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Can we afford endless war?

Tue, 08/17/2010 - 14:36 — Dave Culver
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  • Minding our own business would be cheaper — and safer.

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  • We Can’t Afford War

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Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune | IL

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Bob Heberle

Ben Sargent

It's a shame to let accountants spoil the charming romance of war, but sometimes they insist. Recently the Congressional Research Service reported that our military undertakings in Iraq and Afghanistan have marked an important milestone. Together, they have cost more than a trillion dollars.

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That doesn't sound like much in the age of TARP, ObamaCare and LeBron James, but it is. Adjusted for inflation, we have spent more on Iraq and Afghanistan than on any war in our history except World War II. They have cost more in real dollars than the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.

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But we can only wish we were getting off so lightly. Neither war is over, and neither is going to be soon. The House just approved $37 billion in extra funding to cover this year, and the administration wants another $159 billion for 2011. That won't be the final request.

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We Can’t Afford War, Amy Goodman, TruthDig.com

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  • “General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts,” began the MoveOn.org attack ad against Gen. David Petraeus back in 2007, after he had delivered a report to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. George W. Bush was president, and MoveOn was accusing Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House.” The campaign asked “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” on a full-page ad in The Washington Post. MoveOn took tremendous heat for the campaign, but stood its ground.

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  • Your Tax Dollars at War:  More Than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military

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  • The War Is Making You Poor Act

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Section(s): 
Peace & Nonviolence

Beautiful Women Used to Obscure the Horrors of War

Sat, 08/14/2010 - 11:12 — Dave Culver

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  • Today (August 8), Time hits newsstands with a photo of a beautiful young woman with her nose cut off. Western photography, war, and beautiful "victims" have a long and fraught history.

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  • Time isn't the only with Photoshop and a political agenda.

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Daisy Hernandez, ColorLines

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On Monday (Aug 9) , Time magazine will hit newsstands and Ipads with its full story on the plight of women in Afghanistan<http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238,00.html> --- and the disturbing cover image that's already been intensely debated on the Internet.

The photo is of 18-year-old Aisha, a light brown Afghan woman with piercing eyes, a thick mane of dark hair, and her nose cut off. Her husband also sliced off her ears after she ran away from her in-law's home, where she was being beaten so badly she thought she would die.

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It's hard, perhaps impossible, to look at the picture of Aisha and not feel horror, anger, fear. What's to be done? Time's editors have just the solution. The story's headline reads: "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan." Critics, including Muslim women bloggers, are accusing Time of exploiting Aisha to gather support for Obama's futile war in Afghanistan and boost dwindling sales of the magazine as well.

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Peace & Nonviolence

Targeting Iran: Is the US Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust?

Wed, 08/11/2010 - 16:44 — Dave Culver

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The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace. "Making the World safer" is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.
The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research

The US and its allies are preparing to launch a nuclear war directed against Iran with devastating consequences.

This military adventure in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity.

While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result  from a  Third World War, using "new technologies" and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality.  

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The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign, Gareth Porter, FireDogLake.com

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  • What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.

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  • The Republican back door to war with Iran

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  • Iran scientist: CIA offered me $50m to lie about nuclear secrets

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  • Write and speak out!  Silence is complicity!

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Section(s): 
Peace & Nonviolence

Stuart Carlson | The Other Spill / Slate.com

Wed, 08/11/2010 - 14:49 — Dave Culver

Section(s): 
Peace & Nonviolence

How the Military Destroys the Lives of Soldiers Who Try to Tell the Truth

Wed, 08/11/2010 - 14:39 — Dave Culver
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  • Bradley Manning is not the first military whistleblower to have his life ruined. The military is infamous for trying to silence soldiers who speak out against the war.

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  • Support Bradley Manning!

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Justine Sharrock, AlterNet

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Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

Last week (Aug 1-7), Representative Mike Rogers called for the execution of military whistleblower, Private Bradley Manning. His crime? Sharing the “Collateral Murder” video and the classified Afghanistan “war logs” with Wikileaks, which exposed the truth behind the failing war in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s cooperation with the Taliban, and potential war crimes. The 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst said he felt it was "important that it gets out...I feel, for some bizarre reason...it might actually change something.” He is currently in jail at Quantico, on suicide watch, and is facing up to 50 years in prison for exposing information the American public has the right to know.

“The government is engaging in selective prosecution to ensure that employees keep their mouths shut,” says Stephen Khon, a lawyer specializing in whistleblowing cases. “All of a sudden the whistleblower becomes public enemy number one. There is no proportionality.”

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Support Bradley Manning! The World Can't Wait
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Peace & Nonviolence

The War on Iraq : Five US Presidents, Five British Prime Ministers, Thirty Years of Duplicity, and Counting...

Tue, 08/10/2010 - 12:56 — Dave Culver

"Out of the mirror they stare, 
Imperialism's face And the international wrong." (W.H. Auden, 1907-1973, writing in 1939.)

Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research

Twenty years ago this August, with a green light from America, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He had walked in to possibly the biggest trap in modern history, unleashing Iraq's two decade decimation, untold suffering, illegal bombings, return of diseases previously eradicated and what can also only be described as UN-sponsored infanticide.

The reason for the Kuwait invasion has been air brushed out of the fact books by Britain and America, and been presented as the irrational and dangerous act of a belligerent tyrant who was a threat to his neighbours. He had, they pointed out piously, attacked, then fought an eight year war with Iran, and exactly two years to the month, after the 20th August 1988 ceasefire, invaded Kuwait, on 2nd August 1990. 

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Peace & Nonviolence

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