NATO strike kills 11 children in Afghanistan: officials (via AFP)The president has so effectively diminished American strength abroad that there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent. He is working to pre-emptively disarm the United States. He advocates slashing our nuclear arsenal even as the North Koreans threaten us and the Iranians close in on their own nuclear weapon. He has turned his back on America's allies around the world and ignored growing threats.we find out that we will all be paying for Bush and Cheney's folly in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades to come.
Abstract: The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history – totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion. This includes long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs. The largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid. Since 2001, the US has expanded the quality, quantity, availability and eligibility of benefits for military personnel and veterans. This has led to unprecedented growth in the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense budgets. These benefits will increase further over the next 40 years. Additional funds are committed to replacing large quantities of basic equipment used in the wars and to support ongoing diplomatic presence and military assistance in the Iraq and Afghanistan region. The large sums borrowed to finance operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will also impose substantial long-term debt servicing costs. As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives. The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.Remember what we were told 10 years ago? James Fallows does:
A little over ten years ago, George W. Bush fired his economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, for saying that the total cost of invading Iraq might come to as much as $200 billion. Bush instead stood by such advisors as Paul Wolfowitz, who said that the invasion would be largely "self-financing" via Iraq's oil, and Andrew Natsios, who told an incredulous Ted Koppel that the war's total cost to the American taxpayer would be no more than $1.7 billion.So what does the Harvard Kennedy School of Government report see as the greatest security threat?
One of the most significant challenges to future US national security policy will not originate from any external threat. Rather it is simply coping with the legacy of the conflicts we have already fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.Get that Liz? Our biggest security threat are the actions of your father and George W. Bush.
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| (Credit: AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq) |
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan warned his troops to be ready for increased violence because of a series of anti-American statements by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, NATO said Thursday.So please remind me again - why are we still spending blood and treasure in this hell hole? Our "ally" threatens the welfare of America's finest - not acceptable. I realize we can't pull out overnight but we should start getting out as quickly as possible.
In an email to battlefield commanders, Gen. Joseph Dunford, said the remarks could spur more insider attacks, days after members of Afghan security forces killed two U.S. troops and a U.S. contractor in two separate shootings.
"We're at a rough point in the relationship," Dunford said in the email, according to a senior U.S. official, speaking anonymously to discuss the confidential communication.
There is a difference between strenuously objecting to a particular policy or appointment and completely distorting the content of that policy or the views of the appointee. If most movement conservatives genuinely hate the idea of improved relations with Russia, for example, that’s their choice, and they can protest against efforts to improve those relations. What they can’t do, if they still want their arguments on policy to be taken seriously by others, is to impose absurd, impossible standards for judging the policy or simply lie about what that policy is.So why are we still in Afghanistan again?
Earlier today, uniformed Afghan security forces attacked a US military base in eastern Kapisa province, killing a civilian contractor. Three Afghan troops are also said to have been killed in the incident.So why are we still in Afghanistan again II?
A statement issued by ISAF today said: "Individuals wearing Afghan National Army uniforms turned their weapons against International Security Assistance Force members in eastern Afghanistan today, killing one ISAF-contracted civilian."
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber wearing a vest bomb struck outside the Afghan defense ministry on Saturday, killing at least 10 people in a blast just hours after Chuck Hagel, the new United States defense secretary, arrived here in Kabul.And the NRA must love this:
HIGHLAND, N.Y. (AP) — A New York town that began assigning an armed police officer to guard a high school in the wake of the Connecticut massacre has suspended the program after an officer accidentally discharged his pistol in a hallway while classes were in session.And this was a well trained police officer.
Lt. James Janso of the Lloyd police department tells media outlets Officer Sean McCutcheon will be suspended while an investigation continues.
McCutcheon was assigned to the high school in the Hudson Valley town of Highland in January. Janso says the program has been suspended for now.
There were no staff members or students nearby when the weapon went off just after 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. Nobody was hurt.
Given the images people see on TV, many conclude Afghanistan never made it out of the Middle Ages,” writes Mohammad Qayoumi at Retronaut. “But that is not the Afghanistan I remember. I grew up in Kabul in the 1950s and ’60s. Stirred by the fact that news portrayals of the country’s history didn’t mesh with my own memories, I wanted to discover the truth.”Of course Kabul was an anomaly - even while Kabul was becoming a modern society the rest of Afghanistan remained a middle ages tribal society. There was there was the possibility that modernization could extend beyond Kabul but then the Russians invaded and attempted to occupy. The Russians failed but opened the door for the Taliban. The invasion and occupation of the US and NATO only reinforced the centuries old war between the Afghan people and the west. So western innervation in Afghanistan ha once again set the country back.
Qayoumi’s gallery of what the Graveyard of Empires looked like before it was brought into contemporary civilization by the Hippie Trail
Losing Afghanistan: Clerics now openly support the Taliban (via GlobalPost)
That the war in Afghanistan has been unwinnable has been obvious to most outside analysts since well before the so-called surge of 2009. Now, the United States government has finally admitted the obvious in deeds if not words.
This mis-adventure was never winnable. The people of Afghanistan hate the NATO forces and they hate their own corrupt government. while over 2,000 American lives have been lost the NATO forceshave killed far more women and children. Is it any wonder they hate us? Our effort there depends on Pakistan which has demonstrated it is some less than a friend.
Following the murder of six NATO troops in yet another "green on blue" attack in which Afghan soldiers supposedly fighting on our side killed NATO troops, the coalition has all but ended combined operations with Afghan army and police forces at the tactical level, requiring general officer approval for exceptions.
While spokesmen insisted that "we're not walking away" from the training and advisory mission that is the ostensible reason for continued Western presence in Afghanistan eleven years into the fight there, that statement rings hollow. As American Security Project Central and South Asia specialist Joshua Foust puts it, "The training mission is the foundation of the current strategy. Without that mission, the strategy collapses. The war is adrift, and it's hard to see how anyone can avoid a complete disaster at this point."
Speaking of campaigns, one wonders what it will take for the debacle in Afghanistan, which has claimed 2,121 American lives, 257 so far this year, to become part of the discussion between the men vying for the post of commander-in-chief. Perhaps Mitt Romney, who has had one debacle after another on the campaign trail the past few days, will seize the opening to announce his support for rapid withdrawal.Romney is a puppet to the neoconservatives so he can't support any withdrawal.
More likely, however, both he and President Obama will continue to pretend that American soldiers and marines aren't dying in Afghanistan for a cause that's long since been lost.
Most joint U.S.-Afghan military operations have been suspended following what authorities believe was an insider attack Sunday that left four American soldiers dead, officials told NBC News.
“We’re to the point now where we can’t trust these people,” a senior military official said. So far this year, 51 NATO troops have been killed in these so-called blue-on-green attacks. Sunday's attack came a day after two British soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan policeman, Reuters reported.
2007 - 2 attacks, 2 Isaf soldiers dead
2008 - 2 attacks, 2 dead
2009 - 6 attacks, 10 dead
2010 - 6 attacks, 20 dead
2011 - 21 attacks, 35 dead
2012 (so far) - 36 attacks, 51 dead
It does not have the drama of the Inchon landing or the sweep of the Union comeback in the summer of 1864. But the turnabout of American fortunes in Iraq over the past several months is of equal moment -- a war seemingly lost, now winnable. The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.So the "reduced violence" is a sign the was is "winnable". Of course what is still missing is a definition of "a win".
And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two weeks ago: "This is not working. . . . We must reverse it." A euphemism for "abandon the field," which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.
How do they avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks -- mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government -- that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.
As a caution against over-enthusiasm about the surge, it's useful to consider what happens in a "draw play" in football. Defensive linemen go charging toward the quarterback, congratulating themselves on evading the blockers, when suddenly the opposing running back races past, and they realize, "Oops! We've been suckered." A Syrian analyst draws a similar picture of what's happening now in Iraq. He notes that former insurgents are regrouping and forming alliances among Sunni and Shiite militias that oppose the United States. "This will be known as the era of deception," warns my Syrian friend.Those who oppose the US occupation within Iraq know the surge must start winding down - they are simply waiting. Over 70% of the Iraqi people consider the US troops to be occupiers not liberators and want them out of their country. The Iraqi government does not want the United Nations to extend the mandate for continued occupation. Can there be any doubt that the current lull is just the eye of the hurricane and not the end of it?
LONDON (Reuters) - The conflict in Afghanistan has reached "crisis proportions," with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country and closing in on Kabul, a report said on Wednesday.Bush and Cheney should be impeached for this alone.
