NewsTrust - War - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Chomsky condemns 'immoral' Afghan war

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - By Noam Chomsky - Nov. 23 (Interview) - (video)

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Depleted Uranium and the Medical Mismanagement of Gulf War Veterans

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Paul Zimmerman - Nov. 21 (Opinion) - The United States insists that weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) pose no health hazards to exposed populations. This charade persists because an artful propaganda matrix has infiltrated and corrupted certain aspects of the radiation and biological sciences.

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Lowering the Bar: Kindergarten Recruitment

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - As a parent, how does one explain what killing "only bad ones" means when the child asks why a NATO airstrike obliterated dozens of civilians,

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Deficit hawks attacking the wrong prey

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By David Sirota - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - When the House considered a health care expansion proposal that the CBO says will reduce the deficit by $11 billion a year, tea-party protesters and Congress' self-described "fiscal conservatives" opposed it on cost grounds. At the same time, almost none of them objected when Congress passed a White House-backed bill to spend $636 billion on defense in 2010. The hypocrisy is stunning

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TALIBAN = 9/11?? Afghanistan by Hypnosis

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Greg Palast - By Greg Palast - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - On September 11, 2001, my office building, the World Trade Center, was attacked by al Qaeda, a murder cult of Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians. And so, in response to the Saudis' attack, America invaded ... Afghanistan. Like, HUH? And here we go again. New York Times headline last Friday: "Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11."

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Israel's "Pathology"

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Ira Chermus - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - From the outside, it looks like Obama and his advisers are drifting without a rudder, unable to guide themselves, much less the Israelis and Palestinians, toward the peace the president says he's committed to. Pundits chalk it up to the administration's ineptitude or the power of the Israeli lobby or the chaotic state of Palestinian politics, or all of the above.

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Afghanistan and the "Other" Vietnam War

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Dallas Darling - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - . As the war dragged on, some personal aides claimed Johnson was never more ecstatic over Vietnam than when pledging to send billions of dollars to help toward construction and agricultural projects and the economic growth of Southeast Asia and the Mekong River region.(1)

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A Fiasco

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - Nov. 12 (Editorial) - It's time to stop the verbal pretense. In the Near East, there is no negotiation "process" underway. Furthermore, there is also no prospect for peace. ..... The United States bears the primary responsibility.

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Healing our troubled vets

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - Nov. 11 (Editorial) - The public is kinder to its veterans today than it was during the Vietnam War, when soldiers risked their lives overseas only to face scorn from antiwar activists when they got home. Yet veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan may be having a harder time readjusting to civilian life than previous generations of warriors.

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Families, Caregivers Bear the Biggest Burden

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Bob Woodruff - Nov. 11 (Comment) - This Veterans Day, after we raise the flag, we must raise awareness about wars hidden injuries, and what's required for injured service members, families and caregivers to have safe futures. Today, most troops wounded in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are surviving their injuries. They fought our country's battles. Now they fight their own. Nearly 20 percent will report symptoms of PTSD or major depression.

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20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Will Another Superpower Meet Its End in Afghanistan?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Loretta Napoleoni - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - Remarkably, the central Asian country of Afghanistan seems once again to be shaping our future. It is paradoxical that the graveyard of one superpower should become a battlefield for the other.

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Missile Defense Could Be the Silver Bullet

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

sptimes.ru - By Dmitry Trenin - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - In the eyes of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the “resetting” of U.S.-Russian relations became a reality only six weeks ago, when U.S. President Barack Obama announced his decision to reconfigure U.S. missile defense plans for Europe. Putin called Obama’s step “courageous,” which, coming from him, is perhaps the highest form of personal approbation

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The Liberty Affair and the Problem with the Truth of History

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

alanhart.net - By Alan Hart - Nov. 05 (Review) - Text of the San Diego Union Tribune’s op-ed Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel’s June 8th1967 bombing of the USS Liberty.

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UN workers fear huge impact of relocation

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Nov. 05 (Interview) - The UN has said that it will temporarily relocate 600 of its international staff based in Afghanistan. Here, UN workers discuss how the measures to tackle growing security challenges will impact on the UN operation in Afghanistan.

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memeorandum: AP sources: Authorities had concerns about suspected Fort Hood … (Associated Press)

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:38:47 -0800

Associated Press - Nov. 05 - Associated Press: AP sources: Authorities had concerns about suspected Fort Hood shooter, reviewed Web postings? ?? WASHINGTON - The Army psychiatrist suspected of carrying a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, had come to the attention of authorities six months ago because of Internet postings ?

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The Generals' Revolt

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:07:22 -0800

Rolling Stone - Nov. 04 -

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Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Ray McGovern - Nov. 01 (Editorial) - The White Man's Burden, a phrase immortalized by English poet Rudyard Kipling as an excuse for European-American imperialism, was front and center Thursday morning (October 29) at a RAND-sponsored discussion of Afghanistan in the Russell Senate Office Building.???? The agenda was top-heavy with RAND speakers, and the thinking was decidedly "inside the box" - so much so, that I found myself repeating a verse from Kipling, who recognized the dangers of imperialism, to remind me of the real world: It is not wise for the Christian white To hustle the Asian brown; For the Christian riles And the Asian smiles And weareth the Christian down. At the end of the fight Lies a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased; And the epitaph drear, A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East. With a few notable exceptions, the RAND event offered conventional wisdom to a fare-thee-well.

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Week in review: Afghanistan and Pakistan

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Worldfocus - Oct. 31 (Interview) - David Andelman, editor of the World Policy Journal and a former foreign correspondent, and Chrystia Freeland, U.S. managing editor of Britain’s Financial Times, join David Brancaccio to review the week’s events in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They discuss troop levels in Afghanistan and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s controversial remarks in Pakistan.

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Iraq on the Edge

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Joost R. Hiltermann - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - For the occasional visitor such as myself, various methods exist to measure America's standing in Iraq, Iraqi suspicions and aspirations, and progress in the transfer of power, but none prove as illuminating as the checkpoints into and throughout Baghdad's Green Zone, that diminishing symbol of the Bush administration's ambitions.

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It's Time For Us To Go

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Christopher Buckley - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - Get out of Afghanistan now, Mr. President. And here's why...If you have not seen Karen DeYoung’s Oct 27 story, “U.S. Official Resigns Over Afghan War”, you owe it to yourself, your country, and our soldiers over there to read it. But even more powerful than Ms. DeYoung’s stunner of a scoop is the accompanying letter of resignation itself of Matthew P. Hoh, the 36-year old Marine-turned-Foreign Service Officer. It is a cry of conscience and an indictment of our continued presence in Afghanistan.

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Former Marine captain resigns in protest of Afghanistan war

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, resigned last month from his position with the Foreign Service, where he was the the senior U.S. civilian in the Taliban-dominated Southern Afghanistan province of Zabul, because he became convinced that our war in that country will not only inevitably fail, but is fueling the very insurgency we are trying to defeat. Hoh's resignation is remarkable because it entails the sort of career sacrifice in the name of principle that has been so rare over the last decade, but even more so because of the extraordinary four-page letter (.pdf) he wrote explaining his reasoning.

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Afghanistan: Former Marine at State Resigns

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Taylor Marsh - By Taylor Marsh - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - His name is Matthew Hoh and this could turn into a story that will haunt Pres. Obama’s decision on Afghanistan every day until the strategy is announced. I’m sure it is already. Hoh simply doesn’t believe in where the U.S. mission has been and where Obama is about to take the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. No doubt it will fuel people who want to withdraw, even as I continue to believe from all information I’ve gathered that no more troops is step one, with many complicated issues to address more important than sending in more U.S. soldiers. So, when Hoh says, “But you have to draw the line somewhere, and say this is their problem to solve,” I absolutely agree. But as it now stands, the Afghan women are worse off today than they were when the Taliban reigned. We cannot leave it at that or Afghanistan will be more than a corrupt mess; it will revert to a failed state, because no country can stabilize with the women of that country being gang raped, reduced as property and held under lock and key. After all, it was Carter who authorized the first funding that begat Reagan’s partnership with Zia that begat the mujahadeen that begat William Casey’s obsessions that begat, and on and on, until Bush invaded after 9/11, that became the mess he dropped in Obama’s lap.

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The Middle East: Victory Is Obsolete

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Winslow Meyers - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - Acceptance of each other can only follow from acceptance of some bigger realities that form an inescapable context for both sides. The first reality is that they each equally perceive themselves as fighters for a just cause. It is futile to try to force people who carry a torch against what they are sure is unjust to move from resentment to acceptance. This forcing, by either side, carries a dark and ironic connotation of extermination - of ideas, values and hopes, if not of actual people.

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