Diesel Civil Trust

ataxiwardance:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military,authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said… .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, “it doesn’t really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them,” a senior administration official said. “They are then part of the enemy.”

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Thousands of extra Marines pouring into Afghanistan’s opium-growing heartland will go after those who process drugs but not those who grow the crop, the commander of U.S. Marines in the area said.

This is a nation-building opportunity if ever was one. Let the Marines drive out the Taliban, but make sure we give farmers safe alternatives to growing poppies. Show a man an ethical way to support his family, more often than not he’ll take it. Emphasis mine.

azspot:

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Over the past eight years, deployments to the Middle East have become so routine at this military base that President Obama’s declaration Tuesday of a military buildup in Afghanistan was like an announcement that winter was coming.

Iran has begun five days of large-scale war games to simulate attacks on its nuclear sites, officials said, warning it will retaliate if provoked.

azspot:

After the second bomb dropped, a Japanese company sent a film crew to document what was happening in the cities – the leveled ground, the dying. They were the only ones filming. If you were an American, you hadn’t seen a thing but a mushroom cloud. The news told you that we’d bombed the Japanese, and why we did it – ostensibly, to end the war.

But the U.S. military stepped in and banned the filming, taking what the Japanese had already recorded. Later, the military selected one of its own to head up a camera crew, Lt. Daniel McGovern, and document this campaign in Japan. They recorded every horror they saw.

What happened to that film, the footage we’d sent soldiers and civilians in to radiation-blasted cities to capture? The government suppressed every bit of film that documented the effects of the bombings and attempted to do the same with photographs. The Japanese film disappeared for more than 20 years. The footage McGovern’s crews recorded vanished for more than 30. We labeled it secret and hid it away.

It’s easy enough to come up with reasons why the government would have wanted to suppress the films — if people saw the sort of devastation atomic bombs could cause, they might not be so quick to support the use of nuclear weapons.

Such well-kept government secrets only reinforce the importance of journalism, even in the age of user-generated content. And we can thank people like McGovern and his crew and the Japanese newsreel team for their bravery.

Today, we have a parallel, of course. How many photos have you seen of dead soldiers in Afghanistan? How many photos of soldiers’ coffins?

The argument for suppressing the photos is that it’s unpatriotic to publish them and pushes a pacifist agenda. It can also be incredibly painful for families to see their dead loved ones in the news.

The argument against is that unless we see what we’re sacrificing, we don’t understand the cost of what we’re engaged in, or the courage it takes to get it done.

azspot:

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.