If NATO, the lead force operating in Afghanistan, is to have any impact against the insurgency, troop numbers will have to be doubled to at least 80,000, the report said.
"The Taliban has shown itself to be a truly resurgent force," the Senlis Council, an independent think-tank with a permanent presence in Afghanistan, wrote in a study entitled "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the brink."
"Its ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt," it said. "The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centers, and important road arteries."
Senlis said its research had established that the Taliban, driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion in late 2001, had rebuilt a permanent presence in 54 percent of the country and was finding it easy to recruit new followers.
It was also increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside and suicide bombs, to powerful effect, and had built a stable network of financial support, funding its operations with the proceeds from Afghanistan's booming opium trade.
"It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when," the report said.
Why did you decide to invade Iraq and let Osama go free?And then I answered the question:
Dubya and Osama have a symbiotic relationship - each one is strengthened by the acts of the other. That of course makes it all the more important to ask the question.Well apparently FOX's Col. David Hunt didn't get the memo or read MEJ.
We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it. Nice job again guys — now, pull the damn trigger.Now the wingers are upset but not with the Bush administration but because the military is afraid to kill people because they fear they will be put on trial for it. To quote Col. Hunt; "You cannot make this crap up".
Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden.
You cannot make this crap up; truth is always stranger and more telling than fiction. Our government, the current administration and yes, our military leaders included, failed to kill bin Laden for no other reason than incompetence.
The current “boneheads” in charge will tell you all day long that we are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan to stop terrorists there so they do not come here. Nice talk, how about — just for a moment — acting like you mean what you say? You know walk the walk. These incidents, where we displayed a total lack of guts, like the one in August, are just too prevalent. The United States of America’s political and military leadership has, on at least three separate occasions, chosen not capture or kill bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri. We have allowed Pakistan to become a safe haven for Al Qaeda.
LONDON (Reuters) - Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the "war on terror" is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday.Are we safer today than we were on 9/10? The answer is obviously no. Iraq has gone from being an unfriendly place for al-Qaeda to a virtual graduate school. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are getting stronger in Afghanistan. The Taliban and al-Qaeda control even more of Pakistan. The US military is run down and bogged down and would be hard pressed to respond to another serious threat to the United States. World wide terrorism is up not down. This all a result of the Bush/Cheney cabals inept and ill conceived "war on terror".
A report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) said a "fundamental re-think is required" if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective.
"If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut," said Paul Rogers, the report's author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.
"Combined with conventional policing and security measures, al Qaeda can be contained and minimized but this will require a change in policy at every level."
He described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "disastrous mistake" which had helped establish a "most valued jihadist combat training zone" for al Qaeda supporters.
The report -- Alternatives to the War on Terror -- recommended the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq coupled with intensive diplomatic engagement in the region, including with Iran and Syria.
In Afghanistan, Rogers also called for an immediate scaling down of military activities, an injection of more civil aid and negotiations with militia groups aimed at bringing them into the political process.
If such measures were adopted it would still take "at least 10 years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11."
The administration has "actively rejected expertise and embraced ignorance"
For three decades, Ahmed has been investigating the nexus between the Pakistan military and extremist groups, roving tribal lands in between Pakistan and Afghanistan.Afghanistan could have been a success story but...
[.....]
Ahmed believes his research is worth the risk. The mountains and valleys surrounding Afghanistan are among the least understood parts of the globe, he says. And he believes his findings help policymakers understand and alleviate tensions in the volatile region. He's shared his research with the world and has had high hopes, particularly for successive U.S. administrations. In recent years that hope has been dashed.
Until Bush came into office, Ahmed thought his words mattered to America. In the 1980s, he discussed Taliban resistance with ambassadors over tea. In the 1990s, he collaborated with policymakers to raise Afghanistan's profile in the Clinton White House. But during the Bush administration, he feels his risky research has been for naught.
Ahmed traversed the city’s bureaucracies and think tanks repeating “one common sense line”: In Afghanistan you have a “population on its knees, with nothing there, absolutely livid with the Taliban and the Arabs of Al Qaeda . . . willing to take anything.” The U.S. could "rebuild Afghanistan very quickly, very cheaply and make it a showcase in the Muslim world that says ‘Look U.S. intervention is not all about killing and bombing; it’s also about rebuilding and reconstruction…about American goodness and largesse.”Go read the entire article.
