Archive for the ‘war’ Category
February 9, 2010
US occupation forces in Afghanistan
Thousands of Afghan civilians have began fleeing their homes before a threatened US military offensive against Taliban fighters.
International Red Crescent aid workers in the southern Afghanistan city of Marjah, Helmand province, reported that US warplanes had dropped leaflets on the area warning people to leave or be killed.
The Taliban has inflicted a huge number of casualties on the US-led occupation forces in Marjah.
Commander of more than 55,000 foreign fighters in Afghanistan US General Stanley McChrystal claimed that the leaflets were directed at Taliban militants.
Hee added that the offensive against the city, which has a population of 80,000, was intended to “re-establish security.”
Red Crescent spokesman Bijan Farnoudi warned that the Afghanistan government did not seem prepared to deal with an exodus of refugees and revealed that medical posts in the province were already recording an increase in the number of patients with bullet or shrapnel wounds.
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Tags:Afghan civilians, Afghanistan, Helmand province, Taliban, US military
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February 9, 2010
Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA’s “secret” battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — that is, pilot-less drones — shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in: a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or Afghan “militants” have died. The numbers are often remarkably precise. Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from. In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead. They, too, tend to be precise.
Don’t let that precision fool you. Here’s the reality: There are no reporters on the ground and none of these figures can be taken as accurate. Let’s just consider the CIA side of things. Any information that comes from American sources (i.e. the CIA) has to be looked at with great wariness. As a start, the CIA’s history is one of deception. There’s no reason to take anything its sources say at face value. They will report just what they think it’s in their interest to report — and the ongoing “success” of their drone strikes is distinctly in their interest.
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Tags:"Operation Breakfast", CIA's "secret" battlefied, CIA’s escalating drone war, Combodia, Pakistan, pilot-less drones, Pratap Chatterjee, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Vietnam
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February 7, 2010
Laura Flanders, The Nation, Feb 3, 2010
Who says the president is failing to show leadership? In one area at least, there’s no sign of flag or falter. If anything, the administration’s only becoming more forthright. Sad to say, that area is military build-up.
Last year, the White House made a big deal of cutting a weapons program — the F-22 fighter jet — and the cuts conveniently obscured the growth in spending on unmanned aircraft or drones (the weapons that Pakistanis say killed a record 123 civilians in twelve attacks last month; 41 for every alleged Al Qaeda operative.)
This year, the president dispensed with the window dressing. No big deal about cuts — except on the domestic side. While the administration’s record $3.8 trillion budget cuts or freezes spending on domestic programs, it requests $708.3 billion for war. That’s $14.8 billion more than we’re spending now.
The total includes $548.9 billion for “regular” war, plus $159.3 billion for special spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh yes, the administration’s also asking Congress to increase spending on new nuclear weapons by more than $7 billion dollars over the next five years — despite that peace prize-winning pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world.
The quote of the day comes from the CEO of a military contractor-funded policy group called the Lexington Institute. Loren Thompson tells Tuesday’s New York Times, “The defense industry is pleased but bemused… It’s been telling itself for years that when the Democrats got control it would be bad news for weapons programs. But the spending keeps going on.”
Take that you Nobel committee!
And to think some whiners complain about Democrats suffering from a lack of direction.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
Tags:$3.8 trillion budget, $708.3 billion for war, defense industry, drones killed Pakistani civilians, Laura Flanders, President Barack Obama, spending on new nuclear weapons, unmanned aircraft or drones, weapons
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
February 7, 2010
Victims trapped in the rubble after a suicide bombing at the opening of a school for girls in the northwestern Pakistani town of Dir last week
THE discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country.
Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term “war on terror” and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists.
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Tags:American soldiers, bombing, CIA retaliation, covert war in Pakistan, multiple drone attack, Obama, Pakistan, US drone airstrikes in Pakistan, US troops were in Pakistan
Posted in Commentary, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
February 7, 2010
Dahr Jamail, author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, reports on how the U.S. military has used anthropologists and other social scientists to further the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, Hayley Austin)
A core tenet of the Obama administration’s plans for “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan is an increased reliance on counterinsurgency.
As previously reported on this web site, the US military has sent shock troops – anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists – with their own troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, who also donned helmets and flak jackets. By the end of 2007, American scholars in these fields were embedding with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a Pentagon program called Human Terrain System (HTS), which evolved shortly thereafter into a $40 million program that embedded four or five person groups of scholars in the aforementioned fields in all 26 US combat brigades that were busily occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The program is currently comprised of approximately 400 employees, and is actively seeking new recruits.
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Tags:American scholars, Dahr Jamail, David Price, Human Terrain System (HTS), Iraq and Afghanistan wars, militarization of anthropology, scholars with the troops, US military
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February 5, 2010
George S. Hishmeh, Al Arabiya News Channel, Feb 5, 2010
Much as the world has responded marvelously and generously to calls to help Haitians after their devastating earthquake last month. The opposite has been true about the impoverished Palestinians in Gaza Strip who have been under an increasingly tighter siege since the Israeli blitz a little over a year ago.
The Obama administration has committed $300 million to help rebuild the heavily demolished area, now home to more than 1.5 million Palestinians, many of them refugees from nearby towns in what is now Israel. The United Nations has also raised $4.5 billion, but to date, neither the American nor the U.N. funds have been spent there because of the tight Israeli blockade which is also enforced by the Egyptians on their border with the once Israeli-occupied strip.
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Tags:blockade of Gaza, George S. Hishmeh, Israel, Palestinians in Gaza, Richard Goldstone report
Posted in Gaza, Uncategorized, war, war crimes, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
February 4, 2010
Police and rescue workers look into a destroyed vehicle at the site of a bombing which hit near a school in Timergara, the main town in Lower Dir district, located in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province on February 3, 2010. STR/PAKISTAN/REUTERS
Three U.S. soldiers are among those killed in a bomb blast in northwest Pakistan
Barack Obama may have banned the Bush-era term “war on terror,” but the scope of the conflict hasn’t diminished. In fact, with covert and mostly deniable violence, the President has vastly escalated the war against Islamic extremists, far beyond the obvious 30,000 additional troops sent to Afghanistan.
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Tags:Afghanistan, American airstrikes in Pakistan, American covert operations, Obama's scalation of war, Pakistan, U.S. soldiers in Pakistan
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
February 3, 2010
Americans have largely stopped thinking about Iraq, even though we still have approximately 110,000 troops there, as well as the largest “embassy” on the planet (and still growing). We’ve generally chalked up our war in Iraq to the failed past, and some Americans, after the surge of 2007, even think of it as, if not a success, at least no longer a debacle. Few care to spend much time considering the catastrophe we actually brought down on the Iraqis in “liberating” them.
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Tags:American troops in Iraq, carnage, death toll, Iraq, Michael Schwartz, occupation of Iraq, oil, President Obama, U.S. embassy in Iraq, US military bases
Posted in Commentary, Iraq, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
February 3, 2010
By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, Feb 3, 2010
CIA drone missile attacks claimed the lives of 123 civilians last month alone in Pakistan, it was reported this week. Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, US Special Forces have launched an assassination campaign against alleged leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement in preparation for an imminent military offensive.
These killings are the product of the military “surge” ordered by the Obama administration, which is increasing the US troop deployment in the country by another 30,000. With other NATO countries providing between 5,000 and 10,000 additional soldiers, the occupation force in Afghanistan is set to swell to 150,000 by the fall of this year.
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Tags:Afghanistan, American drone attacks, Bill Van Auken, mounting casualties, Obama's military 'surge', Pakistan, Pakistani military offensives, revenge attacks by CIA, targeted assassinations
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Pakistan, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
February 2, 2010
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: deltaMike, BloodInOurWells)
This is how major US defense contractors reacted to the Obama administration’s unveiling of its fiscal year 2011 spending plan for the Pentagon, part of the president’s overall $3.8 trillion budget proposal.
Shares of General Dynamics, a maker of military aircraft, submarines and munitions, rose 3.9 percent and closed at $69.43 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the uptick due in large part to additional spending on the war in Afghanistan, according to Sanford Bernstein, a financial research firm.
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Tags:General Dynamics, Harris Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp., Obama's budget proposal, Predator and Reaper drones, Raytheon Co., reaction of US defense contractors, Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Iraq, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
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Peace and Justice Post 
The Defense Industry Is Pleased with Obama
February 7, 2010Laura Flanders, The Nation, Feb 3, 2010
Who says the president is failing to show leadership? In one area at least, there’s no sign of flag or falter. If anything, the administration’s only becoming more forthright. Sad to say, that area is military build-up.
Last year, the White House made a big deal of cutting a weapons program — the F-22 fighter jet — and the cuts conveniently obscured the growth in spending on unmanned aircraft or drones (the weapons that Pakistanis say killed a record 123 civilians in twelve attacks last month; 41 for every alleged Al Qaeda operative.)
This year, the president dispensed with the window dressing. No big deal about cuts — except on the domestic side. While the administration’s record $3.8 trillion budget cuts or freezes spending on domestic programs, it requests $708.3 billion for war. That’s $14.8 billion more than we’re spending now.
The total includes $548.9 billion for “regular” war, plus $159.3 billion for special spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh yes, the administration’s also asking Congress to increase spending on new nuclear weapons by more than $7 billion dollars over the next five years — despite that peace prize-winning pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world.
The quote of the day comes from the CEO of a military contractor-funded policy group called the Lexington Institute. Loren Thompson tells Tuesday’s New York Times, “The defense industry is pleased but bemused… It’s been telling itself for years that when the Democrats got control it would be bad news for weapons programs. But the spending keeps going on.”
Take that you Nobel committee!
And to think some whiners complain about Democrats suffering from a lack of direction.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
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Tags:$3.8 trillion budget, $708.3 billion for war, defense industry, drones killed Pakistani civilians, Laura Flanders, President Barack Obama, spending on new nuclear weapons, unmanned aircraft or drones, weapons
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »