The US is bragging right now that it's dropped a GBU-43/B MOAB, aka Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, know in the Chairforce as a "Mother Of All Bombs" bomb, apparently the larger of non-nuclear bombs in its arsenal, on a suspected tunnel in Afghanistan, presumably full of Afghans. Will the UN condemn the US act and support coalition retaliatory airstrikes on the rogue regime which did it? No need for an investigation, we're on TV admitting to the deed. Note the US war media are adding "in combat" and "on the battlefield" to their headlines although the command and control center allegedly targeted would be Islamic State's DC. If the US is going to insist that the MOAB bombing was legal under US rules of engagement, it would be hard to argue that Islamic State Terrorism (see what I did there) could not enjoy a comparable broad latitude. Normally of course, US spokespeople would deny responsibility, but this bomb was too big. Too big not to break windows five miles away, and too big to smuggle into the hands of covert operatives so that we can say they did it.
Tag: Afghanistan
US forces push women to front lines, canon fodder being traditional minority role
Pentagon lifts ban on women in combat. I guess US prisons have consumed the traditional canon fodder labor pool. What's the upside to this news --a kinder gentler militarized empire? Fail. Our culture of violence doesn't breed matriarchs. American women on the front lines is good news for insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc, etc, now Mali, who must welcome the chance to even the score, US forces having targeted so many of their women. And this retaliatory killing comes with no karmic debt, unlike our civilian casualties, because US female soldiers, like gay don't-ask-don't-tell turnstile jumpers, are gung-ho eager-for-carnage volunteers. Have at it ladies. Insurgents must be really encouraged by recruiting trends in US schools which promise the prospect of the US soon deploying kids. We owe our colonial victims so many children's lives.
When ‘health care’ is pure corporate corruption – Afghanistan as case study
Much of US health care is really a form of corporate corruption and government welfare for corporate interests, and plain medical dysfunction. So it is certainly to be expected that Pentagon-occupied Afghanistan would face the very same MESS us Americans do, just on a more gargantuan basis. See Government cannot afford to run any of the 19 new foreign-funded facilities due to come online in the next two years. Americans, as well as Afghans, deserve to have a medical system free of constant corporate corruption pushed by corporate-run government.
2,000?
The media today did a casualty count for the war against Afghanistan and its mistreated people, and came up with the magical number 2,000 (Sorry Afghans, nobody in the US hardly cares about your deaths). We are all supposed to ponder and reflect (according to the Pentagon fed corporate US media) about the supposed sacrifices that Americans have made to supposedly benefit the people of Afghanistan. Doesn't it just make you sick, Democrats, to know how 'your' political party, for which you vote constantly, views this war as being a good war? No, I guess it doesn't. First off, the US itself started the war against Afghanistan way back in 1979 when Jimmy the Peanut Bible thumping man was president, and when he decided to use Muslim Right Wing terrorists to battle the Soviet-backed government in that country. Remember, Democrats? Osama and his many friends of that ilk battled the Soviet Union and its Afghan puppet government for ten long years, leading to 14,000 Soviet dead and way over a million easily of Afghan casualties.... who knows the actual number? All this was because the US and its military pumped in billions upon billions of dollars to help keep the killing going nonstop. Then, with the fall of the Soviet Union there was a brief period when the Right Wing Muslim allies of the US took over and tried to recuperate the country from its misery some. Then came 9/11 and the subsequent reentry of the US into the Afghan killing fields of its own USA-made making with the invasion and occupation, where the US led troops slaughtered and tortured their prison held, Afghan soldier POWs taken, ...thousands to the lot. Did any Americans bat an eye? NO. They simply did not. They didn't care. And now of course the count began on march to the magic 2,000 figure (Afghan hundreds of thousands simply are not counted, because the 'civilized community' considers these people to be beasts and not even human). The accounting done in Afghanistan provides us a mirror to see our own sorry American selves, Democrats. You supported the Pentagon because you are a bunch of flag waving numbskulls, just about as out of it as are the Republicans. The Afghans paid the price and remain enslaved by the US government. You don't even tally the figure of who your government kills as you pull the DP lever in the voting booths.... be it Republican or Democrat who sits in presidential office////
Prince Harry the Hedonist shows war for what it really, really should not be
A young prince who can do anything he wants, might go to war for some noble cause, if he hadn't already exposed his and its deeply immoral character. After his Vegas binge, Prince Harry has returned to Afghanistan, his request this time to be a gunner on an Apache attack helicopter in the UK squad with the highest kill rate. It reminds me of the Hapsburg emperor who liked to shoot a peasant each day before breakfast --eventually his handlers had to enlist actors and load the old man's rifle with blanks. We prefer to look back at old Franz Joseph as senile, but what is the truth about unrestricted inhuman whim? A recent Taliban attack on Camp Bastion, Prince Harry's base in the Helmund Province, may have been aimed at the bloodthirsty prince. Who can blame the Taliban for targeting a pro-war figurehead which the UK itself is exploiting? It could be however that Prince Harry's secondary strategic benefit is not dissimilar to the American misuse of anti-Muhammad taunts to provoke insurgents. Drawing more Taliban fighters out of the shadows probably does not displease his royal trigger-happiness. Probably unarmed Austrians shared just as unfavorable odds as Afghans with AK-47s against Harry's gunship. Let's hope not.
US wars: You win some, you win some
JULY 18-- Syrian rebels led by CIA and US special forces were able to assassinate three senior officials of President Bashar Assad's regime, targeted by NATO and the UN for Obama's TM Change, which we now can believe means "Regime Change". But news headlines today also tell of 24 NATO fuel tankers set alight in Afghanistan, by a Taliban insurgency of undetermined US backing, of course US contractors now get to sell NATO replacement tankers, AND elsewhere in occupation news, US auditors report $8 billion squandered in Iraq, although total spent, minus reconstruction achieved, probably yields far more billions than that. Meaning more growth opportunity for the US war industry, at Cost Plus. Unless cost squandered means plus should be refunded.
Do as we say and not as we do? -D.C. slaughters civilians in Afghanistan even as it lectures Assad of Syria
There is nothing more sickening than Hillary and Barack lecturing others about their supposed slaughter of civilians even as they slaughter them themselves in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Afghan leader: NATO airstrike killed 18 civilians ___Just who are Clinton and Obama to be lecturing Assad of Syria about anything involving Human Rights?
Hey, Honey! Let’s visit Hell on our Memorial weekend vacation!
This vacation news item on USA Today catches the eye... Ongoing conflict severely limits tourism in Afghanistan. Those damn 'conflicts', Honey. Let's not let them get in our way to visiting a vacation paradise... AFGHANISTAN!
NATO troops led by US forces kill 6 more kids
Even while imperialists are screaming that Assad, head of the Syrian government, is a child murderer, Obama's forces are killing kids in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. Here's the latest... Afghan authorities: NATO air strike kills eight civilians May 27, 2012 | 4:12 am
Obama Administration reaches agreement with itself to have US occupy Afghanistan forever
What a total fraud of a 'withdrawal'! 'After months of negotiations, the United States and Afghanistan completed drafts of a strategic partnership agreement on Sunday that pledges American support for Afghanistan for 10 years after the withdrawal of combat troops at the end of 2014.' Further about this 'agreement' between the US government and itself at the New York Times article titled... With Pact, U.S. Agrees to Help Afghans for Years to Come ...It's time to throw the Republicans out of hte White House! Oh, wait? In our 'democracy' the US population only has a choice between two sets of Republicans- Republicans or Republicrats.
The Invisible Man – President Obama’s soldier at large, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales
Sgt. Robert Bales is the Obama Administrations 'Invisible Man'. He is also the Pentagon's stealth killer and the American war machine's hidden 'hero'. He is the guy now taking the lone fall for what a group of American soldiers collectively did as they slaughtered down a total of 17 civilians, including 9 children in the middle of the night. Where are they keeping Robert Bales hidden away from the people of Afghanistan? What cowards we are all are for letting them get away with this sick con played out by Obama and his Pentagon team! Our love of 'the troops' seems to keep Americans from being able to open our eyes about how the militarization of our society is turning us all into a group of collective degenerates. We have collectively lost our sense of shame. YES, we all know that it was not merely a lone crazy that killed those children next to our war base in Afghanistan. It was 'our' US army. Bales covers for what his men collectively did, and the Obama Administration now covers for Bales.
Did US Staff Sergeant Robert Bales engage in a US military revenge killing?
(Robert Fisk) 'The Afghan narrative has been curiously lobotomised – censored, even – by those who have been trying to explain this appalling massacre in Kandahar. They remembered the Koran burnings – when American troops in Bagram chucked Korans on a bonfire – and the deaths of six Nato soldiers, two of them Americans, which followed. But blow me down if they didn't forget – and this applies to every single report on the latest killings – a remarkable and highly significant statement from the US army's top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, exactly 22 days ago. Indeed, it was so unusual a statement that I clipped the report of Allen's words from my morning paper and placed it inside my briefcase for future reference. Allen told his men that "now is not the time for revenge for the deaths of two US soldiers killed in Thursday's riots". They should, he said, "resist whatever urge they might have to strike back" after an Afghan soldier killed the two Americans. "There will be moments like this when you're searching for the meaning of this loss," Allen continued. "There will be moments like this, when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back. Now is not the time for revenge, now is the time to look deep inside your souls, remember your mission, remember your discipline, remember who you are."' ... from Robert Fisk commentary: Madness is not the reason for this massacre. Yes, this Pentagon propaganda effort to blame some sort of PTSD for Staff Sergeant Robert Bale's war crime is rather disingenuous.
I’ll see your Staff Sgt Robert Bales and raise you 15 death squad members
Everyone from the US Department of Defense to the School of the Americas knows it takes a village to raze a death squad, or vice versa. According to the manual, if you want to storm houses in the middle of the night, gather the male family members for execution, shoot everyone in the head, gather stray bodies into a pile, pour gasoline over them and burn them, then repeat the operation in a neighboring village, you need a death squad, possibly two, especially if everyone's drunk. US forces have pulled off so many of these massacres in Iraq and Afghanistan, that it's a wonder military analysts don't recognize the Panjwayi raid as a textbook operation. If the official US spin is to be believed, and one drunken staff sergeant can do the work of 15-20, I'm thinking our entire NATO force in Afghanistan could be reduced by the same factor without jeopardizing US kill goals.
American society looks into the mirror and sees this
US Army killer, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales
Pentagon is trying to stage manage storyline about events in Afghanistan
"It is not possible for only one American soldier to come out of his base, kill a number of people far away, burn the bodies, go to another house and kill civilians there, then walk at least 2 kilometers and enter another house, kill civilians and burn them," said Abdul Rahim Ayubi, a lawmaker from Kandahar province who visited the area on Monday. See the latest AP report Afghan recounts US soldier shooting his father. Yes, we agree, and it is simply amazing how the Western corporate media has sprung into overdrive to help the Pentagon stage manage the storyline about what just happened, all so that 'sensitive' supporters of the US war machine will not be so bothered by the on-ground realities of the US military foreign occupation and murder machine. Sick! Why are so many of our fellow Americans so desiring of letting themselves be manipulated by the US war machine and its propaganda division of corporate media stooges? Why? Is it because their paycheck comes from the Pentagon, either directly or indirectly?
Spinning US atrocities, words matter: shooting sprees & shopping rampages
Headlines about Sunday's midnight massacre in Kandahar transformed quickly from NATO FORCES RAID to become LONE GUNMAN KILLS 16, as the attributed sources shifted from Afghan locals on the scene to US military spokesmen. One might argue it's in the interest of national security to attribute the murders in Balandi and Alkozai to a solitary stalker, to tamp the swelling anger of the Afghan populace, but what's the truth? Making a rare concession, the NYT has revised its headline a 3rd time to read LONE SOLDIER SAID TO BE KILLER OF 16 AFGHANS, and the BBC puts "ACTED ALONE" in quotes. (UPDATE: AP adds "allegedly" and LA Times "apparently") Pundits stroke our soldiers' egos by asking could one special forces soldier alone kill so many (?!), but more difficult to imagine is how a rogue fighter can equip himself and pass through multiple security defenses unobserved. Also doubtful is how and why a stealth assassin would burn the victims' bodies as he moved about. Easier to believe is that damage control decided it best that one man take the fall for his comrades, God and country, probably the one too drunk to object.
