Diaper Bomber
Filed Under Bullshit, Orwellian | Leave a Comment
Beyond the gay rights issue and Mitt Romney’s memory problems about being a bullying-asshole, the preposterous-incompetence of the war on terror is near blinding.
Hard to fathom, but the frightful state of mind is enormous: Eighteen-month-old Riyanna has been called a lot of things: cute, adorable and now … a suspected terrorist.
The US TSA is one piece of hot-wired shit.
(Illustration found here).
Riyanna’s mother explains:
She was called that (a suspected terrorist) on Tuesday night at the Ft Lauderdale Airport.
She and her parents had just boarded a JetBlue flight when an airline employee approached them and asked them to get off the plane, saying representatives from the Transportation Security Administration wanted to speak to them.
“And I said, ‘For what?’” Riyanna’s mother told only WPBF 25 News on Wednesday.
“And he said, ‘Well, it’s not you or your husband.
Your daughter was flagged as no fly.’
I said, ‘Excuse me?’”
Riyanna’s father was flabbergasted.
“It’s absurd,” he said.
“It made no sense.
Why would an 18-month-old child be on a no-fly list?”
Yes, way-indeed.
The problem lies in the dumb-ass war on terror.
From HuffPost on the TSA being dismantled:
For many TSA critics, this is the only acceptable solution.
The TSA represents a shameful chapter in this nation’s history that must be put behind us, they say.
For them, TSA will be always be associated with paranoid secrecy, crime, institutional arrogance and unnecessarily violent screening methods they’ve described as “gate rape.”
They would end the TSA for the same reason a unified Germany pulled the plug on the Stasi, the feared government security service — because it simply can’t be redeemed.
Naomi Wolf in the UK’s Guardian notes:
Actual terrorism-fighting nations would never devolve such security concerns to private contractors or sell easier travel access for cash — because it is both dangerous and absurd to do so.
In fact, what the FBI and CIA and the Pentagon are up against is that people — including Americans — are waking up to the fact that there would be no enemy if we weren’t manufacturing new terrorists by taking out civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan.
An end to foreign wars (which are already costing us thousands of casualties a year) would be a much more effective counter-terror strategy than this hyped, synthetic threat to justify a corporate surveillance-and-security product gold rush.
Instead, we are treated to a spectacle orchestrated by alarmist officials who keep holding frightening press conferences promoting the threat of dazed, poor, drugged-out “lone wolves”.
The true, Orwellian agenda is to support a vast new crony-capitalist industry that uses terror theater to turn open democracies into surveillance societies.
The parents of diaper-bomber Riyanna way-more than understands:
They believe they were profiled because they are both of Middle Eastern descent.
Riyanna’s mother wears a hijab, a traditional head scarf.
That’s why they have asked to remain anonymous.
They said they’re concerned about repurcussions.
That said, they are both Americans, born and raised in New Jersey, just like their daughter.
Riyanna’s parents said once they were taken off the plane, they were met by TSA agents and made to stand in the terminal for about 30 minutes.
US peoples are scared of everybody — from gay people to babies.
Afghan Awful
Filed Under Bullshit, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
“The other day I was listening to the radio. The Afghan minister was assassinated. I’m thinking, What threat did he pose to the Taliban? Who even wants to go to Afghanistan? His phone rings once a month.”
– Bob Newhart, quoted in Esquire, January 2009
The continuing wonderland Afghan war caught another shit-storm this weekend when Taliban struck at targets in Kabul and three other cities in attacks described as “brazen” and “coordinated” — the now-near-pointless conflict becoming even more frightfully foolish.
Observer point of the day from an auto mechanic just after the attacks started: “All the shops closed. I ran away.”
(Illustration found here).
Don’t blame you, buddy.
Afghanistan is not a friendly place these days — as if the poor country ever had any friends.
Reportedly, the surprise attacks came early Sunday when armed insurgents took over half-built buildings and used them to open fire while residents scrambled for cover as gunfire rained down from all directions.
Complete chaos for awhile.
Although much has been made of this incident — Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force: “…no one is underestimating the seriousness of today’s attacks” — and much noise about the always dangerous Taliban, the episode might be just an example of showing off.
Juan Cole asks why at Informed Comment this morning:
This sort of tactic makes a lot of noise, but typically has no practical benefit for a guerrilla movement.
The Sunni Arab Islamic State of Iraq has been blowing up Baghdad regularly but we’ve seen no sign of it interfering with the consolidation of power by PM Nouri al-Maliki.
Perhaps it has even backfired and created momentum for al-Maliki.
