President Obama’s Dec. 1 speech about his decision on the Bananastans (Afghanistan and Pakistan) is unlikely to surprise anyone. The sanctioned leaks have been coming fast and furious the past few days, and it appears that Gen. Stanley McChrystal will get what he asked for. Maybe.
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President Obama will announce his big decision about Afghanistan on Tuesday. The sanctioned leaks about what he’ll say are coming fast and furious.
According to various reports, he’ll commit somewhere between 30,000 and 34,000 extra U.S. troops to the region. When he announces that, [...]
Are we going to escalate the war in Afghanistan for the sake of saving face? Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have to stay the course in Afghanistan to deny al-Qaeda a “propaganda win.”
A propaganda win, as best I can tell, is a condition where [...]
President Barack Obama is about to make the biggest mistake of 21st century by sending 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
We currently have 68,000 troops in Afghanistan. NATO countries supply an additional 42,000. There are maybe 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and maybe 300 in Pakistan. [...]
Michael O’Hanlon, a war-hawk tank thinker with the Brookings Institution who encouraged us to invade Iraq, says we should “remain hopeful” about Afghanistan. Even though the news about Afghanistan has been “dispiriting,” O’Hanlon tells us, “Most foreign and Afghan officials and officers who I encountered on [...]
Reptilian former presidential candidate Fred Thompson says that President Obama’s delay in making a decision of Afghanistan is “evidence” that the war is already lost. “Our enemies are emboldened,” says Thompson, “our allies are discouraged.” He says Obama’s “heart’s not in it” and that he is too obsessed [...]
“It really boils down to one of two decisions, getting out or getting in.”
--President Lyndon Johnson, speaking about Vietnam.
“Soldiers came to school today,” announced the Kindergarten kid. "They only kill bad people. They don't kill good people." This is story comes' [...]
“It really boils down to one of two decisions, getting out or getting in.”
--President Lyndon Johnson, speaking about Vietnam.
“Soldiers came to school today,” announced the Kindergarten kid. "They only kill bad people. They don't kill good people." This is story' [...]
The mainstream media’s coverage of Iran continues to suck. Joe Klein of TIME magazine just posted a short piece that mentioned “the discovery of the nuclear reactor at Qom, a secret facility that seems to have been built for research into weaponization. The Russians were as surprised by this [...]
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on the Sunday gab circuit that rooting al-Qaeda out from Afghanistan is [...]
The Independent posted a Nov. 15 story regarding allegations of sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers. The Ministry of Defense is investigating 33 new torture cases. Human rights groups caution that the British Army may face hundreds of claims of sexual and physical [...]
It’s tough to tell what’s going to happen with Af-Pak. We get so many conflicting reports.
For a time, we heard that President Obama was leaning toward sending 30,000 additional troops there, and that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, [...]
Our counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine is a sham.
The Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual says “The primary objective of any COIN operation is to foster development of effective governance by a legitimate government.” A pretty good rule of thumb in political science says that if you [...]
Mikhail Gorbachev, head of state of the Soviet Union when it withdrew from Afghanistan, has two words for Barack Obama: get out. Gorbachev, now 78, said in an interview in Berlin that he sees no chance of American success in Afghanistan even with more troops. “I [...]
Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen finally told it like it is. "If we don't get a level of legitimacy and governance [in Afghanistan],” he confessed, “then all the troops in the world aren't going to make any difference."
We’re not going to get legitimacy and governance in [...]
National Security Adviser James Jones says, "Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false." That’s maybe good news. It maybe means Obama is coming to his senses and is ready to pull the plug on this Af-Pak madness.
Various reports [...]
A pair of recent stories by Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad suggested that Hillary Clinton had cut a big league dope deal with Pakistan’s military and intelligence services to negotiate with the Taliban and give the U.S. a face-saving path to exit Afghanistan. The story was [...]
Afghanistan has become a Mel Brooks movie.
President Hamid Karzai handpicked an election commission that threw the election his way. UN overseers declared the election was crooked and decreed that a runoff was required. Karzai didn’t want to face a runoff, but John Kerry and other [...]
Adnkronos International (AKI), the Italian news agency, reports that the U.S., in the person of Hillary Clinton, pressured Hamid Karzai rival Abdullah Abdullah to drop out of the presidential race. The way AKI describes it this was the biggest foreign policy coup of the Obama administration to date.
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Daniel Ellsburg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers that revealed Lyndon Johnson went along with a war he knew was unwinnable, says we’re repeating Vietnam in Afghanistan. In an interview with The Real News, Ellsberg remarks “No victory lies ahead in Afghanistan” and “they’re not going to get effective [...]
So this platoon comes back to an Afghan village it hasn’t visited in three months. One of the village elders tells the platoon commander, Lieutenant Thomas Goodman, "We ask you not to come here. It is better for us, and better for you." As the platoon leaves the village, [...]
As Colonel Tim Reese noted in July, “The ineffectiveness and corruption of [Iraqi government] Ministries is the stuff of legend.” Of Iraq’s security forces, Reese reported that “Corruption among officers is widespread, Cronyism and nepotism are rampant in the assignment and promotion system,” and “Laziness is endemic.”
[...]NATO ministers were hot to trot for Gen. Stan McChrystal’s Afghanistan escalation scheme, but Europe isn’t likely to send any more troops to the fray. Opinion polls in most European countries show clear majorities in favor of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso says, [...]
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton makes one pine for the doltish Condi Rice. Rice was a bumbling tool of Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives. Hillary, on the other hand, is a full partner in the warmongery.
She’s told the Iranians they have to accept the [...]
Who’s the bigger fraud: Hamid Karzai or the phalanx of western toads who are hailing him as the “legitimate” president of Afghanistan?
To review the bidding: Karzai appointed a gang of crooks as election officials who threw the original election in his direction. [...]
Abdullah Abdullah says he won’t participate in Afghanistan’s run-off election because it will be too crooked, so crook Hamid Karzai wins. Everything we do in AfPak from now on, counterinsurgency-wise, will be in support of what is likely the most corrupt government on earth. It will be a [...]
In an Oct. 26 op-ed piece, David Ingatius of the Washington Post tells us everything we need to know about why mainstream media war coverage is so tainted. The article is 750 words worth of war pornography, verbal sex performed on Gen. David Petraeus, who gives Ignatius [...]
