Tag: Afghanistan

And you thought that meant the U.S. courts I’ll bet {we don’t do accountability of top officials representing us}, nope it’s the British high courts and a Brit Government Inquiry into torture is also setting to begin. But they both will bring out the U.S. participation in that which we condemn those we occupy and are fighting of doing.

Once upon a time, sounds like a fairy tale beginning but even as we’ve sunk to the depths of incivility in more then our politics in this country, it isn’t a fairy tale I assure you. For once there was a closer resemblance to debating issues and cross political party ideology, good or bad, were really discussed seriously.

What do the Vietnam congressional debates have to do with the now, as Sen. John Kerry says “lawmakers’ meetings during the Vietnam War offer useful lessons for the discussing the Afghanistan war.”

Record number of Army suicides in June

7/15/2010 Officials have been grappling with how to identify, treat soldiers at risk

The U.S. Army on Thursday reported a record number of suicides in a single month among active duty, Guard and Reserve troops, despite an aggressive program of counseling, training and education aimed at suicide prevention.

Suicides for the first half of the year are up 12 percent over 2009. In June, 32 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide, including 21 on active duty.

The June report came as the Army also released a 20-minute training video on suicide prevention titled, “Shoulder to Shoulder – I will never quit on life.”  Continued

Sorting through the complexities in Afghanistan

July 13: Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, talks with Rachel Maddow about the history of the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the different Taliban groups active in the region.

Iraq, Rapidly becoming the Forgotten War!!

There have been 4,729 coalition deaths — 4,410 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 5 Georgians, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 South Korean, 3 Latvian, 22 Poles, 3 Romanians, 5 Salvadoran, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thai and 18 Ukrainians — in the war in Iraq as of May 5 2010, according to a CNN count. { Graphical breakdown of casualties }. The list also includes 13 U.S. Defense Department civilian employees. At least 31,860 {31,839 last month} U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the war in Afghanistan

Folks this book by Tom Engelhardt just came out — it’s got good antiwar writing in it, and a good perspective can bring out its especially good points.  But, hey, that’s what reviewers are for!

(crossposted at Orange)

Crossposted at Daily Kos

This is going to be short.

Meant to inform of this day, to send you to one extremely dedicated individuals own post, to hopefully send some to search out even more {if you haven’t followed the real issues}, for the trolls who won’t see these issues on conservative blogs or news? sites, and we probably won’t hear a peep on any of the Sunday Morning empty blab shows or news outlets.

End this fucking war NOW!

Private security contractors protecting the convoys that supply U.S. military bases in Afghanistan are paying millions of dollars a week in “passage bribes” to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to travel along Afghan roads, a congressional investigation released Monday has found.

The alleged payments, which are reimbursed by the U.S. government, help fund the very enemy the U.S. is attempting to defeat and renew questions about the U.S. dependence on private contractors, who outnumber American troops in Afghanistan, 130,000 to 93,000.

LATimes.com

Bold text added by the diarist

  So taxpayer money is funding contractors in Afghanistan who in turn fund THE TALIBAN with US Government reimbursable bribe money.

Seriously?

WTF???

More areyoufuckingkiddingme below the fold

Cross-posted at Dkos http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

We’ve all seen the photos of the wildlife stricken by the oil spill, and I expect most who’ve seen them have been saddened and outraged.

I’ve been plenty horrified and outraged myself.

The following photos are upsetting.

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