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Archive for Afghanistan

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Thursday 12th August 2010

How We Brought Freedom & Prosperity to Afghanistan

posted online today by the Future of Freedom Foundation, from the May issue of Freedom Daily -
BRINGING FREEDOM & PROSPERITY TO AFGHANISTAN
by James Bovard
The Obama administration is seeking to rechristen the Afghan debacle it inherited from the Bush administration. Obama’s efforts to legitimize the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan simply ignore the previous record of American [...]

Wednesday 11th August 2010

Government Lies Make Leaks Explosive

The Pentagon is caterwauling that the next round of WikiLeaks’ disclosures of US government documents will be even more damaging than the last round.
It is always touching to see the world’s most powerful military machine portray itself as a “pitiful, helpless giant” (the phrase Nixon used in his speech announcing his illegal invasion [...]

Wednesday 4th August 2010

My 2 Cents on WikiLeaks, the FBI, and Assorted Hokum - Antiwar.com Transcript

The good folks at Antiwar.com Radio added a transcript to the MP3 of last week’s interview. My comments on the Obama administration’s ploy to increase FBI surveillance power are excerpted here at the top. (The full text is below. My Kelly Girl past is now no longer secret).
Bovard:
National Security letters have [...]

Tuesday 3rd August 2010

New U.S. Government Motto: Controlling Us to Secure Us

“If you don’t have control of the population, you can’t secure the population,” according to Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges, director of operations for the NATO regional command in southern Afghanistan.
The front-page Washington Post piece with the above quote deals with Kandahar.
But it is also the motto for the U.S. government’s approach to [...]

Saturday 31st July 2010

MP3 of My Interview with Scott Horton on the FBI, WikiLeaks, Etc.

Scott Horton of Antiwar.com Radio and I had fun tarring-and-feathering the usual federal outrages on Thursday. The MP3 is here.
Scott balked at the chance to reveal his deepest thoughts on Chelsea’s wedding. It could have been a great “Bill Hicks moment.”
Here’s Scott’s thumbnail of the interview:
James Bovard, author of Attention Deficit Democracy, [...]

Thursday 29th July 2010

Excellent Interview with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange by Antiwar’s Scott Horton

Antiwar’s Scott Horton did a superb radio interview with WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange yesterday. Transcript and the MP3 are here.
I have been amused to see the tut-tutting of some of the Washington press corps because the Afghan document disclosure was not as earth-shaking as the Pentagon Papers.
Folks, this game is only beginning. Assange confirmed [...]

Monday 26th July 2010

Three More Cheers for WikiLeaks!

The latest deluge of truth from WikiLeaks is a welcome novelty in American politics.
The New York Times, UK Guardian, and Germany’s Der Spiegel are simultaneously releasing articles today on more than 90,000 Pentagon documents that WikiLeaks posted on the web regarding the Afghan war.
These documents reveal the lies that have permeated U.S. Afghan [...]

Thursday 22nd July 2010

The Pentagon No Longer Awards This Medal

10:17 pm | Afghanistan | Attention Deficit Democracy | Comments: 2

Amazing how much has been forgotten since this 1988 New Yorker cartoon…

Friday 9th July 2010

“Freedom & the War on Terrorism” - my Pennslyvania speech…

Now online here: the video of my “Freedom and the War on Terrorism” speech last month in Bernville, Pennsylvania. I want to thank Bob Bowers, who organized this libertarian supper club, for inviting Jacob Hornberger and I to talk there. The audience was excellent - lots of hardliners full of fire-and-brimstone. [...]

Friday 2nd July 2010

POLITICAL SHOCKER! A Whiff of Truth on Afghanistan!

4:01 pm | Afghanistan | Comments: 3

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele blasted Obama’s Afghan troop surge last night at a Connecticut fundraiser.
Steele asked: “If [Obama's] such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Because everyone who has tried, over a thousand [...]