Oops, troops don’t get memo, kill kids
SUNDAY- Drunken US soldiers kill 16 Afghanistan civilians, nine of them children. The US military is claiming the massacre was the work of one soldier who "wandered" inside homes in Kandahar's Panjwayi district, but witnesses report it was a squad who laughed as they shot the families and tried to burn the bodies. US Army defenders might argue mouths agape that it doesn't make sense, what would US NATO forces accomplish by doing that? State terrorism is no accident. Whether by directive, unleashing berserkers, or enlisting young men with mental deficiencies, TROOPS KILL KIDS. For our remedial readers I'll note that Tony and I are under fire for raising that point at an Occupy GA. What's the vigilante posse got to say about the US soldiers in the village of Zangabad? Just part of the ugly job of war? Happens everyday? Yes it does.
US Occupation troops starve the children of Afghanistan half to death
'More than half of Afghan children under the age of five are chronically malnourished, according to the joint report by the World Bank and the government.' The full responsibility for this lies with the US military Commander in Chief, Barack Obama. See AFP report Afghan child hunger among worst in world: report ....How many Afghan children have actually died from the hunger caused by the US government and its troops occupying Afghanistan? One hates to imagine the actual number.
Reuters poll says that 2/3 of Americans want troops brought home immediately
Unfortunately, many if not most of these same Americans would easily buy into the US going to war with Iran if the new war was presented by the US propaganda machine to them all nice and properly.... More than half of Americans back Obama's Koran apology. ...An apology is not near enough though. The US has spent decades destroying Afghanistan, and it's not just about some few burnt Qurans anymore. Plus, you cannot be planning for a war with Iran and expect anybody to take your 'apology' seriously, Barack. Bring ALL the troops home now!
Battle for Hearts & Minds of Afghan and Iraqi people has been lost by US troops
Does anybody in the US really believe that the American military has won over the Hearts and Minds of the people in Afghanistan and Iraq, let alone in other parts of the Middle East? Our government's military is a corporate modeled occupation army and not one fit to over Hearts and Minds of those whose lands they occupy. For example, read Just Plain Stupidity Or A Failure By Design? ... Burning the Quran; Urinating On Dead Bodies ... In that commentary the author talks about the 'brainless' behavior of the US occupation forces. But could it be any other way? Racist military men and women hardly are the best conduit for winning people over to supporting the US. They are just over there to do a 'job', make a 'career' for themselves in the US military, and then get back home and grab some of the extras that the military offers up to its hires.
Why do they kill? Who orders the killing? Why do the grunts do what they do?
“Who has given the license to kill and in what court? Who has declared that they can hit anyone they like?” “How many ‘high level targets’ could there possibly be?” “What kind of democracy is America,” Safdar asks, “where people do not ask these questions?” From Kathy Kelly's commentary on CounterPunch today “All of us ask, ‘Why?’ They kill people with computers and they can’t tell us why." They also kill people with plain old fashioned bombs and guns too. Why does the US occupy Afghanistan? Why do the American people mainly sit passively by like a herd of sheep?
The Colorado Springs Occupy Movement needs to burn some Bibles out at Fort Carson perhaps?
'The U.S. government and the American commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan apologized after Afghan laborers found charred copies of the Koran while collecting rubbish at the sprawling Bagram Airbase, about an hour's drive north of Kabul.' See Reuters Six killed, many wounded in Afghan Koran protests. A fake D.C. 'apology' is not enough though. The US soldiers deliberately disrespected Occupied Afghanistan and deliberately insulted the Afghan people who are overwhelmingly Muslim, and the US soldiers just don't care much how they trample on these poor peoples of the world they are hired guns to oppress. So what if Occupy Colorado Springs were to burn some Bibles so that these soldiers headed out to Afghanistan don't just forget and repeat with some new atrocity or another against the Afghan population? What if also the American Antiwar Movement threatened to burn some Bibles out at all the US military installations around the US? Wouldn't that get the message through to the US troops that some of us American people are just as outraged at 'our' US occupying army contempt for other peoples of the world as the Afghan people are themselves? Yes, I think it would get that point across rather sharply! It would also bring into light the entire issue of just how wrong it is for the US to be militarily occupying Afghanistan. It simply really is a criminal act our country as a whole is engaged in as a whole, and we should be utterly ashamed of what 'our' troops are doing, and not proud about them at all. Shame on the US for being 'holy book' burners! The US troops knew just exactly what they were doing and chose to disrespect the people who hold another religion than their own.
