Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’
Posted by M. C. on June 11, 2018
https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2018/06/10/a-personal-message-from-major-danny-sjursen-u-s-army-veteran-of-iraq-and-afghanistan/
by Maj. Danny Sjursen
This is all very intimate for me; hard to speak on, really.
Suffice it to say that this middling soldier gave his youth, and innocence, to what we used to call the Global War on Terror (GWOT).
I left several of my boys in the meaningless streets and fields of Iraq and Afghanistan: five killed by improvised bombs, a couple still in wheelchairs, one with a triple amputation; dozens more were shot and wounded; perhaps hundreds emotionally and morally damaged for life. Two of my troopers got themselves killed over there and didn’t even know it: a suicide and a prescription overdose…so it goes for my generation of volunteer “warriors.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, Antiwar.com, Danny Sjursen, Global War on Terror, Iraq | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on May 1, 2018
In 2011, I observed directly and graphically that our war, which was ten years old at the time, had failed to accomplish our objectives and reportedthat U.S. leaders were claiming success where they knew there was none.
US Government. Lying about war for 240 years.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/foreign-policy-failure-america-has-not-learned-its-wars-25607
Daniel L. Davis
It’s time for the Washington foreign-policy establishment to consider the seemingly unthinkable: perpetual foreign-military operations and occupations do not enhance American national security and economic prosperity.
Overwhelming evidence—currently on painful display in Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen —reveals the stark reality that these operations drain our nation of critical resources, produces a slow-bleed of U.S. troops, and deteriorates our ability to respond to potentially existential battles in the future. Changes must be urgently made if we are to reverse this negative condition… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, Foreign Policy Failure, Syria, war, Yemen | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2018
95,000 vehicles! How much of this ended up in Al Qaeda and ISIS hands? How much armament was “lost” (to Al Qaeda and ISIS)? On purpose depending the enemy du jour (Syria, Iran, the wrong variety Kurds).
How can you lose track of 95,000 vehicles without it being part of the plan? We always leave equipment in place for use by our “friends”. This makes it easier to come back when plans go haywire, which they usually do.
If the Afghan military is anything like the Iraqi military most of the recruits bail with their weapons and sell them or take their equipment and training and join ISIS.
Are you getting an inkling on why Afghanistan is worse than when we started after 15 years? If they only hadn’t attacked US…oh wait…they didn’t. If Iraq hadn’t…oh ya…they didn’t attack US either.
http://theantimedia.com/pentagon-admits-billions-us-dollars-disappeared-afghanistan/
Written by Tyler Durden
A new report from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DoD IG) exposes even more fraud, waste and/or corruption in America’s ongoing war in Afghanistan. This latest report reveals that more than $3.1 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds provided to the Afghan Armed Forces from 2014 through 2017 was grossly mismanaged. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, Pentagon, US Dollars Disappeared | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on February 12, 2018
How many more decades of death and destruction before we declare victory and go home?
Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result…
http://www.ocregister.com/2018/02/07/the-aimless-war-in-afghanistan-will-cost-us-taxpayers-45-billion-this-year/
Sal Rodriguez
America’s forever war in Afghanistan will cost $45 billion this year, a Pentagon official told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.
Now in its 17th year, there seems to be no end in sight to what has mostly become a futile effort at nation building. Depending on how you calculate it, the total cost of the war to date somewhere between $841 billion and $2 trillion… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: $45 billion, Afghanistan, Pentagon official, Senate Foreign Relations Committee | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on February 8, 2018
Afghanistan-The graveyard of empires.
Then again there are good reasons for hanging around. Oil, pipelines, keeping the pentagram suppliers busy, keeping Saudi Arabia happy, keeping Israel happy (how many Israeli/SA troops in Afghanistan-hard to tell– probably none).
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/02/07/sen-rand-paul-trump-s-military-parade-is-good-idea-if-bring-troops-home-from-afghanistan-first.html
Sen. Rand Paul
If victory requires the disparate tribes and regional factions of Afghanistan to have more allegiance to a regime in Kabul than to their local tribal leaders, then victory will never come.
