Been a soldier for a thousand years . . .

So McChrystal was sacked today, for obvious reasons. He's a complicated guy, who voted for Obama, and banned Fox News from TV's at his headquarters.

But lest anyone remember him fondly, he's still this guy:

Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, describing McChrystal's role in what he calls an "executive assassination wing" of the military's joint special-operations command that Hersh claims reported directly to former Vice President Cheney's office (NPR, March 30, 2009).

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1897542,00.html#ixzz0rqYP1wp6

And this guy:

McChrystal has been accused of involvement in covering up of the fact that Tillman had been shot by his own comrades, having approved a citation for a posthumous medal that attributed his death to "enemy fire," though the general also penned a memo warning the White House against describing the circumstance of Tillman's death for fear of future embarrassment.

An official investigation blamed McChrystal for “inaccurate and misleading assertions” in the formal recommendation of Tillman for a Silver Star.

And this guy:

Camp Nama, for example, was clearly authorized by high authorities, was a mini-concentration camp for detainees, with U.S. soldiers in no uniform, with no names, licensed by their commander-in-chief to beat and terrorize and torture at will. Money quote from a soldier who witnessed the systematic, approved abuse:

"Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. 'Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?' And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in — they won't have access and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators." ...

Was he just allowing his staff to shoot-off their collective mouts, or was he condoning clear and obvious disrespect for the chain of command? Was he even trying to organize a "soft coup"?

McChrystal’s, of course, playing innocent now, and he’s apologized to the White House, but it’s hard to believe a man who spends his every waking hour plotting strategy would “accidentally” leak these kinds of whopping gaffs to the press.

It should serve as a reminder to everyone that not all military coups are violent overthrows of a democratically elected president. Sometimes, disgruntled generals can perform “soft coups,” a gradual, sneaky undermining of presidential authority and policy. Oops, did I just mentioned we’re killing civilians to the press? Whoops! Did I just discredit the president to Rolling Stone?

I dunno. But he's clearly not in charge of his staff. And that doesn't bode well for a military commander.

And he doesn't seem to understand this kind of soldier:

This could should be ...

... on every blog in blogtopia and the blogosphere:

People sometimes ask me what the differences are twixt…

... Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and it provokes flashbacks almost too painful to bear.

One thing in common is that they were all started by the fat, old, bigoted, and prejudiced white men seeking hegemony and the spoils of war. And, as all wars are, the similarities were always there: Good men driven relentlessly until they, too, recognized the insanity of war while trying to kill, maim, and destroy as many people as possible, even women and children.

It is the difference that haunts me, follows me, and breaks through my dreams to the sheer horror that was hell on earth at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, RPV, during my last trip there to help evacuate as many people as we could within a very short timeframe in April, 1975.

I had never before, and have not since, ever see crowds of well over 1.5-2 million people, so many of themselves wounded, so many with the blank stare of a mother or father whose children had either been killed or injured or were being forced to stay behind with little to no hope of survival. The cacophony of voices, the sea of tear-stained faces, the wailing cries of the sick and dying, the looks and pleas being made with the expectations that, despite it all, America wouldn't abandon them as promised even as they were watching us doing that very thing, in disbelief and with the knowledge certain we would not return.

A large group of us learned that some of the evacuees were paying $10,000.00 per head for the 'right' to go, Blackmarket bribery! that, with pride we set up an area for the poor, and with every busload of people, as we left the main processing grounds, we would stop and load on as many women and children as we could before continuing on to whatever aircraft we had on the ground.

Aircraft, combat loaded by marching evacuees up the plane's ramp and having them sit on the bare metal floor, no seats, seatbelts, no amenities of any kind 260 people on a C-141 Starlifter, 210 people on a Hercules C130. An aircraft leaving the ground every twenty minutes,non-stop.

