Tag: afghanistan

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...

Sean Hannity seems to think that the "world" is limited to the eastern US. in Texas if you report a doctor for malpractice you may go down on a felony rap. Canada seems to have become infected with the paranoia of its southern neighbor, and from Inquisition headquarters: The "Christian Manifesto" brands liberals as Nazis. These stories and more in today's picks.

The disturbing story of a US soldier waterboarding his baby girl, A Jim Hightower tribute to Howard Zinn, "Innovation" lives on in the GOP...cut taxes on the rich, and privatize everything, casualty reports from the AfPak drone war come under fire and Bob Herbert reports on the unfair distribution of income and pain in today's picks.

President Obama's 2011 budget proposal includes 20 cost-saving ideas submitted by federal employees; three from VA employees: -- Allow Veterans to Keep Medication When They're Discharged: The award-winning SAVE Award idea would allow veterans leaving VA medical facilities to keep leftover medications, including eye drops and inhalers. The plan would save taxpayers $14.5 million in the next four years.

The gang that paid the Dems to turn their collective backs on the harebrained gambling and outright criminal behavior of Wall Street is threatening to stop the money flow from Glen Greenwald at Salon. More on the fat cat lenders getting rich off the backs of college students in a NYT oped. The results of the recent SCOTUS decision to hand over our electoral process to corporations are already unfolding in plutocratic pow wows in a story from Raw Story via AlterNet and more in today's picks.

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.

CIA TRANSLATION OF OSAMA BIN LADEN INTERVIEWED ON 9/11 (ENGLISH VOICE OVER WITH CIA OFFICAL TRANSCRIPT BELOW) By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor The Western media is...

WHAT OUR MILITARY LEADERS ONLY SAY BEHIND CLOSED DOORS By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Open today's newspaper and get a map of the battle zones...

Equipped with the same "red meat speech" she uses in every appearance and crib notes on her palms the "lip gloss pit bull" addressed the "Tea Partiers" last night and Salon's Joan Walsh took notice and careful aim. Eliminating the middle men in student loan programs could save mega bucks for taxpayers and students reports Jon Walker at FireDogLake and ominously, Israeli warships are reported to be moving through the Red Sea en route to the Persian Gulf, those stories and more in today's picks.

Are airlines becoming the shopping malls of our skies? Jim Hightower wants to know. Veterans will not be surprised to learn that 8 people died for a scrap of real estate "of no strategic value," many of us have seen that in the past. On the lighter side, more great editorial cartoons from McClatchy in today's picks.

The way the Taliban use Pakistan’s tribal areas to launch cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan is perhaps the most contentious issue between Pakistan and the United States. But the problem is hardly contained to Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Gaping holes in security checks along the border also remain at heavily trafficked crossings, like this one, in Baluchistan Province, where, American officials say, the Taliban’s leaders have taken refuge, out of reach of American and NATO forces.

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...

While the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, invests Congress with the power “to declare War,” the law school dean points out this has been largely ignored since President Harry Truman in 1950 “de facto changed the Constitution so that not the Congress, but the President, and he alone, makes the decision on war.”

A proposal to swap the bulk of Iran's enriched uranium for fuel for a medical reactor appeared to be revived as President Ahmadinejad said Iran had "no problem" with a deal brokered by the IAEA, the Washington Post reports. U.S. officials reacted cautiously to Ahmadinejad's remarks. "If Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments reflect an updated Iranian position, we look forward to Iran informing the IAEA," said a White House spokesman.

In Viet Nam, for example, U.S. leaders caused the deaths of thousands of their own men and several million Vietnamese after they already knew they had made probably the worst mistake in American history. Velvel writes, “Our top military men create(d) free fire zones where civilians are killed on sight, and bomb and defoliate to the nth degree.” In Iraq, our leaders unleashed “a horrendous reign of terror from the skies, create a thus far thoroughly destabilized post-war society, and then, when all their other myths have shown to be myths, retroactively justify the war by saying that we got rid of an admittedly horrible dictator, his equally horrible sons, and his entirely horrible government.”

Since World War Two, an indisputably necessary conflict, Velvel points out the U.S. has fought the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, and the Second Gulf War in Iraq. It has also invaded, bombed or “quarantined” Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and Libya, and has “declared” a global war on terrorists.

In the past few years Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan's rugged heartland have begun to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In its attempt to stamp out the growing Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda, the US military has been arresting suspects and sending them to one of a number of secret detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.

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."

Day by day a growing chorus of voices is heard saying that the tribes are the solution in Afghanistan. This very powerful grassroots movement is blossoming; and it can give the Afghan people new hope, self-esteem and a sense of belonging. As Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) told the news media Russia Today; "For about one billion dollars we could…(obtain)... the good will of all the tribal leaders and all the ethnic leaders in Afghanistan, and for another billion dollars, we could put nice projects in local villages." But, to make sure that there is success to this notion, an effective bottom-up approach tool is required to match the existing top-down approach so that jointly both approaches can rescue the nation.

Yes Magazine's Brooke Jarvis brings tells an entertaining and timely story of Murray Hill Inc, the first corporation to run for political office; proving, I suppose, that some Corps retain a sense of the absurd. Haiti's thoroughly inept government is taking increasing fire from her beleaguered citizens and Jim Hightower is back firing away at Corporate personhood in today's picks.

