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POPSAfghanistan Looming as Huge Mire of wasted lives, resources When will we ever learn? Trying to bomb these people (at great cost in innocent lives) into submission in a guerrilla war is incredibly stupid. The Russians couldn't do it and apparently we didn't learn our lessons well in Vietnam, Jungle/desert comparison aside. Their will to defend their own turf is rooted in the ages while ours is in greed and misguided ideology and there's the rub. Fools. What a waste of lives and resources and perception of good will worldwide. It's NOT a "good" war, if there are any. And changing strategy to more troops is folly of the worst kind but great for the war profiteers.
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POPSThe US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet and We Simply Never Talk About It. Where the Sun Never Sets Let's face it, we're on an imperial bender and it's been a long, long night. Even now, in the wee hours, the Pentagon continues its massive expansion of recent years; we spend militarily as if there were no tomorrow; we're still building bases as if the world were our oyster; and we're still in denial. Someone should phone the imperial equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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POPSVFP Calls for U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan and the Prosecution of Dick Cheney and George Bush fo
This same resolution calls for the U.S. government to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan, in non-coercive forms, to help them rebuild their own nation and their lives in cooperation with other nations in the region; and to allow the people of Afghanistan to freely determine their own government without interference by the U.S. "These three statements from our membership represent many of the core values of our organization. We believe that service members have the right to re-evaluate their decision to kill and change their mind. We know that after all the killing is done the individual soldiers must live with themselves and make sense of what they have done. We believe that our political leaders must be held accountable for their actions. This is a critical to a healthy and functional democracy. We realize that to survive the challenges we face today, like global warming, we must find ways to work together and war is not viable." To read full text of the resolu
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POPSAfghans Fed Up With Government, US A strong sense of frustration echoed through dozens of interviews by The Associated Press with Afghan villagers, police, government officials, tribal elders and Taliban who left and rejoined the religious movement. The interviews ranged from the capital, Kabul, to the rural regions near the border with Pakistan. The overwhelming result: Ordinary Afghans are deeply bitter about American and NATO forces because of errant bombs, heavy-handed searches and seizures and a sense that the foreigners do not understand their culture. They are equally fed up with what they see as seven years of corruption and incompetence in a U.S.-backed government that has largely failed to deliver on development. Even with more foreign troops, Afghanistan is now less secure.
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POPSPalin Invokes God to Justify Iraq, Pipelines. What a....Repukelican. ..no I won't say what I really think. There are women here I respect too much...But not Sarah, or Cindy McCain or Laura Bush--any woman who can cleave to men like that doesn't deserve MY respect.
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POPSPoor, Poor Buttsore Billary This is an especially sore point for Bill Clinton, people close to him say, because among many grievances he has about the campaign Obama waged against his wife is a belief that the candidate poor-mouthed the political and policy successes of his two terms. One senior Obama supporter said the Clinton associates negotiating on her behalf act like “Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific still fighting after the war is over.” A prominent Obama backer said some of Clinton’s lieutentants negotiating with the Obama team are “bitter enders” who presume that, rather than the Clintons reconciling themselves to Obama’s victory, it is up to Obama to accommodate them.
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POPSUK Denies Money to Wounded Afghans I think there are a lot more deaths from "collateral damage" and so do officials reprting...It's disgusting what our tax dollars are doing.... ‘We have huge concerns, especially over the number of casualties from air strikes,’ said Marc Garlasco, a former air strike commander for the Pentagon who left after becoming disillusioned with the number of innocent victims in Afghanistan and who is the author of this week’s HRW report. He said the casualty figures must be viewed as extremely conservative with the total representing the ‘bare minimum’.
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POPSUS Weighs Stepped-Up Military Forays Into Pakistan Why don't we just hand over all the decisions to the Generals and Admirals and get it over with? We might as well save money on elections an other such futile circuses. Just call it The Disunuted States of the Pentagon. just cut out "the people" As middlemen and go directly to the profiteering Korporations and ask them what they need to bring in more obscene $$$$$$. Why fuck around voting?
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POPSHaving the ‘Best Military’ Is Not Always a Good Thing So consider this a modest proposal from a retired citizen-airman: A small but meaningful act against the creeping militarism of the Bush years would be to collectively repudiate our “world’s best warfighter” rhetoric and re-embrace instead a tradition of reluctant but resolute citizen-soldiers. Becoming Warfighters I first noticed the term “warfighter” in 2002. Like many a field-grade staff officer, I spent a lot of time crafting PowerPoint briefings, trying to sell senior officers and the Pentagon on my particular unit’s importance to the President’s new Global War on Terrorism. The more briefings I saw, the more often I came across references to “serving the warfighter.” It was, I suppose, an obvious selling point, once we were at war in Afghanistan and gearing up for “regime-change” in Iraq. And I was probably typical in that I, too, grabbed the term for my briefings. After all, who wants to be left behind when it comes to supporting the troops “at the pointy end of the spear”
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POPS"Generation Kill" brings the Iraq war to the TV viewer From the producers of "The Wire" With its $550 billion budget and 1.5 million troops, the military might seem a mechanized colossus of precision-guided violence, give or take a few bad apples and errant artillery shells. But if you have served in the military or written about it from the inside, you know that on the unit level it is filled with men and women of vastly different motivations and skills. The Marines in Generation Kill are intelligent and dimwitted, panicked, sensitive, racist, comic, homicidal, brave. It is a wonder when things go according to plan. "You know what happens when you get out of the Marine Corps?" says one of the characters. "You get your brains back."
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POPSMoyers: Conservatives had their chance and Blew it! On top of such bungled calamities as Iraq and Katrina… GEORGE W. BUSH: Again I want to thank you all for- and Brownie you're doing a heck of a job. BILL MOYERS: The conservative regime sent spending into the stratosphere…borrowed trillions from the future to pay for their agenda, and rewarded their wealthy base with huge tax cuts. Earmarks and contracts fattened lobbyists on K Street, which Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay honed into a ruthless shakedown machine exploited by conservative movement stars like Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, and Jack Abramoff. JACK ABRAMOFF: Senator, I respectfully invoke the privileges previously stated. SEN. KENT CONRAD: And I'd say to you Mr. Abramoff, shame on you. BILL MOYERS: And after crusading for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, conservatives pushing family values turned out to be their own worst enemies. Some of their foot soldiers in politics and the religious right were outed for adultery, stalking Capitol Hill pages, soliciting sex. Be
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POPSSeeds of Current Propaganda found in Reagan Era Enduring Skills Beyond these individuals, the manipulative techniques that were refined in the 1980s — especially the skill of exaggerating foreign threats — have proved durable, bringing large segments of the American population into line behind the Iraq War in 2002-03. Only now — with more than 4,100 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead — are many of these Americans realizing that were manipulated by clever propaganda, that their perceptions had been managed. For instance, the New York Times recently pried loose some 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents revealing how the Bush administration had manipulated the public debate on the Iraq War by planting friendly retired military officers on TV news shows. Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former analyst on Murdoch’s Fox News, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20,
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POPSElite US Army Academy Lures Kids With Mud and Duty this sickening; Kathleen Engle, 16, from Fairfield, California, said she had looked into the Peace Corps and other options but decided on the military. “I was in fifth grade when 9/11 happened and that’s when I decided the best thing I could do for my country was this,” she said, playing a video game called “America’s Army.” “I guess it’s going to be hard to kill someone, but if that’s your job and that’s what our commander tells us we need to do, I’m going to do that in order to protect my country.” Brainwashed at 16, or sooner
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POPSThe Amerikkan Beast Still Lives A significant number of soldiers are screaming that something is terribly wrong with the leadership and judgement of those who pushed us into this war — the false reasons for starting it; the slipshod manner in which it was begun; the lack of support for those on the ground; and the lies to the soldiers; not to mention the broken promises that Iraqis have suffered. And we at home are lied to when we are told that the US has "turned this war around." While hostilities have reduced, it is quite far from being turned around.
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POPSCollateral Damage What It Really Means When America Goes to War Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or Marines, are to most of the occupation troops in Iraq nameless, faceless, and easily turned into abstractions of hate. They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing — the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm — to murder — the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing. The savagery and brutality of the occupation is tearing apart those who have been deployed to Iraq. As news reports have just informed us, 115 American soldiers committed suicide in 2007. This is a 13% increase in suicides over 2006. And the suicides, as they did in the Vietnam War years, will only rise as distraught veterans come home, unwrap the self-protective layers of cotton wool that keep them
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POPSWinter Soldiers Hit the Streets A late April poll conducted by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. found that nearly three-quarters (68 percent) of respondents opposed the Iraq war. The strategy of the regional IVAW groups is clearly meant to capitalise on the growing opposition to the occupation of Iraq among the U.S. public. Christopher Diggins, a psychotherapist who attended the demonstration, reflected the feelings of many — that this strategy is important. “This tactic is better because you have to get the community involved,” Diggins told IPS. “You have to have community awareness and support.” “I want to show my solidarity for vets who are against the war, because it is the only way this war is going to stop,” he added. “It’s hard to have the war if nobody is going to fight.”
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POPSMr. Magoo Worse than Bush? I think we're past "victory" and " honor" now. all that's left is tragedy and suffering--for the returning troops and the dead and innocent families who "we" destroyed. 40'000+ US soldiers and Marines diagnosed with PTSD and many more sucides. For what--Bush's Ego and oil. AAAARRRRGH!
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POPSThe Sacrificer: Bush Quit Golf Over Iraq War When I saw this on the news (OLbermann's special comment was brilliant) I was flabbergasted...to think! Our Preznit had to give up golf 'cuz it wouldn't be proprewr! Such *solidarity* with the families of all the dead! **gag**
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POPSSchool Military Recruiting Could Violate International Protocol THIS HORRIBLE PRACTICE BY THE MILITARY HAS GOT TO STOP--OUR CHILDREN ARE NOT CANNON FODDER FOR STUPID OLD MEN'S WARS!! the U.S. armed services “regularly target children under 17 for military recruitment, heavily recruiting on high school campuses, in school lunchrooms, and in classes.” “The United States military’s procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics,” said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project. The increased aggressiveness of military recruiters is due in major part, according to the report, to the increased pressure to meet enlistment quotas caused by ongoing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to which nearly 200,000 soldiers and marines are currently deployed. The pressure created by current military commitments has not only translated into enhanced recruitment efforts among children under 18. The armed forces have also lower
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POPSIf We Really supported the Troops... Go to http://anysoldier.com/WhereToSend/ and then click on a soldier-contact's name, read the blurb he or she has posted about what his or her unit wants, and then click again to request a form (asking for your own addy and name) to get the appropriate address for that unit. You must not send porn, and you must not send packages that contain both food and soap/sunscreen/etc in the same box. No pork products. No anti-islamic tracts in bulk. No political content. No flea collars. No depictions of naked or partly naked people. No explosives, firearms, other shit that is illegal to mail anyway. Don't send chocolate, it melts. You must request the address to send your package to on the same day you mail it, so it's hard to really meet the requests. I am thinking of assembling a bunch of common cheap items, and boxing them up at the last minute. even someone as poor as me can spring for toothbrushes and lip balm, for crying out loud. Things particularly in need: * Personal letters from
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POPSThe Loathsome Smearing of Israel’s Critics The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile “pro-Israel” writers and media monitoring groups — including Honest Reporting and Camera — said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked. Any attempt to describe accurately the situation for Palestinians is met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian land, “Honest Reporting” claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth of Jews “poisoning the wells.” If you interview a woman whose baby died in 2002 because she was detained — in labour — by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint within the West Bank, “Honest Reporting” will say you didn’t explain “the real cause”: the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on, and on.
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