Until They All Come Home. A soldier of the 4-19th Agribusiness Development Team makes his way home through the Indianapolis International Airport from a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Sunday, June 10, 2012.
(Photo: Sgt. John Crosby / The National Guard / flickr)For reasons beyond my personal control, I recently found myself snarling through the long and winding bowels of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport ...which, if you haven't had the pleasure and so are unaware, is quite possibly the most preposterous travel hub north of the equator. As I finally managed to stagger my way to the end of another endless hallway that led, allegedly, to the 'Exit' doors, I came upon an impromptu party.
There were maybe fifty people standing behind the security perimeter, some holding American flags, some holding "Welcome Home! " signs, some in uniform. Another man in uniform emerged from the hallway, and the assembled crowd lit up again. And then another. That is fact. Between 1995 and 2000, Mr. Who Benefits From the Organized Violence of War? U.S.
Army soldiers in four-wheel vehicles wait as bundles of fuel are air delivered by a C-17 Globemaster III to Forward Operating Base Waza K'wah in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Jan. 30, 2011. (Photo: The U.S. Army) A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. Few nations have such extensive borders or coasts as the United States. Why does this nation squander trillions of dollars on "security" and "defense"? We may never solve these riddles unless we better understand both human nature and the nature of war. Let's start with "human nature" (whatever that means).
Who "volunteers" to be the cannon fodder and why? But maybe human nature - and men - get a bad rap. Each nut and bolt plays its little role often oblivious to its contribution to the machine's malign functioning. More Questions. CIA 'tortured and sodomised' terror suspect, human rights court rules. CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday.
In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations. Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA "rendition team" at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan. It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture.
"The grand chamber of the European court of human rights unanimously found that Mr el-Masri was subjected to forced disappearance, unlawful detention, extraordinary rendition outside any judicial process, and inhuman and degrading treatment," said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. Masri was released in April 2004. How Did the Gates of Hell Open in Vietnam? Vietnam War Memorial.
(Photo: enviziondotnet / flickr)For half a century we have been arguing about “the Vietnam War.” Is it possible that we didn’t know what we were talking about? After all that has been written (some 30,000 books and counting), it scarcely seems possible, but such, it turns out, has literally been the case. Now, in Kill Anything that Moves, Nick Turse has for the first time put together a comprehensive picture, written with mastery and dignity, of what American forces actually were doing in Vietnam. The findings disclose an almost unspeakable truth. It has been Turse’s great achievement to see that, thanks to the special character of the war, its prime reality -- an accurate overall picture of what physically was occurring on the ground -- had never been assembled; that with imagination and years of dogged work this could be done; and that even a half-century after the beginning of the war it still should be done.
Scorched Earth in I Corps Pumping Up the Body Count.