|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 . '/' . substr('9780871404244',-6,3) . '/' . '9780871404244' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Max Boot
$35.00
By Richard Ellis
$10.88
$23
|
|
|
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Winter approaches, and as many as 400,000 Afghans face starvation. The trouble is not an insufficient supply of food. There is no way to get food to those who need it.
|
defenseindustrydaily.com
|
Roughly 20,000 soldiers who aren’t on the military’s list of combat wounded have signs of brain injury, according to an analysis of Army, Navy and Veterans Affairs data conducted by USA Today. The Pentagon’s official tally of troops who’ve suffered brain trauma in combat is 4,471—one-fifth the total gleaned from military records.
|
AP photo / Charles Dharapak
|
By Robert Scheer — What can you get for a trillion bucks? Or make that $1.6 trillion, if you take the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as tallied by the majority staff of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Or is it the $3.5-trillion figure cited by Paul, whose concern about the true cost of this war for ordinary Americans shames the leading Democrats?
|
AP photo / Gerald Herbert
|
By Robert Scheer — “The war on terror” made me do it. That’s the excuse that works for George W. Bush to rationalize his assaults on the rule of law, from arbitrary arrest to torture. So why not try some war-on-terror obfuscation to bail out his president-dictator buddy over in Pakistan?
|
|
According to the calculations of congressional Democrats, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost about $1.5 trillion. That’s nearly double the (already staggering) $804 billion that’s been appropriated or requested. Lawmakers arrived at the revised estimate by considering larger economic factors, including interest on debt and health care costs for wounded veterans.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
The Air Force has decided to ground all 676 F-15 fighter jets in service because of a recent crash that is thought to have originated from a mechanical defect that may have caused the plane to break up in flight.
|
nytimes.com
|
By Todd Gitlin — Was the Bush administration’s fevered response to 9/11 made easier by primal American myths of victimization and fear, as Susan Faludi argues in her provocative new book?
|
|
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, a figure that includes interest for putting war costs on the proverbial credit card. To date, the two conflicts have cost more (adjusted for inflation) than the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — An impotent GOP is beating up immigrants, sick kids and foreign countries in the feeble hope that grateful voters will stick it to the Democrats next year.
|
AP photo / Haraz N. Ghanbari, file
|
A new book by two ACLU lawyers, “Administration of Torture,” includes documents in which one Gen. Michael Dunlavey claims that President Bush gave him “marching orders” to get the Pentagon’s approval of more severe interrogation methods at Guantanamo. Also, it alleges that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — By simply deciding that something is a “state secret,” the Bush government has avoided answering for its brutal treatment of innocent victims in the war on terror. This is a perversion of the principle of American justice.
|
|
In an attempt to target suspected militants with ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban, the Pakistani army has bombarded a section of its shared border with Afghanistan for four days, causing chaos in the town of Mir Ali in north Waziristan, where some 45 troops and 150 rebels have reportedly been killed.
Posted on Oct 9, 2007
READ MORE 
|
rawstory.com
|
Last Friday, National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin was found dead on her U.S. base in Afghanistan with a single gunshot wound in her head. Now, her family is looking for answers and wondering why the U.S. military isn’t offering details about the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death.
|
|
By Joe Conason — The controversy over what Rush Limbaugh meant when he uttered the phrase “phony soldiers” last week isn’t just another broadcast sideshow. As the political power of conservatism declines, the symbolic authority of figures such as Limbaugh is likewise shrinking.
|
foreignpolicy.com
|
The Washington Post has it on good authority that Pakistan is losing its war against Taliban and al-Qaida forces operating within its borders, due in no small part to Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s tenuous hold on power.
|
|
Blackwater USA founder and chairman Erik Prince stubbornly defended his company Tuesday while members of the House Oversight Committee grilled him with questions such as “Why are we privatizing our military to an organization that has been aggressive and in some cases reckless in the handling of their duties?”
|
|
The freshly sworn-in chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, started his first day on the job with this revelation: “The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan will one day end.” That’s a relief, coming from the newest member of Team Bush, but don’t get too excited, there’s more: “We must be ready for who and what comes after.” Oh dear.