So it was, undoubtedly, with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, who accompanied Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as he stumbled through a challenge-filled, error-prone two-day trip to Pakistan. Gates must have felt a little like a punching bag by the time he boarded his plane for home having, as Juan Cole pointed out, managed to signal “that the U.S. is now increasingly tilting to India and wants to put it in charge of Afghanistan security; that Pakistan is isolated… and that Pakistani conspiracy theories about Blackwater were perfectly correct and he had admitted it. In baseball terms, Gates struck out.”

The SCOTUS aided Corporate takeover has been prominent in the news this past week and featured heavily here as well, Personally. I can't think of a more important issue than changing or negating the effects of that ridiculous decision. In other stories NATO is coughing up 500mil to pay off the Taliban, apparently their roadside stickup revenues are sagging and Steve Benen address the problem of no nothing voters in today's picks.

FEW AMERICANS KNEW OF ZINN, FEW KNOW WHAT WE HAVE LOST AND THE DOOM WE FACE By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Silly obituaries of Howard...

These larger groups are partially divided as Northern Pashtun, Southern Pashtun, Northern Tajik, Western Tajik, Southwestern Tajik, etc., etc, and the list goes on. Further, the many mini-tribes each have their own, independent tribal leaders, tribal laws to fit their local conditions, and a fierce determination to protect their real or imagined boundaries and their real or imagined ability to traverse wherever they wish, whenever they wish.

I’m proud to say that Anand Gopal, who has been reporting for the Wall Street Journal from Kabul, produces here the single most extensive report so far on American night raids in Afghanistan and the military holding areas that are the“black sites” of this moment. (His investigation, a shared project of TomDispatch.com and the Nation magazine, appears in print in the latest issue of the Nation.

a "Watergate" type attack on the Federal Building in New Orleans was thwarted when 4 "black bag" operatives, one the son of US Attorney, William J. Flannigan, whose offices were in the same building, were arrested "in the act."

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 Washington Post is running an article this morning entitled Kabul residents to say U.S. soldiers kill imam sitting in a car in which Afghanis claim that American troops shot and killed an imam sitting in his cars with his children. There seems to be some confusion however whether or not it was American troops or coalition forces troops riding in an American convoy.

Poverty, misery, dictators, anarchy, Soviets, Mujaheedin, Intelligence Agencies, Taliban, Warlords, and now NATO, a time line, as lengthy as my age, 50 years, was before my eyes, I could hardly recall a moment when Afghanistan was smiling.

Jim Hightower takes on the Supremes' prostitution to corporate plutocracy, Glen Greenwald wants to know whats so sacred about the defense budget, Blackwater (Xe) mercenaries still in the news, Terrible numbers from Haiti, and questions about Afghanistan and Pakistan in todays picks.

Drones are the hot weapons of the moment and the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review -- a soon-to-be-released four-year outline of Department of Defense strategies, capabilities, and priorities to fight current wars and counter future threats -- is already known to reflect this focus

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.

The Greatest Myth: The 9/11 Commission offered insight into the systemic problems of the CIA and the intelligence community. The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 solved the problems that had been exposed by the 9/11 Commission by creating a director of national intelligence, the so-called intelligence tsar. In fact, the 9/11 Commission failed to use the powers it had been given to explore the reasons for the 9/11 intelligence failure.

Lance Corporal Mathison and several Marines near him were spared when the IED he had ncountered failed to detonate. So began a brief journey through the Taliban’s shifting tactics and the vagaries of war, where an experience at the edge of death became instead an affirmation of friendship, and in which a veteran Marine reluctantly assumed for a morning one of the infantry’s most coveted roles: that of the charmed man.

USA’s new “Turn”…!!!  By Sajid Ansari for VT  After lots of drum-beating of “war-on-terror” and Al-Qaida, for 9 years, which is nowadays under heavy criticism, at...

The Nation continues Jeremy Scahill's coverage of Blackwater in Pakistan and War Looms Between Israel and Hezbollah at Truthdig along with the grim...

In what should be the biggest political story of the week the Supreme Court decided to allow all future federal elections to be completely dominated by America's the worlds corporations. Marty Kaplan writes in Huff Post about Republican finesse with with the age old art of storytelling, and over at Crooks and Liars we find distressing news about "Oathkeepers."

Defense industry supporters of efforts to establish the Dayton, Ohio region as a national center of training, education and product development for unmanned aircraft say that persuading the U.S. government to approve airspace for flying the unmanned craft near this urban area is critical. Civilian authorities fear technology for unmanned aircraft can’t assure air safety.

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

Hamid Karzai intends to launch the reconciliation and reintegration plan at the start of next week's London conference on Afghanistan, The Afghan president has also pledged to hold a new peace conference, a loya jirga, in the spring, restating a standing invitation toTaliban insurgents ready to swear an oath to the country's constitution.

Jeff Gates outlines how Israel, using game theory, has manipulated America, inflicting damage no enemy could, while acting as our closest ally. Through the careful application of complex game theory, terrorist acts have been planned based on superbly crafted plans meant to use public fear, outrage and the predictability of America to serve the interests of Israel while bringing about the systematic downfall of the United States.