Category Archives: war

Leaving Iraq

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What is the candidates’ objection to Obama implementing the status-of-forces agreement that his predecessor signed in 2008 [requiring a US withdrawal from Iraq]? The [GOP] candidates should answer three questions: How many troops would they leave in Iraq? For how long? And for what purpose? If eight years, 4,485 lives and $800 billion are not enough, how many more of each are they prepared to invest there? And spare us the conventional dodge about “listening to” the “commanders in the field.” Each candidate is aspiring to be commander in chief in a nation in which civilians set policy for officers to execute.

– George Will, calling for a substantive discussion of the issue in Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate.

We have spent way more blood and money in Iraq than was rational. Good for Will.

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Imperialism quote of the day

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Portrait of Glenn Greenwald -creator of Unclai...

Glenn Greenwald

“Every now and then it’s worth pausing to reflect on how often we talk about the killing of people by the U.S. Literally, the U.S. government is just continuously killing people in multiple countries around the world. Who else does that? Nobody — certainly nowhere near on this scale. The U.S. President expressly claims the power to target anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, for death, including his own citizens; he does it in total secrecy and with no oversight; and this power is not just asserted but routinely exercised. The U.S., over and over, eradicates people’s lives by the dozens from the sky, with bombs, with checkpoint shootings, with night raids — in far more places and far more frequently than any other nation or group on the planet. Those are just facts.

– Glenn Greenwald, “The killing of Awlaki’s 16-year-old son“. (via The Quotation of the Day Mailing List)

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Alpha Dog

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Here is the latest update of Boston Dynamic‘s AlphaDog, a military robot to be used to carry up to 400 lbs. across rugged terrain. (via The New York Times)

Click here for a video of an earlier version, which seems much creepier to me.

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America assassinates its own citizens

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The United States says it has killed American-born Anwar al-Awlaki and another man, Samir Kahn, in Yemen. Both were American citizens.

These killings were not on any battlefield. In a face-to-face battle, the government clearly does not have to check IDs before shooting those on attack.  But painstakingly seeking out known citizens for killing via remote control would not be hampered by some type of basic due process hearing by outside the executive branch.

The standards applied the Obama Administration for determining whether this action was justified and legal have not been provided to the public, let alone reviewed by any court.  Nor have any facts regarding the actions of these two men been determined by any court. Secret laws and secret memos should not be part of US law. Shameful.

Glenn Greenwald reacts:

Just think about this for a minute.  Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose “a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests.”  They’re entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations.  Amazingly, the Bush administration’s policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges — based solely on the President’s claim that they were Terrorists — produced intense controversy for years.  That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution.  Shouldn’t Obama’s policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind — not imprisoned, but killed — produce at least as much controversy?

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Political quote of the day

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Well, obviously, before you ever get to that point, you have to build a relationship in that region. And that’s one of the things that this administration has not done. Just yesterday we found out through Admiral Mullen that Haqqani has been involved with — and that’s the terrorist group directly associated with the Pakistani country — so to have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States.

– Rick Perry, responding to a question of what he would do if, as President, he recieved a 3 a.m. call informing him that the Taliban had gained control of Pakistan’s Nukes. You can be forgiven if you thought the quote was by Sarah Palin.

Only an expert

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Laurie Anderson explains the (non-)solution to our problems: only an expert can do it. This is one song that addresses Oprah, Iraq, torture, and Wall Street financial crimes, while being kick-ass msuically.  The version below is live, but the version on the album, Homeland, is even more terrific.

The studio version is available on iTunes for those who like her work.

9/11 was only the beginning

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Everything has gotten worse since 9/11, as reported by the best news source in the country. Excerpt:

As media coverage of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 ramps up this week, citizens across the United States collectively realized they would rather think about the terrorist attacks of 2001 than about anything else that has transpired in the subsequent decade.

Why Dick Cheney is hated

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Conor Friedersdorf, writing in The Atlantic, describes, in great detail and with ample citations exactly why Dick Cheney is loathed by so many.  Lies about WMD, lies about an Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection, impassioned support for torture, and on and on.

Well worth a full read to remind yourself just how bad he was.

Excerpt:

Despite these questions and uncertainties, and having full awareness of them, the vice president nevertheless proceeded to misrepresent the facts in his public statements [leading up to the Iraq War], claiming that there was no doubt about the existence of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq and that a full-scale nuclear program was known to exist, including: (a) March 17, 2002: “We know they have biological and chemical weapons.” (b) March 19, 2002: “We know they are pursuing nuclear weapons.” (c) March 24, 2002: “He is actively pursuing nuclear weapons.” (d) May 19, 2002: “We know he’s got chemical and biological…we know he’s working on nuclear.” (e) August 26, 2002: “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons… Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (f) March 16, 2003: “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

– quotation from article quoting Wil S. Hylton

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Political quote of the day

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Five hundred and sixty five pages and a simple apology would have been in order in some of them. Which is to say, the great fact of those eight years is we went to war—big war, costly war—under false pretenses. And…to write a memoir in which you say essentially nothing seriously went wrong…if I wrote a memoir of my last week, I would have things to apologize for.

– George Will, stunned by Dick Cheney’s failure to apologize for the Iraq and inflated claims about WMD.

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Hiroshima after the bomb

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360Cities has posted a collection of 360-degree panoramas of Hiroshima following the atomic bombing of the City. They show amazing detail and are powerful argument against future use of these horrible weapons against civilian non-combatants.  Click the full screen button for the full view closeup. (via Boing Boing)

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