|
AP photo / Charlie Niebergall
|
By Robert Scheer — It’s not just Bushie loyalists and Republicans who are gunning for more money to be poured (out of taxpayers’ pockets) into the Iraq war chest. Take Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who is aiming to double Bush’s proposed $12 billion in funding for the rapid production of mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles—a proposition which, Scheer argues, is about much more than the security of U.S. troops.
|
|
Add another $50 billion to the tab the Bush administration is looking to run up in military costs for the ‘08 fiscal year, bringing the potential total to around $200 billion if this latest request goes through.
|
|
Rep. Henry Waxman has accused the State Department’s top oversight official of looking out for the best interests of the Bush administration, and not the American taxpayer. A number of current and former subordinates of the State Department’s inspector general contacted Waxman to report interference with investigations into fraud and corruption in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
|
AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
|
Aaron Glantz —
The sorry state of care of American veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is not accidental. It’s on purpose. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has fought every effort to improve care for wounded and disabled veterans.
|
men.style.com/GQ
|
The former defense secretary graces the pages of October’s GQ (of all places) to make some bold assertions, claiming he was not a driving force behind the Iraq war and that he warned the president of many of the problems that have come to pass.
|
|
Ayaz Amir —
Valuable sources of news and analysis about key nations and players on the current world stage (including our own) can often be found by looking beyond the western “MSM.” Here, prominent Pakistani columnist Ayaz Amir offers his forceful take on the U.S.‘s divisive impact on his country’s politics and future.
|
|
Being heavily in debt is prompting some U.S. military members to volunteer to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. Take Air Force Capt. Nick Sloan, who admits that the need to get out of debt was a significant factor in his choice to go to Iraq.
|
guardian.co.uk
|
More than 93 percent of the world’s opiates are now grown in Afghanistan, with an opium crop that has doubled in the last two years. According to the executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, “No other country beside China in the 19th Century ever had such a large amount of land dedicated to illegal activities.”
|
|
According to the U.S. military, 99 active-duty soldiers committed suicide in 2006, a number that may rise after ongoing investigations into other cases conclude, making last year’s suicide rate the highest in 26 years.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
The Pakistani government may declare a state of emergency, which would grant it extraordinary powers, limit civil liberties and extend the political lifespan of embattled President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
|
abc.net.au
|
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has criticized the tough talk coming out of Washington and the presidential campaign as counterproductive. President Bush and Barack Obama, among others, have recently raised the possibility of attacking targets in Pakistan without necessarily consulting that nation’s government.
|
|
Joining forces for a press conference at Camp David on Monday, President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused the Taliban’s proposal for a prisoner swap. The Taliban says it will free the 21 surviving South Korean Christians kidnapped in Afghanistan on July 19 if captive Taliban members are released.
|
AP Photo / Abdul Khaleq
|
A U.S.-led airstrike on a meeting of Taliban leaders killed a “large number” of civilians, witnesses said. Roughly 50 people were hospitalized for injuries. NATO has said it is considering the use of smaller bombs in order to curtail civilian casualties.
|
|
By Robert Fisk — The seasoned Mideast reporter for the British paper The Independent returns home to his flat in Beirut to find his landlord reinforcing his building with an iron door. After considering the state of affairs in Lebanon—not to mention in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Gaza—Fisk gets behind his landlord’s security plan.
|
|
In a hearing before a House committee Wednesday, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified he had not known the real circumstances of Pat Tillman’s death in April 2004 and that he would not characterize the Army’s handling of the friendly-fire case as a “cover-up.”
|
foxnews.com
|
Defense Department documents handed over to the Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request raised the possibility that the “friendly-fire” death of soldier Pat Tillman, a former NFL player, was the result of an intentional act that amounted to a crime.
|
|
The Army is punishing seven officers for mishandling the Pat Tillman case, according to ABC News. The harshest punishment reportedly is being meted out to Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who allegedly deceived investigators about when he knew the facts about Tillman’s death.
