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POPSThe War Condolences Obama Hasn’t Sent
Chance was very troubled during his first tour of duty in Iraq, although he performed admirably by all accounts. At one point he was put on a suicide watch and had his ammunition taken away for a week. After Iraq, Chance declined a $27,000 reenlistment bonus and transitioned to the U.S. Army Reserves, hoping to avoid another deployment. He sought and was receiving treatment at a Veterans Affairs facility. Gregg said, “We sat down as a family, and we said, ‘President Obama is going to be elected, and President Obama will end this war, and you won’t have to go.’ ” But then his son’s orders to deploy came again. the GI Rights Hotline, which advises active-duty soldiers on options for leaving the military, says outside psychological professionals can help suicidal soldiers obtain a medical discharge: “The military wants to know whether the patient can perform their duties without causing trouble, embarrassment or expense. His or her welfare is distinctly less important.”
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POPSEight Years Later: Speak Out Against the War in Afghanistan I remember the day after 9-11 when I was talking to a group of friends in Rehab about it--they (all supposedly reasonable people) all wanted to go to war and I was alone in saying that going to war would solve NOTHING. So, who was right? 'Mericans first response to any crisis seems to be violence of some kind and I'm SICK OF IT. So speak out, don't hold back, fellow Americans!!!
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POPSBarack McNamara Obama: Why Can't Obama See His Wars Are Unwinnable? "We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes," McNamara warned long after the fact, speaking of "America's enemies" but really just about people--people who live in other countries. People whose countries possess reserves of natural gas (Vietnam) or oil (Iraq) or are situated between energy reserves and deep-sea ports where oil tankers dock (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Why can't President Obama imagine himself living in a poor village in Pakistan? Why can't he feel the anger and contempt felt by Pakistanis who hear pilotless drone planes buzzing overhead, firing missiles willy-nilly at civilians and guerilla fighters alike, dispatched by a distant enemy too cowardly to put live soldiers and pilots in harm's way? In fairness to McNamara, it only took two years for him to call to an end of the bombing of North Vietnam. By 1966 he was advising LBJ to start pulling back. But, like a gambler trying to recoup and justify his losses, the president kept
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POPS"There's No Way I'm Going to Deploy to Afghanistan" Another man of conscience chimes in: Having served three years and nine months in the U.S. Army, Agosto was to complete his contract and be discharged on Aug. 3. But due to his excellent record of service and accrued leave, he was to be released the end of June. Nevertheless, due to the stop-loss program, the Army decided to deploy him to Afghanistan anyway. Stop-loss is a program the military uses to keep soldiers enlisted beyond the terms of their contracts. Since Sep. 11, 2001, more than 140,000 troops have had tours extended by stop-loss. Agosto posted copies of the Counseling Statements issued by the Army on his Facebook page. Counseling Statements outline actions taken by the Army to discipline Agosto for his refusal to obey a direct order from his company commander. On one of them, dated May 1, Agosto's written statement appears: "There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the
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POPSDemocracy at Gunpoint Guarantees U.S. Defeat The implication of what the Taliban says is simple and convincing: that it will be impossible for the U.S. and NATO to win a war in Afghanistan in which the enemy is based on the other side of what is for them an easily permeable frontier between Afghanistan and the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, but which is for American and NATO forces politically impregnable. This is classical guerrilla warfare against regular forces. The guerrillas operate with (in this case) almost perfect intelligence concerning NATO troops. They are highly mobile and reactive, and possess a refuge where they are vulnerable only to attack by rocket-firing drone (unmanned) aircraft, since the main, ground-based NATO/U.S. forces cannot reach them. The Pakistan government and army forbid American and NATO intrusion into their country. The United States in the past has scarcely been a scrupulous observer of foreign sovereignties, and the Bush administration declared its policy commitment to aggressive and
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POPSObama's Triple Surge Into Afghanistan What Obama has not mentioned is that, in addition to soldiers and civilians, there is a third surge in his plan: private military contractors. Yes, another privatized army, such as the one in Iraq. There, the Halliburtons, Blackwaters and other war profiteers ran rampant, shortchanging our troops, ripping off taxpayers, killing civilians and doing deep damage to America's good name. Already, there are 71,000 private contractors operating in Afghanistan, and many more are preparing to deploy as Pentagon spending ramps up for Obama's war. The military is now offering new contracts to security firms to provide armed employees (aka, mercenaries) to guard U.S. bases and convoys. Despite the widespread contractor abuses in Iraq, Pentagon chief Robert Gates defends the ongoing privatization push: "The use of contractor security personnel is vital to supporting the forward-operating bases in certain parts of the country," he declared in a February letter to the Senate Armed Services Committ
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POPSIsraeli Voices for Peace Cries in the wilderness...a different perspective than most US lame stream media and limpdiked supporters of Israeli Gov't's obscene death-g;orifying policies. I knew it had to be about gaining political power for thar uberSabra Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak--I shudder every time i see those two strut around like some Cheny/Bush, Hitler/Goebbels clones. Israel Uber Alles!!!
