The Trump administration has a brilliant idea on how to deael with the conundrum of the 16 year war in Afghanistan: privatize it by outsourcing it to a private mercenary army. Trump White House weighs unprecedented plan to privatize much of the war in Afghanistan By Jim Michaels, USA Today The White House is actively …
Tag: Afghanistan war
Apr 29 2016
US Exonerates Itself of War Crimes After Bombing a Hospital
I listened, with utter disgust, to the Pentagon’s press conference as it exonerated itself of war crimes after, despite their denial, intentionally bombing the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last October. The Pentagon said on Friday that its attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, last October was not …
Feb 27 2011
Iraq and Afghanistan: Wasting Tens of Billions of Dollars
First I have a question, already know the answers, not related directly to this report nor the Wars of Choice but is as to the economy, as to anyone interviewing this Gov. Walker.
Why is it when questions are being pointedly asked to him about his battle with the public sector employee’s, and especially as to collective bargaining, his constant response is just how broke that state, and many others are, that as soon as he says everyone must sacrifice whoever is asking the questions doesn’t forcefully ask what about those tax cuts passed and signed within his first month?
I didn’t hear one mention, question or statement by anyone, admit I tuned in a tad late, about those tax cuts, not one!
Now onto the recently released report, where much of our treasury, on the credit card, has gone and readily flushed down the drain by the tepublicans especially, who not only don’t want the past decade brought up they certainly don’t want the country reminded of not only the spent but the lost billions.
February 25, 2011 – A new report blasts the U.S. government for wasting tens of billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan by relying too much on contractors and doing too little to monitor their performance.
The interim report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan points out that contractors in the war zones sometimes have exceeded the number of military personnel. Numbering 200,000, contractors now roughly match the military force.
“Misspent dollars run into the tens of billions,” the report said. The 64-page report was released Thursday and will be followed up next week with a hearing on how to improve contractor accountability.
“War by its nature entails waste. But the scale of the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan also reflects the toxic interplay of huge sums of money pumped into relatively small economies and an unprecedented reliance on contractors,” the report said.
Sen. James Webb, D-Virginia, who helped establish the commission three years ago, said Friday that its latest proposals deserve attention from Congress and the Department of Defense and called for a hearing on the matter. {continued}
For your convenience, and mine, I uploaded the pdf so others can read it who may not want to download it, just below.
You can visit the Commissions site with link below to read the pdf press release as well as their other links.
Nov 16 2010
For millions of Americans, every day gets a little harder
“For millions of older Americans, every day gets a little harder.
Even though the costs of medication, transportation, and utilities are rising, we have already denied seniors a modest Cost of Living Adjustment to their Social Security payments for two years.
The war in Afghanistan costs the taxpayers $190 million PER DAY.
We will continue to spend $1.3 billion every week on war in Afghanistan for the indefinite future while we force our seniors to make tough choices between their medications and their food; their rent and their heat; their phone and gas for their car.”
[…]
Oct 13 2010
The Week in Editorial Cartoons – Exorcism, InsaniTea, and Helping Jerry Brown
Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette
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Christine O’Donnell has wiggled her nose and put a hex on the GOP establishment. The novice Tea party candidate turned lots of heads, Linda Blair-like…But Karl Rove, the Warlock of W, has been taken aback by O’Donnell’s victory. Even he thinks this girl is bat$#!+ crazy and that the Republicans have been given a Tea Party roofie.
Personally, I think she’s the best thing to happen to political satirists since her mentor, Sarah Palin. Republicans, on the other hand, are fingering the Yellow Pages looking for an exorcist. And maybe an antidote.
Sep 23 2010
The Week in Editorial Cartoons, Part I – New GOP Campaign Slogan: Monosexuality=Bad
Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette
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Christine O’Donnell is fast becoming the face of the Republican Party. Her campaign slogan is — to put it in Marxist language — power to the people. Or, something like that. To quote an oft-used phrase on the internet(s) and one used frequently on this blog, “Teh stoopid! It burns.”
Time permitting, I will try to post Part II of this diary later on this week.
Jul 04 2010
The True Wealth Deficit
“This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-more’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.”
“It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.”
“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.”
lest we forget …
Mar 03 2010
Sign The Kucinich Out Of Afghanistan Resolution Petition!!
