Make no mistake: we’re entering a new world of military planning. Admittedly, the latest proposed Pentagon budget manages to preserve just about every costly toy-cum-boondoggle from the good old days when MiGs still roamed the skies, including an uncut nuclear arsenal. Eternally over-budget items like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, cherished by their services and …
Continue reading “Offshore Everywhere”
After almost two months in abeyance and the (possibly temporary) loss of Shamsi Air Base for its air war, the CIA is again cranking up its drone operations in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. The first two attacks of 2012 were launched within 48 hours of each other, reportedly killing 10 ___s, and wounding at least …
Continue reading “Drone Disasters”
It’s 10 pm. Do you know where your drone is? Oh, the confusion of it all! The U.S. military now insists it was deeply befuddled when it claimed that a super-secret advanced RQ-170 Sentinel drone (aka “the beast of Kandahar“) that fell into Iranian hands on Dec. 4 — evidently while surveying suspected nuclear sites …
Continue reading “The Life and Death of American Drones”
He was 22, a corporal in the Marines from Preston, Iowa, a "city" incorporated in 1890 with a present population of 949. He died in a hospital in Germany of "wounds received from an explosive device while on patrol in Helmand province [Afghanistan]." Of him, his high school principal said, "He was a good kid." He is …
Continue reading “He was 22… She was 12…”
John Feffer says watch the skies
I attended a recent talk on “defense cooperation” between the United States and the Arab world. Inevitably, no one on the panel of five bothered to ask why the United States should be fueling an arms race by selling to nearly every country in the region, but as each speaker had a personal interest in …
Continue reading “The Merchants of Death and Me”
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home. – James Madison House Raids, Murder, and Other Aggression The war in Iraq has been conducted using “urban warfare” tactics including the raiding of Iraqi homes. On several occasions, those raids have resulted in the killing of innocent civilians, …
Continue reading “The Imperial Boomerang Returns”
These last weeks, there have been two “occupations” in lower Manhattan, one of which has been getting almost all the coverage — that of the demonstrators camping out in Zuccotti Park. The other, in the shadows, has been hardly less massive, sustained, or in its own way impressive — the police occupation of the Wall …
Continue reading “Mapping America’s Shadowy Drone Wars”
In Pakistan, according to American officials, strikes from Predators and Reapers operated by the CIA have killed more than 2,000 militants; the number of civilian casualties is hotly debated. In Yemen last month, an American citizen was, for the first time, the intended target of a drone strike, as Anwar al-Awlaki, the Qaeda propagandist and …
Continue reading “Journalism 101: If a US Official Says It, Report It”
Justin Raimondo says it’s not what you think
