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POPSFacts? We don't need no stinkin Facts. "Palin again, a few days ago: “Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.” At the end of the nineteen-sixties, when Bill Ayers was a leader of the New Left’s most destructive, self-destructive, and delusional splinter, Barack Obama was a small boy living with his mother in Indonesia. The fact that thirty years later Obama and Ayers sat on a couple of the same nonprofit boards tells us no more about Obama’s politics and character than does the fact that another member of one of those boards was Arnold R. Weber, the former president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and a donor of fifteen hundred dollars to the McCain campaign. Ayers and Obama are not now, nor have they ever been, pals."
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POPSFrom "War on Terror" to "War of Terror" This war in Afghanistan's not about avenging the 9-11 attacks or preventing new ones. It's about killing local fighters, who fight to rid Afghanistan of unwelcome foreigners from Christian-majority countries. What began as a "War on Terror" has long since become a War of Terror. The Canadians and Europeans have long since tired of it. So have the American people, despite the failure of the corporate media to expose the Big Lies that Cheney and Bush continue to promote in order to justify their Terror War. Seven years down the road, there's no end in sight. No hope except for the "fool's hope" that public opinion in the imperialist countries, plus the inevitable resistance of the Afghans to foreign control, plus the military judgement that the war is not winnable will bring this "good war" to an end. The whole article is worth reading. Clip Song
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POPSThe Things Their Families Carried “Oftentimes you would see a family go up to the grave and they would just launch themselves onto the tombstone and start crying,” Mr. Alpert said. “Our instinct as reporters was ‘We have to film that.’ And we didn’t. We would stand there, and then we would go over without the cameras running, and we would talk to people. And we would explain who we were, why we were there, and ask if it would be possible for them to share with us.”
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POPSThe Savagery of a Surge That Failed He didn't scream. Instead, the sight induced a sort of catatonia; he picked up the head, cradled it in his arms, and started walking aimlessly. He carried on like this for days, until tribal elders pried the head from his hands and convinced him to deal with his loss more constructively. He decided he would get revenge by becoming a suicide bomber and inflicting a loss on some American family as painful as the one he had just suffered. The Taliban are as uninterested in social services and human rights as the Karzai government or the international forces, but they know how to turn a world of poverty, insecurity, and death from laser-guided missiles to their advantage. Washington spends about $100 million a day on this war - close to $36 billion a year - but only five cents of every dollar goes towards aid. From this paltry sum, "a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and salaries".
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POPSAfghanistan Conflict Rapidly Worsening What a mess. Nato troops given new mandate to attack heroin drug barons in Afghanistan NATO accused of sheltering Afghan heroin trade Karzai's brother denies links to drug trade Nato happy to ignore explosion in Afghan opium output, says Russia
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POPSBush Denounces 'Dungeon' of Cuba You'd think Bush was speaking of his own dictatorial reign, eh? "Our great nation that believes in human rights and human dignity, blah, blah, blah..." Hahahaha! What a joke! Tell that to the people of Iraq or Afghanistan or the people wasting away in Gitmo! I'd bet Castro's popularity ratings are higher than yours! Bush, why don't you just STFU? Fix your own country, who is "being repressed by a handful of elites" first, before trying to impose your twisted version of "freedom", on everyone else! Lift the embargo. The age of the red scare is dead and gone. It's the red, white and blue scare, most of the world is concerned about these days...SIR!
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POPSTaleban On Top of USA & UK in Propaganda A War is lost if Propaganda of Loser wins hearts of Populace. Taleban uses Mobile phone technology and has won. Britain and USA awake too late. Underestimating is a habit with both 'uk & usa'.
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POPSIraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Founded in June 2004, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is the nation's first and largest group dedicated to the Troops and Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the civilian supporters of those Troops and Veterans
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POPSThe Surge That Failed Read the rest to find out why I'm not going to vote for Obama, who wants to continue this war! This is obscene and unconscionable!
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POPSPetraeus Talk Bolsters Obama Cont.... Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors. Yet Petraeus emphasized throughout his lecture that reaching out to insurgent groups — some “with our blood on their hands,” he said — was necessary to the ultimate goal of turning them against irreconcilable enemies like Al Qaeda in Iraq.
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POPSGitmo release order angers Bush But no evidence suggests these Uighurs are terrorists - they are from China's Xinjiang province, where China wars against separatists. Were detained by Pakistanis, turned over to USA years ago; now, no one will take them.
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POPSIAVA Gives McCain a 'D' Senator McCain, before you claim to know what the veterans think of you, you really should discuss it with them.
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POPSDelta Force officer: US officials stopped plans to kill bin Laden This is the 2nd guy I have heard claim this. The other was a CIA operative who spoke at an event and also has a book. The stories are pretty similar. I guess Bush and crew figured without a bad guy to chase, the war would be short, so let Bin Laden out there so we can expand the war. One reason why I could never take orders - if I had the bad guy in sight - I would take em out!
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POPSDistrict Judge Orders Release Of Uighur Jihadists In D.C. By Friday
This is the very nightmare scenario I warned about. The courts' steps are outrageous, but predictable and inevitable. A lot of the blame here, however, goes to the administration and the military. They have long taken the position that radical Islamic ideology is not the problem, and that we need only worry about actively those taking up arms against the United States. They don't want us to talk about jihad — the better to keep us in the dark about jihadist ideology. Thus, the government rationalizes, the Uighurs are not a threat to us, only to the Chinese. That was all the daylight the judges need to say: OK, then release them in the U.S., since no other country — except China, where they'd be persecuted — will take them. The government's self-defeating argument is preposterous. Jihadists — and there is not question that the Uighurs are jihadists — do not recognize distinctions based on the Westphalia world of nation-states.
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POPSLIHOP: Let It Happen On Purpose
(cont.)In effect, taking the hit on 9-11-2001 -- or more accurately, having several thousand innocent people take the hit -- would then allow a fanatical response, which would be politically acceptable to the American public. Thus the initiation of what might best be described as Bush Wars -- a variation of a theme of Oil Wars. An extremely credible and interesting article in this regard is by a member of the British Parliament, entitled The War on Terrorism is Bogus. This article has the advantage of basing its argument on what has been learned over the last two years -- but almost never publicized in the mainstream Media. In essence, it explains that the evidence is extremely convincing that the high level neo-conservatives in the US government were aware of the impending strike and took great pains to ensure that it was successfully accomplished. The latter includes making sure every member of the government was immediately unavailable to deal with the crisis as it unfolded o
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POPSJudge Orders Gitmo Prisoners Released!
Thank God. Seeing my country involved in arresting people without cause, not allowing them legal representation, communication with family, no visits from the International Red Cross, not giving them their day in court, holding them for 'indefinite detention," keeping them imprisoned -- in this case -- for seven years -- and documented torture and abuse of such prisoners -- it's all pretty disgusting. And more disgusting that these prisoners were also used for propaganda about how these alleged evil men were out to harm us. And disgusting that thick-headed rednecks, neocon neofascist, and other warmongers went around waving flags about all this and claiming "God was on their side." -- and accusing us as the one's being 'unpatriotic,' when we were the most patriotic of all. What sickness! What lies! DEFEAT ALL REPUBLICANS is now Step #1 Step #2 is seeing Bush and Cheney in jail; and all those who aided and abetted their crimes. The good news? -- this can be done.
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POPSAfghanistan Unwinnable? Ask the Russians about winning a war in Afghanistan. It reminds me of the Mony Python sketch - "Not much fun in Stalingrad?" Existing strategies probably don't allow "victory" because of our myopia on drugs and the hearts and minds of the populace.
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POPSA Better Strategy on Opium in Afghanistan The statistics are bleak and we are pursuing typically myopic policies in Afghanistan. Hitchens (whose writing I think is superb) makes a great case for a different approach. "in the short term, hard-pressed Afghan farmers should be allowed to sell their opium to the government rather than only to the many criminal elements that continue to infest it or to the Taliban. We don't have to smoke the stuff once we have purchased it: It can be burned or thrown away or perhaps more profitably used to manufacture the painkillers of which the United States currently suffers a shortage. (As it is, we allow Turkey to cultivate opium poppy fields for precisely this purpose.)"
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