Our dead in Afghanistan has now reached 2000. As anti-American protests and sentiments continue to grow, the Obama Administration continues to spend billions in the country and continues to send our soldiers into harm’s way. In the most tragically apt moment, we reached 2000 dead with yet another American killed by an Afghan soldier that he was treating as an ally and comrade in arms.
A civilian contractor with NATO and at least two Afghan soldiers also died in the attack by what the government refers to clinically as “an insider.” In addition to our 2000 dead, 1,190 more coalition troops from other countries have died.
With the Afghanistan President referring to Americans as “devils” and saying that he wishes he could have joined the Taliban, it is not surprising that we are training some soldiers who view our soldiers as the enemy.
Despite Obama’s promise of the withdrawal of U.S. forces, American, NATO and allied troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a rate of one a day. We are years into Obama term and we still have thousands of troops in a country where we are widely viewed as enemies and continue to spend billions as our own cities and states shutdown basic public programs for lack of money.
Source: Yahoo
BettyKath,
Thanks for Clinton and Ryan. Quite buddy-buddy.
“Just call me” says Clinton.
The memory of Jon Stewart slicking him in the ear is kinda nauseating.
Clinton looked a bit askance at him a couple of times. Guess he felt that some of the jokes were not showing adequate deference..
Then, guess he thought, “Oh well, I came here to reach his nuthead fringe. It could convince some independents too. Bear the freight and get the payoff.”
Billie,
Fully agree.
I have read a brief account on what it was like in the CIA station in Iraq. They were the most aggressive, intelligent ones in the CIA, but the systme overwhelms all. And the environment does too.
Partiularly here due to the presemce of alcohol and women “desert flowers”.
Your son’s situation was much worse.
Has any soldier written his story yet. Or are they allowed to do so? Anybody know?
The Colonel? That is called setting a good example for the EMs. Hah!
Bill Clinton on Ryan and Medicare, 2011
I say bring all the Soldiers home from every country… my son was in Iraq 14 months off and on… and wish he would have never gone in the Army… the stories that he has told me about the events going on between our soldiers and the high rank… and the things they were doing… I would fear to put it here and tell the stories… wow I was shocked… at the things some of the soldiers were doing and it was ordered by higher ups… and the fights between our soldiers … just craziness… and the drugs that was being pumped into them… wow… we have not learned a thing in 40 years from Vietnam…. a fight broke out one day between our soldiers stationed out of Fort Benning….that were in Iraq…… about 100 of them …. and they just let them fight… broken arms broken legs they were drunk… what the hell… first you are going home than you are not… than you are going home and than you are not…. and the things that were done… I won’t mention any names.. but this Colonel is sitting at the Pentagon… and he shot 2 Iraq’s prisoners tied up on the ground and gave thumbs up… wow some of the young men 18 and 19 and 20 didn’t know what to think of that….Oh ya war crimes were charged on him… when they got back… he made General and is now sitting at the Pentagon…. hmmmmmmm I say bring all our Soldiers home… Just saying….
OT, sort of.
Clinton and Ryan on medicare.
SwM,
Fully agree. I know one from the region whose family left Iran, which is not better in its views on women. I know a young woman from Afghanistan who is fully modernized living here. And have read reports written by reliable westerners there—including a gang of western nurses who went there. set up an aid station without sponsorship, etc solely to help the women in the district. This meant getting acceptance from the men, discussions.
Never were they insulted or mistreated by these leaders. Perhaps the men were not Talibans, but the point being that offering without conditions can be done.
Obviously I would want my women to get away from the Talibans.
And the poor wlll be faced living under them.
My Afghani pharmacist says that education is the only answer.
And when did American women get suffrage?
Here is a choice: http://warisacrime.org/content/ny-oct-7-demonstration-protest-11-years-death-debt-afghanistan
We have spent over 4 trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan, so far. Can you imagine the law enforcement investigation along with the full and fair trial of any person involved in 9/11 that that money would have provided? Best of all, no one dies.
They lie, you believe, others die. This must end.
anonymously posted, my coffee soured this morning after searching your links.
What an incredibly insulated reality my life functions in.
Thanks to the goals of government, capitalism, and genius marketing, I am almost as dumb and unaware of things as my kitchen dish rag.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_freeland
This links to an article in the New Yorker. It’s about rich guys hanging out and discussing their self interest. I was “foolishly” amazed to read Al Gore was one of the attendees.
“The dinner was the highlight of the fourth annual SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, known as salt, a convention orchestrated by the fund manager Anthony Scaramucci; it brings together fund managers with brand-name speakers and journalists for four days of talking and partying. The star guest at the dinner was Al Gore, who was flanked by Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, and the New York hedge-fund investor Orin Kramer, a friend of Gore’s and a top Obama fund-raiser.”
This article solidified in my mind, The amazing power the super rich yield.
My political influence is basically my vote. There are groups of super rich that own some of the politicians I vote for.
Money is not free speech, Corporations are not people, …… Money and Corporations are the Plutocratic Fascists that own our government.
I am almost envious of my kitchen dish rag.
idealist, I am for pulling out as you are, but if you were an Afghani woman, would you not be trying to leave before the talliban takes over? The families with money will get out as they have already moved their money out of the country.
Let us NOT in the name of fear of terrorists…..!
No is so important. Think if Obama had said that at the surge request and said instead yes to pullout.
Messp,
That was fine when we were fighting for independence.
Now the Afghans are fighting for theirs, from us.
There is a difference after all.
We are instead fighting a nation whose leading figures would and have dominated us for over a century. In fact since 1789.
Which nation` Our own USA, beautiful America. With spacious skies for the elite, amber waves of grain for the agrobusinesses supported by our taxes.
If you have any children or relative’s children involved in Iraq or Afghan, then tell us.
And may I ask what they feel about the wars?
Just askin’.
And what do you think the vets, the ones who came home living, in whatever shape, think of these wars.
You don’t have to be a muslim lover, or a weak sister to hate these wars. All it takes is a little humanity.
By all means, let us protect ourselves from terrorists. But let us not impoverish ourselves, deny education to the children, medical help to the poor, scholarships to the bright and student loans to the worthy. That is just the short list of how we might pay for these wars.
Let us in the name of fear of terrorists think we can buy insurance against lifes hazards by paying with our freedoms that George Washington bought for us at Valley Forge.
We are willing to fight but fainthearted against our real enenmies. That war has a seemingly meaningless outcome ending in early serfhood. And you know of whom I speak.
No need to list them for the weary here.
Your army is hunkered down in a hostile region with diminishing supply lines caused in part by the surrounding populace’s animosity to your mission. The enemy is unseen but lurking. Skirmishes abound and you have lost 2500 troops in one three month span men to all manner of war born calamities. You are feeling no support at home and Congress seems reluctant to decide how to help you if they help you at all. Two thirds of the American people are either apathetic or despise your mission. You are at the mercy of suspect foreign born intelligence that seems a bit fraudulent or perhaps even traitorous. Your despair is at an all time high but you believe your mission is vital to the country’s national interests to prevent fear and oppression at home..
Pull out or fight to complete the mission?
Afghanistan circa 2012?
No, Washington at Valley Forge circa 1777.
Willard: In the debate tomorrow please make one promise. “I, Willard Romney promise to pull out of AfghaniStan and PakiStan within one month of taking office.”
If you cant say that tomorrow Willard then we cant vote for you. If you win, we will put it to you like we said to Nixon: “Pull out now Willard, like your father should have.”
If you hire out that additional 100,000 troops that you promised the rich guys the other day at the fund raiser then dont send them to a Stan country. Send them fresh troops to Texas to keep the border virtuous so that all those folks dont come across to pick your rich boys’ grapes and fix their roofs.
Us dogs are on to you and your kind Willard. We know about the crate on top of your car. Crate dogs are for Obama.
Missing from the article is the number of suicides.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/casualties-afghanistan-war_n_1927691.html
U.S. Casualties In Afghanistan Rise Past 2,000 As Long-Term Costs Of War Remain Unknown
by David Wood
“The roster of American wounded — over 17,000 in Afghanistan and 32,000 in Iraq — include some 17,000 young Americans with multiple severe wounds. Through July 2012, the Defense Department recorded 1,655 amputations due to battle injuries, acording to data drawn up for The Huffington Post by the U.S. Army Surgeon General. The wounds include those with disabling genital wounds.
But the carnage spreads far beyond physical wounds. According to the Armed Forces Health Survillance Center,
3,299 American troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan have been diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury since 2003. That data almost certainly understates the number suffering from mild, moderate or severe brain injury because the military didn’t begin testing for TBI on the battlefield until 2007. Even now, precise diagnosis of TBI is not possible, according to the Defense Department’s senior TBI specialist.
In cold cash, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost American taxpayers $1.4 trillion. But that’s only a down payment, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that the cost of health care for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans will reach between $40 billion and $55 billion.
Other demands for education, housing and pension benefits will drive the Department of Veterans Affairs’ long-term costs into the trillions of dollars, some officials believe.
But any measure of the war’s dead, including some 20,000 Afghan civilians and perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians, will necessarily fall far short of the true cost of young lives cut off, of grieving families, of children without a parent.
Nor can the burden on the survivors, the 2.5 million Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, be properly weighed. Even senior officials at the Pentagon and the VA say privately they cannot accurately describe what life will be like for the severely wounded and their families, who face decades of complex medical care and uncertain rehabilitation.”
Missing from the article are the numbers of suicides.
If we look at tonight’s reports from reality and the reports amounting to protest, it has been a depressing harvest.
And it should feel depressing.
Since the series in 2004, IGTNT, to 2011 there has been protest. Has it not caught fire as Vietnam protests. Nope.
(“They are professional soldiers and that is what we are paying them for!” Cynic!)
Is that the only reason? Perhaps, depressingly it is. Our compassion does not extend very far.
And if the the crimes committed ón these people EVETY DAY, are not shown on prime time, who gets reminded. “Well, you know, it’s not news anymore.” Cynic! Are the real facts of life and mostly death being smothered on orders from on high. Surely so from what we-ve seen from tonights offerings.
I thought the Lannan incident particularly worrisome.
As it shows that even our nominal friends perhaps are only a front by the FBI or the CIA to use to in this case control the stuff that hurts our belief in the system—in this case the cooperation of the media with the government.
Think about that next time you read about “liberal” organizations. Fronts are literally loved by the CIA.
I’ll tell you why some other time.
Is the CIA operation outside their charter here in the USA? There are more employed in district offices all over the states than in overseas positions, including embassy placed officers.
BettyKath,
Is this what they mean by bringing the war home to us?
Yes what else can the military do? The military is evil. Evil obviously is not good. Why then have it? Legal sytem likewise being = to sharia law. Why then have it?
IRONY, SARCASM DEPT.
Betty Kath,
That notice was not for you but some others here. Which stuck pig will squeal now…….?
With a view to what you wrote that we sometime can look forward (?) to being chased by helicopters by our own army and police—I was just wondering if movies and tv-series will be offered based on such events. The genres are well-established, and audienc participation is guaranteed. “See, there is cousin Bill, he got away, uh, that time, Duh.”
“Mommy, I don’t like seeing Grandpa bleeding.”
“Well, child, he has at least been memorialized. He’ll be remembered forever.”
Shalom alejkam. And that was a joke too. If you get it.
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/11-4
Published on Saturday, June 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
‘The War You Don’t See’: A Film You Won’t See
An Open Letter to Noam Chomsky and the General Public
by John Pilger
Dear Noam,
I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, ‘The War You Don’t See’, and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media.
Lannan invited me and David over a year ago and welcomed my proposal that they also host the US premiere of ‘The War You Don’t See’, in which US and British broadcasters describe the often hidden part played by the media in the promotion of war, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. The film has been widely acclaimed in the UK and Australia; the trailer and reviews are on my website http://www.johnpilger.com
The banning and cancellation, which have shocked David and me, are on the personal orders of Patrick Lannan, whose wealth funds the Lannan Foundation as a liberal center of discussion of politics and the arts. Some of you will have been there and will know the Lannan Foundation as a valuable supporter of liberal causes. Indeed, I was invited in 2002 to present a Lannan award to the broadcaster Amy Goodman.
What is deeply disturbing about the ban is that it happened so suddenly and inexplicably: 48 hours before David Barsamian and I were both due to depart for Santa Fe I received a brief email with a ‘sorry for the inconvenience’ from a Lannan official who had been telling me just a few days earlier what a ‘great honor’ it was to have the US premiere of my film at Lannan, with myself in attendance.
I urge you to visit the Lannan website. Good people like Michael Ratner, Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald are shown as participants in discussion about freedom of speech. I am there, too, but my name is the only one with a line through it and the word, ‘Cancelled’.
Neither David Barsamian nor I have been given a word of explanation. All my messages to Lannan have gone unanswered; my calls are not returned; my flights were cancelled summarily. At the urging of the New Mexican newspaper, Patrick Lannan has issued a one-sentence statement offering his regrets to the Lannan-supporting ‘community’ in Santa Fe. Again, he gives no reason for the ban. I have spoken to the manager of the Santa Fe cinema where ‘The War You Don’t See’ was to be screened. He received a late-night call. Again, no reason for the ban was forthcoming, giving him barely time to cancel advertising in The New Mexican, which was forced to drop a major feature.
There is a compelling symbol of our extraordinary times in all of this. A rich and powerful individual and organization, espousing freedom of speech, has moved ruthlessly and unaccountably to crush it.
With warm regards
John Pilger
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism’s highest award, that of “Journalist of the Year,” for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.