One local Afghan newspaper was left puzzling as to the purpose of these attacks, which, like those in Baghdad, likely have not hope of tactical success.
The article speculates that the Taliban are trying to keep the US boots on the ground, just as President Hamid Karzai is, so as to extract strategic rent from the ongoing Western presence in Afghanistan.
That is, some allege that the attacks in Kabul were motivated by a desire to draw the US into a longer-term occupation, so that the Taliban can be assured of having someone to fight.
(Seems unlikely to me, but interesting that it appeared in the Afghan press. And, I don’t think it would work. Most Americans, even Republicans, want out, and I think most US troops will be out by 2014…)
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll revealed only 30 percent of the US public believes the Afghan war is was worth fighting, the lowest level of support since at least 2007, and for the first time, the majority of warmongering Republicans want out of the country.
And from an ABC News poll last month on the impact of continous war on US troops:
Still, apart from the specific incident, there is a broad sense that the military should be doing more to track mental health — 79 percent say so — and to limit the amount of time active duty service members are deployed to combat areas, favored by an almost identical 80 percent.
Just 14 and 15 percent, respectively, think the military already is doing enough mental health monitoring and that time limits on deployments are not needed.
What can be added to that?
Except this — via The Fayetteville Observer and the living nightmares of one particular veteran:
The father of a Fort Bragg soldier charged with shooting at Fayetteville police and firefighters from his apartment in January says his son suffered from war-induced mental problems and thought he was firing at Afghan insurgents.
Staff Sgt. Joshua “Ike” Eisenhauer, 30, was wounded by police, who returned fire in the four-hour standoff at Austin Creek apartments.
…
Joshua Eisenhauer flashed back “to combat in Afghanistan, fired on the ‘insurgents’ who were actually firemen and police officers and was seriously injured with gunshot wounds to his upper chest, right face and right thigh,” his father says.
…
No police or firefighters suffered serious injuries in the exchange of gunfire.
Joshua Eisenhauer was taken to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, where he recovered from his wounds.
He has been charged with 17 counts of attempted murder, nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon on a government official and six counts of assault on a law enforcement officer with a firearm.
At the hospital, Mark Eisenhauer wrote, a nurse in the intensive care unit told him that when his son regained some mental awareness, he mumbled “whose got the roof.”
When asked what he thought had happened, Joshua Eisenhauer was said to have responded: “I was fighting insurgents.”
The shootings happened after someone in the apartment complex reported a fire and firefighters began knocking on doors.
A neighbor reported that the shootings began after she heard firefighters asking Eisenhauer to open his door.
Welcome to the future of war in the homeland.
CSA — Crime Scene Afghanistan
Filed Under Bullshit, Just Plain War, War & Politics | 1 Comment
Although the name of the supposedly “lone service member” who killed 16 Afghan civilians a week ago has finally emerged — Sgt. Bob Bales — the names of the victims of the rampage haven’t seen the light of day.
As Paul Woodward wrote at War In Context, the reason: Because they are not Americans.
These asshole conflicts in the name of national security are the purest of bullshit, creating “conditions of atrocity,” where US GIs are place in an ethical and moral quagmire like that long-ago horror of Vietnam’s “free fire zones” in which anybody/anything can be gunned down.
Iraq was a horror and Afghanistan could get even worse, but I really don’t see how — the killing will never stop and the US — George Jr. and company — are greatly to blame.
(Illustration found here).
From the UK’s the Guardian last week:
The nature of these occupations fosters atrocity.
The invented enemy, the lack of a battlefield void of civilians, the supposed moral superiority of the occupiers, the obscure goals of the mission, the methods of training that prepare soldiers for occupation, and the methods of warfare all make the murder of civilians unavoidable.
In modern warfare, 90 percent of the casualties are civilian, but this is a reality that the west likes to ignore.
The writer, Ross Caputi, is a former US Marine who served in Iraq — he continues further in the piece:
We often toyed with the ideas of suicide and homicide, and joked about them.
We laughed at the possibilities that someday, we might end up homeless on the streets, or shooting bystanders from a bell tower somewhere.
We knew these possibilities were real, and we were frightened by them.
“Ah, the glory of it all,” we laughed.
It was dark humor that made the dark reality that many of us really were on the verge of killing ourselves or someone else easier to bear.
However, in occupied territory, violence that might otherwise be turned inwards, sometimes gets expressed outwards.
In Fallujah, I witnessed all our frustrations, our loneliness, our grief, our confusion, hate, fear and rage being unleashed on Fallujah — and Fallujans paid dearly.
I witnessed good people do horrible things.
