players are honoring the sacrifices made by our nation's wounded warriors by launching an exclusive line of military-themed licensed products to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, it was jointly announced today by the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) and the Wounded Warrior Project. Major Leaguers are also contributing an additional $100,000 from the Major League Baseball Players Trust to the Wounded Warrior Project, to support their efforts in ensuring this generation of wounded warriors is the most successful and well-adjusted in our nation's history.

AMERICA, ISRAEL, AFGHANISTAN, ALL THE SAME "TAPPING THE REPTILE BRAIN" By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER Any discussion that challenges how people are conditioned by repeated lies and...

Authorities might never completely determine why Jesse C. Huff dressed in Army fatigues, walked to the steps of the Dayton Veterans Affairs Department’s Medical Center and shot himself to death Friday morning. Police said they found no suicide note and knew of no ominous statements he made to employees while inside the medical center hours before his death.

Is that what the US military is for – to be duped into dope syringe surge? By Colonel Evgeny Khrushchev (ret) STAFF WRITER/Editor (Moscow) Soviet and Russian...

The Pentagon has increased its use of the military's most elite special operations teams in Afghanistan, more than doubling the number of the highly trained teams assigned to hunt down Taliban leaders, according to senior officials.

By Khalil Nouri STAFF WRITER During the last few days, President Karzai has thrown the “kitchen sink” at his allies, and his own people. ...

After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.

Regardless of whether U.S. Special Forces removed bullets from the bodies of the Afghan women they just killed, as charged by the victims' relatives - and if they did, what their motivation was for doing so - spreading the story that the women's bodies had been found "tied up" and "gagged," as NATO did in a Feb. 12 press release still posted on its web site, if that was not true, would meet any disinterested observer's definition of the word "coverup."

Now, in a sworn declaration obtained exclusively by Truthout, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during George W. Bush's first term in office, claims that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others knew the "vast majority" of prisoners captured in the so-called War on Terror were innocent and the administration refused to set them free once those facts were established because of the political repercussions that would have ensued.

ACCUSATION OF DEFECTION, COLLABORATION COMPLICATED BY VIDEO RELEASED BY GROUP TIED TO MOSSAD  SOMETHING VERY WRONG HERE  By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor  Yesterday, a very odd...

The fight over the war supplemental is tremendously important, because Congressional pressure can move Administration policy, even when critics of Administration policy don't command a majority of votes. This is especially true when, as in this case, critics are in the majority in the President's own party, and when, as in this case, the policy under pressure is an international policy which is also under significant international pressure.

By Khalil Nouri, STAFF WRITER Last week, president Karzai met with tribal leaders hoping for their support in his rift with Washington. Instead, his meetings...