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POPSPhotographs of War... or Not? What a complicated issue.... I can see the military wanting to preserve security and honor the memory of their dead; I can see families not wanting to be traumatized by photos of their loved ones; but I think about all we are still learning from photographs of WWI and WWII... and if there are no photos of the Iraq war, where will that leave historians of the future? Most of the WWI and WWII photographs were taken by military photographers assigned to document the actions. I wonder if there are still military photographers documenting todays "wars"?
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POPSTrue tests of leadership Continuing the clip: "Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better. Three weeks after Senator Obama voted to deny funding for our troops in the field, General Ray Odierno launched the first major combat operations of the surge. Senator Obama declared defeat one month later: "My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now." His assessment was popular at the time. But it couldn't have been more wrong." And more telling... he always chooses the politically expedient answer.
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POPSBaldwin makes a call for impeachment hearings
We have seen this administration fabricate the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and allege, despite all evidence to the contrary, a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida. These lies dragged our country into a preemptive and unjustified war that has taken the lives of more than 4,000 U.S. troops, injured 30,000 more, and will cost our nation more than a trillion dollars. We watched as this administration again undermined national security by manipulating and exaggerating evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities and openly threatened aggression against Iran, despite no evidence that Iran has the intention or capability of attacking the U.S. We have looked on in horror as the administration suspended habeas corpus by claiming the power to declare any person an "enemy combatant," ignoring the Geneva Convention protections that the U.S. helped create. We have seen torture and rendition of prisoners in violation of international law and stated American policy and
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POPSBlackwater Is Here to Stay
Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Even if - and this is a big if - the company pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, here is the cold, hard fact: business has never been better for Blackwater, and its future looks bright. More on this in a moment. Back to the matter at hand. Complaining that negative media attention and congressional and criminal investigations are hurting business and that the Blackwater name had become a catch-all target for anti-war protesters, the company’s brass told the AP that Blackwater was shifting its focus to its other areas of government contracting, like law enforcement and military training, as well as logistics. ”The experience we’ve had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk,” said Erik Prince, Blackwater’s reclusive, 39 year-old founder and owner. Company president Gary Jackson said Blackwater has become like the “Coca-Cola” of war contractors, a b
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POPSWhy can't Obama admit the obvious Even USAToday (who thinks the world would be a better and safer place if Saddam was still in charge of Iraq) is baffled by Obama's reluctance to admit the truth.
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POPSBusting the Surge Myth Cont.... The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.
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POPSGreen ‘Peace Party’ positions against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars compared to pro-occupation Clint “The occupation of Iraq will continue whether a Democrat or a Republican moves into the White House in January 2009,” said Jason Wallace, Green candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 11th District <http://www.electwallace.us> and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War <http://ivaw.org/index.php>. IVAW has announced ‘Winter Soldier’ (March 13-16), a four-day event bringing together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan <http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier>. “The ILWU action planned for May 1 is evidence that working people are impatient with vague promises to end these wars. Will Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama endorse the ILWU protest and pledge to call home all US military personnel immediately?” “By calling the Iraq War a matter of military preparedness and botched strategy, Democrats are sidestepping the premise of the war,” said Bob Kinsey, Green candidate for the US Senate in Colorado <http://www.kinseyforsenate.org>. “While it’s true that
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POPSOreGon Green Candidates get Ready “The overwhelming majority of the damage done, from war to attacks on democratic rights, came with the votes of the Democrats in Washington,” Olmsted points out. “It is time for the building of a party that can be the voice of the majority to fight for our interests. Then we have a chance for real change.” (www.newmenu.org/ore gongreens4congress.)
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POPSThe Truth About Afghanistan Every American Should Know The pre-9/11 plan to invade Afghanistan and the oil pipeline deal behind it, that neither McCain nor Obama will discuss as relevant. Again 9/11 was the pretext for both Iraq and Afghanistan regime change and arranged prior to that "catalyzing event". pre-911: Unocal lavished money and attention on Taliban, flew a senior delegation to Texas Now: Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1680 km long pipeline project expected to cost $ 8 billion. "Mission accomplished". Note the role that Karzai played prior to his installment. Note also how Pakistan fits into this equation which has nothing to do with terrorism. But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land-locked Central Asia to the sea: through Iran, or through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For Washington, Iran is tabu. That leaves Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan
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POPSObama is wrong While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.
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POPSCBS covers up for McCain Since the American media has bought into the myth of the Surge, they can't very well show things like these and expose themselves. Ooops...too late!
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POPSGet Your Morning Laugh Here The Young Turks is a show that can really give you a few chuckles. The host Cenk Uygur, is a funny guy. He sure called the shots on McCain describing him as a mumbling, grumbling, bumbling old man. Thanks Cenk, I needed that pick-me-up. Sorry McCain, if the shoe fits... Wear It! ;-) ---- (If the shoe fits, wear it) If something belongs or pertains to you, accept it. This proverb first appeared as “if the cap fits,” which may have referred to a fool’s cap. The later version has become more common and is associated with the glass slipper in the fairy tale, “Cinderella.”
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POPSAfghanistan: Obama Sees Problems; McCain Sees A solution The differences are not small ones, and reflect a distinction between the kind of staff-driven, laundry-list mush that sees the immensity of a problem and a leader-driven set of priorities that sees a solution. It is the distinction between Obama's opposition to the Iraq surge and McCain's support for it: not just the courage to make the tough choice, but the clarity to follow the right course. It's also the distinction between winning the war and simply ending it. Thomas Donnelly is the Resident Fellow in Foreign & Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
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POPSObama's Foreign Policy Goes Neocon--Unjust Wars Will Continue
The real Obama policy. Must see video interview (at link) where Obama 1) legitimizes the "war on terrorism" (as necessary and true war); 2) escalate war in Afghanistan (regime change, like Iraq continues); 3) willing to attack targets inside Pakistan--i.e. invade any sovereign country to kill and destroy alleged 'terrorists' (think collateral damage on civilians or wrongly accused from missiles and UAV drones). Watch the interview, Obama does not answer one "why?" question of Lara Logan about the "necessity" of the "war on terrorism", he simply dodges and assumes its legitimacy without reason or debate. UNJUST WAR is the problem here. Where is the protest? The "war on terrorism" is not a true or legal constitutional war, and enabling Obama to do the same as Bush without criticism is hypocritical and partisan blindness. It has always been the goal to finish Iraq and legitimize and spread the war on terrorism. Note the media: War = Patriotism
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POPSObama: 'There's no doubt that Gen. Petraeus does not want a timetable' Of course Gen. Petraeus is only concerned about financing his pet war in Iraq. s/off. Petraeus doesn't want *artificial* timetables that would undermine the progress that's been made. Maybe if the Senator would come back to the US, assume the job he's being paid to do (deal with legislation in the Senate), learn a little and not sound so stupid then he might be better able to help the US economy which HE claims is really hurting.
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POPSLanny Davis: "We were wrong" Thank You, Lannie. It is great to see there are still stand-up people on the left. From article: "Maybe another democracy, however imperfect, other than Israel in the Middle East could lead to more moderation, possibly other democracies? Democracies that could serve as bulwarks against al Qaeda-type of terrorist states?" "And then in early 2007 came the Surge, which so many of us in the anti-war left of the Democratic Party predicted would be a failure, throwing good men and women and billions of dollars after futility. We were wrong." "The surge did, in fact, lead to a reduction of violence, confirmed by media on the ground as well as our military leaders."
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POPSMugtada al-Sadr keeps the truce for now.... Cont.... Such tales abound. Sudani said she'd heard of troops bursting into a woman's home and arresting her four sons, as a soldier threw the mother to the ground and put his boot on her head. Iraqi troops are said to have seized gasoline canisters from a Sadr City resident and distributed them to others, claiming they were from the government. Ali Jassim, 30, another resident, said his cousin's phone rang at a checkpoint with a ringtone containing a chant about Sadr. When soldiers heard it, they slapped him, he said. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, has suffered a series of setbacks since last spring. It lost control of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, and the southern city of Amara after Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ordered his forces to retake those areas. Many charge that Maliki is waging a political war against his former allies in time for fall's provincial elections.
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POPSMaliki's Bet Mr. Obama, he is also placing one on Mr. McCain, which is that in the event the Republican is elected, he will place principle and the national interest over politics and petty vindictiveness. For our part we see the emergence of an Iraq making its own choices in these matters rather than having them dictated by the American ambassador or American generals as yet another sign of victory in the Battle of Iraq. The Iraqis want America as their friends whether Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain is president. For all the talk by critics of how the Iraq War supposedly alienated America from the world, here is an administration in Baghdad maneuvering for a friend in the White House.
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POPS"My First-Hand Experience with Gov't Spies" America's new government, including the states, in action: Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the ACLU, we now know that "Lucy" was only one part of a vast, insidious project. The Maryland State Police's Department of Homeland Security devoted near 300 hours and thousands of taxpayer dollars from 2005 and 2006 to harassing people whose only crime was dissenting on the question of the war in Iraq and Maryland's use of death row.
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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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POPSUS to Iran in "Diplomacy": Two Weeks to Comply Just as we posted earlier, playing diplomatic "good cop" is just a nicer face with a club in his belt. The exact same tactic was used with Saddam leading up to the Iraq war, even though he could not prove to them he had no WMD, because you cannot disprove a mere suspicion or a lying accusation.
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POPSDinosaur Media March Deeper Into The Tar Pit Barry O is on his preemptive victory lap around the world and he steadfastly refuses to take questions from the foreign press. I wonder why? it's not like he isn't great reading off a prompter ?off the cuff?answering tough questions right? What would our media say if it was the Maverick dodging tough questions? I kinda doubt they would let it slide, but the Obama slinks along unmolested by any serious scrutiny from our self-selected watchdogs of the Fourth Estate. It is refreshing as a member of the newest type of new media to know that every day the solons of the liberal e-light who make up the dinosaur media march ever deeper into the tar pit.
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POPSWhat he really said Maliki: There are many factors, but I see them in the following order. First, there is the political rapprochement we have managed to achieve in central Iraq. This has enabled us, above all, to pull the plug on al-Qaida. Second, there is the progress being made by our security forces. Third, there is the deep sense of abhorrence with which the population has reacted to the atrocities of al-Qaida and the militias. Finally, of course, there is the economic recovery. Maliki: The casualties have been and continue to be enormous. But anyone who was familiar with the dictator’s nature and his intentions knows what could have been in store for us instead of this war. Saddam waged wars against Iran and Kuwait, and against Iraqis in the north and south of his own country, wars in which hundreds of thousands died. And he was capable of instigating even more wars. Yes, the casualties are great, but I see our struggle as an enormous effort to avoid other such wars in the future.
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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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