I and many Security Police Law Enforcement Specialists were flown to Tan Son Nhut AB to act as Customs Agents and worked for eight days straight, day and night continuously, before relief could be flown in for us. Then we were taken to an Agent Orange Storage warehouse where we simply dropped to the floor and crashed. To this day I can still remember sleeping in and breathing remnants of those notoriously leaky A.O. barrels. I had no idea that this would someday almost kill me with two cancers, chemo, radiation therapy, and a radical neck dissection that permanently severed several nerves, leaving me in never-ending pain.

Still we worked twelve hour days tending to and processing that never ending sea of people, Hearing their cries, begging for us to take their babies and young children with us even when they knew they could not follow and would likely never see them again.

And that is the difference between these three wars. In Afghanistan they beg us to leave, to stop the senseless killing of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of innocent women and children, bombing wedding parties and any other large groups gathered, even those seeking to bury their dead, in the belief, fostered by w and co., that we MIGHT kill a high value target; too bad about the others.

Iraq, a war of aggression ordered by war criminals seeking revenge for w's daddy and control of that nations resources. Again the people there beg us to just go and leave them to make their own choices.

But in Vietnam, another war we should never have started, the people who suffered the most begged us the hardest to stay or take them with us, and, for a very large segment of the population actually loved us Americans who abandoned them after declaring we had 'won' and could all go home.

I still hear those cries for help, still see the faces of people whom, though they had no reasons to like or trust us…except we promised them we were their saviors. We promised them freedom. We promised them justice. We lied and many, many good Americans will never again trust 'those in power' when they rattle the chains of war.

The Vietnamese believed and trusted in us and begged us to stay, Afghanistan is now and always will be under the thumb of the criminals and warlords supplying well over 90% of the world's heroin, and we never had the evidence claimed that was used to justify that war in Iraq.

But despite the ravaging of my body and mind by my own government, using dioxin ( a chemical so toxic they now wish it could be 'disinvented') it will always be those final images of Vietnam that will haunt me forever. In the ultimate unfairness of the Universe I paid so dear a price to mind and body, particularly my mind, which seems to have had large chunks of memory ripped out of it to never return, I dearly wish that some of those memory chunks had been these: the nightmarish visions and never-ending sounds of people abandoning hope and knowing with certainty they were more likely die than to ever live in common, human decency with hopes and dreams of a better future.

That, my friends, is the difference. And that, my friends, will forever haunt me with questions to which there can be no answers, only nightmares, sadness, and the recognition that we are, or should be, a better people.

Full disclosure: I invited Bill a couple of years ago to write for VidiotSpeak, a blog I contribute to. He has never let me or our nation down.

Bugle Call Rag

Stars and Stripes, the well known leftist Pentagon funded newspaper [/snark] has donesome excellent work on the following story. Check out the timeline:

Wednesday, June 24, 2009:Army bars Stars and Stripes reporter from covering 1st Cav unit in Mosul

Asserting that Stars and Stripes “refused to highlight” good news in Iraq that the U.S. military wanted to emphasize, Army officials have barred a Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.

Officials said Stripes reporter Heath Druzin, who covered operations of the division’s 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team in February and March, would not be permitted to rejoin the unit for another reporting tour because, among other things, he wrote in a March 8 story that many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave and hand over security tasks to Iraqi forces.
[...]
Additionally, Col. Gary Volesky, the 3rd Brigade’s commander, asserted that Druzin “would not answer questions about stories he was writing.”

Maybe it's just me, but I seem to remember a “goddamned piece of paper” saying something about freedom of the press.

Now fast forward a few weeks.

Monday, August 24, 2009:Journalists' recent work examined before embeds

U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan acknowledged to Stars and Stripes that any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group, which gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for its work helping to create the Iraqi National Congress. That opposition group, reportedly funded by the CIA, furnished much of the false information about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion.

Rendon examines individual reporters’ recent work and determines whether the coverage was “positive,” “negative” or “neutral” compared to mission objectives, according to Rendon officials. It conducts similar analysis of general reporting trends about the war for the military and has been contracted for such work since 2005, according to the company.

Notice there is nothing about accuracy in their standards.

But wait, there's more!

Thursday, August 27, 2009: Files prove Pentagon is profiling reporters

Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”
[...]
“They are not doing that [rating reporters], that’s not been a practice for some time — actually since the creation of U.S. Forces–Afghanistan” in October 2008, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters Monday. “I can tell you that the way in which the Department of Defense evaluates an article is its accuracy. It’s a good article if it’s accurate. It’s a bad article if it’s inaccurate. That’s the only measurement that we use here at the Defense Department.”
[...]
But the Rendon profiles reviewed by Stars and Stripes prove otherwise. One of the profiles evaluates work published as recently as May, indicating that the rating practice did not in fact cease last October as Whitman stated.

And the explicit suggestions contained in the Rendon profiles detailing how best to manipulate reporters’ coverage during their embeds directly contradict the Pentagon’s stated policies governing the embed process.
[...]
“It’s troubling that the military is contracting a private PR firm, paid with U.S. taxpayer dollars, to profile individual reporters,” said one servicemember who declined to be identified for fear of official retribution. “It shows utter contempt for the Constitution, which we in the service pledge our lives to defend.”

And if you call now you'll receive:

Friday, August 28, 2009:Pentagon: Reporter profiling under review

Under fire following revelations that a military command in Afghanistan is compiling profiles of reporters covering U.S. military operations, Pentagon officials acknowledged Thursday that they were reviewing the practice even as they maintained that they were not making use of “positive,” “negative” and “neutral” grades assigned to reporters’ work by a Pentagon contractor.
[...]
[Pentagon spokesman Bryan] Whitman told Pentagon reporters that he was inquiring about the issue, but he added that the Pentagon is not launching any formal inquiry to the matter.

“I haven’t seen anything that violates any policies, but again, I’m learning about aspects of this as I question our folks in Afghanistan,” Whitman said. “If I find something that is inconsistent with Defense Department values and policies, you can be sure I will address it.”
[...]
“USFOR-A has only used this information to in part help assess performance in communicating information effectively to the public,” USFOR-A spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks told Stars and Stripes in an e-mailed statement. “These reports do not ‘rate’ reporters or news outlets themselves, nor do we keep any reports on individual reporters other than personal information, name, passport or ID number, media outlet, etc….”

Shanks also contended that the compiling of the reporters’ profiles was halted in May of this year.

But those claims run counter to the actual media profiles, the existence of which Stars and Stripes revealed earlier this week. The profiles contain ratings and pie charts purporting to depict whether an individual reporter’s work is “positive,” “negative” or “neutral,” as well as advice on how best to place a reporter with a military unit to ensure positive coverage and “neutralize” negative stories.

One Pentagon correspondent who requested and received her profile on Thursday said it included her current work up through July.

Riiiight, they never did it, and if they did do it they've stopped doing it, and if they did do what they said they didn't do and stopped doing they're still doing it and even tho they're reviewing what they didn't do they're not investigating it.

"Confused? You won't be, after this week's episode of...Soap"

Saturday, August 29, 2009: Army used profiles to reject reporters

The secret profiles commissioned by the Pentagon to rate the work of journalists reporting from Afghanistan were used by military officials to deny disfavored reporters access to American fighting units or otherwise influence their coverage as recently as 2008, an Army official acknowledged Friday.

Congratulations to the Stars and Stripes for their work in exposing lies from the Pentagon and maintaining the 4th Estate promise of keeping government honest. Unlike the stenographers of the corporate media, they did their jobs. There should be a Pulitzer in their future.

(You can go here to learn more about the history of Stars and Stripes.)

And now, the title song of this post starts at about 1:10:



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Kill them all and let god sort them out ...

... appears to be the American and Israeli military strategy:

Truckloads of Dead Civilians After Afghan Battle

[...]
Civilian deaths have become a bitter source of friction between Afghan authorities and U.S. forces. Washington says it is working harder this year to limit civilian deaths and investigate reports of such incidents more rapidly after the number of civilians killed by U.S. forces soared last year.