Almost anyone in such a situation would have become just as ruthless.
Some of my closest friends mutilated dead bodies, looted from the pockets of dead resistance fighters, destroyed homes, and killed civilians.
Considering the current situation on the ground in Afghanistan, life in that war zone can’t continue as before — business as usual — and the very reason for the US being there is so long gone it’s ludicrous.
President Obama tossed out some foot-stomping bullshit two years ago when he ordered an Afghan “surge,” and though claiming the whole aim of the conflict was to “disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat Al-Qaeda” — Obama’s National Security Adviser, Gen. James Jones, put the number at “fewer than a hundred” in an October interview with CNN.
How many are there now?
Supposedly, not hardly any — from The Nation: According to a Defense Department spokesman, the most recent operation that killed an Al Qaeda fighter was in April 2011—ten months ago. However, there was an “Al Qaeda foreign fighter” captured near Kabul in May 2011, and an “Al Qaeda facilitator” captured in the Paktiya province on January 30 of this year.
Osama’s dead and his boys have gone elsewhere — so what the freak are we doing there?
Maybe not for too much longer, however.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has demanded US troops withdraw from villages and return to their bases, saying relations between the two countries were “at the end of their rope” because of the massacre.
The Afghan investigation claims there were also more than just one guy, a whole team took part in the killings.
Although initial reports did indicate a bunch of GIs — see Sky News — the official US line is that only Bales committed the slaughter.
And this whole affair could rattle the US scenario.
Retired Maj. Gen. James A. “Spider” Marks, a former commander of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center, told CNN yesterday:
“Our commanders on the ground will determine that probably within about another week.
Within a couple of weeks, it would not be unusual if there has not been a change in our posture inside those bases, that you can see forces coming back.
It’s not inconceivable that that could happen.”
Don’t count on it, though.
The US has a dumb-ass history of staying way-too-long anywhere.
‘Deranged, Crazy Person’
Filed Under Bullshit, Madness, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Mitt Romney gave his most-rich thoughts yesterday on the massacre of Afghan civilians over the weekend: Asked whether he agrees with conservative commentators who say the U.S. should accelerate the pullout, Romney said Monday that he “wouldn’t jump to a new policy” because of a “deranged, crazy person.”
Crazed, of course.
The US Army staff sergeant who perpetrated the slaughter was indeed carrying a shitload of mental baggage, but the incident way-underscores the horror in a decade’s worth of killing children in far off lands which has created a legion of deranged, crazy people.
(Illustration — Salvador Dali’s ‘Soft Self-portrait With Fried Bacon‘ — found here).
First and foremost:
“In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.
As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
“It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa’ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
To accomplish this, top Administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and al Qa’ida as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11.
Sadly, the Bush Administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.
This the June 2008 findings of the US Senate Intelligence Committee , which under sane, rational rules would have sent a shitload of high-in-the-government assholes to the jailhouse.
However, just as with all those banksters that brought the world’s financial house down that same year, not one of those responsible has spent even a second behind bars — talk about crazed and what’s-up-with-that-shit.
One wonders at that staff sergeant’s state of mind when he seemingly methodically killed 16 people, including nine children and an entire family, all 11 members, in a total nutcase of an incident.
A clinical psychiatrist told HuffPost the guy might have gone ‘berserk‘ and lost all mental capacity as berserkers “have this curious quality of icy and flaming rage; all they want to do is destroy, they want nothing to get in the way of their unmediated destruction and killing, and they are truly insensitive to pain. They are totally beyond the society of their own military forces and disconnected from them.”
The sergeant’s entire life will soon be an open book, but we may never know what happened to snap his brain.
Three tours of the nightmare inferno of Iraq might be a clue, but there’s been so much of this ‘berserk‘ shit in the last few years, vets are afraid of the backlash.
From military.com:
“It’s a huge concern,” said Matt Gallagher, an Iraq War vet and senior fellow at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“The only thing missing right now is a powerful visual, but I’m sure someone is going to find a creepy photo of the sergeant in question posing with guns, and that will be blasted everywhere.”
That perception affects the “99 percent of veterans who never have committed any crimes or unnecessary violence,” Gallagher said.
“[It affects] not only job searches, but how friends and family interact with them,” he said.
One must, however, remember this from a non-indicted war criminal: Rumsfeld paused, asked Wilson to repeat the question, then finally replied, “You go to war with the army you have.” Besides, he added, “You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can be blown up.”
Juan Cole offers his thoughts this morning:
It should be remembered that frequency and duration of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan were substantially increased by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
As a result of the Bush administration’s frenetic pursuit of multiple wars abroad, the small professional military of the US was put under enormous strain.
