Monday, Oct 27th
Last update06:50:11 AM GMT
War Glance
The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned.
TVNL Comment: More "change" for you.
Using a Predator drone, the U.S. military this week fired a Hellfire missile into a crowd of suspected insurgents in Helmand province, killing 13 people and wounding three others, military officials said Tuesday. It was one of two such attacks by unmanned aircraft on the same day.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has cautioned his troops against relying on aircraft to bomb targets unless there is a clear insurgent threat, as such bombings have killed civilians and inflamed anti-American sentiment among Afghans.
The commission's report said the wording of UN resolution 1441 "cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the Dutch government did) as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's resolutions."
TVNL Comment: It took THIS LONG to realize this?
This is a propaganda system at work: the choice of words and framework of logic designed to condition people into accepting certain options. In this case, the pre-determined option is a unilateral military strike on Iran either by the US or Israel. In that event, it will of course be reported by the BBC and other western media as a “pre-emptive” military measure to “prevent” Iran from attacking western interests in the region. Reported too, no doubt, will be the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties – unfortunate victims in an otherwise “just cause” to bring a “hardline regime” to abide by “international norms”. This is classic thought engineering that British political essayist George Orwell exposed so brilliantly – the official use of sanitised words to cover the sordid truth.
So let’s rewind and play back the news with some pertinent facts and context that are routinely omitted in western media reporting.
Contrary to repeated claims that the Iraq war did not deprive Afghan forces of necessary resources, the Army's history shows that the Bush administration "hamstrung" forces in the country, according to The New York Times.
"A Different Kind of War," to be published later this year, was written by seven historians at the Army's Combat Studies Institute. It is the first report of its kind, giving an official stamp on events which transpired between October 2001 and September 2005. The Times obtained the 400-page manuscript and posted it online.
A secret Army interrogation squad abused dozens of Iraqi prisoners, a firm of lawyers has claimed. Prisoners were hooded, held in "stress positions", denied sleep and daylight, and told their wives and mothers would be raped, the lawyers allege.
They say the Joint Forward Intelligence Team (JFIT) was not answerable to the Army chain of command.
The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a remote outpost in southeastern Afghanistan had been invited onto the base and had not been searched, two former U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.
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