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By Chris Hedges
$20.75
By Mahmoud Darwish
$12.00
$24
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msnbc.msn.com
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Just before the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, al-Qaida has released a lengthy videotape featuring the group’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, providing updates about how the holy war is faring around the globe and laying into Iran for “cooperating with the Americans” and with the American-approved governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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In Jonathan Mahler’s new book, George W. Bush emerges as the most lawless president in American history, the first to usurp the law as a matter of policy.
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By William Pfaff — The Bush administration has lived by a strategy of tension, and will go out of office bequeathing the wars it has started and the ill will it has created to its successors, to compromise those who come after.
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AP photo / William B. Plowman
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By Col. Ann Wright — Since I posted on April 28 the article “Is There an Army Cover Up of the Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers,” the deaths of two more U.S. Army women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been listed as suicides—the Sept. 28, 2007, death of 30-year-old Spc. Ciara Durkin and the Feb. 22, 2008, death of 25-year-old Spc. Keisha Morgan. Both “suicides” are disputed by the families of the women.
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AP photo / Fraidoon Pooyaa
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Iraq isn’t the only U.S.-occupied nation looking for some sovereignty. Afghan officials are calling for more regulation of foreign troops amid an uproar over U.S. airstrikes. One recent U.S.-led attack, according a U.N. investigation, probably killed 90 civilians—mostly children.
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AP photo / Rafiq Maqbool
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By Chris Hedges — Mounting bombing raids and widespread detentions of Afghans are rapidly turning Afghanistan into the mirror image of Iraq. But these very real events, which will have devastating consequences over the next few months and years, are largely ignored by us.
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music.aol.com
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Is this the same Toby Keith who unleashed the cheese-slathered anthem, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” (complete with fluffy golden retriever puppies and rippling flags in the video version), on the general public in 2002? Mr. “We’ll-Put-A-Boot-Up-Your-Ass”?
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By William Pfaff — When large and powerful countries intervene in the affairs of smaller countries, they take for granted that they are, or should be—and certainly could be—in control. The reverse is often true.
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arcent.army.mil
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Despite criticisms of the efficacy of the “surge” in Iraq, a U.S. commander in Afghanistan has dared to say that a planned “surge” in Afghanistan would in fact not help U.S. interests in the country. The commander did make sure not to completely deweaponize the Bush administration’s rhetoric, suggesting instead that a different type of surge is needed.
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AP photo / Alex Brandon
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By Bill Boyarsky — After enduring the silly debate over who injected race into the presidential campaign, let’s look at some recent numbers that indicate how Barack Obama could win this close election.
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By Marie Cocco — There is nothing like the blast of a Baghdad bomb and the wail of sirens to drown out John McCain’s bitter campaign sound bites or the patter of Barack Obama’s “premature victory lap.”
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AP photo / Evan Vucci
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President Bush had words of praise for Pakistan during his first meet-and-greet with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani at the White House on Monday, a meeting in which the subject of the U.S. missile attack on the Pakistani-Afghan border mere hours before was not brought up by either party.
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AP photo / Jae C. Hong
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During his quick jaunt to Paris on Friday, Barack Obama sent a direct message to Iran, cautioning it to stop enriching uranium or “the pressure ... is only going to build.” Obama had the chance to chat briefly with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who told him that the French would be “delighted” if he won in November’s election.
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In “Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies,” Barbara Slavin, a leading Middle East reporter for USA Today, offers a refreshingly nuanced and revelatory taxonomy of power within theocratic Iran that sheds light on its leaders and their ambitions.
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By Eugene Robinson — While John McCain pouted in obscurity, Barack Obama capped off a whirlwind tour with a commanding performance on the world stage.
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AP photo / Ziv Koren, Pool
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By Robert Scheer — Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack. Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration.
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AP photo / Jae C. Hong
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By Bill Boyarsky — The adoring media coverage of Barack Obama’s international tour is masking the reality that, whether he wins or loses, we’re almost certain to be stuck in Iraq for a long time, thanks to the legacy of George Bush.
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Wiki Commons
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Stung by lawsuits, protests, government audits, criminal charges and negative media attention, executives from the mercenary firm Blackwater Worldwide say providing security in Iraq and elsewhere has become a drain on the company’s future and will be gradually all but phased out. However, there are no immediate plans to end the contract with the State Department which became so controversial after the company’s agents went on a deadly shooting spree in Baghdad last year.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — To win the presidency, Barack Obama needs only to battle John McCain to a tie on foreign policy and national security. That means Obama has no need for a great triumph during his trip this week to the Middle East and Europe. His goal is to look safe, sound and competent, and that’s how he’s playing things.
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s not a “timetable” for extricating U.S troops from Iraq that George W. Bush is suddenly talking about, and heaven help anyone who accuses him of proposing a “timeline.” No, the Decider says he is now amenable to a “time horizon,” which apparently is a whole different kind of time thing.
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AP photo / Jae C. Hong
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Before leaving Kabul for Baghdad, Barack Obama spoke to his intention to increase America’s troop commitment to Afghanistan by 10,000 soldiers. “We have to understand that the situation is precarious and urgent ... and I believe this has to be the central focus, the central front, in the battle against terrorism,” the candidate told CBS.
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AP photo
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Barack Obama embarked on his international diplomacy tour—a key step in raising his profile on the world stage and demonstrating his readiness to take over the American presidency—with an important first major stop. The Illinois senator landed in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday as part of congressional delegation surveying the current situation in that troubled nation.
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By William Pfaff — Barack Obama is right to want to get out of Iraq, but his eagerness to do battle in the tribal hinterlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan will only lead to a quagmire of his own.
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Apparently, the Bush administration is also against straight marriage—if you live in the desert under U.S. military occupation. Tom Engelhardt details seven years of wedding crashing in Afganistan and Iraq, and the notable lack of remorse on the part of the Pentagon.
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Canadian lawyers released a wrenching 2003 video—the first of its kind ever made public—of a tearful 16-year-old boy suffering what appears to be a mental breakdown during an interrogation by Canadian officials at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. Five years later, Omar Khadr has still not been charged with any crime.
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AP photo / Al Behrman
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Sen. Barack Obama made a key speech on Tuesday in Washington, in which he asserted his position on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, offered a 16-month troop withdrawal timetable and outlined his plans for combating terrorism if he is elected president in November.
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Following this weekend’s attack in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, in which nine American soldiers were killed by Afghan insurgents, U.S. commanders have asked the Pentagon for more heavily armored MRAP vehicles—as many as 600 to 1,000 more—according to this CNN report from Monday morning.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Nine American soldiers are dead after a Taliban raid on a small combat outpost in the Afghan province of Kunar, near Pakistan. Coalition forces rarely experience such losses. The attack took place close to where the U.S. allegedly killed 47 civilians, a charge the military denies.
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Imagine this happening in the U.S.: Forty-seven people, including the bride, are killed on their way to a wedding after an airstrike on “militants” goes off course. Of course, this happened not in the U.S. but in Afghanistan, and, of course, the attack’s civilian toll was initially denied by the U.S. military.
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AP photo / Petros Giannakouris
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By William Pfaff — The endless debate about the U.S. withdrawing its army from Iraq and what will happen to the country once it does tends to ignore much of what we know about how the world works.
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thecia.com.au
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The recent spate of war movies about Iraq and Afghanistan has proved to be a hard sell with American audiences—even more so with the U.S. military. Now, the Pentagon is combating a certain lack of nuance, as military officials see it, in flicks like “Redacted” and “In the Valley of Elah” by offering script consultation services to Hollywood types looking to make movies about the current conflicts in the Middle East.
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AP photos / Pajhwok News Agency
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Details have emerged about Monday’s deadly blast at the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, raising suspicion that the bombing was done by Pakistani militants associated with the Taliban. The fact that the Indian Embassy was targeted is one substantial indication, considering the long-standing conflict between India and Pakistan. The blast killed 41 and injured over 130.
Posted on Jul 7, 2008
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A suicide bombing apparently tied to the one-year anniversary of the Red Mosque raid killed at least 15 in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad Sunday night. The next morning, a bomber drove an explosives-laden car into the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 41—including India’s ranking defense attaché—and injuring more than 140 others.