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POPSAfghanistan Looming as Huge Mire of wasted lives, resources When will we ever learn? Trying to bomb these people (at great cost in innocent lives) into submission in a guerrilla war is incredibly stupid. The Russians couldn't do it and apparently we didn't learn our lessons well in Vietnam, Jungle/desert comparison aside. Their will to defend their own turf is rooted in the ages while ours is in greed and misguided ideology and there's the rub. Fools. What a waste of lives and resources and perception of good will worldwide. It's NOT a "good" war, if there are any. And changing strategy to more troops is folly of the worst kind but great for the war profiteers.
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POPSThe US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet and We Simply Never Talk About It. Where the Sun Never Sets Let's face it, we're on an imperial bender and it's been a long, long night. Even now, in the wee hours, the Pentagon continues its massive expansion of recent years; we spend militarily as if there were no tomorrow; we're still building bases as if the world were our oyster; and we're still in denial. Someone should phone the imperial equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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POPSVFP Calls for U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan and the Prosecution of Dick Cheney and George Bush fo This same resolution calls for the U.S. government to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan, in non-coercive forms, to help them rebuild their own nation and their lives in cooperation with other nations in the region; and to allow the people of Afghanistan to freely determine their own government without interference by the U.S. "These three statements from our membership represent many of the core values of our organization. We believe that service members have the right to re-evaluate their decision to kill and change their mind. We know that after all the killing is done the individual soldiers must live with themselves and make sense of what they have done. We believe that our political leaders must be held accountable for their actions. This is a critical to a healthy and functional democracy. We realize that to survive the challenges we face today, like global warming, we must find ways to work together and war is not viable." To read full text of the resolu
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POPSAfghans Fed Up With Government, US A strong sense of frustration echoed through dozens of interviews by The Associated Press with Afghan villagers, police, government officials, tribal elders and Taliban who left and rejoined the religious movement. The interviews ranged from the capital, Kabul, to the rural regions near the border with Pakistan. The overwhelming result: Ordinary Afghans are deeply bitter about American and NATO forces because of errant bombs, heavy-handed searches and seizures and a sense that the foreigners do not understand their culture. They are equally fed up with what they see as seven years of corruption and incompetence in a U.S.-backed government that has largely failed to deliver on development. Even with more foreign troops, Afghanistan is now less secure.
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POPSPalin Invokes God to Justify Iraq, Pipelines. What a....Repukelican. ..no I won't say what I really think. There are women here I respect too much...But not Sarah, or Cindy McCain or Laura Bush--any woman who can cleave to men like that doesn't deserve MY respect.
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POPSPoor, Poor Buttsore Billary This is an especially sore point for Bill Clinton, people close to him say, because among many grievances he has about the campaign Obama waged against his wife is a belief that the candidate poor-mouthed the political and policy successes of his two terms. One senior Obama supporter said the Clinton associates negotiating on her behalf act like “Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific still fighting after the war is over.” A prominent Obama backer said some of Clinton’s lieutentants negotiating with the Obama team are “bitter enders” who presume that, rather than the Clintons reconciling themselves to Obama’s victory, it is up to Obama to accommodate them.
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POPSUK Denies Money to Wounded Afghans I think there are a lot more deaths from "collateral damage" and so do officials reprting...It's disgusting what our tax dollars are doing.... ‘We have huge concerns, especially over the number of casualties from air strikes,’ said Marc Garlasco, a former air strike commander for the Pentagon who left after becoming disillusioned with the number of innocent victims in Afghanistan and who is the author of this week’s HRW report. He said the casualty figures must be viewed as extremely conservative with the total representing the ‘bare minimum’.
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POPSUS Weighs Stepped-Up Military Forays Into Pakistan Why don't we just hand over all the decisions to the Generals and Admirals and get it over with? We might as well save money on elections an other such futile circuses. Just call it The Disunuted States of the Pentagon. just cut out "the people" As middlemen and go directly to the profiteering Korporations and ask them what they need to bring in more obscene $$$$$$. Why fuck around voting?
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POPSHaving the ‘Best Military’ Is Not Always a Good Thing So consider this a modest proposal from a retired citizen-airman: A small but meaningful act against the creeping militarism of the Bush years would be to collectively repudiate our “world’s best warfighter” rhetoric and re-embrace instead a tradition of reluctant but resolute citizen-soldiers. Becoming Warfighters I first noticed the term “warfighter” in 2002. Like many a field-grade staff officer, I spent a lot of time crafting PowerPoint briefings, trying to sell senior officers and the Pentagon on my particular unit’s importance to the President’s new Global War on Terrorism. The more briefings I saw, the more often I came across references to “serving the warfighter.” It was, I suppose, an obvious selling point, once we were at war in Afghanistan and gearing up for “regime-change” in Iraq. And I was probably typical in that I, too, grabbed the term for my briefings. After all, who wants to be left behind when it comes to supporting the troops “at the pointy end of the spear”
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POPS"Generation Kill" brings the Iraq war to the TV viewer From the producers of "The Wire" With its $550 billion budget and 1.5 million troops, the military might seem a mechanized colossus of precision-guided violence, give or take a few bad apples and errant artillery shells. But if you have served in the military or written about it from the inside, you know that on the unit level it is filled with men and women of vastly different motivations and skills. The Marines in Generation Kill are intelligent and dimwitted, panicked, sensitive, racist, comic, homicidal, brave. It is a wonder when things go according to plan. "You know what happens when you get out of the Marine Corps?" says one of the characters. "You get your brains back."
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