|
AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite
|
With the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder on the rise among American veterans returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, two veterans’ groups have filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (pictured) and other defendants, citing systemwide failures in dealing with the PTSD crisis on the governmental level.
|
AP photo / Musa Khan
|
The Taliban, which sponsored al-Qaida, is alive and well on both sides of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and, following last week’s Red Mosque showdown in Pakistan, pro-Taliban militants are retaliating by breaking a 10-month truce and unleashing violence in the country’s northern region.
|
|
By Tom Engelhardt — Civilian deaths as a result of ground operations (see Haditha) often evoke cries of barbarism from the media, but the killing of innocents in airstrikes is routinely characterized as “collateral damage” and a cold fact of modern warfare. Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch proposes that we start to speak honestly about the devastation American military operations have rained down on Afghanistan and Iraq and see “collateral damage” for what it really is: carnage.
|
|
A tragic milestone has been marked in Afghanistan: The number of civilian deaths attributed to American- and NATO-led forces in the last half-year has outstripped the number caused by insurgents.
|
AP Photo/Farzana Wahidy
|
NATO officials have registered Afghan President Hamad Karzai’s strong criticism of the Western coalition’s recent tactics, which have resulted in tragically high numbers of civilian deaths, and are offering conciliatory words in response.
|
|
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai angrily accused American- and NATO-led forces in his country of becoming increasingly reckless with their combat strategies, killing innocent civilians and straining relations with Afghanistan.
|
|
The Taliban, once a powerful and oppressive presence in Afghanistan, does not “have the guts” to face down the government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the BBC. The real problem that needs attention in his country, Karzai said, is the ever-rising civilian death toll.
Posted on Jun 21, 2007
READ MORE
|
|
Sometimes the best way to tell what other nations think of the U.S. is to see how Americans are depicted in entertainment products. Judging by this translated excerpt from the Iranian television drama “Guantanamo” (granted, subject matter must also weigh heavily in the equation), our international PR leaves a lot to be desired.
|
|
Afghan forces retook a district in Kandahar province that had been captured by the Taliban. The Afghan forces said they had made a tactical decision to withdraw, but the Taliban said it captured the district outright after days of battle. Either way, the former ruling fundamentalists of Afghanistan appear less than beaten.
|
|
An airstrike by U.S.-led forces near the eastern border of Afghanistan killed seven children Sunday night—a tragic error that coalition forces attributed to al-Qaida operatives who had used “human shields” as cover, according to The New York Times.
|
|
Michael T. Klare —
What if wars of the future are fought just to run the machines that fight them? That’s just the alarmingly ironic point that Klare, author of “Blood and Oil,” takes on in this essay, sizing up the Pentagon’s huge energy expenditure—which will only increase exponentially if America’s imperialist globe-trotting continues. Note: Originally posted on TomDispatch.
|
|
Afghan police say U.S.-led troops opened fire on a security post, killing seven police officers. The U.S. military has acknowledged the skirmish, but said it was responding to an attack and did not confirm the Afghan casualties. The Red Cross has described worsening security in Afghanistan as “a very worrying situation.”
|
makeshiftblog.wordpress.com
|
A new study of American veterans who served between 1917 and 1994 found that returning soldiers are more than twice as likely to kill themselves, compared to civilians. While the research did not include veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall trend and reports of poor mental health care are cause for concern.
|
news.yahoo.com
|
Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he had “concerns” over the military “surge” in Iraq during its planning and development. He said the operation would “likely have only temporary and localized effects” unless it was matched by efforts from the Iraqi government and American civilian authorities.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Now we’ve bungled our own kangaroo courts. Two military judges, acting separately in the cases of two alleged terrorists, have dismissed war crimes charges against both. The legal reasoning is technical. But this breakdown is no technicality—it is farce.
|
|
Five Americans, a Canadian and a Briton died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on Wednesday, apparently shot down by a resurgent Taliban. The grim news from what some have called “the forgotten war” in Afghanistan comes amid mounting casualty reports from Iraq.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Bank of America Lied to Homeowners and Rewarded Foreclosures, Ex-Employees Say
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
