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POPSJudge tosses Blackwater case, cites gov't missteps
"We're obviously disappointed by the decision," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said. "We're still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options." Prosecutors can appeal the ruling. Blackwater contractors had been hired to guard U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said insurgents ambushed them in a traffic circle. Prosecutors said the men unleashed an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades. The shooting led to the unraveling of the North Carolina-based company, which since has replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services. The five guards are Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn., and Paul Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas. Defense attorneys said the guards were thrilled by the ruling after more than two years of scruti
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POPSThe message from Lawrence of Arabia: Watch Your Back From Money and Power Grubbers Imperialists hungering for power ruined what could have been and gave us 90 plus years of conflict that runs up to today's conflicts. Now old fashioned imperialists are gone but global oil, the military-industrial complex, fundamentalist wannabe dictators and terrorists have agendas that don't support an Afghanistan for Afghans, a free Palestine and Israel, a prosperous Paskitan and on and on it goes. Simple solutions for complex social-political issues are almost always wrong and cause more harm.
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POPSBlackwater In the News.........Again
More information on the perils of "outsourcing" military and intelligence agencies' responsibilities below: "“It became a very brotherly relationship,” said one former top C.I.A. officer. “There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency.” Representative Rush D. Holt, chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said in an interview that “the use of contractors in intelligence and paramilitary operations is a scandal waiting to be examined.” ... Mr. Holt said that the use of contractors in such operations “got way out of hand.” He added, “It’s been very troubling to a lot of people.” That gave Blackwater greater influence over C.I.A. clandestine operations, since company personnel helped decide the safest way to conduct the missions. “We keep finding functions that have been outsourced that common sense, let alone U.S. government policy, would argue should not have been handed over to a private company,” he said. “And yet we do it again
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POPSIraqi boy to Maj. David Howell: "Will you save me?"
Don't let this ruin your day libs. You can keep lying and saying stupid things about America tomorrow. Howell, who lives in Grand Ledge now works as a physician assistant for Flint cardiologists. "I felt an obligation as an American to do something for this family. If I was going to try to do something (for any family), this was it." Howell, 55, was on a mission to protect a gathering of Iraqi women and children last November in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, when he first saw Mohammed. The women, widows of Iraqi policemen, were collecting government support. Mohammed's mother plunged into poverty after her husband was killed three years earlier by insurgents because he was an interpreter for American military forces, Howell said. She brought Mohammed to the gathering to show the women his injuries in hopes they would give her money. Mohammed made eye contact several times with Howell, who was serving as a physician assistant. Two days later, Howell tracked Mohammed
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POPSGoogle to Put Iraqi Artifacts Online “I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and the ideas of your civilization available to all the people of the world,” Mr. Schmidt said.
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POPSUK Iraq war inquiry set to begin Will they recommend that soldiers travel to war in warplanes, not on passenger flights? Probably that is all that happens. Can't even decide if the invasion was legal.
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POPS100 Things blamed on Global Warming 26. Snowfall in Baghdad 27. Western tree deaths 28. Diminishing desert resources 29. Pine beetles 30. Swedish beetles 31. Severe acne 32. Global conflict 33. Crash of Air France 447 34. Black Hawk Down incident 35. Amphibians breeding earlier 36. Flesh-eating disease 37. Global cooling 38. Bird strikes on US Airways 1549 39. Beer tastes different 40. Cougar attacks in Alberta 41. Suicide of farmers in Australia 42. Squirrels reproduce earlier 43. Monkeys moving to Great Rift Valley in Kenya 44. Confusion of migrating birds 45. Bigger tuna fish 46. Water shortages in Las Vegas 47. Worldwide hunger 48. Longer days 49. Earth spinning faster 50. Gender balance of crocodiles
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POPSBlackwater:Ain't Misbehaving, Saving My Contracts for You
Of course the US government was blind to this - they didn't want to know, they turned a blind eye to what Blackwater was doing because it would have been too hard to arrange for another contractor to do all the security missions that it had ongoing. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are as many private contractors as there are uniformed military personnel. Most of them are not security guards as Blackwater's most visible function was. The lack of oversight is abhorrent but not surprising; the State Dept's failure to can this company is inexcusable. My only observation on this article is to suggest how the US government got into this predicament, and it's pretty easy to see. The Bush administration wanted to hold onto the fiction of a few conservative principles, one of those being the concept of a small federal government. Since it already blew that "principle" with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, I'm betting there was White House guidance that directed "no mo
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POPSOur Tax Dollars At Work-Blackwater More from the article as follows: "The Nisour Square shooting was the bloodiest and most controversial episode involving Blackwater in the Iraq war. At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded." "Those responses deeply worried Blackwater officials. Before the Nisour Square shootings, the company had operated in Iraq without a license largely because the Iraqi government had never enforced the rules. Being blocked from the country would have been costly — the State Department deal was Blackwater’s single biggest contract. From 2004 through today, the company has collected more than $1.5 billion for its work protecting American diplomats and providing air transportation for them inside Iraq." "
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POPSThe Hole at the Heart of Our Strategy ~ Mark Steyn
...to the “noble” “heroism” of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base. Since 9/11, we have, as the Twitterers recommend, judged people by their actions " flying planes into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London Tube trains, planting IEDs by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. And on the whole we’re effective at responding with action of our own " taking out training camps in Afghanistan, rolling up insurgency networks in Fallujah and Ramadi, intercepting terror plots in London and Toronto and Dearborn. But we’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic .......
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POPSMatt Damon in 'Green Zone', Movie With Message About Iraq War "Bourne Goes to Iraq" or Loyal Army officer finds out truth and the real enemy which changes his mission against the "powers that be". Note in the clipmark from Wiki the producer intends this to be not merely entertainment but relevant commentary: "Film shouldn't be disenfranchised from the national conversation. It is never too soon for cinema to engage with events that shape our lives. Perhaps this is like Clooney and Damon in Syriana in that respect. Allegedly based upon this book here. , which has some real interesting "reviews" worth considering.
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POPSUS warned on deadly drone attacks The dear ol' UN....helping Iran and concerned about how terrorists are eliminated. I wonder if they are concerned about the recent deaths perpetrated by terrorists in Kabul, Baghdad, and Pakistan.
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POPSAlternate Iraq War Universe … Obama Won! Never mind that the surge was initiated by President George Bush, and the current withdrawal was negotiated by the Bush administration with a sovereign, elected Iraqi government which his actions allowed to come into being, in place of the prior despot he had deposed, while Democrats, including Obama, were howling for abandonment. Obama deserves some credit, of course. For staying Bush’s course and throwing his own boneheaded pandering demands for a precipitous pullout under the bus. OK, I thought Friedman had got about as weird as he could. Silly me. This next step is particularly important, which is why we cannot let Afghanistan distract U.S. diplomats from Iraq. Remember: Transform Iraq and it will impact the whole Arab-Muslim world. Change Afghanistan and you just change Afghanistan. Fascinating. The big clamor for the last few years of course has been that Iraq was distracting us from Afghanistan, and now every jackanape out there, to include Friedman . . .
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