22
POPSHow to Lose a War: The American Way An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.
21
POPSRepublicans: Crazy, Or Nuts?
Who in their right mind would argue with the observations in this article? More: "The Republican Party has become an aggregation of people who prefer to live in a world of fantasy -- and their first fantasy, the Ur-myth on which the entire conceit rests, is (classically) "we are the realists." "It degrades, into farce and Newspeak, from there. The perpetrators and defenders of the outing of a CIA agent are "patriots." Tom DeLay is a "leader" and Newt Gingrich is a "visionary." The President plays guitar while New Orleans drowns, causes a hundred thousand Americans and Iraqis to be killed or injured, and outsources torture, and it's the Democrats who, per the repellent Ramesh Ponnuru, are the "party of death." "It has gotten so that you have to muster all the compassion and understanding of which you are capable just to think of the Republicans as a party of greedy corporatists manipulating the credulous, the provincial, and the bigoted. That's the nice way of putting it.”
19
POPSWomen Test Limits "Now, women are taking courses run by nongovernmental organizations, getting educated and learning ways to improve their family incomes. Most important, the women have won over the men, she said. “Their minds have changed,” Najiba said. “They want to share decisions, not too far, but they want to give us some share.”
19
POPSSaddam Hussein Is Sentenced to Death International legal experts and human rights observers have questioned the impartiality of the trial court, which was created to try top leaders of the ousted government during the 15-month period of formal American occupation following the invasion in the spring of 2003. "We saw this trial, along with the others, as an opportunity to bring justice to those Iraqis who had suffered horribly under Baath Party rule," Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Sunday. "Unfortunately, we believe the serious shortcomings in the fairness of the proceedings undermined the legitimacy and credibility of the trial."
15
POPSSoldiers Admit: 'Iraq War is Lost' With the constant awareness, that I might be "emboldening the enemy" and am likely to be labeled defeatist or cowardly, I'm gonna post this clip anyway. The pro-warriors can stone me later... ;)
14
POPSThe Empire Is Over "We are like all empires in their final stages. We have grown soft. We like our comforts. We don't wish to be inconvenienced. We like poor Mexicans to do our stoop work and poor Americans to do our fighting, provided they do it far away so we won't be disturbed by explosions and screams. We enjoy our decadence, and there are always people in the media who can rationalize anything, no matter how sick and revolting it is."
14
POPSEat Crow, liberal Iraqi war skeptics If Democrats had won the White House in 2004, the jihadists might have succeeded. The idiotic liberals are still for retreat in the face of victory. The US decision to "stay the course" in the Iraq war, which was also widely mocked and criticized, served to thoroughly demoralize the jihadist movement. Another example of why liberals are unfit to run this country, unless you want to run it into the ground.
13
POPSThe AK-47: Weapon Of Mass Destruction Historical overview of the cheap, mass-produced assault rifle that would permanently change the balance of power in conflicts the world over. By Larry Kahaner, the author of AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War : Now 85, tiny, feeble, nearly deaf, his right hand losing control because of tremors, Kalashnikov is often haunted by the killing machine he has bestowed upon the world. "I wish I had invented a lawnmower," he told the Guardian in 2002.
12
POPSGen. David Petraeus beats megastar Angeline Jolie.... People in the *real* world know who is truly important. No disrespect to Ms. Jolie, but her influence is minimal when it comes to life & death issues. This is also true of Crews, Baldwin, Franken, Hayden, etc..... Celebrities are useless when it comes to getting things accomplished. Nice article that gives credit where credit is due.
11
POPSBanned from Iraq: Blackwater Mercenaries More: Blackwater is one of many security firms contracted by the U.S. government during the Iraq war. An estimated 25,000-plus employees of private security firms are working in Iraq, guarding diplomats, reconstruction workers and government officials. As many as 200 are believed to have been killed on the job, according to U.S. congressional reports. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee estimated in February that nearly $4 billion had been spent on security contracts amid the insurgency that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003 -- costs that have forced the delay, cancellation or scaling back of some reconstruction projects. Sunday's incident highlighted concerns in the U.S. Congress about a subject that one lawmaker, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, has called "one of the biggest gray areas of the entire war effort" -- the legal status of private security firms in Iraq.
11
POPSArmy Times: "Time for Rumsfeld to go" Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.
11
POPSUS Presidents subverting US Laws isn't unique to Bush
NED was created in 1983, ostensibly as a non-profit-making organisation to promote human rights and democracy. In 1991 its first president, the historian Allen Weinstein, confessed to The Washington Post: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" The funded organisations sometimes managed to weaken and even eliminate opposition to friendly governments, while creating a climate favourable to US interests. Although legally an NGO, the NED was funded from the State Department budget, subject to congressional approval. As well as allowing the government to disclaim any formal responsibility, this offered a further strategic advantage. As former State Department official William Blum said: "Notice the non-governmental - this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have." NED's talent for channelling money, establishing NGOs, electoral manipulation and media brainwashing was due to the CIA, the State
11
POPSObama would still oppose the surge
OK. This clinches it. Obama is utterly incapable of rational leadership. The terrorists were wreaking havoc in Iraq and killing hundreds daily. Now there is relative calm. Iraq is turning around. al Qaeda is out of Iraq. al Qaeda describes the situation as lost and say they can no longer recruit in the region. Iran is no longer having their way with propping up the insurgency. Intelligence tells us we are winning the hearts and minds of the Middle East. We have basically won in Iraq. However, Obama says he would still not support the surge after originally saying prior to the surge that he did not support the surge because it would have the "opposite effect" and increase violence. He is saying now that we should have let the situation in Iraq fester, withdrawn troops, hand the terrorists a victory in Iraq, allow the violence in Iraq to continue and instead concentrate on the few Taliban incapacitated in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. What a complete fool!