In the worst incident last year, the Afghan government and the United Nations said a U.S. strike killed 90 civilians. Washington initially denied it, but after three months said it had killed 33 civilians as well as 22 people it called militants.

Even if the US assessment is correct, killing 3 civilians for every 2 militants doesn't seem conducive to anything but creating more militants.
*************

UN Blames Israeli Army for Gaza War Attacks

UNITED NATIONS - A United Nations inquiry Tuesday blamed Israel for six serious attacks on UN buildings during its Gaza offensive, drawing fury from Israeli officials who accused the UN body of bias.

The report was drawn up by an independent commission of inquiry set up to investigate nine cases in which UN buildings in the impoverished Gaza Strip were damaged by bombardments or arms fire during the three-week war.

The findings present the latest criticism of Israel over the war it launched against the Hamas-run territory on December 27 in response to ongoing rocket fire from Gaza militants. More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis [soldiers] died.

And that's just the UN buildings attacked in the report. Not to mention the illegal arms Israel used on Palestinian civilians:

Israel backs down over white phosphorus

Israeli troops stopped using white phosphorus shells in Gaza this year after The Times published evidence that they were injuring civilians.
[...]
On January 7 a military spokeman said that the shells in question had “no explosives and no white phosphorus”.

Wow, a government investigates itself, finds itself innocent and then proof is shown that they lied and then they backtrack to another excuse.

I think I've seen that movie before.

But I digress, my main point is that you cannot use bombs or missiles or 'air strikes' within a area known to contain civilians in order to kill combatants. Even if the bombs are 'smart.' Even if the combatants are hiding behind civilians.

This is not a reason to call in air, this is a hostage situation. Generally it's handled by negotiators and an overwhelming, but individually targeted, threat of force. Both of which the armies involved have.

Having to indiscriminately kill civilians to obtain an objective shows weakness, not strength. Lying about it proves the weakness.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you ...

Bump & Update: Ms Sparky commented on this post about KBR's dangerous lack of ethical, moral or electrical standards. And it turns out she has been there and done that:

I’m Calling You On Your Crap … KBR!!!

[...]
KBR, you had many many great electricians that have supported our troops since 2003. Many great electricians who wanted to do a good job and do the right thing. Many great electricians who stood up and tried to defend doing the right thing. And what did you do? You totally disregarded them. Totally disrespected them. They were labeled as troublemakers. They were threatened to be sent home. They were sent to crap jobs as punishment. If given a chance, these great electricians may have been able to prevent the deaths that have occurred.

Unlike Ms. Sparky I've never worked in a war zone. But I do know "If you don't have the time to do it right, how are you going to find the time to do it over?"

And I also know if we're going to ask our troops to risk their lives fighting they shouldn't have to die in the shower when they get back to base.

Just the comments on her blog would be a reason enough to link to it, (we'll be adding her soon to our blogroll), but her knowledge and passion about KBR and the fraud they perpetrated on Americans and the deadly conditions KBR knowingly and systemically exposed our troops to makes it a must read.

Original post:

Military improves education on electrocution

The U.S. military is creating an electrical code for U.S. facilities in Iraq as part of an effort to prevent future electrocutions in Iraq. The deaths of at least 18 U.S. service members and contractors in Iraq are under investigation as possible electrocutions.
[...]
The letter also spells out other actions taken to prevent electrocutions, such as creation of a media campaign to educate soldiers about working with electricity. Petraeus said 86,000 facilities are being inspected, and it will be next year before all repairs and improvements are made.

Petraeus added, "All leaders understand the urgency of completing the required actions."

One of the soldiers killed was Green Beret Sgt. Ryan Maseth of Pittsburgh, who was electrocuted in January while showering in his barracks in Iraq.
[...]
In a statement, Casey praised the changes, but said he'd like them to be implemented in Afghanistan as well.

There's so much wrong here it's hard where to start.

