Entries Tagged with War on Terror
September 4th, 2006
Women’s Rights
- Class warfare at Starbucks — lambert @ CorrenteWire writes about how class warfare starts over breast milk. Companies are far more likely to be accomodating to executive mothers who need breaks during the day to pump breast milk, but the women who work in the stores and “on the line” have to “barricade themselves in small restrooms intended for customers, counting the minutes left in their breaks.” There’s a lot of pressure to breast-feed in this day and age, but it’s easy to get discouraged and give up under less than ideal conditions.
- A Mystery From the Time When Abortion Was Illegal and Dangerous — olvlzl @ ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES remembers a horrible, deadly practice from the pre-Roe era — infanticide.
The woman who owned the trunk was in her 60s in 1983. The papers say she was called a “pillar of the community” when she lived in the area. People who remembered her said that at the time the babies had been killed she often appeared to be pregnant but she never had children. The authorities found her but she wouldn’t say anything about the trunk. I don’ t know of any legal pressure put on her to talk. The fact that there were five corpses of infants wrapped in newspapers from different years certainly suggests serial infanticide, not a misdemeanor in anyone’s book.
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Tags: Starbucks, Women's Rights, breastfeeding, class warfare, abortion, baby snuffer, infancticide, Islamofascism, propaganda, War on Terror, WWII, Osama bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, Domino Theory, Hitler, whistleblowers, Russell Tice, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Department of Justice, 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Fox News, David Warren, Debbie Schussel, Kathleen Parker, Mark Steyn, Glenn Greenwald, hypocrisy
September 3rd, 2006
Last month, while Israel was making war against Hezbollah, I kept wondering whether the death toll of Israelis and Lebonese was worth the lives of the two Israelis who were kidnapped at the beginning of the war. After all, it was their lives that started it all.
Is there a point where the cost of innocent civilians and the lives of patriotic soldiers outweighs the original loss? What I mean is, do the lives of the few outweigh the lives of many? What makes the lives of those two soldiers worth more than those Israel was willing to kill or send to die for them?
Closer to home, how many Americans lives need to be lost before we’ve spent more than it was worth to invade Iraq?
As The Martian Anthropologist reminded me today (not that I could forget), President Bush has repeatedly linked the tragedy of September 11th with the invasion of Iraq. According to him, the two are irreversibly intertwined in the War on Terror.
Whenever he invokes those emotional memories of the loss of lives on September 11th, he’s telling us that every American life he sends to die in Iraq is for those lives lost that day. He’s telling us that he’s sending more Americans to die, to kill innocent and not-so-innocent people in exchange for those lives already lost. Those are what the lives are worth.
I think it’s something to ponder today of all days consindering as of today more Americans have died in the War in Iraq than on September 11th.
(CNN) — As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed.
The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.
The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.
Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iraq, American soldiers, War on Terror, 9/11, George W. Bush
October 17th, 2005
Remember the War on Drugs? “Just Say No?”
The War on Terror has not only dwarfed the War on Drugs, it’s kind of sort of aiding and abedding the drug “bad guys”.
Afghanistan, that place we liberated from the Taliban, that place we hardly hear about any more because of Iraq and all of our successes there, is now the “world’s largest exporter of heroin, and the opium used to produce it, supplying 87 percent of the world market.” In 2004, Afghanistan produced 4,000 tons of opium, most of which was converted into 400 tons of morphine and heroin.
“It is not only the largest heroin producer in the world, 206,000 hectares is the largest amount of heroin or of any drug that I think has ever been produced by any one country in any given year,” says Robert Charles, who until last spring was assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, overseeing anti-drug operations in Afghanistan.
Charles says Afghanistan is producing more heroin than Columbia is producing cocaine. [“Afghanistan: Addicted to Heroin (60 Minutes)”]
According to a report on last night’s 60 Minutes, heroin production in Afghanistan has increased more than 2,000% since 2001. Wow. How long until drug lords become more powerful than the tentative new-born democracy do you suppose?
In fact, a number of suspected drug lords have been given key positions in the government. The most prefered method of transportation of the drug is the use of official vehicles like government transports and police cars. I wonder how much of that money is going to support terrorists.
Doesn’t it make you feel warm and cozy and safer knowing that we’ve done such a bang up job over there in the Middle East?
Tags: Iraq, War on Terror, War on Drugs, Afghanistan, Taliban
July 31st, 2005
Well, the War on Terror is over.
Well, actually, it’s just been renamed.
“Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism.” Nifty, ain’t it?
I’m sure that the Bush Administration doesn’t think anyone will notice and probably most of the sheep following blindly won’t notice.
I never thought they should have been calling it a war in the first place. A war suggests soldiers marching honorably off to war with women keeping the homefires burning. It suggests defined battlegrounds and strategies and even a defined enemy, generally having a central location so that we can eventually march in with great glory and free the oppressed. Wars even tend to suggest that there will be an end, that it’s somehow winnable by one of the sides, that a treaty or pact will eventually be agreed to and all the parties involved will slink back to their corners and try to play nice.
Terrorism doesn’t work that way. Funny that I never liked Star Trek: Next Gen, which may send Sci-Fi-ites storming my screen-door for my geek card back, but the one episode I remember from early on had to do with terrorism and the one thing that I got out of it is that no matter how many you kill, no matter how many you oppress, it just fuels the fire for creating more. Terrorism isn’t going to end because, quite frankly, everyone thinks they’re right and no one is going to give in, and lacking a government with a massive army and nuclear weapons to back them, this is how the “enemy” –er– violent extremists is going to continue fighting the “war” –er– struggle.
Oh, I liked this little quote from SeattlePi.com:
The U.S. government does not have a rich history of success when it calls one of its programs a “war” unless it involves a real military operation. We’ve had the “war on hunger,” “war on poverty,” “war on crime,” “war on obesity” and our all-time least-successful, “war on drugs.”
Excellent yet sadly amusing observation on their part.
Oh, and I also like the use of “Global” in the new struggle against violent extremists. It kind of makes it sound like we’re all united in the matter and by “all”, I don’t mean just us Americans, who can’t even agree on whether or not there were WMD in Iraq, but “all” as in the whole wide world — because you know how much most of the world loves us and stands behind us.
Tags: War on Terror, terrorism
June 20th, 2005
Remember back around fall 2001, when President Bush said that finding Osama Bin Laden was our highest priority? Remember when he said that the U.S. would not tolerate countries that harbored terrorists?
What the fuck happened?
From CNN.com:
CIA Director Porter Goss says he has an “excellent idea” where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that the al Qaeda chief will not be caught until weak links in the war on terrorism are strengthened…
[TIME] magazine asked Goss when bin Laden would be captured.
“That is a question that goes far deeper than you know,” he said. “In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links. And I find that until we strengthen all the links, we’re probably not going to be able to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice.
“We are making very good progress on it. But when you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you’re dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play.
“We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways that are acceptable to the international community.
Asked whether that meant he knew where bin Laden is, Goss responded: “I have an excellent idea where he is. What’s the next question?”
Goss did not say where he thinks bin Laden is, nor did he name the country or countries he was referring to when he spoke of sanctuaries.
We invaded a country that might or might not have weapons of mass destruction because they might use them one day though we had no proof and still have no proof. We alienated half of the world by insisting we invade without their agreement. We insisted that we knew better and could do whatever the hell we wanted and not worry about the repurcusians…and yet still no Bin Laden and now all of a sudden, we don’t want to step on any toes or upset any Middle East countries?
Tags: Osama bin Laden, CIA, Porter Goss, War on Terror