Thursday 24th June 2010

Towards a More Honest Afghan Policy

2:07 pm | Afghanistan | Obama | Comments: 6

Good riddance to McChrystal. His role in the coverup of the killing of Pat Tillman alone was enough to qualify him for the Pentagon Rogues Gallery of the new Millennium.
Petreaus is better than McChrystal because at least we get to sometimes watch him get overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the BS he shovels [...]

Tuesday 6th April 2010

Killing Journalists as Video Game Sport

Three cheers for Wikileaks. Their posting of a 38-minute video from an Apache helilcopter showing U.S. gunners killing two Reuters journalists (and ten other civilians) in 2007 is heroic. Naturally, the Pentagon had endlessly scorned Reuters’ Freedom of Information Act and other efforts to get the video.
The video and a transcript of [...]

Wednesday 10th March 2010

Kudos to Kucinich & 64 Other Courageous Congressmen on Afghanistan

11:04 pm | Afghanistan | Attention Deficit Democracy | Ron Paul | Comments: 2

Dennis Kucinich deserves credit for forcing the House to formally debate the Afghan war.
His comments - and those of Ron Paul and the other 63 folks who voted against perpetuating this war - will be part of the honor roll of our time.
On the Republican side, Rep. Paul was joined in opposing the Afghan war [...]

Tuesday 1st December 2009

Will Obama Out-BS Bush?

Obama’s speech from West Point tonight may drive the final wooden stake into liberals’ hope that their guy would create a Brave New Order in Washington and the world.
The fact that Obama is following in Bush’s footsteps - talking to an audience of captive individuals who would be ruined for life by a single [...]

Wednesday 18th November 2009

Dying for Crooks: US Troops in Afghanistan

10:37 pm | Afghanistan | Attention Deficit Democracy | Obama | Comments: 12

Transparency International reported yesterday that Afghanistan is the most corrupt nation in the world - except for Somalia.
Heckua achievement, if the only nation on earth that is more shady is one that is full of pirates… Karzai is making Marion Barry look like Mother Teresa.
The Washington Post reported today that one of Afghanistan’s top [...]

Thursday 22nd October 2009

Karzai Gets 2nd Chance to Steal the Election

So what am I missing in Afghanistan?
Isn’t this like catching a really dumb bank robber in the act (stealing almost a million votes) - and then, instead of booking him on charges, giving him another chance to rob the same bank?
The U.S. government and NATO are going to let Karzai take another swing at [...]

Friday 9th October 2009

8 Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan

And so now the Pentagon and the White House are going to tell the truth about Afghanistan?
Pshaw!
Here’s my 2 cents on the issue - distributed by the Future of Freedom Foundation and also appearing on Counterpunch today.
** I have a ‘reader survey’ question at the bottom regarding a specific line in the piece.
EIGHT YEARS [...]

Monday 5th October 2009

Afghan 24-Karat BS: Throwing Away American Troops’ Lives

11:33 am | Afghanistan | Comments: 2

The Washington Post article on this weekend’s attack on a remote US military base in Afghanistan notes:
It is really hard to interdict the enemy,” said the base’s company commander in an interview with The Washington Post in late September. “There are literally thousands of trails around here. We just don’t have the numbers of [...]

Wednesday 19th August 2009

Ginning Up Another Election Scam Abroad - Afghanistan

8:18 am | Afghanistan | Attention Deficit Democracy | Elective Dictatorship | Comments: 5

So the Afghan people will have the chance to prove they are free and self-governing this week.
Or at least that is the story the Obama team and most of the U.S. media are shoveling.
After the Bush team successfully carried off similar scams in Iraq, it is not surprising that the new regime in America would [...]

Friday 10th July 2009

WHOOP WHOOP Quote of the Day - on War Crimes

3:46 pm | Afghanistan | Attention Deficit Democracy | War crimes | Comments: 0

â€œWe believe that anyone suspected of war crimes should be thoroughly investigated.â€
So claims an anonymous U.S government official, quoted in a story on the New York Times website today.
Of course, he was referring to an alleged massacre of Taliban prisoners by Afghan Gen. Dostum in Afghanistan in late 2001. (Despite Obama’s victory last November, the [...]

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