I'll start with Petraeus saying "All leaders understand the urgency of completing the required actions." Well, no general, if leaders like yourself understood the urgency then they wouldn't have waited to implement these changes since last January! They would also implement them at EVERY US military base. And if it was 'urgent', they really shouldn't have tried to cover it up.

And it's not like Sgt Maseth was the only one electrocuted in a shower built by KBR.

Second, I'd just like to mention that THERE IS AN ELECTRICAL CODE THAT EVERY ELECTRICIAN IN THE U.S. IS REQUIRED TO PASS A TEST BEFORE THEY GET A LICENSE! Oddly enough, it's called the National Electrical Code.

(Sorry about the shouting, but I've worked for electricians and I've hooked up distro for major concerts. The mistakes that had to be made for the incidents described in the reports have been known, and mandated, for civilian workers for over 50 years.)

Third, there's one basic rule about working on electrical equipment: Turn the damn electricity off before you work on the equipment!

Which obviously wasn't an option for Green Beret Sgt. Ryan Maseth.




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

What, My Lai!?

When I first saw this on August 22nd I thought the US & NATO were probably lying:

Coalition forces said 30 militants had been killed in an air strike in Shindand district in the early hours of yesterday and no further air strikes had been launched.

Air strikes were called between 1am and 2am after Afghan and coalition soldiers were ambushed while on a patrol targeting a known Taliban commander in Herat, the US military said.

"Insurgents engaged the soldiers from multiple points . . . using small-arms and [rocket-propelled grenades]," it said.

But Afghans and the UN said

Afghan officials said Thursday that a deadly U.S.-led special forces raid on a remote western village last week was based on misleading information provided by a rival clan.

It was the latest twist in a tangled debate over what happened. U.N. officials say the raid killed up to 90 civilians, most of them children.

The Pentagon pushed back:

Pentagon disputes reports of 90 Afghan civilians killed in US airstrike

A Pentagon inquiry has found that a controversial US airstrike in Afghanistan resulted in only five civilians deaths, not the 90 deaths reported by Afghan and UN officials.

And what 'investigation' did those Pentagonal folks do? They relied on Ollie North, embedded with the troops as a journalist for Faux Noose, for corroboration of their fiction. (Yes, that's the oliver north, international drug dealer, arms trader to Iran and traitor to the US Constitution.)

For awhile it was a he said/she said with the US gov't playing the role of 'I didn't hit her and if I did she had it coming' and the Afghan civilians and the UN saying "92 were killed, including as many as 60 children."

And now we have camera phone stills and video of the aftermath of this massacre:

Harrowing video film backs Afghan villagers' claims of carnage caused by US troops

As the doctor walks between rows of bodies, people lift funeral shrouds to reveal the faces of children and babies, some with severe head injuries.

Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,” shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.”

The grainy video eight-minute footage, seen exclusively by The Times, is the most compelling evidence to emerge of what may be the biggest loss of civilian life during the Afghanistan war.

These are the images that have forced the Pentagon into a rare U-turn. Until yesterday the US military had insisted that only seven civilians were killed in Nawabad on the night of August 21.
[...]
The villagers’ accounts have been supported by separate investigations conducted by the UN, by Afghanistan’s leading human rights organisation and by an Afghan government delegation. Two Afghan army officers involved in the operation have been dismissed.

The Pentagon’s original investigation concluded last week that US forces used close air support after coming under heavy fire during a mission to seize a Taleban commander named Mullah Sadiq. They allege that he died in the operation.

The US military said that its findings were corroborated by an independent journalist embedded with the US force. He was named as the Fox News correspondent Oliver North, who came to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, when he was an army colonel.

Sources close to one of the investigations said that a video film was shot by Afghan officials the morning after the attack. It corroborates the doctor’s footage but has not been made public.

In a statement released on Saturday, the commander of Nato forces, General David McKiernan, appeared to back away from previous US accounts. He said: “Following the recent operation in Azizabad, Shindand district, we realise there is a large discrepancy between the number of civilian casualties reported by soldiers and local villagers.