Deployments were increased from a year to 18 months, and multiple deployments became common.
Because of the prevalence of roadside bombs as an insurgent weapon of choice, brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan sky-rocketed.
The murky military occupations of countries where young US troops had little local knowledge produced paranoia and widespread Islamophobia, sometimes reinforced by evangelical hatemongering among the troops. British officers who served with Americans in Iraq were shocked and appalled at the sheer racism they often encountered among their US colleagues, complaining that Americans viewed locals as Untermenschen, a lesser race as the Nazis would have put it.
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome often went untreated.
Used and discarded in other words.
If these dumb-ass wars aren’t terminated and US military veterans treated for all sorts of war trauma, most-likely more of this kinds of delayed horror will happen.
And who’s the deranged, crazy person?
Terminal Death
Filed Under Bullshit, Madness, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Understatement on the crazed shootings yesterday in Afghanistan: It is believed that, some time before the killings, the soldier suffered a nervous breakdown.
In a bad situation getting worse, the incident only makes it near-imperative the US and NATO get the shit out of that country, and like way-now.
US peoples know, but the powers-that-be don’t, or don’t care: Sixty percent of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth its costs, and nearly the same number advocate an early US pullout from the country, a new poll showed.
(Illustration found here).
Although on the surface apparently, the shooting hasn’t yet stirred the ugly pot of unrest, but it might be just building up steam.
From the New York Times this morning:
Early on Monday, with the attacker in the custody of American forces, the public mood in Kandahar and Kabul seemed subdued with no immediate sign of protests on the streets.
But social networking sites such as Facebook and Afghan blogs were filled with angry postings, some of them accompanied by graphic photographs of what appeared to be children slain in the attack.
“This is a clear crime and will only add to the people who hate American in Afghanistan,” said one online posting.
“You can’t give their lives back to them with apologies.”
The shooter, an US Army staff sergeant, had from all indications, more than a passing experience in the ways of war:
Another senior military official said the sergeant was 38 and married with two children.
He had served three tours of duty in Iraq, this official said, and had been deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December.
Yet another military official said he has served in the Army for 11 years.
War effects everybody and these George Jr.-affiliated conflicts seem to pack a wallow with those actually doing the killing — the shooter yesterday was from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, a place in 2010 considered “the most troubled base in the military” by the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes.
Overall, suicide in the US military jumped 80 percent from 2004 to 2008 — four real-bad years for a lot of killing.
Two years ago, four Lewis-McChord soldiers were convicted in the deliberate thrill killings of three Afghan civilians, and the military would like to sweep all that bad shit under some kind of happy rug in order to save money.
CBS News:
In the past five years, about 300 patients at Madigan Army Medical Center at the base had their PTSD diagnoses reversed by a forensic psychiatry team, The Seattle Times reported this month.
The Army is reviewing whether those doctors were influenced by how much a PTSD diagnosis can cost, in terms of a pension and other benefits.
At Coffee Strong, a coffee shop near the base that doubles as a resource center for soldiers seeking to leave the Army, executive director Jorge Gonzalez said he was not surprised the shooter was from the base.
“Joint Base Lewis McChord has been bombarded with bad stories,” said Gonzales, who served in the Army in Iraq in 2006.
“We’re not seeing the true costs of war, we’re seeing soldiers committing suicide … murder and domestic violence.”
Richardson said the vast majority of the tens of thousands of soldiers at the base were professionals.
“It’s unfortunate that these things keeping ending up at Joint Base Lewis-McChord,” he said.
“I promise you, not even a percent of those people are like this, but unfortunately it keeps happening.
Things like this will continue until there is no more war.”
The war on terror sucks the terror homeward.
Despite reality, President Obama continued the official line of bullshit: “This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan.”
Barry, are you out of your mind.
Even as he meets with his UK counterpart today.
This nugget from the Guardian:
Such is the bleak reality facing Barack Obama and David Cameron when they sit down in Washington to discuss Afghanistan on Monday.
The shared narrative they have presented to their nations on how the Afghan war will end has been relentlessly eroded by the death toll among their soldiers and the daily headlines about the Karzai government’s seemingly incorrigible venality, like the Wall Street Journal report over the weekend that the US-funded Afghan air force was using its planes to smuggle narcotics and illegal weapons around the country.
Afghanistan is indeed the ‘graveyard of empires‘ and the US is most-likely at the end of its run as the world’s top dog — what a fitting place to end the American Dream.
Hopefully, not, but yet….