Lt. Col Daniel L Davis: Truth, Lies and Afghanistan

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with US troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army's Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy.  Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Khandahar , Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces. What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by US military leaders about conditions on the ground. Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress. Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level. My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-08 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the US Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs, among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, R. Texas. As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops.       

Jon Henley: We are Kicking Pregnant Women on the Streetsi

As Greece enters its fifth straight year of "recession", the cuts deepen and the dole queues lengthen, some people are beginning to fight back. On Monday, in Plaka, Athens' old town, I met Katerina Kanelidou, 42, a leadership coach who decided she had to do something one night a couple of weeks ago, when she saw a homeless man outside the station during one of the coldest winters in memory. "Then on YouTube, I saw someone had posted a video of a pregnant woman being ejected from a homeless shelter," she said. "I was just so shocked. I was thinking, how many unemployed people are going to become homeless? And what kind of society have we become, that we are kicking homeless pregnant women on to the streets?" Realizing she had neither "the power to influence the politicians, or the money to pay for more shelters", Kanelidou decided what she could do was offer her professional experience, providing specially devised, free coaching programs for the city's unemployed, aimed at boosting their self-confidence and skills. "I just thought: I have to do something," she said. "Yes, there is real depression. Huge numbers of people are taking ant--depressants, and a lot of anger at what's happened, but the time for excuses is over now. I am so fed up with the excuses: We can't do anything, we don't have the money, the time, the right paperwork. I have all I need to do something." So Kanelidou posted on her Facebook page and emailed her contacts, offering coaching sessions to unemployed people on little or no income. She wasn't sure what the take-up would be. "People call us lazy, but we have always worked hard," she said. "There's a huge stigma to being unemployed in Greece."     

Kawther.info: Yet Another Israeli Assassination Campaign

In the latest campaign of incitement of the state of terrorism, Israel against the besieged Palestinians in the Gaza concentration camp and the Hamas movement, the Israeli war criminals are using the media paid and owned by the Zionist lobby in western countries to promote their blood propaganda before they started a series of assassinations against a number of Palestinians from the West bank who were expelled to the Gaza Strip during the recent exchange of Palestinian prisoners against the French Zionist soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured by the Palestinian resistance while shooting at Gaza civilians some years ago. During the primary campaign of bloodshed against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Israel accused Hamas of "planning to launch hostile campaigns which threaten the Israeli security", whatever that is supposed to mean. The Israeli intelligence instructed its underground elements in Gaza to launch a couple of rockets towards some so-called "Israeli villages" on stolen, since 1948, Palestinian land in order to justify their pre-planned aggression against blockaded Gaza. In terrorist Israel, the wrong beliefs and trumped-up suspicions which flower in the minds of its bloodthirsty generals, heirs of the terrorist organization Haganah and Palmach and their "defense" minister in the "state of Israel", become facts, become charges and accusations, and ultimately become grounds and justification for waging a fierce war on the neighboring countries in general and on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the occupied territories in special, fully in the light of knowledge of the community of nations, and under the thunderous silence and shameless complicity of a world governed by Zionist politicians, in the "western" countries and elsewhere.    

Krishnendu Halder: Darpa Director Leaving Pentagonfor Google!

One of the most top-secret Pentagon departments, the same that spawned America's drones, military robots, electromagnetic guns and other sci-fi weaponry, is about to lose its top officer to Google. Regina Dugan oversaw the development of of some of the DoD's research lab is parting ways with the Pentagon to take on a role with Google. Not even three years after she took on the role as the first female director of the America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, Regina Dugan is now walking away to join the ranks of America's other innovative powerhouse. Dugan will be relinquishing her top role at the Defense Department's Darpa program and trading in the Potomac River for Silicon Valley, and says it is a natural decision to move somewhere where the possibilities seem endless. Apparently within the cogs of the war machine, there is only so much left to explore. Anfirming the move to a "senior executive position" with Gogle, Darpa spokesman Eric Eric Mazzacone tells Wired that Dugan couldn't refuse an offer with such an "innovative company" as the search engine giant. Until the latest news broke, however, Darpa had been touted as a creative, yet controversial research lab for space-age technology only once imaginable. Darpa has developed technologies used across the globe that can take away lives and, as seen with cutting-edge robotic limbs, practically create them. With the Defense Department scaling back on many operations and Google seemingly only growing, Dugan's departure only makes sense given the timing. Both US President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have thrown their weight behind a shift in the Pentagon's budget in an effort to save billions over the next few years. Google, on the other hand, has only increased its outreach, operating countless new endeavors and taking on new mediums.

