There seems no stopping newly minted president, Obama, making questionable appointments to various positions which could as easily have been made by the Bush / Cheney "team".
The latest appointment to attract flak is that of the new Army chief in Afghanistan. The Telegraph in the UK reports:
"The general chosen by Barack Obama to run the war in Afghanistan permitted abusive treatment and interrogation of detainees in Iraq, according to human rights investigators.
Soldiers have described beatings, psychological torture and other physical mistreatment at a camp near Baghdad where General Stanley McChrystal, then commander of US Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, was frequently seen.
A tall Irish-American with a deceptively gentle manner, Gen McChrystal was named last week as the next head of Afghan operations. He is currently operations director for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The investigation into human rights abuses was led by Marc Garlasco, himself a former Pentagon intelligence officer who helped lead the hunt for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Now a weapons expert at Human Rights Watch, his report, No Blood No Foul, covered the period 2003-2004 when Gen McChrystal operated in the shadows and hunted insurgents across Iraq.
Gen McChrystal is likely to be questioned over the findings of the report, compiled in 2006, during Senate hearings which are needed to confirm his appointment to his new post.
His special operations unit used Camp Nama, an acronym for "Nasty Ass Military Area", which had a fearsome reputation.
According to Mr Garlasco's report, which was based on soldiers' evidence, inmates at the camp were regularly stripped naked, subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme cold, placed in painful stress positions, and beaten. Gen McChrystal is lionised in the US as a warrior-scholar. Last week the media has carried admiring reports on how he eats just one meal a day and operates on a few hours' sleep. He led Task Force 121, the Special Operations units in Iraq which caught Saddam Hussein and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq."
Perhaps there is something in the piece in Information Clearing House "Is It Too Late To Swap Obama For McCain?"
"Anyone who has ever wasted good money on a clunker only to drop the transmission 15 minutes after leaving the car-lot, knows the feeling. It's like a swift-kick in the groin followed by weeks of fist-pounding rage. It's called buyer's remorse; "Gawd, I wish I hadn't bought that piece of dogshite!"
There are probably a lot of former-Obama supporters feeling that same agonizing sense despair now that President Rainbow has done an about-face on every campaign promise he made. So much for "truth in advertising", eh?
What a disaster. Did anyone know it was gonna be this bad?
For the record; I didn't vote for Obama because I didn't like the way he backpedaled on wiretapping and because he promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan. (Like everyone else who voted for Ralph Nader; I got loads of grief for it) But that doesn't mean I didn't want Obama to succeed. I did. The country is in too big a mess NOT to hope that he would succeed. But now...?
The latest appointment to attract flak is that of the new Army chief in Afghanistan. The Telegraph in the UK reports:
"The general chosen by Barack Obama to run the war in Afghanistan permitted abusive treatment and interrogation of detainees in Iraq, according to human rights investigators.
Soldiers have described beatings, psychological torture and other physical mistreatment at a camp near Baghdad where General Stanley McChrystal, then commander of US Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, was frequently seen.
A tall Irish-American with a deceptively gentle manner, Gen McChrystal was named last week as the next head of Afghan operations. He is currently operations director for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The investigation into human rights abuses was led by Marc Garlasco, himself a former Pentagon intelligence officer who helped lead the hunt for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Now a weapons expert at Human Rights Watch, his report, No Blood No Foul, covered the period 2003-2004 when Gen McChrystal operated in the shadows and hunted insurgents across Iraq.
Gen McChrystal is likely to be questioned over the findings of the report, compiled in 2006, during Senate hearings which are needed to confirm his appointment to his new post.
His special operations unit used Camp Nama, an acronym for "Nasty Ass Military Area", which had a fearsome reputation.
According to Mr Garlasco's report, which was based on soldiers' evidence, inmates at the camp were regularly stripped naked, subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme cold, placed in painful stress positions, and beaten. Gen McChrystal is lionised in the US as a warrior-scholar. Last week the media has carried admiring reports on how he eats just one meal a day and operates on a few hours' sleep. He led Task Force 121, the Special Operations units in Iraq which caught Saddam Hussein and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq."
Perhaps there is something in the piece in Information Clearing House "Is It Too Late To Swap Obama For McCain?"
"Anyone who has ever wasted good money on a clunker only to drop the transmission 15 minutes after leaving the car-lot, knows the feeling. It's like a swift-kick in the groin followed by weeks of fist-pounding rage. It's called buyer's remorse; "Gawd, I wish I hadn't bought that piece of dogshite!"
There are probably a lot of former-Obama supporters feeling that same agonizing sense despair now that President Rainbow has done an about-face on every campaign promise he made. So much for "truth in advertising", eh?
What a disaster. Did anyone know it was gonna be this bad?
For the record; I didn't vote for Obama because I didn't like the way he backpedaled on wiretapping and because he promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan. (Like everyone else who voted for Ralph Nader; I got loads of grief for it) But that doesn't mean I didn't want Obama to succeed. I did. The country is in too big a mess NOT to hope that he would succeed. But now...?
Comments