War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Even now after nearly half-a-century, one Vietnam vet still works to get a grip: Wright died in 1968 when he stepped on a land mine, Atwood said, and Wright’s mother always blamed him for her son’s death. He’s never been able to bring himself to visit his friend’s grave, he said. On Saturday he found…
Six US GIs have been killed since Friday in a conflict Mitt Romney says is just a ‘word‘, four this morning, shot dead by an Afghan soldier during a firefight with insurgents in a remote area in the southern part of the country. One aspect of this horror show is getting worse: It was the…
Seven US peoples have been killed in Afghanistan the last few hours, but where’s the political outcry? The Washington Post laments: Yet this may be the first presidential campaign in U.S. history in which an ongoing war fails to produce a significant debate. Explicitly or implicitly, the candidates have successfully encouraged much of the media to…
Fog/drizzle this morning up here on California’s northern coast, a mighty contrast to the rest of the US, and most-likely, a huge chunk of the planet. Bad news continues with another mass killing in Wisconsin, this time apparently with religious/racial overtones, and the bizarre link in the shooting deaths of two Brooklyn, NY, shopkeepers, both…
Mitt Romney and George Jr. the night of Feb. 8, 2002, the opening of the Salt Lake City Olympic games: As the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s rendition of the national anthem echoed off the snow-dusted mountains, the 43rd President turned to the man who now could be the 45th and marveled, “That was a great moment. 
In the same way-ugly stain of Mitt Romney’s financial, near- fraudulent bullshit this past week, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds issued its final audit account on Friday, the take-away bottom line: “The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known,†the report said. And we’re not…
Hiding in plain sight behind the crazed presidential election and the extreme weather experienced by most US peoples the last couple of weeks, the killing fields of Afghanistan are still being plowed. Six US troops were killed yesterday in a single IED blast in eastern Afghanistan, where fighting has started to increase in recent weeks…
“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…
Doc: I don’t give a shit if he’s from Johannesburg. I don’t want to hear dune koon or sand nigger from him or anybody. Vig: Captain uses those terms. Troy: The point is, Conrad, ‘towel head’ and ‘camel jockey’ are perfectly good substitutes. — Three Kings US Army Sgt. Bob Bales is to be charged…
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…