War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
What’s this with US bombs and Afghan weddings? These two kids, small members of an Afghan wedding party bombed to bits by US aircraft in July 2002, killing 20 to 30 people (Illustration found here), are a horrifyingly sad picture of what’s been accomplished in a war that’s now dragged on for more than seven…
Shipping in and out of the Red Sea is undergoing some old-time, real-violent incidents with pirates, so much so there seems to be a crisis in an ability to handle it. Information Dissemination, the best site for all things Naval, made note today on another freighter attacked by pirates as it tried to navigate through…
Despite all, wars keep warring. In Africa’s heart, seemingly all-perpetual war keeps hacking away at history, yesterday, today and tomorrow. The machete-AK-47 adventure continued in earnest on Monday as UN peacekeepers attempt to mount a rescue of its aid workers trapped in the deep Congo jungle, caught in the pincer of an escalating advance of…
Despite Sarah Palin’s gosh-darn, flippant attitude toward war, she does need to work a bit harder on world geography. In a bullshit session last Sunday: Three days after a mostly gaffe-free debate performance, the Alaska governor fumbled during a speech in which she praised U.S. soldiers for “fighting terrorism and protecting us and our democratic…
Just when it was thought to be safe to venture over to a relative’s house in Afghanistan: An Afghan district governor and two of his bodyguards have been killed by mistake in a Nato raid on a house in Uruzgan province, police say. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, expressed sorrow over the killing, which he…
Sixty-three years ago today Sueko Hada was then seven-years-old: “I managed to claw my way out from under the rubble. By now, our house was on fire and the cries of my sisters were getting fainter. I left to look for help. When I went outside I saw that everything had totally changed. Although it…
Wikipedia: knuckleball A knuckleball (or “knuckler” for short) is a baseball pitch with an erratic, unpredictable motion. The pitch is thrown so as to minimize the spin of the ball in flight. This causes vortices over the stitched seams of the baseball during its trajectory, which can cause the pitch to change direction, including corkscrew,…
One of the most-marvelous and near-enigmatic of military operations in the Iraqi war was the famous “surge,” — Decider George’s answer to the fratricide-like butchery shop he’d created with his invasion and subsequent dumb-ass, greed-obsessive policies. In January 2007, he ordered a big chunk of US GIs gushed into certain parts of Iraq for a…
And this morning from the Germans via Reuters: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months. In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq…
Another lost opportunity for Decider George. Even as he holds out a shocking, back-stabbing fig leaf to Iran, the original intent with the late-great Global War on Terror in Afghanistan is going to shit in a wire basket. Just in the last few days, the situation on the ground there has quickly quick-sanded into a…