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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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POPSAfghan leader assails airstrike on civilians “It is quite obvious, the Americans bombed the area due to wrong information,” he said by telephone. “I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners and they do not understand. These people they killed were enemies of the Taliban.”
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POPSFilm Reveals CIA's 'Most Secret Place on Earth'
This film's analysis sets it apart from other books and documentaries on the subject, most of which justify the conflict, lauding the CIA operatives and their Air America pilots as heroes. The reality, as Alfred McCoy says towards the end of the film, was very different. "We destroyed a whole civilisation, we wiped it off the map. We incinerated, atomised human remains in this air war and what happened in the end? We lost." The covert nature of the conflict meant that U.S. forces were able to ignore virtually all the rules of engagement operating in Vietnam. Every building was a potential target and the civilian toll was huge. The situation grew worse in 1970 when U.S. President Nixon authorised massive B-52 bombing strikes on Laos, which remained classified information until many years later. American planes dropped an average of one planeload of bombs on targets in Laos every eight minutes, 24 hours a day for nine years, making it the most heavily bombed country on earth
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POPSgiorgia exscuse my ignorence, but what is "smart bombs"?
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POPS60% Increase in Afghan Civilian Deaths "Most of those casualties are caused by the insurgents, who seem to have no regard for civilian life, but there are also still significant numbers caused by the international military forces,” Holmes said.
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POPSmessage: We can't save them from themselves. The U.S. is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pay the monthly salaries of some 600,000 armed fighters in the three rival ethnic camps in Iraq. These fighters -- Shiite, Kurd and Sunni Arab -- are not only antagonistic but deeply unreliable allies. The Sunni Arab militias have replaced central government officials, including police, and taken over local administration and security in the pockets of Iraq under their control. They have no loyalty outside of their own ethnic community. Once the money runs out, or once they feel strong enough to make a thrust for power, the civil war in Iraq will accelerate with deadly speed. The tactic of money-for-peace failed in Afghanistan. The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban.
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POPSThe Man on Both Sides of Air War Debate As the U.S. military has significantly stepped up its use of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Garlasco has tracked every bomb, noting their effectiveness and their potential for killing the innocent. The United States increased its use of aerial bombs in Iraq by more than 500 percent from 2006 to 2007 and dropped more than 20 times as many bombs on Afghanistan last year as it did just a few years ago. That increase, part of a strategy by U.S. commanders who want to attack enemies in areas they have controlled for years, has made Garlasco’s work all the more relevant. And his previous work on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff has given him a level of credibility and a voice that few human rights activists have. He can call up officers in the Air Force’s secret facility in Southeast Asia and can walk up to U.S. command posts in Afghanistan to learn what is being done.
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POPSWho Counts Among the Dead in Iraq?
As for the civilian toll, no one wants to know the numbers, let alone be held responsible for their consequences. Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom publishes an official report on Iraqi civilian fatalities and casualties. As General Tommy Franks put it: “We don’t do body counts.” Citing concerns about bandwidth scarcity, the U.S. military has further limited the flow of information by blocking troops’ access to YouTube and MySpace. The discrepancy between the Pentagon’s definition of non-mortal wounds and the VA’s higher count led the VA to revise its figure downward from 50,508 in September 2006 to 21,469 non-mortal wounds in November 2006. The Pentagon apparently does not include injuries and accidents from non-combat operations in its lower WIA count. In a matter of two months, 29,000 veterans, mostly from the Iraq war, vanished, presumably to align the VA’s count with the Defense Department’s tighter definition and classification of the wounded.
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POPSPartners in Crime I wonder if Afghanistan and Iraq consider themselves lucky countries too? As for climate change? It seems to me that Oz has been suffering quite a bit due to climate change with endless droughts and snow in Summer. Perhaps Oz should rethink it's butt-kissing attitude towards the US and think for itself for a change?
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POPSRevenge killings increase in Iraq The US military notes that increasingly "larger numbers of people are involved in killing". According to the US leaders' assessments, the situation is getting more and more out of control, rather than improving, as the civilian death toll and a general sense of desperation increase among ordinary Iraqis. Many families are either becoming radicalized or leaving the country as the violence spirals.
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