NATO troops kill 8 children in Afghanistan
How long will the US and European populations sit back passively allowing their governments' troops to kill children repeatedly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in Asia and Africa? Here is the latest atrocity by US/ NATO troops... NATO airstrike killed eight children: Karzai
Gen. James Mattis, Obama’s choice for being head of the US Central Command
Thirty year military veteran, Brian Cloughley, writes in the latest online weekend edition of CounterPunch just exactly what he thinks about Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who continues to head up the U.S. Central Command in Asia. The following is what he has to say in brief... 'The fact that a psychotic moron like James Mattis is now chief of the US military’s Central Command is a depressing indication that Washington prefers smart-ass murderous dum-dums to intelligent life. Someone who finds it fun to kill people because they “ain’t got no manhood” is seriously disturbed and should not be in command of a pretzel stand. The appalling Mattis, that piece of perambulating filth — whose official photograph bears an uncanny, terrible and probably intentional resemblance to that of the disloyal, dishonorable and disastrous General Douglas MacArthur — is, quite simply, brainless beyond belief.' He goes on to state that... 'Moronic Marine Mattis is the typical US General of our times. He is brash, arrogant, conceited, over-promoted and incompetent. He loves killing people. His troops and aircraft killed 24 soldiers of the Pakistan army on November 26 last year in a cross-border attack, and, like his Washington admirers, he offered no apology for the catastrophe.' Cloughley's diagnosis about the US command occupying Afghanistan? 'Commanders of soldiers — real leaders of men — good officers — have no difficulty in maintaining discipline and decency in their troops. It is when the rot comes from the top that vicious filth appears at the bottom.' So I guess we can look for even more pissy US government/ Pentagon made atrocities ahead in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. It looks like we will continue to have stormy weather ahead, all thinks to the Democratic Party top leadership and their insistence in fighting old wars and beginning yet new wars of aggression in the ME and Asia. YES, the Bush Cheney crowd has long ago given up being in command of these wars, you know... We know that, don't we? The US CIC is now Barack Obama, who is head of the Democratic Party. To links to more of Brian Cloughley's commentaries about military issues
The Puppet-Masters and their pet Turkey, double-dealing.
They condemn those of us in America who rebel against their fascist Corporate leadership and presumption of ownership of every aspect of our lives, calling it "Freedom" while their Pig-Slaves break our heads with clubs and plastic bullets. And in the case of Oscar Grant, lead and copper bullets. While cheering rebellions in countries which have denied "deprived" the Poor Little Rich Boys like Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch, Shell, "stolen" their claim to have Corporate Control over their ports and their oil. And they actually finance and organize the so-called "spontaneous" rebellions like in Libya and now, Syria. Never mind they're also paying Other Peoples Money And Lives to put down REAL grass roots movements in Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen... And Turkey. Turkey is now paying back their Corporate Overlords for the U.S. and NATO PUBLICLY FUNDED Terror War against the Kurds and Albania. The Slave-Caliph Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemns Syria for responding violently to violent attacks while continuing to suppress, with the help of his Puppet Masters in London and Washington, the Kurdish People actually having a right to life. Lick them Pentagon Boots, "caliph" Erdogan. They're your masters and you are their dog. Just like the New Puppet Regime in Libya, and the somewhat more established Puppet Regimes in Tel Aviv, Kabul, and Baghdad. Be the little whipped hound for racist bastards who call you "ragheads" and "sand-niggers" and "muzzle monkeys". You might wear golden chains and a gold collar, but they're still a collar and chain. Just like the Oakland, Denver, Colorado Springs and New York Police departments violently suppressing freedom here, in the very homeland of your puppet-masters and, at their bidding.