Many lifelong bureaucrats specializing in the region shared Ahmed's enthusiasm, and they agreed that after decades of violence, America could finally turn Afghanistan around through aid. But the biggest players in Bush's government, Ahmed says, had already shifted their attention to Iraq "abandoning Afghanistan at its moment of need."
The objective in fighting insurgents isn't to kill every enemy fighter -- you simply can't -- but to persuade the population to abandon the insurgents' cause. The laws of these campaigns seem topsy-turvy by conventional military standards: Money is more decisive than bullets; protecting our own forces undermines the U.S. mission; heavy firepower is counterproductive; and winning battles guarantees nothing.Every time you go after an insurgent and kill a civilian you make 5, 10, 20 or 100 new insurgents or insurgent sympathizers. It's not difficult to see why a large majority of the Afghans and Iraqis now hate the US and see the US soldiers as the enemy. So how do you win? Not with brute force.
The first tenet is that the best weapons don't shoot. Counterinsurgents must excel at finding creative, nonmilitary solutions to military problems.Of course that's not the way the immature president and the megalomaniac vice president see it. I doubt that many of the front running Democratic presidential candidates see it that way either. The denizens of the DLC are just as bad as the Republican hawks and Hillary Clinton is the queen bee if the DLC. Like Vietnam the war in Iraq and probably Afghanistan will end when the price becomes to high. Then we will have those helicopter on the roof moments some of us remember from Vietnam. In the case of Iraq we may simply run out of tin soldiers. History will show that thousands died for what was a lost cause from the very beginning because the bullies were in charge and the bullies never win.
Consider, for example, the question of roads. When U.N. teams begin building new stretches of road in volatile Afghan provinces such as Zabul and Kandahar, insurgents inevitably attack the workers. But as the projects progress and villagers begin to see the benefits of having paved access to markets and health care, the Taliban attacks become less frequent. New highways then extend the reach of the Karzai administration into previously inaccessible areas, making a continuous Afghan police presence possible and helping lower the overall level of violence -- no mean feat in a country larger and more populous than Iraq, with a shaky central government.
Said another way: Reconstruction funds can shape the battlefield as surely as bombs. But such methods are still not used widely enough in Afghanistan. After spending more than $14 billion in aid to the country since 2001, the United States' latest disbursement, of more than $10 billion, will start this month. Some 80 percent of it is earmarked for security spending, leaving only about 20 percent for reconstruction projects and initiatives to foster good governance.
The second pillar of the academy's curriculum relates to the first: The more you protect your forces, the less safe you may be. To be effective, troops, diplomats and civilian aid workers need to get out among the people. But nearly every American I saw in Kabul was hidden behind high walls or racing through the streets in armored convoys.
Afghanistan, however, isn't Iraq. Tourists travel through much of the country in relative safety, glass office towers are sprouting up in Kabul, and Coca-Cola recently opened a bottling plant. I drove through the capital in a dirty green Toyota, wearing civilian clothes and stopping to shop in bazaars, eat in restaurants and visit businesses. In two weeks, I saw more of Kabul than most military officers do in a year.
This isolation also infects our diplomatic community. After a State Department official gave a presentation at the academy, he and I climbed a nearby hill to explore the ruins of an old palace. He was only nine days from the end of his 12-month tour, and our walk was the first time he'd ever been allowed to get out and explore the city.
Of course, mingling with the population means exposing ourselves to attacks, and commanders have an obligation to safeguard their troops. But they have an even greater responsibility to accomplish their mission. When we retreat behind body armor and concrete barriers, it becomes impossible to understand the society we claim to defend. If we emphasize "force protection" above all else, we will never develop the cultural understanding, relationships and intelligence we need to win. Accepting the greater tactical risk of reaching out to Afghans reduces the strategic risk that the Taliban will return to power.
The third paradox hammered home at the academy is that the more force you use, the less effective you may be. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are notoriously difficult to tally, but 300-500 noncombatants have probably been killed already this year, mostly in U.S. and coalition air strikes. Killing civilians, even in error, is not only a serious moral transgression but also a lethal strategic misstep. Wayward U.S. strikes have seriously undermined the very legitimacy of the Karzai government and made all too many Afghans resent coalition forces. If Afghans lose patience with the coalition presence, those forces will be run out of the country, in the footsteps of the British and the Soviets before them.