Thirty-Seven Members of Congress Warn Against War

Thirty-seven Members of Congress sent a letter to President Obama on Friday, supporting diplomacy with Iran to resolve the nuclear issue and prevent war. The Members urge for a redoubling of bilateral and multilateral diplomatic engagement efforts with Iran to achieve transparency measures that can ensure Iran's nuclear program remains a civilian one. The letter also warns that pressure alone could lead to unintended and potentially devastating consequences, including war. The letter, below, was led by Reps Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Walter Jones (R-NC): "Dear President Obama: As tension with Iran continues to escalate, we urge your Administration to utilize all available tools of diplomacy to resolve the crisis over Iran's nuclear program and prevent another costly war in the Middle East. We have supported your Administration's efforts to unite the international community to bring about the strongest sanctions on Iran to date. Now, we must redouble our diplomatic efforts to achieve robust transparency measures that can verify Iran's nuclear program is strictly a civilian one. Without a corresponding diplomatic undertaking, we are concerned that a lack of communication with Iran could lead to a dangerous escalation with potentially devastating consequences. We hold no illusions about the abuses of the Iranian regime and are well aware that it rejected your previous diplomatic overtures. At the same time, we agree with most Americans that the United States should not enter a new war, just as we are finally ending two others. A military strike against Iran could lead to a regional war in the Middle East and attacks against US interests. Even worse, such a strike would likely compel Iran to abandon the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, eject international inspectors, and rapidly pursue a nuclear deterrent. Top military and civilian leaders have repeatedly issued warnings about the consequences of a military strike on Iran. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta cautioned that the United States "could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, sinking our ships, striking our military bases," and that "would not only involve many lives, but I think could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret."     

James North: Egypt is looted, and the US Press calls it Reform

One of the most annoying and dishonest features of the mainstream American media over the past couple of decades has been its use of the word "reform," without quotation marks, as shorthand for a set of controversial economic policies the United States and global institutions like the International Monetary Fund have imposed on poor nations in the global south. The word "reform" is biased. No right-thinking person could be against it. If the New York Times and the Washington Post had followed their own rules about objectivity, they would have instead used neutral terms, like "neo-liberalism," or "the Washington Consensus," and they would have pointed out that distinguished economists like Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, along with large, vocal masses of people in the poor countries themselves, have warned for years that the "reform" policies are a slow-motion disaster. The latest evidence for the failure of neo-liberalism comes from Egypt, and even the mainstream press is finally recognizing it. In the Washington Post recently, Stephen Glain blamed the US government, the IMF and the World Bank for pushing policies that severely damaged Egyptian agriculture, to the point where the country now has to waste precious foreign exchange to import nearly all of the wheat it needs for bread, the staple food. An earlier Post article showed how the US Agency for International Development (AID) funded a Cairo think tank that vigorously promoted the "privatization" of state-run companies, public resources, and lands. Privatization, one of the tenets of the neoliberal orthodoxy, is supposed to foster competition, efficiency and economic growth.  

Nile Gardiner: Barack Obama's Top Ten Insults Against Britain!

For the past two years I have published a list of Barack Obama's biggest insults against America's foremost ally, Great Britain, during his time in office. Here is an updated list to accompany President Obama's hosting this week of an official visit to the White House by the British Prime Minister, as a reminder that a basketball trip to Ohio and a bells and whistles state dinner do not erase a track record of major insults by the Obama administration since it took office. Mr Obama has been by far the most anti-British president in modern American history, kicking off his presidency with the removal of a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, and continuing today with a policy of knifing Britain in the back over the Falklands. He will be all smiles and full of platitudes this week when he greets Mr Cameron in Washington, but the fact remains that for President Obama the Special Relationship has been largely a blip on his teleprompter screen, in his eyes an anachronism of a bygone era, rather than the engine of the free world. Here are the 2012 rankings: Siding with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. This has remained the top insult for three years running. For sheer offensiveness, it's hard to beat the Obama administration's brazen support for Argentina's call for UN-brokered negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falklands, despite the fact that 255 British servicemen laid down their lives to restore British rule over the Islands after they were brutally invaded in 1982. In a March 2010 press conference in Buenos Aires with President Cristina Kirchner, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave Argentina a huge propaganda coup by emphatically backing the position of the Peronist regime.