Gen. Stan McChrystal, United States Army, will leave active service with four stars instead of three because of a special waiver bestowed on him by President Barack Obama. One is supposed to hold four-star rank for three years before one can retire at that pay grade, something McChrystal obviously didn’t do, but Obama made nice …
Continue reading “Code of Military Justice”
Pat Buchanan asks: What was accomplished, at what cost?
Remember? prods Robert Koehler
It’s a sign of the New American times that even when we know we don’t have cogent grounds to continue our woebegone wars, we can’t invent compelling reasons to end them. In September 2009, President Obama caved to Pentagon demands to send more troops to the Bananastans* even though nobody in the Department of Defense …
Continue reading “The Stepmother of Invention”
Updated at 6:18 p.m. EDT, July 25, 2010
Despite extra precautions, belligerents detonated a car bomb in Karbala. A separate car bomb destroyed the al-Arabiya studios and a lawmaker’s home in Baghdad. At least 46 Iraqis were killed and 88 more were wounded in those two attacks. Curiously, no other attacks in Iraq were reported. Meanwhile, members of the Iraqiya party refuse to allow the political impasse preventing the formation of the next government to become “internationalized.”
Super Dave Petraeus, newly installed as top banana in the Bananastans*, is practicing the exploding-cigar kind of diplomacy Dick Cheney and his cabin boys perfected during the Li’l Bush regime. Following policies outlined by the neoconservative cabal in their September 2000 manifesto Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Dick and the Destroyers’ negotiations with Iran amounted to a …
Continue reading “Pavlov’s Dogs of War Revisited”
Updated at 7:50 p.m. EDT, July 19, 2010
An attack in northern Iraq killed one Briton and as many as three other foreign nationals. At least 17 Iraqis were killed and 55 more were wounded in that attack and in other violence across the country. Meanwhile, Ayad Allawi outlined his plans for the new government should he become the next prime minister. He also met with Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who blamed Iraq’s security woes on the United States, during a trip to Damascus.
At least 13 Iraqis were killed and 26 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities transferred 55 high-level detainees, including Tariq Aziz, to their Iraqi counterparts. Also, Turkey is considering building a new army that will handle their war against PKK rebels.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal might have left town through the back door with his four stars barely intact, his 35-year career in the Army humiliatingly cut short by a lack of judgment with a counterculture magazine. But in reality, he got off easy. As a four-star popular with his peers, McChrystal will have professional options most …
Continue reading “The Dark Legacy of Gen. McChrystal”
During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson and the military argued that we had to win in order to prevent communism from taking over other nations in the vicinity, the so-called domino theory. The military asserted repeatedly that provided we sent over more troops, they could win the war. They also argued that we needed …
Continue reading “More Lives Lost in Vain” 