Although Pentagon investigators determined quickly that he was killed by his own troops, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed he was killed by enemy fire.Now the White House has refused to turn over papers that would implicate the Bush administration in the cover up.
Tillman's family and others have said they believe the erroneous information peddled by the Pentagon was part of a deliberate cover-up that may have reached all the way to President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. The committee said Friday it had scheduled a second hearing on Tillman's death for Aug. 1, this time to probe what senior Pentagon officials knew and when.
The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting "implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests."Tillman gave up his football career after 911 to fight al-Qaeda but was critical of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the Bush administration. The only reason the administration could have for refusing to supply the documents is they were involved in the cover up.
Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), the leading members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, objected to the refusal yesterday in letters to the White House and the Defense Department.
White House and Pentagon officials have turned over about 10,000 pages of material, but Waxman and Davis said those papers do not include critical documents that would show communications between senior administration officials and top military officers shortly after Tillman was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.
Today Chairman Waxman and Ranking Minority Member Davis sent a letter to the White House objecting to the withholding of documents related to the death of U.S. Army Corporal Patrick Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004. As a result of deficient responses from both the White House and Defense Department, the Committee also announced an August 1 hearing to examine what senior Defense Department officials knew about Corporal Tillman’s death.
Following the Committee’s April 24, 2007, hearing on the Tillman fratricide, the Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding seeking “all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President” relating to Corporal Tillman’s death. The White House Counsel’s office responded that it would not provide the Committee with documents that “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests” and produced only two communications with the officials in the Defense Department, one of which was a package of news clippings. The response of the Defense Department to the Committee’s inquiry was also deficient.
In response to the deficiencies in the White House and Defense Department productions, Chairman Waxman and Ranking Member Davis today sent letters to White House Counsel Fred Fielding and Defense Secretary Robert Gates requesting complete document production by July 25, 2007. Chairman Waxman also wrote the Republican National Committee to request communications about Corporal Tillman’s death by White House officials using e-mail accounts controlled by the RNC.
In addition, the Oversight Committee announced that a hearing will be held on Wednesday, August 1, 2007, to investigate what senior officials at the Defense Department knew about Corporal Tillman’s death.
A headline like Seven afghan children killed in US-led airstrike, which I read in Monday's New York Times, can't help but make you angry. Angry about the dead children, of course, but also angry about the knowledge that there are bound to be others out there angrier over their deaths than I am. They'll have brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, uncles and fathers, mothers, and cousins.That is from Matthew Yglesias' commentary in the Guardian,
Many of them, naturally enough, will become America's enemies.
And with enough such enemies, we'll lose in Afghanistan. We'll lose because, at the end of the day, even wars that aren't fundamentally unjustified and infeasible can still be lost if they're prosecuted in a sufficiently inept manner. And that's just what seems to be happening in Afghanistan today. As the New York Times reported, the dead children "may well add to the growing anger many Afghans feel about civilian casualties from American and Nato military operations," anger stoked by the deaths of more than 130 civilians at American hands over the past six months.Of course the same applies to Iraq where over 50% of the population think it's alright to kill members of the US occupation force. Yglesias quotes from the Counterinsurgency Manuel written by none other than General David Petraeus.
Bombing, even air strikes, should be weighed against the risks, the primary danger being collateral damage that turns the population against the government and provides the insurgents with a major propaganda victory. Even when justified under the law of war, bombing a target that results in civilian casualties will bring media coverage that works to the benefit of the insurgents. A standard insurgent and terrorist tactic for decades against Israel has been to fire rockets or artillery from the vicinity of a school or village in the hope that the Israelis would carry out a retaliatory air strike that kills or wounds civilians - who are then displayed to the world media as victims of aggression. Insurgents and terrorists elsewhere have shown few qualms in provoking attacks that ensure civilian casualties if such attacks fuel anti-government and anti-US propaganda. Indeed, insurgents today can be expected to use the civilian population as a cover for their activities.But of course in the first few months of the surge air strikes have increased. And as William Lind points out air strikes are a sign of desperation.