Yeah, it's not lying, it's not a war crime, it just a discrepancy.

A discrepancy that just happens to happen over and over and over.

Maybe it's just me, but I think a discrepancy is when your checkbook is off by a few cents from your bank balance. It's a war crime when you massacre 60 children and 32+ of their elders.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Into the valley of Death, Rode the six five hundred.

500th U.S. service member dies in Afghanistan

[...]
Twenty-two U.S. service members were killed in Afghanistan in August, part of a recent increase in American deaths there. In June, 28 U.S. service members died in Afghanistan -- the United States' highest one-month total in that country.

Including deaths from the United States' coalition partners, 46 service members were killed in August, equaling the coalition total for June. Forty-six is the highest one-month total for coalition forces.

But that's just 'us', what about 'them'?

UN backs Afghan civilian deaths claims

The US-led coalition has acknowledged that five civilians - two women and three children - were killed in the air strikes in Herat.

An Afghan investigation has already found that the strikes killed 90 civilians.

Now the human rights team with the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan says it has found convincing evidence that 90 civilians were killed in the attack, including 60 children.

It shouldn't need repeating, but as I've said before, if you use air strikes in a civilian populated area to kill alleged extremists ... let's just say the cure is worse than the disease.

Here's a math question: How many lives of innocent civilians are worth the life of a 'terrorist?' Follow up: How many 'terrorists' are created from their surviving family members when you kill innocent people?
Your time is up, put down your pencils. (Note to Bushco; next time show work.)

While Americans, and our media, are distracted by the dog & pony donkey & elephant show this is a reminder of the blood that's shed for their bread & circuses.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway

The lovely and talented darkblack has been too busy to post this here, so I will do it for him:


For those unfamiliar with the source artwork, here's from wikipedia:

Guernica is a monumental painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain, by twenty-eight bombers, on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The attack killed between 250 and 1,600 people, and many more were injured.

The Spanish government commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint a large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris). The Guernica bombing inspired Picasso. Within 15 days of the attack, Pablo Picasso began painting this mural. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour brought the Spanish civil war to the world's attention. Guernica epitomizes the tragedies of war and the suffering war inflicts upon individuals. This monumental work has eclipsed the bounds of a single time and place, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace.

For those intent on invoking Godwin's law, blow it out your collective ass. The source of the conflict is irrelevant. The operative phrase here is "Guernica epitomizes the tragedies of war and the suffering war inflicts upon individuals". While not speaking directly for darkblack (he can indeed do that on his own), I can state that no sane person would find the trouble visited on the Iraqi people in any way redeeming or positive. I repeat, no sane person . . .

I confess to being mystified and in awe of people who are visually creative, I don't have that gene. My feeble attempts at art in both high school and early college were simply terrible. For me it's all about the music, the sounds, which create wondrous visual effects in my brain.

For that reason, among others, I am humbled and flattered that someone with darkblack's talent for the visual helps out here. Everyone blogging here has merit and talent. But darkblack, and Dancin' Dave, provide eye candy, and thoughtful and provocative art, that raises us all up.

Thanks, guys.

As long as we’re together, honey, I don’t care

John McCain only has eyes for Iraq. To paraphrase Joe Biden some months ago: A noun, a verb, and Iraq/surge.

Our friend Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks scoops the entire world media today with this pickup of another McCain gaffe:

I guess Afghanistan wasn't big enough for him.

Watch the video, it's great.

One third-degree mortally wounded, gloomy, gloomy way

Karzai Only Controls 1/3 of Afghanistan

February 28, 2008; 2:23 AM

WASHINGTON -- More than six years after the U.S. invaded to establish a stable central regime in Afghanistan, the Kabul government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country and Karzai's government controls 30 percent to 31 percent. The majority of Afghanistan's population and territory remains under local tribal control, he said.
[...]
In 2007, insurgency-related violence killed more than 6,500 people, including 222 foreign troops. Last year was the deadliest yet since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Officials estimate that up to 40 percent of proceeds from Afghanistan's drug trade _ an amount worth tens of millions of dollars _ is used to fund the insurgency.