Posted on Jul 7, 2008
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AP photo / Kevin Sanders, file
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By Chris Hedges — I survive the degradation that has become America—a land that exalts itself as a bastion of freedom and liberty while it tortures human beings, stripped of their rights, in offshore penal colonies, a land that wages wars defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, a land that turns its back on its poor, its weak, its mentally ill, in a relentless drive to embrace totalitarian capitalism—because I read books.
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The Brave New Foundation is launching an important new project, “In Their Boots,” which gives veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a platform to tell their own stories about serving and sacrifice. Check out American soldiers’ compelling stories in this week’s installment.
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By William Pfaff — A basic argument in Washington’s war on terror, an argument that one might think settled by now, concerns whether al-Qaida is the powerful global organization the Bush administration says it is or whether it has been, since its retreat into the Pakistan tribal areas, mostly an Internet phenomenon.
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voanews.com
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For the second month in a row, the number of American and NATO troops killed in Afghanistan—45—was higher than in Iraq. In fact, the so-called forgotten war was deadlier last month than at any time since the United States invaded in 2001, according to an AP tally.
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By William Pfaff — The Bush government was elected in 2000 on a platform including vigorous opposition to the United States Army’s doing “nation-building.” What a difference a five-year-long military disaster can make!
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It’s been more than six years since the invasion of Afghanistan but, as this Mosaic Intelligence Report illustrates, it looks like the Taliban is actually getting stronger and bolder—as evidenced by the recent Taliban-led prison break at Kandahar’s Sarposa Prison. Could 2008 be the Year of the Taliban?
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Flickr / soldiersmediacenter
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Coverage of the Iraq war on American newscasts gets a fraction of the airtime it has in past years. Some network journalists complain that they have to beg to get Iraq stories on the air. Although the war in Afghanistan has recently gotten more coverage, no American network has a full-time correspondent on the ground there.
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UNHCR / John Wreford
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A U.N. report Tuesday estimated the number of the world’s displaced refugees in 2007 at 11.4 million, a majority of which the U.N. says come from the U.S.-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Analysts also say the number of refugees threatens to grow even more due to new concerns such as climate change, environmental degradation and increasingly scarce resources.
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By Marie Cocco — The forceful language of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s decision in the case granting detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp the right to contest their confinement in federal court is the voice of a Supreme Court majority that is fed up.
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Last weekend’s prison break in Kandahar, Afghanistan, resulted in the deaths of at least nine policemen and eight prisoners, and more than 600 prisoners were on the loose, many of them said to have ties to the Taliban.
Posted on Jun 16, 2008
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z.about.com
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If authoring a war against innocent civilians abroad and civil liberties at home wasn’t enough, George W. Bush is toying with the idea of writing a book upon leaving the Oval Office in January.
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AP photo / Allauddin Khan
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A nighttime raid on Kandahar’s Sarposa Prison, carried out by Taliban operatives Friday, led to the escape of 1,200 prisoners, including around 400 Taliban members. The attack represented a serious security challenge in the Afghan city that’s considered the traditional home of the country’s leaders and the Taliban’s spiritual center.
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AP photo / LM Otero
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By Elliot D. Cohen — John McCain has long been a major player in a radical militaristic group driven by an ideology of global expansionism and dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive, unilateral, multiple wars. Over its two terms, the George W. Bush administration has planted the seeds for this geopolitical master plan, and now appears to be counting on the McCain administration, if one comes to power, to nurture it.
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Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting committee has been meeting with lawmakers in Washington, so naturally a few names have started to filter out. Most were to be expected (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Jim Webb and so on), but among them is someone you may not have heard of: retired Gen. James Jones, a veteran of the Vietnam War and former supreme allied commander of NATO. Of course it’s far too soon to place bets.
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nsa.gov
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Only a year after his agency warned of a resurgence of al-Qaida in the Arab world, CIA Director Michael Hayden remarked on Friday that U.S. “counter-terrorism work” has led to the strategic defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and significant setbacks for al-Qaida globally.
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Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the privatization of the military and the surge in defense spending since 9/11, individual Pentagon auditors now have to keep track of more than three times as much money as they did 10 years ago. Because of limited resources, the Defense Department inspector general revealed in a recent report, about half of the military’s $316 billion weapons budget went under the radar last year.
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President Bush gave his final Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and declaring: “It is a solemn reminder of the cost of freedom that the number of headstones in a place like this grows with every Memorial Day.”
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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