As William S. Lind observed on June 11, the rise in strikes is indicative of the ongoing failure of the "surge" on the ground. After all, "calling in air is the last, desperate and usually futile action of an army that is losing" its ground-based counterinsurgency efforts. "Worse," he writes, "the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and General Petraeus's best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping 'fourth generation' war."Of course "winning" is not the objective of the Bush administration. Their only desire at this point is to postpone the inevitable withdrawal, "loss" to the next administration.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is orchestrating militants' operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a senior commander of Afghan Islamist group Taliban said in remarks broadcast on Wednesday.This sounds like something that could have been written by Karl Rove or The Weekly Standard's William Kristol or Fred Barnes. This bit of absurdity will fuel the wingers but will it stick with the American people? How will the sycophants in the MSM respond?
Bin Laden has not made any video statements for many months raising speculation that he might have died.
"He is drawing plans in Iraq and Afghanistan ... Praise God he is alive," Mullah Dadullah told Al Jazeera television.
The War on Terror is a marketing campaign for security industries and terrorism experts. The latter are pulling in the consulting fees, and the former are rapidly inventing new products that enable "our" government to watch our every move and to know our location at every moment.In order to make us feel safe the government and make us think it is doing something to make us safe it inconveniences us with for the most part ineffective security measures that threaten our freedom more than they make us safe. And it never ends.
Although it should be working on its corporate ethics, BAE Systems is working on an "Onboard Threat Detection System." The system consists of tiny cameras and microphones implanted in airline seats. The Onboard Threat Detection System records every facial expression and every whisper of every passenger, allowing watchful eyes and ears to detect terrorists before they can strike. BAE says its system is so sophisticated that it can differentiate between nervous flyers and real terrorists.
Think about this for a moment. Aside from the Big Brother aspect, the Onboard Threat Detection System is either redundant or the security authorities have no confidence in the expensive and intrusive airport security through which passengers are herded.
Other firms are developing chip implants that identify a person to scanning machines and allow our movements to be monitored by GPS systems. Still others are developing ID cards that have retina scans and our DNA. No doubt we will be required to have both.So ask yourself - who is the greatest threat to your way of life? The terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan or the ones in Washington DC who are terrorizing your every waking moment and picking your pocket at the same time.
All of this is to protect us from terrorists.
No thought is given to whether the intrusion from the protection is a greater threat than possible terrorist acts by foreigners protesting American hegemony over their own lives. If American hegemony has this big a price, I can do without it.
Some of us remember when it was possible to read a book in an airport while waiting on a flight. Today it can’t be done without ear plugs. TVs blaring the latest propaganda compete with incessant repetitive terrorist warnings interrupted by announcements of flight cancellations and gate changes. The cacophony of sound is maddening. If only we could go back to the days of crying babies and screaming children.
Once a terrorist warning is produced, it lives forever. Every US airport endlessly plays the same ancient warning from decades ago instructing passengers to carefully watch their luggage and not to accept items from other people to carry aboard flights. This warning dates from pre-security days when the explosion of an airliner in flight was blamed on a passenger accepting a parcel from a stranger to carry to a person waiting at the flight’s destination. Allegedly, the parcel was a bomb.
To hear this warning today thirty or forty times after passing through security makes a person wonder about the efficiency of airport security. Were all those warrantless searches pointless?
The greatest problem confronted by marketers of anti-terrorist products is the shortage of terrorist attacks. The only terrorist events Americans have experienced are the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As for 9/11, we still don’t have a good explanation of how so much security failed in one morning.
To prime the market for anti-terrorism products, the Bush administration used 9/11 to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush administration has been attempting to occupy both countries for several years at a cost to taxpayers estimated at 1,000 billion dollars.
The main result of the military action has been to stir up resentment among Muslims in the hopes that the resentment will find expression in terrorist acts in the US. We have been made less safe in order that entrepreneurs can make big bucks protecting us with new security products. It would have been much better just to give the 1,000 billion dollars to the security firms and not invaded the two countries.
Keep that in mind when you are being monitored in your airliner seat and are blinking too much because you still wear the old hard contact lenses or are suffering from allergies. Excessive blinking is a telltale sign of stress and means that the blinker is about to commit a terrorist act. When you are arrested don’t bother arguing with the foolproof Onboard Threat Detection System. Just be thankful that your senators and representative received enough campaign donations from security firms to be concerned with your security.