10
POPSIraq: Another Dirty Secret - South African Mercenaries, former White Apartheid era Veterans
More: The root of that distrust dates to the mid-1990s, when thousands of white officers left South Africa's security agencies during the transition from apartheid to majority black rule. Unemployed soldiers and police joined private security companies that got embroiled in African wars from Angola to Sierra Leone. A wheelchair-bound man who owns an SUV with vanity plates that proclaim "Baghdad," Brink lost a leg and fingers in 2005 to a mine that exploded under his armored vehicle in Baqouba, a hotbed of the Iraqi insurgency. Since returning to South Africa, he has been encouraging wounded colleagues to apply for U.S. worker's compensation under the U.S. Defense Base Act, which applies to all workers, American or foreign, who are subcontracted in war zones by Washington Brink was advising them on how to file for U.S. worker's compensation. I'll buy a farm if I can collect on my claim, said Gouws, 45, But I don't recommend this method of getting a farm to anyone else
10
POPSIraq like Vietnam, says Bush Asked whether he agreed with Friedman's summary , Bush said, "He could be right. ... There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."
10
POPSAn End Foreseen After all, the end is not in doubt. The only question is how much more killing, how much more destruction, how much more suffering must be caused before the occupiers arrive at the inescapable conclusion. Every drop of blood spilt is a drop of blood wasted.
9
POPS Why military might does not always win: Star "You can use brute force to kill terrorists or insurgents, but at some time you need acquiescence and compliance from the population, or every time you kill an insurgent or terrorist, he will be replaced." The study's war model claims to be accurate in 80 per cent of the conflicts. Ominously, and despite some gains in Anbar province, the current U.S. mission in Iraq has a probability of success of just 20 per cent. (Vietnam, by comparison, had a 22 per cent chance of success.) There are obvious similarities between Iraq and Afghanistan – an enduring insurgency, an unstable "democratic" government.
9
POPSAl Qaeda in Iraq Ranks Rebelling An insurgency can only work if the people shelter the insurgents. When that stops, the insurgency is doomed. This is happening now in Iraq, and al Qaeda's days there are numbered.
9
POPSLetter From Kevin Tillman on Iraq War "Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground. " SPOT ON!
9
POPSBush admin considering allying with Iraqi Shiites Laura Rozen reports on a secret mission where Stephen Hadley advocated the US drop its posture as a "neutral referee" in the Iraqi civil war and align with the Shiites to crush Sunni insurgents. This strikes me as a very, very bad idea. Via Kevin Drum
8
POPSUS made deal with devil to stabilize Iraq Chris Hedges is the author of this editorial. ...those who support the continuation of the war insist that "the surge" has been successful. But the surge...did little to thwart attacks. "The big news of the past year, the smashing up of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the stabilization of a lot of Sunni Arab areas, has virtually nothing to do with the surge," said Wayne White, former deputy director of the State Department's Middle East Intelligence unit. "What we have done, in effect, is we have made a deal with the devil in order to get rid of al-Qaeda. We have allowed nearly 100,000 tough Sunni Arab fighters to organize and arm themselves as they never could before when they had to operate underground. We have destroyed a nasty insurgency and replaced it with a more deeply rooted and broad-based potential insurgency."
8
POPSForeign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S. Yet, the insurgency is mostly home grown: "In contrast to the comparatively small number of foreigners, more than 25,000 inmates are in American detention centers in Iraq. Of those, only about 290, or some 1.2 percent, are foreigners, military officials say."
7
POPSScrambling to Frame Iran Indeed, the Bush administration's sudden focus on Iran's role in Iraq may simply be an effort to provoke an Iranian reaction that could then become an excuse for war. Whatever the reason, the motivation for blaming Iran must be pretty strong, given how much effort the U.S. government is putting into promoting such weak evidence.
7
POPSSenlis Council: Did the Bush Gang get anything right? "The US is the common denominator in both countries – instead of containing the extremist elements in Somalia and Afghanistan, US policies have facilitated the expansion of territory that al-Shabab and the Taliban have psychological control over." Aid groups say Somalia, wracked by anarchy and violence for decades, is suffering its worst humanitarian crisis since 1993. According to Lazzarini, the UN head of humanitarian affairs for Somalia, 2.5 million people are in need of food or other aid. Against this grim backdrop, the Senlis Council, in its 79-page report, directly accused the US of undermining reconciliation efforts by backing the hardline president, Abdullahi Yusuf, instead of the more moderate prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. According to the security thinktank, the US government in February disrupted negotiations with opposition parties - including hardline Islamists - by exerting pressure on the prime minister to exclude certain groups and individuals from a rec
1
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update