War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Seymour Hersh had ’em nailed all along. From the New Yorker online: They want to turn these guys into assassins,†a former high-level intelligence officer told me. “They want to go on rumors — not facts — and go for political effect, and that’s what the Special Forces Command is really afraid of. Rummy is…
In the realm of stalemate/quagmire: But after nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, the war’s strategic rationale still remains tenuous. Central Asia holds little intrinsic strategic value to the United States, and America’s security will not necessarily be endangered even if an oppressive regime takes over a contiguous fraction of Afghan territory. Given Afghanistan’s…
A couple of celestial phenomena have graced eyes and telescopes most recently, especially this evening as the longest total solar eclipse this century swept across Asia, starting in India, sweeping east across China and into the Pacific Ocean. A blogger/astronomer who chased the eclipse from a mountain outside Hangzhou, China: 8:05 a.m. (8:05 p.m. E.D.T.) We…
Four more US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday and this morning news of eight suicide bombers striking government compounds in two eastern towns as this near-decade-long war is going from bad to worse to even worser (if there is such a word/situation). Thirty US GIs have already been killed this month, and coupled with 25…
All the blubbering coming from broadcast news last night on the death of Walter Cronkite yesterday made me want to grab a barf bag and run away. These talking twit-heads on TV are nothing but smoke and mirrors — not at all connected to the news business, but a shadow, a sham and shit-long-way from…
End of trust and straight-talk – Walter Cronkite died today at age 92.  (Illustration found here). In memory, Ben Bradlee with a piece posted today in Newsweek on Cronkite and Watergate: In October 1972, Cronkite devoted two segments, back to back, to the Watergate story. The first was 14 minutes, the second eight. I think that second night…
I didn’t think the Emmys had the grapes — not like that time they nominated Vince Edwards: He’s just a damn doctor, Jim. (Illustration found here). Who said Seth MacFarlane is imbecilic? Go ahead, you homo, tell me and I’ll trim his toenails with an axe. A nomination for Best Comedy was heaped upon Family Guy this…
Two US marines were killed Saturday in southern Afghanistan, two more died Monday, while the UK lost eight soldiers in a swift, 24-hour period at the end of last week — a war getting worse and already in apparent bad need of more boots on the ground. An ironic scenerio when coupled with the recent death…
Last fall, I read Frederick Forsyth’s The Afghan, which contains a view of the riot/battle at Qala-i-Jangi fort in November, 2001, exposing the US public to a view of some ferocious insurgency fighting in those panic/dream-days just after 9/11. A work of fiction, but Forsyth’s novel has more truth in it than what the US…
As the US slogs its way through two disastrous wars, the ones doing the fighting are killing themselves. At record numbers, 88 so far this year, 21 more than the same time in 2008: “Every soldier suicide is different and tragic in its own way,†said Brig. Gen. Colleen McGuire, director, Army Suicide Prevention Task…