Clipmarks | jklugman's 'war' clips

Palin Backs Obama's stand on launching attacks in Pakistan on terrorists

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:47:18 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Go Temple!

“If the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out,” Obama added.

“You don’t say that out loud,” McCain said. “If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.”

Palin’s apparent disagreement with McCain’s position on Pakistan came as the Alaska governor was picking up a couple of cheesesteaks at Tony Luke’s in South Philadelphia. She was approached by a man wearing a Temple University t-shirt, who later identified himself as Michael Rovito.

“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked.

“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.

Tags: john mccain, sarah palin, barack obama, pakistan, war on terror, war-on-terror, temple university

Democracies don't war against each other, right?

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:17:02 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: crookedtimber.org

“The absence of war between major established democracies is as close to anything we know to a simple empirical regularity in relations between peoples.”

John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 52—3.

Well, obviously it depends on how much you pack into “major” and “established”, but, since both Russia and Georgia rate as 7, “fully democratic” on the Polity index, there’s at least some case for saying that there’s just been an exception to that lawlike generalization.[fn1]

1. I seem to remember reading, maybe in something by Michael Mann, that various native American peoples had democratic constitutions, and that wars waged on them by the United States were also counterexamples.

Tags: democracy, political-science

Gitmo torture training based on Korea-era Chinese torture

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:06:09 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Used on US prisoners during Korean conflict

Clip Source: www.democracynow.org

Gitmo Trainers Based Interrogations on Chinese Techniques

The New York Times has revealed military trainers at Guantanamo Bay based an entire interrogation class on Chinese techniques used on US prisoners during the Korean War. The techniques have long been considered forms of torture, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” “exposure,” “semi-starvation," “exploitation of wounds.” Some of the intended effects include “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.” The methods were also seen as widely ineffective, having obtained mostly false confessions. The techniques were outlined in a chart from a 1957 Air Force study entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War.” Some of the methods were used on Guantanamo prisoners until Congress banned the use of coercion in 2005.

Tags: torture

Obama: "I need to earn troops' trust"

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:11:58 GMT

clipped by: pkronfield
clipper's remarks: Before they can trust, they have to respect. Clinton never got the respect of the troops other than the lickspittle Gen. Wesley Clark. Similarly, this empty suit, al Qaeda sleeper cell Hussein Obama, will never gain that respect. He represents the Left who continually stabbed them in the back during the long war.

Clip Source: www.armytimes.com

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama knows that to win the vote of current and former military members and their families, he has to prove himself.

“Precisely because I have not served in uniform, I am somebody who strongly believes I have to earn the trust of men and women in uniform,” Obama said in a July 2 interview with Military Times as he contrasted his lack of service with that of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a Navy retiree and Vietnam veteran who has years of experience in Congress working on national security issues.

Tags: war on terror, loony left, hussein obama

ACLU: Massive Pentagon effort conceals human costs of war

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:53:04 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: ACLU charges unprecedented effort to "control and suppress information about the human cost" of the wars

Clip Source: thinkprogress.org

The ACLU today released documents regarding Navy investigations of civilians killed by coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report notes that the administration has gone to “unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost” of the wars. Some of the key findings:

– Banning photographers on U.S. military bases from covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers killed overseas

– Paying Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort

– Inviting U.S. journalists to “embed” with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review

– Erasing journalists’ footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan

– Refusing to disclose statistics on civilian casualties.

The New York Times revealed in April that the Pentagon also had used a domestic propaganda program to paint a rosy portrait of the war effort. See the documents here.

Tags: war on terror

Prisoner's tortured at the hands of the guards in Afghanistan

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:08:08 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar

Clip Source: www.mcclatchydc.com

KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that's used to corral livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.

Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.

This picture from a U.S. court martial file, drawn by military polygraph examiner George Chigi III, shows how Afghan detainee Dilawar was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of an isolation cell at Bagram Air Base before being beaten to death in December 2002. | View larger image

Tags: terror, terrorism, torture, bagram, afghanistan, war, war on terror, war crimes

In defense of William Ayers

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:30:57 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

Wonderment said:

But to call Ayers a "terrorist" and throw him in the Osama bin Laden pile is a reach for the moral high ground by the very people and political establishment that secretly carpet bombed Cambodia, murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians.

...Ayers is no martyr, and he's no role model. But he doesn't deserve to be the punching bag of the moral cretins who still celebrate lying wars of aggression and the pointless slaughter of untold thousands.

Clip Source: bloggingheads.tv

Ayers makes the claim that the use of violence, particularly with the aim of zero loss of life, was justified as a form of protest and pressure to end the Vietnam and Cambodian War. If you look at the crimes of the Johnson and Nixon administrations in their historical context (napalming civilians, Agent Orange, torture, starvation, mass murder, carpet bombings, persecution of dissidents in the US, including the murder of college students by the National Guard, pro-war police riots, disproportionately race-based conscription of 18-year-olds, etc. etc.), there is a case to be made that taking up arms against such a regime is justified.

Now you may argue that the prospects of achieving success in ending the war through "revolutionary" violence were slim to none. I agree.

Tags: william ayers, vietnam, cambodia, hypocrisy, war, civilian-killings

John McCain's revolutionary foreign policy proposal

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:04:05 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

Fareed Zakaria said:

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

Via Laura Rozen

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.