We spend about $50 billion a year in Afghanistan. When quizzed in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently, undersecretaries of Defense and State could not answer the most rudimentary of questions concerning the war. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, graveyard of empires, Rand Paul | 1 Comment »
Posted by M. C. on January 27, 2018
Can’t let minor annoyances get in the way of the racket that is war.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/01/23/notwithstanding-how-congress-enabled-chuck-hagel-and-ash-carter-to-keep-child-rape-and-torture-from-disrupting-forever-war/
…Chuck Hagel and Ash Carter were fully aware of gross human rights abuses, including both child rape and torture, but elected to use the blunt tool that Congress had given them to ignore these human rights abuses and continue funding the same units within the Afghan military that carried out the abuses. So while official policy was that abuses are to be reported, they then are completely ignored at the Congressional and Cabinet level in order to continue a forever war that is forever failing.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, Ashton Carter, Child Rape, Chuck Hagel, Department of Defense, green on blue, SIGAR, tea boy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on January 12, 2018
“I am disappointed and also concerned that the American people, our coalition partners, the Afghan government and the Afghan people will believe that American service members are callous and indifferent to the horrors of war or the suffering of innocent people trapped in conflict,” Votel said in a statement.
It seems as though some are indifferent. The pentagram is doing absolutely nothing constructive anywhere in the ME. It must get boring. You have to get your laughs somehow.
It is not as thought this is an isolated incident. Ask Reuters.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/us-military-probes-video-of-apparent-shooting-in-afghanistan-9854072
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon said on Thursday (Jan 11) it had opened an investigation after a video posted online appears to show an American soldier firing a shotgun at the driver of a civilian truck in Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, American soldier firing a shotgun Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/us-military-probes-video-of-apparent-shooting-in-afghanistan-9854072, Happy Few Ordnance Symphony, Pentagon Investigation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on November 22, 2017
Does this mean that we can expect considerable fumbling and a game with no exit strategy, something like a replay of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? You betcha.
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/boy-is-this-stupid-or-what/
Even the U.S. media has been reluctantly reporting that ISIS has been rolled back in Syria by the joint efforts of the Syrian Army and the Russian air force with the United States and its allies playing very much secondary roles in the conflict. The Russians have, in fact, complained that Washington seemed just a tad disinterested in actually cooperating to destroy the last remnants of ISIS in the few areas that the group still controls, citing most recently an alleged incident during the Syrian government liberation of the town of Abu Kamal in which U.S. air assets on site appear to have allowed ISIS fighters to escape. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, Iraq, ISIS, James Mattis, Kurds, Nikki Haley, Syria | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on November 11, 2017
What is the truth? Hillary/Obama colluded with Karzai and his drug dealing, trucking operation owner half-brother. The US paid off the Taliban not attack truck convoys. Everyone colludes with everyone and his brother.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/hamid-karzai-colluded-isil-afghanistan-171110191715544.html
Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan, has accused the US of working with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in his country.
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera’s UpFront aired on Friday, Karzai said the US government had allowed ISIL, also known as ISIS, to flourish inside Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, ISIL | Leave a Comment »
Posted by M. C. on September 5, 2017
Another Pentagram foreign policy success story. Well, a success for bomb makers.
The Taliban Tried to Surrender and the U.S. Rebuffed Them. Now Here We Are.
So when the Taliban came to surrender, the U.S. turned them down repeatedly, in a series of arrogant blunders spelled out in Anand Gopal’s investigative treatment of the Afghanistan war, “No Good Men Among the Living.”
Only full annihilation was enough for the Bush administration. They wanted more terrorists in body bags. The problem was that the Taliban had stopped fighting, having either fled to Pakistan or melted back into civilian life. Al Qaeda, for its part, was down to a handful of members.
So how do you kill terrorists if there aren’t any? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Afghanistan, Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living, Taliban | Leave a Comment »
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