Feb 24 2008
The following comes from Jack Dresser, Ph.D., Behavioral Scientist, Co-founder, Lane County Veterans for Peace: Capt., US Army (psychologist, Vietnam era)
Squadron 13 ; Veterans Against Torture via G.I. Special-Military Project, Volume: 6B Issue: 16 Ft. Dix, you can read it in Word or in PDF for the rest of the News Letter.
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Feb 22 2008
I have no understanding of what it is to live like this:::
The belt made a thump when Rasheed dropped it to the ground and came for her. Some jobs, that thump said, were meant to be done with bare hands.
Magnifico asked why Afghanistan as an issue has sunk away faster than an essay on the dKos diary list… he asks this, as I have been thinking about this country and its people, after reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
Hosseini is, for me, pretty straightforward in his writing. Nothing grand or blazing. Yet, it is shatteringly honest writing. It gathers as you read it. Slow. Until there is this little thing vibrating inside you. Not anger. fear. hate. It’s that wide-awake connection with one’s own free will.
I wonder. If the fight isn’t just as elemental as safeguarding our free will and therein our innate desire for freedom.
The women of Afghanistan are all of us. The atrocities they suffer belong to all of us. They tell us, scream at us that these things have mutilated earthlings through the ages. None of us are exempt from such horrors.
I don’t know how to help Afghan women wholesale. I humbly take the lesson they give, despite the horrors they endure. Their freedom of will, of thought. The dignity of these women, as captured so well in A Thousand Splendid Suns, is loud, vibrant, inspirational.
The women of Afghanistan fight for all of us. In every act of defiance in deed or thought, they taunt brutes and bullies with dignity and will. One more sentinel is revealed… these beautiful souls, guardians of freedoms unseen.
So here you go, Magnifico. Captain America was sent to save this country, but something funny happened on the way to Kabul. These nameless victims, who are called mother, wife, sister, friend… these women … may very well show us the way to salvation…
Feb 22 2008
War brings faster promotions to class that give the orders, but you always find the Scum that’ll do any damn thing to get ahead!
The very last place you want to see it is in the Military and when that Military is sent into Wars Of Choice!
But it happened than, all the past than’s, and the present is no differant!
Feb 19 2008
Fort Hood soliders breaking the silence in war in Iraq
A growing number of active duty soldiers or recent Iraq war veterans are speaking up about the war in Iraq.
And with the number of soldiers speaking up about their experiences in Iraq via online forums, blogs and pamphlets,
some vets feel it’s their duty to let the American public know the truth.
This occurred on the 17th, yesterday, outside of Ft Hood Texas, which has a rich history of action by Active Duty and
recent Veterans of the Vietnam Conflict, back than one of many bases, around the country, as well as the world, and In-Country
Vietnam!
Feb 16 2008
The following is a short discussion, abit of a long read, by two Vietnam Veterans, on a VFP/VVAW, group board. The first post is a copy of a question asked and answered by another Vietnam Veteran. The two posts following that are a reply to the original than an answer to that reply.
I would hope that it might help our present Brothers and Sisters, serving in Theaters of War and when they return from, to help find the answers to any questions that may be.
With the Mutiple Tours, Extended Tours, ever Changing Reasons For, and the initial ignorance of what type of Conflict they were led into, as this countries military had already had a long running battle with Guerilla/Insurgent warfare and those lessons still aren’t being applied, there will be many more questions that need answering than even we ‘Nam vets have been seeking answers for, to the closed ears of our Government and the People of this Country.
Feb 10 2008
Today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy. He reiterated Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent comments in London that NATO is at risk of collapse if member nations fail to meet their military obligations in Afghanistan.
In this diary we look back at the NATO takeover of leadership of (International Security Assistance Force) ISAF-Afghanistan in 2003, to see what US officials were saying at the time. What we’re going to find is a continuing insistance from the US that the very viability of NATO depends on commitments to security in that non-NATO country. Again and again, we see evidence that the real point of this near-hysterical rhetoric is to solidify a US-urged change in NATO’s mandate, from Eurpoean defense to world-wide interventionism.