Tags: john mccain, foreign policy, cold war, russia, china

DHS: Don't describe terrorists as jihadists

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:12:12 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: apnews.myway.com

Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as "jihadists" or "mujahedeen," according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Lingo like "Islamo-fascism" is out, too.

The reason: Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates.

U.S. officials may be "unintentionally portraying terrorists, who lack moral and religious legitimacy, as brave fighters, legitimate soldiers or spokesmen for ordinary Muslims," says a Homeland Security report. It's entitled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims."

"We are communicating with, not confronting, our audiences. Don't insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as 'Islamo-fascism,' which are considered offensive by many Muslims."

Tags: islam, war on terror, war-on-terror, dhs, bush administration

Things Whites Can Say That Blacks Can't II

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:36:31 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: thinkprogress.org

Last Friday, Alexandra Liddy Bourne, Vice President for Policy and Strategy at the global warming denier group Heartland Institute, spoke to the Heritage Foundation. She warned that state-led climate legislation unfairly burdened the South and would lead to “another Civil War here in a short period of time”:

So yet again, the South has to pay on its back the cost of using coal in this country to the northern states. We’re going to have another Civil War here in a short period of time, because the cost is going to go up. So the Southeast has not bought into this because they understand that they’re going to have to pay a very high price. Maryland has decided to sort of stay out of it because they have coal, as is Pennsylvania. They don’t necessarily want to pay Yankee taxes, right?

Tags: heartland institute, hypocrisy, race

Another Angry Black Preacher

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:18:28 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Which Evil Anti-American Racist Demagogue Said This?

"God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place...[God will say:] And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

It was Martin Luther King Jr, someone whom the Sean Hannitys and Bill O'Reillys of the time called a communist, and an associate of moral degenerates (a gay man, Bayard Rustin, with a criminal record for public sex and one of the great heroes of twentieth century American history). E.J.'s column today is one of the best he has ever written.

Tags: barack obama, race, hypocrisy, sean hannity, bill o'reilly

US made deal with devil to stabilize Iraq

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:03:55 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Chris Hedges is the author of this editorial.

...those who support the continuation of the war insist that "the surge" has been successful. But the surge...did little to thwart attacks.

"The big news of the past year, the smashing up of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the stabilization of a lot of Sunni Arab areas, has virtually nothing to do with the surge," said Wayne White, former deputy director of the State Department's Middle East Intelligence unit. "What we have done, in effect, is we have made a deal with the devil in order to get rid of al-Qaeda. We have allowed nearly 100,000 tough Sunni Arab fighters to organize and arm themselves as they never could before when they had to operate underground. We have destroyed a nasty insurgency and replaced it with a more deeply rooted and broad-based potential insurgency."

Clip Source: www.philly.com

In selling the American public on the "surge" strategy in Iraq, the White House and the military have praised the funding and support of Sunni Arab militias in Iraq. We are being told this strategy is yet another proof of "success" in Iraq - when in fact it is a short-term tactic that could result in horrific blowback.

These Sunnis, many of whom once belonged to extremist organizations that attacked U.S. troops, currently receive salaries (each fighter gets $300 a month) from the U.S. military. In return, they have been asked for support to control parts of the country where there is a Sunni Arab majority; target jihadists; and end assaults on U.S. troops. These militias have replaced local government officials, including police, and taken over local administration and security in many pockets of Iraq. They have carved out, with our assistance, independent fiefdoms.

Tags: iraq, chris hedges, surge, al-qaeda, sunni, civil war, war

Bush: This is World War 3

Sat, 06 May 2006 22:05:27 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: WTF?

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Bush likens 'war on terror' to WWIII

He said he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month the act was "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war - World War III".

Mr Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.

Tags: bush, wtf, george bush, world war 3, war, quote

Marine Recruiters Busted in Exam Fraud

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:51:23 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: www.chron.com

Nine Marine Corps recruiters who worked in the Houston area were punished for using fraudulent stand-ins to take military-entrance exams for prospective recruits who might not otherwise measure up, the military confirmed Wednesday.

Eight of the recruiters were reassigned and given non-judicial punishment, which could include fines and reduction in rank. Another, considered the worst offender, was discharged from the service.

Harold Hyman, a Rice University professor emeritus of history and a Marine in World War II, said he felt pity for recruiters who broke the law in a desperate race to meet quotas because of the Iraq war. He noted that recruiters have been known for generations to go to great lengths to sign anyone up.

Tags: marines, military, iraq

'Dirty War' priest gets life term

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:24:57 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A court in Argentina has convicted a former Roman Catholic police chaplain of collaborating in murders during the country's military rule.

Christian Von Wernich, 69, was convicted for involvement in seven murders, 42 abductions and 31 cases of torture during the 1976-83 "Dirty War".

At the trial, several former prisoners said the former Roman Catholic priest used his office to win their trust before passing information to police torturers and killers in secret detention centres.

They say he attended several torture sessions and absolved the police of blame, telling them they were doing God's work.

The church has remained silent on the case, saying it was waiting for the verdict, but it will again be asked about the role did it play in the "Dirty War", he adds.

Tags: argentina, dirty war, catholicism, human-rights, torture, religion