Posts Tagged ‘Iraq and Afghanistan wars’

When Scholars Join the Slaughter

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

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(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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Blackwater ‘became an extension’ of the CIA: report

December 11, 2009
By Raw Story,  Thursday, December 10th, 2009

blackwaterwelcomesign Blackwater became an extension of the CIA: reportThe role of Blackwater employees in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was so central to the US’s efforts that the lines between the controversial security contractor, the CIA and the military were effectively “blurred,” says a report in the New York Times.

During the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, Blackwater guards participated almost nightly in “snatch and grab” raids on suspected militants, the Times reported in a story published late Thursday.

The company’s cooperation in top-secret CIA operations “illuminate[s] a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials have previously acknowledged,” the Times reports.

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Posted in Commentary, crime, Iraq, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, warmongers | Leave a Comment »

Congress Shirks Its Responsibility, Allows White House To Make Wars

August 21, 2009

Sherwood Ross, Scoop, August 20,  2009,

On occasion, critics of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have questioned, with good reason, whether the American war in Afghanistan has been carried far beyond what Congress authorized. This raises a fundamental question that has bedeviled the country since 1950.

Although the Constitution requires Congress to make the decision to go to war and to decide the kind of war to be fought (naval, land, air), since the Korean conflict it has largely abdicated that responsibility to the president, says a law school dean and authority on the issue. The result has been more frequent (and frequently misguided) wars, than there would have been had Congress done its duty.

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Congresswoman Blasts Obama’s War-Funding Request

April 11, 2009

Published on Friday, April 10, 2009 by The San Francisco Chronicle

by Carolyn Lochhead

President Obama’s new $83.4 billion supplemental war request, which brings the cost of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to $1 trillion, drew fire Thursday from anti-war North Bay Rep. Lynn Woolsey.

[Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D- Cali.) in this file photo. Woolsey, who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus, had said in an earlier interview that she can't support raising troop levels. (File Photo)]Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D- Cali.) in this file photo. Woolsey, who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus, had said in an earlier interview that she can’t support raising troop levels. (File Photo)

Former President George W. Bush disguised the cost of the wars in annual “emergency” supplementals, which then-Sen. Obama criticized. The Obama White House promises that this will be the last one.Press secretary Robert Gibbs said the request is a Bush holdover that is needed to fund the wars this fiscal year, before the Obama budget kicks in.

Until now, anti-war Democrats had been undecided about how to position themselves against the Afghanistan escalation under one of their own.

Woolsey, D-Petaluma, who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus, had said in an earlier interview that she can’t support raising troop levels. She came out Thursday with this statement:

“As proposed, this funding will do two things – it will prolong our occupation of Iraq through at least the end of 2011 and it will deepen and expand our military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely.

“I cannot support either of these scenarios. Instead of attempting to find military solutions to the problems we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama must fundamentally change the mission in both countries to focus on promoting reconciliation, economic development, humanitarian aid, and regional diplomatic efforts.”

© 2009 The San Francisco Chronicle

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Peace Movement, Uncategorized, USA, warmongers | Leave a Comment »