Afghanistan vs. Vietnam War Rages on in the Media

It's certainly a debate, raging or not, about what to do about Afghanistan. Stay the course, whatever that might be, or ramp things up? Obama is said to be debating what to do about US forces in the war-torn country.

Vanity Fair reports on a debate raging in the media about whether the Vietnam war should be compared to what is happening in Afghanistan:

"Is Afghanistan the new Vietnam? President Obama says no, but a rising chorus of critics seems to think otherwise. An entire page of yesterday’s op-ed section in the New York Times was dedicated to plucking policy and counterinsurgency lessons from America’s bloody years in Southeast Asia, and even Gordon M. Goldstein’s book about failed policy in Vietnam, Lessons in Disaster, is being passed around the White House these days. As popular support has sagged, nearly every media outlet has run a version of the Is-Afghanistan-Obama’s-Vietnam? story."

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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