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Tom Hayden
$11.86
By Wellford Wilms
$25.00
$23
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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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gizmodo.com
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By Nick Turse —
Those who haven’t seen this summer’s biggest blockbuster (so far, at least—this weekend’s “Indiana Jones” sequel may well change that) “Iron Man” and are planning to hit the multiplex might want to take a gander at this review. The article points out how “Iron Man” is the latest in a string of “pro-military” movies served up for youngsters’ consumption—even as two disastrous wars rage on overseas.
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By Marie Cocco — The comment was outrageous, but it was not the least bit surprising. A psychologist responsible for assessing returning war veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder—a psychological ailment that could entitle them to monthly disability payments—told staff members not to diagnose the illness because to do so would increase the government’s costs.
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post-gazette.com
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More than a dozen American soldiers have died or received severe electrical shocks in Iraq, reportedly as a result of faulty electrical work often done by ill-trained Iraqis and Afghans under the supervision of Houston-based contractor KBR.
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terrorism.inreview.com
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Four years after Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire in Afghanistan, his mother, Mary Tillman, is still asking questions—primarily about the U.S. government’s initial cover-up of the details of Pat’s death and about how far up the chain of command the deception extended. Here, New York Times sports writer George Vecsey praises Mary Tillman and her new memoir, “Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman.”
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By Amy Goodman — Sami al-Haj is a free man today, after having been imprisoned by the U.S. military for more than six years. His crime: journalism.
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Mary Tillman made a sharp and moving appearance Tuesday morning on the “Today” show to talk about her new book, “Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman,” about the friendly-fire death of her son, Pat, and the U.S. military’s subsequent cover-up in 2004.
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Here’s a sobering moment that could happen only with the aid of today’s technology: Sandie and Jeff Petee of Otis, Ore., were recently given a scary dose of reality in the form of a brief message on their answering machine when Sandie’s soldier son, Stephen Phillips, accidentally dialed their number during a battle in Afghanistan.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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By James Harris — Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, argues for a more humane foreign policy and explains why American airstrikes in Somalia and elsewhere are about more than terrorism.
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army.mil
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Pouncing on the rhetorical success of the U.S. “surge” in Iraq, the U.S. military launched operations Tuesday in the south of Afghanistan as part of a “mini surge” against strongholds of Taliban fighters.
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blogs.trb.com
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Why is it that the U.S. economy is on a serious downswing? Could it be that we’re in the midst of a super-expensive war with little sign of scaling down in the near future that has jacked up oil prices to new heights and strained the federal budget? According to Bush, he’d have worked out our economic woes if it weren’t for those meddling congressional Democrats.
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By Eugene Robinson — How on earth is the Republican Party going to sell John McCain? Once the Democrats stop doing the job, I mean.
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A suicide bomber set off a deadly explosion near a mosque in a popular marketplace in Zaranj, Afghanistan, Thursday evening as men were gathering for prayer, killing 20 people and injuring about 30.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Bill Boyarsky — Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s congressional check-in about Iraq this week didn’t offer much hope for America’s overseas entanglements, and as coverage of the overseas wars wanes, the media isn’t holding politicians’ feet to the fire—or telling the real story about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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abcnews.go.com
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Gen. Colin Powell won’t say who will get his vote this November, but on Thursday’s “Good Morning America,” the former secretary of state put in a good word for all three front-runners, praised Obama’s Rev. Wright speech and worried that the U.S. armed forces are becoming “very, very stretched” by the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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AP photo / Duane A. Laverty
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Despite some congressional resistance, it seems Gen. David Petraeus’ recommended “pause” in U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq will take effect after July. On Thursday, President Bush (whose approval ratings have plummeted to a new low) essentially deferred the withdrawal issue to his successor.
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By Marie Cocco — The same kinds of mismanagement and dysfunction that are at work in Iraq continue to plague veterans when they seek medical care at home.
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Agence France-Presse
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As the train that is the Bush administration begins to slow, the president has attended his last ever NATO summit. Speaking to alliance leaders Wednesday, Bush asked for patience and resolve to “finish the fight” in Afghanistan, a war now in its seventh year.
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nytimes.com
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The United States’ chief supplier of ammunition to Afghan forces is under investigation for a number of potential violations that give the unfortunate impression that America is less than fully committed to its fight against the Taliban.
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Newsday
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in London Wednesday to declare his readiness to send additional troops to Afghanistan. The move, seen by some as an effort to strengthen ties with his chums across the Channel, was well received by British lawmakers who believe an increase of NATO occupation forces in Afghanistan would best prevent a Taliban resurgence.
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By Amy Goodman — Last weekend, in the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a remarkable gathering occurred just outside Washington, D.C., called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations.
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By Robert Fisk — The Independent’s Robert Fisk looks back at five years of catastrophe in Iraq and is reminded of Winston Churchill’s depiction of Palestine as a “hell-disaster.”
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — That idiotic “what, me worry?” look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A Yemeni man has told Amnesty International that he was abducted and tortured and spent nearly three years in secret prisons at the hands of the CIA. Khaled al-Maqtari says that without charge, legal representation or even a word to his family he was shuttled from one prison to another and ultimately dumped into Yemeni custody, once the U.S. had finished with him.
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By Marie Cocco — The overdose of Reagan nostalgia to which we’ve been subjected during the Republican presidential primaries is as understandable as it is misplaced.
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Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, resigned on Tuesday, explaining that his reputation as an obstacle to President Bush’s military designs had become too much of a distraction. Fallon was often reported to be a thorn in the side of the president and his other military advisers, a role both the admiral and administration officials strongly deny.
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AP photo / Carolyn Kaster, file
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By Bill Boyarsky — I’m afraid Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are giving the game away to John McCain on the most important matter facing the country, the Iraq war. I hate to sound like one of those middle-aged jock-loving MSNBC pundits, but as I sit here on the sidelines I want to scream, “Quit playing defense.”
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AP photo / Ahmad al-Rubaye, pool
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By Robert Scheer — President Bush has made his antagonism for Iran and its president well known, but in Iraq he has created a great ally for his enemy, as was clear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic visit.
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By Eugene Robinson — It was Prince Harry’s dream to fight in a war, and the British press, normally cutthroat, agreed to let him live it. How sweet. If only it didn’t violate the obligations of journalists to their readers.
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time.com
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A critique often leveled at those who wage wars is that they don’t belong to the class of citizens whose children go to fight them. Not so in the case of England’s royals, as 23-year-old Prince Harry has been fighting (albeit by choice) on the front line in Afghanistan, giving him the chance, he says, to be “a normal person for once.”
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By Marie Cocco — While Pakistan steals headlines, neighboring Afghanistan offers a more realistic opportunity to crack down on the incubation of terrorists—if only the United States and other interested governments are willing to think outside the box.
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Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, a 23-year-old Afghan student, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy because of an article he downloaded from the Internet. The verdict has aroused outrage around the world, and top U.S. and European officials have spoken with the Afghan government. However, some worry that international pressure could back Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the nation’s religious fundamentalists into a corner and therefore ensure that the execution is carried out.
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By Marie Cocco — The president and other fear mongers love to harangue Americans with the specter of terrorism when their pet projects (and our freedoms) are on the line, but when it comes to the basic programs that protect us from disaster, money talks louder than threats.
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flickr.com
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By Robert Scheer — Whadda you mean “we,” Mr. TV Pundit? When you say “we” are doing better in Iraq or, even more absurd, that “we” were right to invade that country in the first place, are you putting Joe Blow American in the same bag as the top officers of Exxon, which made $40.6 billion in profit last year?
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By Aaron Glantz — When young American men and women sign up to serve in our military, the government makes them a basic promise: If they are wounded in the line of duty, they will get the care they need. But for far too many, that’s a promise that only exists on paper—even months after the news emerged about American vets’ shameful treatment at U.S. military facilities.
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A commission set up by Congress in 2005 to examine the readiness of National Guard and reserve units has found that they’re simply inadequate to the task of dealing with a major disaster in the United States. The commission blamed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the Pentagon’s assumption that training for those conflicts would somehow prepare troops for disaster relief at home.
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The number of active-duty soldiers who kill themselves or attempt to is the highest it’s been since the Army began keeping records almost 30 years ago. Three hundred fifty soldiers attempted suicide or injured themselves in 2002, compared with 2,100 in 2007.
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overspun.com
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President Bush’s new budget will not fully fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, the White House plans to ask for “bridge” funds—enough to pay for the wars until the next president takes over. Though no official figure has been given, congressional estimates put the amount at less than half of what we spend on the wars in a year.
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rawa.org
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Mark Deli Siljander, a former Republican congressman, has been indicted for allegedly helping an Islamic charity fund Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a vicious Afghan militant leader with ties to al-Qaida. According to the book “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Hekmatyar was the largest recipient of U.S. weapons during the Afghan war with the Soviets.
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AP photo / David Guttenfelder
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By Scott Ritter — Pervez Musharraf’s recent actions remind us, Ritter argues, that America’s special relationship with Pakistan serves neither country’s best interests.
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serenahotels.com
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The Taliban has taken responsibility for the bombing Monday of Afghanistan’s only five-star hotel. The luxurious Serena Hotel, in Kabul, is popular with diplomats and therefore makes for an attractive target.
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Of the 750,000 or so veterans who have been discharged from the “war on terror,” roughly one-quarter have been recognized by the VA as mentally or physically injured. One of the leading debilitating injuries suffered by those men and women is PTSD, but how much they’re compensated by the government depends a great deal on where they live, according to an investigation by McClatchy’s Washington bureau.
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cnn.com
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The House has followed in the wake of the Senate, saying yes to $70 billion in funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anti-war Democrats have had little success overcoming Republican filibusters and a publicity blitz meant to sell the “surge.”
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whitehouse.org
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Twenty-one Senate Democrats, Joe Lieberman and all but one Republican just approved $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democrats had tried for weeks to tie funding for the wars to a withdrawal plan, but in the end the president got his way.
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By Amy Goodman — The kidnap and torture program of the Bush administration, with its secret CIA “black site” prisons and “torture taxi” flights on private jets, saw a little light of day this week.
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AP photo / Bela Szandelszky
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By Chris Hedges — The refusal to pay my taxes if we go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for these two conflicts, is not a means. It is an end. I do not know if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in halting these wars. All I know is that it is worth doing.
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