Total Cost Of Both Wars ~ Afghanistan and Iraq
Sunday, November 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
New Leaked Report About Iraq War Shows 15,000 More Civilian Deaths ~ That’s About Five 9/11′s ~ Good On Us!!
Friday, October 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
GUARDIAN UK
Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture
• Massive leak reveals serial detainee abuse
• 15,000 unknown civilian deaths in war
• Full coverage of the Iraq war logs
A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.
As recently as December the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.” [Read more...]
Senate OKs $680 Billion-Dollar Spending Bill
Monday, November 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment
By Roxana Tiron 10/22/09 04:20 PM ET
The Senate on Thursday sent the massive 2010 Pentagon policy bill to the president’s desk for signing. The Senate approved the bill authorizing $680 billion in defense spending by a vote of 68-29.
For the first time in a decade-long effort, the bill will include a provision that expands the federal hate-crimes law to cover offenses based on sexual orientation. The provision received a boost from the Democratic majority in Congress and has President Barack Obama’s backing. Democrats view the successful passage of hate-crimes legislation as a tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the champion of expanding the law.
The 2010 defense authorization bill also continues to fund an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Obama administration initially threatened to veto the bill if authorized funds for a second engine would seriously disrupt the overall F-35 program.
But Obama is not expected to veto the defense authorization bill. He won a big victory on it: The Senate voted to stop production of the F-22 fighter jet at 187 planes. The Senate vote had ripple effects through conference with the House authorizers and prompted defense appropriators to also scrap any plans for funding additional planes.
While Obama is not likely to veto the policy bill, he has yet to take a definitive stance over the 2010 defense appropriations bill. Senate and House appropriators are still negotiating the conference report and several lawmakers, including Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee chairman, have indicated that funding for an alternate engine is likely to be in the bill.
The $680 billion defense policy bill also authorizes $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for fiscal year 2010, which started Oct. 1. This story was updated at 5:20 p.m.
An Open Letter To: The People Who Thought The Iraq War Was A Good Idea ~ You Know Who You Are.
Friday, October 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment
John Tully
June 19 2004
You don’t get to sneer about how the evidence was there.
You don’t get to scoff about how even Bill Clinton, Germany and France thought there were WMD’s.
You don’t get to shriek about media-elite liberals just Bush-hating, conspiracy theorists whining about Halliburton, and Saddam gassing his own people:
…Not when our leaders were so fully unprepared for this war that there was no legitimate flank or rear security support for the thousands of vehicles, many endlessly breaking down, in that convoy that stretched across the Iraqi desert at the beginning of the war.
…Not when they couldn’t even bribe Turkey into letting us enter Iraq from the north.
…Not when there weren’t enough MRE’s, tanks that would work in the sand and flack-jackets for our troops .
…Not when our Marines suddenly became gendarmes on the streets of Baghdad while we completely disbanded both the Iraqi army and police and the country was being destroyed from the bottom up as the looters demolished everything that the precision guided bombs did not.
…Not when Republican Senators Richard Shelby, Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar had been screaming about the need for a plan post-war Iraq and what to do about the Shiites/Sunnis/Kurds on The News Hour and Charlie Rose virtually every night for the twelve months leading up to the start of the attack.
…Not when there was no budget for the war, funding was asked for on the eve of the initial strike and there have been no plans to pay for the ever-increasing cost.
…Not when Deputy Secretary Of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is asked to give the number of Americans killed in Iraq during a congressional commitee on April 29 2004 and he’s off by over two hundred soldiers.
…Not when they won’t let us see the bodies at Dover and undercount casualties received in combat by the thousands.
Now bugger off and prepare for the trials.
©2004 THE LOS ANGELES SUN
