Marines often go on foot patrols with tourniquets loosely strapped high on their thighs, so they can begin cranking right away if a foot is blown off.The article is interesting throughout. (via MR)
SPIEGEL - Until recently, people looked at this as something abnormal. But drones and robotic warfare in general are actually the new normal now. We've gone from using a handful of these systems to now having around 7,000 in the air. And the US is not the only country flying them. There are drones from 43 other countries, including Great Britain, Germany and Pakistan.A sample video from Iraq:
[..] There are parallels to other historical moments when there was no turning back. The automobile in 1909. Computers before 1980. The nuclear bomb in 1940s. This is much beyond an evolution, it's a revolution. This happens very rarely in history. These developments force us to ask questions of right and wrong we never had to think about before.
[..] For example the question of the public's relationship to war. The drone war is documented, downloaded, accessible for everyone. You can see the videos on YouTube. It's turning war for some into a form of entertainment. The soldiers call that "war porn." We can see more but experience less.
—P.W. Singer, Brookings Institution
A laughable listicle of the latest Republican panic-tropes. There really is a theme here - from the undie-bomber to resisting transferring prisoners out of Gitmo to gays in the military. The far right are just a bunch of bed-wetting scaredy cats and panic-mongers. They were trained for eight years to be terrified of everything. And that's a hard habit to break.
BAGHDAD — Iraqis on Friday reacted with disbelief, anger and bitter resignation to news that criminal charges in the United States had been dismissed against Blackwater Worldwide security guards who opened fire on unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007.The accused have their own rights, and the court concluded they were violated by government officials offering immunity for testimony.
[..] The attack, at Nisour Square, left 17 Iraqis dead and 27 wounded. Many of the victims were riding inside cars or buses at a busy traffic circle when a Blackwater convoy escorting American diplomats rolled through and began firing machine guns, grenade launchers and a sniper rifle.
The Blackwater guards said they believed they had come under small-arms fire from insurgents. But investigators concluded that the guards had indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified assault.
The incident calcified anti-American sentiment in Iraq and elsewhere, raised Iraqi concerns about the extent of its sovereignty because Blackwater guards had immunity from local prosecutors and reopened a debate about American dependence on private security contractors in the Iraq war.
For all I know that was the right legal call. It was stunning to hear that the first U.S. agents to interview the Blackwater guards offered them immunity: not only were they from the State Department, not the Justice Department, but they were from the division of State that oversees the contract Blackwater held. Whether they intended to sabotage a prosecution is unknown, but that’s exactly what they effectively did.The resulting dismissal is tragic but apparently necessary according to the standard that no one is obligated to testify against themselves.
"I have never disputed the constitutional authority of the President to convene Article III courts in cases of international terrorism. However, I remain very concerned about the wisdom of doing so. Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor. It will be disruptive, costly, and potentially counterproductive to try them as criminals in our civilian courts.For most of the detainees now in Guantanamo, this is probably true. But I think the Obama administration appreciates that because previous commissions enacted by Bush lacked the fairness and legitimacy of due process, merely reforming them is not enough. We must break with that past somehow.
"The precedent set by this decision deserves careful scrutiny as we consider proper venues for trying those now held at Guantanamo who were apprehended outside of this country for acts that occurred outside of the country. And we must be especially careful with any decisions to bring onto American soil any of those prisoners who remain a threat to our country but whose cases have been adjudged as inappropriate for trial at all. They do not belong in our country, they do not belong in our courts, and they do not belong in our prisons.
"I have consistently argued that military commissions, with the additional procedural rules added by Congress and enacted by President Obama, are the most appropriate venue for trying individuals adjudged to be enemy combatants."
WASHINGTON – Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, where troops are seeing record violence in the 8-year-old war, while those in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence,Look for the Right to praise the surge as a success and berate Obama for dithering on Afghanistan.
Reston, Va.: After the Stupak [anti-abortion] amendment victory, can we expect the pro-life community to attach amendments to the Defense budget saying that no public funds can be used to kill people?
Ezra Klein: Oh, definitely. I hear they're organizing on that right now.
[..] President Obama has made his decision on Afghan Strategy Review 2.0 and is preparing for a roll-out sometime around the 19th or 20th of November. Senior officials are clearing their schedules, giving heads-up to allies, and generally girding their loins for a major public relations push. But a push for what?
McClatchey reports that, as expected, the president will split the difference between his warring advisors. He will embrace the counterinsurgency approach recommended by General McChrystal and other military advisors. He will reject the narrower approach favored by Vice President Biden and other political advisors. But he will not authorize the upper-bound of military resources McChrystal requested. If the McClatchey report is accurate, the final choice comes close to resembling the option dubbed "McChrystal light," but probably not light enough to avoid a political battle with the anti-war faction at home.
The IDF has uploaded a video presentation showing the huge shipment of weaponry from Iran, intended for Hezbollah, that was intercepted this week by an Israel Navy commando force aboard the civilian ship Francop.
One consequence of having been alive through a lot of modern American history is remembering a lot of mass shootings. I was working at a high school summer job when news came over the radio that Charles Whitman had gunned down more than 40 people, killing 14, from the main tower at the University of Texas at Austin. I was editing a news magazine during the schoolyard killings in Paducah, Kentucky in 1997 and sent reporters to try to figure out what it all meant. I can remember where I was when the live-news coverage switched to the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, and the shootings at the one-room schoolhouse in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, and the Virginia Tech shootings two years ago. And all the rest.Normally I'd be in agreement, as I was after the Virginia Tech massacre.
In the saturation coverage right after the events, the "expert" talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre "mean"? A decade later, do we "know" anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.
We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They've got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don't mean nothing.
RIP.
Political Browser | washington