Starting with Gates’ remarks today in Munich, we see a strange-seeming doomsdayism about the importance of NATO participation in Afghanistan.
Feb 06 2008
WTF are this Gang Of Criminals, Thieves, War Mongers, War Profitteers, Twisted Ideologies, that this Country REFUSES doing anything about, Thinking?
Veterans not entitled to mental health care, U.S. lawyers argue
They took Complete Advantage over an Extremely Tragic Event, that they should have Stopped in it’s Tracks, Unless, if they paid one little iota to the Intelligence given to them, and Invaded a Country, Destroyed and Killed, that had Absolutely Nothing To Do With the Extremely Tragic Event, 9/11!
So many Lies in justification, when one would fall another would quickly rise, from their spin meisters, So Many Lies!
Feb 05 2008
cross posted from The Dream Antilles
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh
A young man has been sentenced to death in Afghanistan for downloading a report from the Internet and distributing it.
The Independent reports:
A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.
The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.
Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.
So much for debate and freedom of speech.
The UN, human rights groups, journalists’ organizations and Western diplomats have urged the Karzai government to intervene and free Kambaksh. But the Afghan Senate passed a motion on January 30 confirming the death sentence. Welcome to the US puppet government and its barbarianism.
Want to respond to this?
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh’s imminent execution is an affront to civilised values. It is not, however, a foregone conclusion. If enough international pressure is brought to bear on President Karzai’s government, his sentence may yet be overturned. Add your weight to the campaign by urging the Foreign Office to demand that his life be spared. Sign the Independent’s e-petition here
More across the border.
Feb 03 2008
Jan 24 2008
Greyhawk had this posted at ePluribus about the Military breaking ranks with the White House on the propaganda about the Successful Surge with only this one snippet
“Don’t let the quiet fool you,” a senior defense official says. “There’s still a huge chasm between how the White House views Iraq and how we [in the Pentagon] view Iraq. The White House would like to have you believe the ‘surge’ has worked, that we somehow defeated the insurgency. That’s just ludicrous. There’s increasing quiet in Iraq, but that’s happened because of our shift in strategy – the ‘surge’ had nothing to do with it.”
And just a few sentences, so I followed the link. Here’s abit more to hopefully get you to drop over to the Asia Times online and read the rest.
Jan 16 2008
It’s tempting to say that Afghanistan represents the Bush Administration’s supreme failure. I’ve made that claim, in the past. But that presumes that the Bush Administration was, in the the smallest degree, interested in catching the people who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and in keeping this nation safe. Of course, some have done very well, from Bush’s wars. Meanwhile, the collective wisdom of the more than 100 bipartisan foreign-policy experts consulted by Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress to form The Terrorism Index led to this summary:
The world these experts see today is one that continues to grow more threatening. Fully 91 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percentage points since February. Eighty-four percent do not believe the United States is winning the war on terror, an increase of 9 percentage points from six months ago. More than 80 percent expect a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade, a result that is more or less unchanged from one year ago.
But, of course, if the Bush Administration actually gave a damn about national security, and catching the terrorists who attacked us, they’d have done something about it. Instead, their incompetence allowed Osama bin Laden to get away, when he could have been caught or killed, at the battle of Tora Bora. They disastrously shifted their focus from those who had attacked us to those who never had, and because of that, the Taliban are growing stronger both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Al Qaeda has also regrouped and grown stronger in both countries. In fact, both countries are having to negotiate with the Taliban, and bin Laden, himself, is even now well-positioned to launch another attack.
If this war actually was about justice and security, rather than profits, it would be correctly seen as the signature failure of the singularly disastrous administration. Bush is destroying the Constitution and violating international law, not to mention the basic laws of humanity and morality, but he has not made America safer, and he has not caught the people who committed the worst ever act of terrorism on American soil. It would be surreal, were it not so damnable.