Afghanistan “Awash with US Cash and US Blood”
Congressman Dennis Kucinich will introduce a new resolution on Thursday, March 4, 2010, that will force the U.S. Congress (against their will) until debating the merits of continuing to fund the fraud and folly of the Afghnistan foreign occupation.
It is expected that the resolution will be taken up for consideration on the following Wednesday, March 10, 2010, and that the debate will be subject to a rule providing for three hours of debate.
Dennis Kucinich urges that we all sign the petition in favor of this resolution, and getting out of Afghanistan on his web site: http://kucinich.us/
Sign the Petition at: http://kucinich.us/
Feb 26 2010
*New Resolution By Dennis Kucinich
Afghanistan “Awash with US Cash and US Blood”
WASHINGTON – February 26 – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the ongoing war in Afghanistan:
“The Washington Post reports that nearly one billion dollars per year in cash, suspected to include U.S. aid, opium receipts or both, is moving from Afghanistan to Dubai, where friends and family of Afghanistan’s President Karzai have multimillion dollar villas.
“Dubai real estate deals and a number of crooked enterprises connected to the Karzai family have created crony capitalism in a country awash with U.S. cash and U.S. blood.
“Nearly 1000 U.S. soldiers have died. And for what? Hundreds of billions spent. And for what? To make Afghanistan safe for crooks, drug dealers and crony capitalism?
“Next Thursday, I will bring a privileged resolution to this House so that Congress can claim our constitutional right to end this war and to bring our troops home. Please support the resolution.”
–Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Dec 18 2009
The Poster Boy for Cheerleading the President
Cross-posted at Daily Kos
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Jacob Heilbrunn has a new essay up at the Huffington Post titled “Please, Cut Obama Some Slack.” It is Exhibit A in hero mythology of the President, as well as a prime example of chastising anyone — even progressives — who would dare criticize any of Obama’s policies.
A year ago, Barack Obama was a hero for Democrats. Now he’s becoming a villain. Have the Democrats lost their minds?
The tenebrous story is recounted by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, who notes that some liberals are even starting to join forces with the tea party to decry Obama over the confirmation of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. The decriers are also upset about Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, the administration’s readiness to make concessions on health care, its failure to shutter Guantanamo, along with a host of other grievances.
Apparently, because some liberals have chosen not to regard President Obama as a “hero” and have begun to seriously question some of the policies of the Obama Administration, that qualifies Heilbrunn to assert that those same liberals have “lost their minds.” Heilbrunn doesn’t identify in his article who those allegedly insane Democrats are — though for the record, Dana Milbank does, naming liberal voices such as Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, MoveOn.org, John Conyers, and Alan Grayson as the progressives who are supposedly “joining forces with the tea party,” to use Heilbrunn’s language.
Dec 01 2009
Test Votes Mean Nothing to Afghanis and Americans
One hopes that President Obama will strongly and clearly frame our mission in Afghanistan tonight, including the reason for our continued presence in a country that has known wave after wave of outside invaders fighting to advance their own ends. We are but the latest army to set up shop and increase troop presence in pursuit of an elusive and often invisible enemy force. The ultimate result is cloudy at this juncture, as was the previous President’s troop surge in Iraq when it was proposed. I would hasten to call the latter decision an unequivocal success, but it did largely and surprisingly contain a low-grade Civil War. It is with this fact in mind that many will choke down the prospect of another round of foreign entanglement, troop deployment, and media saturation coverage of major military skirmishes.
One could, I suppose, reach for an obscure citation describing a similar conflict to which the United States committed troops. In this situation, however, there are no easy parallels and no conventional warfare nor wisdom to cite. The Soviet Union’s disastrous nine years in the country might be the best possible comparison under the circumstances, but the peculiarities of that conflict leave it more akin to Vietnam to our current endeavor. The Soviet War in Afghanistan was an attempt to bolster the existing Communist party from collapsing against the Mujahideen. We, of course, allocated weaponry and financial support to the Islamic insurgents as a means of undermining the Soviets.
What has been forgotten in this day is that for nearly fifteen years, the Communist government ruled effectively and made great strides in developing a civilization rather than a backwards state beholden to constant conflict. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991 came the decline of the Communist state and the rise of the Taliban, which single-handedly destroyed years of reform and plunged the country back into the Dark Ages. The country deserves lasting stability if it is ever to move forward in time but until it ceases to be a designated battleground, it never will.
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