And in related news:

Fresh cheap heroin headed for New England

Feb 28, 2008

The booming poppy harvest in Afghanistan could soon become New England's heroin problem.

Ahh, the Bush policy of the 'free market' at work.[/snark]

Bush et al were so desperate to invade Iraq that after 6 1/2 years of war in Afghanistan they only manage to control 3 times more area than the Taliban does. And somehow heroin keeps entering our country regardless of the DHS and their 900,000 people on the 'Terrer Watch List.'

Just a quick question: What terrifies you more; The reality of your child being exposed to cheaper heroin or the fantasy of a 'ticking time bomb' somewhere in America?



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Pentagonal Politics

Bump and Update:

Gen. George Casey, the Army's chief of staff, said Tuesday he has no reason to doubt Barack Obama's recent account by an Army captain that a rifle platoon in Afghanistan didn't have enough soldiers or weapons.

Original post:
During the Texas Democratic debate

Barack Obama [said] the war in Iraq, which he opposes, has pulled troops away from Afghanistan and left soldiers there without proper equipment.
[...]
"You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," Obama said. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq,"

"And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

Now Obama's point is so obviously true you just know the wrongwingers will swiftboat tiny details to make it seem as if the whole thing was made up.

And the AP article quoted above, which complained about Obama not giving the captain's name, is true to form by not even bothering to quote anyone:

"A platoon does not have to consist of 39, but can have between 16 to 40 soldiers, according to standard Army unit organization. It is also commanded by a lieutenant and not a captain."

ABC's Jake Tapper talked to Obama's source, and after noting the wrongwing sites and their swiftboating, wrote

I called the Obama campaign this morning to chat about this story, and was put in touch with the Army captain in question.

He told me his story, which I found quite credible, though for obvious reasons he asked that I not mention his name or certain identifying information.

Short answer: He backs up Obama's story.

The longer answer is worth telling, though.
[...]

It's worth reading the rest, and in an odd way, so are the comments.

Even the Pentagon got involved in the pushback:

Pentagon doubts Obama account of equipment problem

[...]
"I find that account pretty hard to imagine," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

"Despite the stress that we readily acknowledge on the force, one of the things that we do is make sure that all of our units and service members that are going into harm's way are properly trained, equipped and with the leadership to be successful," he said.

OK, the wrongwingers are relying on Swiftboat 101, attack a tiny detail and ignore the truth of the point: the war in Iraq has pulled troops away from Afghanistan and left soldiers there without proper equipment.

But the Pentagon attacked the truth of the point. And that's just hypocritical.

Soldiers, officers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, generals, governors of states that needed their National Guard to respond to natural disasters, all have made Obama's same point.

Examples: 18/09/2003 Troops shortage may force US to quit Balkans
4/22/2004 Troop buildup in Iraq exposes critical shortages
1/30/2007 Boosting U.S. troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 would create major logistical hurdles for the Army and Marine Corps
3/30/2007 The military is so short of equipment that it will take years after the war in Iraq ends to bring it up to authorized levels, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs told a House subcommittee Thursday.

Families have to hold bake sales for body armor.
There were ammunition shortages.

During the conduct of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in 2003, there were several reports of ammunition shortages experienced by combat units.

Even police departments are short of ammo due to the war.

Our military is stretched so thin it has had to hire more contractors to work in Iraq than they have soldiers.

Our troops were improperly equipped for the invasion.
Our troops were improperly equipped for the occupation.
Our troops were improperly taken care of mentally and physically if they returned home.

But of course none of that matters because Barack Obama said an Army captain told him a rifle platoon should have 39 members.

To paraphrase former SecDef Rumsfeld, you go to war because of the politicians you have, not the politicians you wish you had.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak