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President Barack Obama has made it clear he is willing to talk with “moderate” members of the Taliban in an attempt to gain control — and perhaps bring to an end — the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Afghan President Karzai has been reportedly negotiating with members of the Taliban for a year and according to [...]
Filed under: Foreign policy, Iraq, War
Here’s an interesting phenomenon from Britain, reported by Jon Henley in the Guardian. Apparently, the above image–an old government poster brought out in 1939 to keep the population calm in the event of a German invasion–has, since the financial crisis began, started popping up all over the country — and even in the U.S. embassy [...]
Though the story of the U.S military’s dependency on contractors — particularly the behemoth Kellogg, Brown and Root, offspring of Halliburton — is well-ploughed, writer Pratap Chatterjee, who has made reporting on the seediness of war profiteering his obsession over the last seven years, embedding with U.S military and spear-heading CorpWatch, freshly explores today how [...]
Filed under: Iraq, Uncategorized, War
To follow up on Kelley Vlahos’ post below on Thomas Ricks’ sudden infatuation with and promotion of General Ray Odierno, Commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I), as a born-again counterinsurgency true believer (in his book Fiasco, Ricks described Odierno’s allegedly heavy-handed tactics as commander of the 4th Infantry as instrumental in the rise of the [...]
Pat Lang explores some of the ramifications of Bush’s last –it might seem his only– good deed: rejection of an Israeli request for overflight permission and perhaps military assistance in bombing Iran’s nuclear reactor. There’s been very little about this in the mainstream press– though it’s the kind of major incident [...]
Filed under: Foreign policy, Iraq, Uncategorized
Upon news their company is being booted out of Baghdad by Iraqi officials who have denied the private security company an operating license there, Blackwater Worldwide executives said the North Carolina-based contractor is well on its way to making $1 billion in annual revenues over the next year or two anyway. And while their guards [...]
The Washington Post declares on its New Year’s front page that the U.S government has turned into a pumpkin in Baghdad’s fortified “Green Zone.” In “As Clock Strikes 12, U.S. Hands Iraq Control of Green Zone,” the paper splashes a lot of color around about “the walls of the majestic Republican Palace” being “stripped bare,” [...]
Among other incredulous assertions made by Rich Lowry on NBC’s Meet the Press today — which include that it was really the fault of the western liberal that post-invasion Iraq was such a catastrophic mess — he attempts to bolster the growing meme that as a wartime president, a passionate wartime president, one of George [...]
Filed under: Foreign policy, Iraq, War, World
The five Blackwater security guards accused of the gruesome murder of 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in September 2007 — including a mother and infant whose bodies were reportedly fused together in the burning hull of their car — will finally face justice. They turned themselves in this morning to authorities in Utah. Only one of [...]
Filed under: Iraq
Another from the file of “Why Army Recruitment Is The Suckiest Job On Earth,” or “How Defense Contractors Are The Only Ones Making Money Today” comes this latest charge against Kellogg, Brown and Root, the former subsidiary of Halliburton, reaper of billions in the War on Terror.
Sixteen Indiana National Guard soldiers have sued the Houston-based [...]