“We don’t look like people who have won a war. We look like scared, fearful, losers.”
“The drones were terrifying. From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death. Drones fire missiles that travel faster than the speed of sound. A drone’s victim never hears the missile that kills him.”
David Rohde, in the Reuters Magazine article “The Drone Wars.”
Read the rest of the article | Download Reuters Magazine [PDF]
(via reuters)“
On the very day the video from Afghanistan emerged, Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz took the stand in a courtroom at Camp Pendleton in California and testified that he urinated on the skull of a dead Iraqi in 2005. Dela Cruz made the admission during the court-martial of a Marine charged in the killings of 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha.
Dela Cruz said he was overcome with grief over a comrade killed by a roadside bomb. “The emotion took over,” he told a military defense attorney.
Marty Brenner, an anger management specialist in Beverly Hills, Calif., who treats combat veterans and civilians, said the acts depicted in the video — and the Marines’ recording of it — demonstrate rage.
“They have no other way of expressing their anger at these people,” Brenner said, “so what they’re doing is urinating on them to show, ‘I’m better. I want the world to see you guys are crap and that’s what you deserve.’”
”Barack Obama Tumblr: The End of the War in Iraq
It means so much. Having an Uncle that spent 13 months overseas fighting for what he believes in is already a great thing, but watching my Aunt raise two young girls and be pregnant with another while he was away is spectacular within itself. It means the world that finally other families can have their loved ones home just like we were fortunate to get when he came back a few years ago.The president is tumbling testimonies from families of Iraq War vets.
“Ten years into the war, just 34 percent say they are in favor of it and a whopping 63 percent say they oppose American involvement, a CNN/ORC International Poll released Friday found. And over half — 58 percent — told pollsters the war has turned into a situation like the U.S. faced in the Vietnam War.”
hman:
Touche.
I am laughing so hard on the inside right now because I am picturing Cornel West, paintbrush in hand, making up slogans for signs, while sitting in his book-lined office in Princeton.
And then he goes out to look for more scraps of cardboard.
Losing the support of Afghanistan’s people was more destructive to the war than losing any firefight to the Taliban. But McChrystal didn’t sufficiently sell his decisions to his own troops, explaining to them why they were ultimately in their interests. “I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts,” a Special Forces veteran told Michael Hastings for his fateful McChrystal profile in Rolling Stone. “His rules of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater danger.”
There was something else missing from McChrystal’s network: the U.S. embassy in Kabul. While McChrystal and Amb. Karl Eikenberry, a former Afghanistan war commander himself, supposedly enjoyed good relations, the embassy and NATO sometimes seemed like they weren’t in the same country. Then one of Eikenberry’s cables back to Washington casting doubt on McChrystal’s desired troop surge leaked to the press. That poisoned the well. “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books,” McChrystal kvetched to Hastings. “Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’”
But the surge itself was causing a breach with the most important node in McChrystal’s network: the White House. In the 2009 debates over sending more troops to Afghanistan, President Obama reportedly felt like the military was boxing him into an unwise escalation. McChrystal, in London for one of his first public appearances, bluntly remarked that he thought all other strategies were doomed. Although McChrystal repeatedly defended the Obama team, the press went wild with a narrative about an insubordinate commander, and not without some justification. Obama ultimately endorsed the surge, but it was, at best, a Pyrrhic victory for McChrystal.
(via How Special Ops Copied al-Qaida to Kill It | Danger Room | Wired.com)
Pentagon Names 30 American Servicemen Killed in Downed Afghan Chopper
The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia
Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access.
Jeremy Scahill’s latest must-read.
Kandahar, Afghanistan: Canadian soldier, Cpl. Ben Vandandaigue, plays on a drum kit at his force’s base in Sperwan Ghar in Kandahar province.
David Goldman/AP Guardian.co.uk
“I don’t think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.”
Obama to announce Afghan plans Wednesday - The Washington Post
President Obama is in the final phase of determining how many U.S. troops he will withdraw from Afghanistan next month and plans to announce his decision Wednesday, administration officials said.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers will be available to watch June 13-14, 2011 in honor of the 40th anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers.
An Kosovo Albanian man walks past the names of some 1800 still missing Kosovars from the 1998-99 Kosovo war writen in a brick wall to mark the countries missing persons day in capital Pristina on Wednesday, April 27, 2011. Around ten thousand people most of them ethnic Albanians died during the war between ethnic Albanians seeking to secede from Serbia and 1800 of them are still missing.
