Skip to main content

No "mission accomplished" here

This short piece from CommonDreams says it all - and speaks for itself:

"After seven-plus years, one trillion dollars, the loss of 4,400 American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, the U. S. media widely reported the "last" U.S. combat brigade left that devastated country last night. Some media were astute enough to use the far more accurate "drawdown" to a mere, still heavily armed 50,000 troops. Some also noted the move came a day after a suicide bomber killed 59 people, and Iraq's two main political parties failed to reach agreement on forming a government. Or that private contractors will now double there. Or that huge uncertainties about Iraq's future remain, including its capacity to provide even basic services - like electricity - to its ravaged population. Most alarmingly, even federal officials were more conscientious than the media about calling it what it was - a "historic moment," with a whole lot of "but"s. Shiny new moniker notwithstanding, we'd add: It's one long-overdue step in a grievous process that should never have begun.

"This is a transition. This is not the end of something. It's a transition to something different. We have a long-term commitment to Iraq." - US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

#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?

Intelligence agencies just can't help themselves

It is insidious and becoming increasingly widespread. Intelligence agencies in countries around the world, in effect, snooping on private exchanges between people not accussed of anything - other than simply using the internet or their mobile phone. The Age newspaper, in Australia, reports on how that country's intelligence operatives now want to widen their powers. It's all a slippery and dangerous slope! The telephone and internet data of every Australian would be retained for up to two years and intelligence agencies would be given increased access to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter under new proposals from Australia's intelligence community. Revealed in a discussion paper released by the Attorney-General's Department, the more than 40 proposals form a massive ambit claim from the intelligence agencies. If passed, they would be the most significant expansion of the Australian intelligence community's powers since the Howard-era reform...