Antiwar.com Blog

No joke. The US is plumbing unprecedented depths of reflexive militarism, and we can’t get a measly buck per reader???

St. Petersburg Times
Mom ferrets out truth on Guard duty

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
troxler@sptimes.com

Published February 10, 2005

Laramie Misner was surprised when her daughter Kelsie, a 17-year-old
senior at Dunedin High School, came home on the evening of Jan. 7 saying
she wanted to join the Florida National Guard.

Misner listened with growing worry when Kelsie told her that a Guard
recruiter had visited school that day. Kelsie said the recruiter
promised not only that the Guard would pay college tuition, but also
that she would not have to leave Florida.

It is absolutely true the Florida National Guard will pay college
tuition at a Florida school.
But it is absolutely not the case that recruits can be guaranteed to
remain in Florida or even the United States. At this moment, 700 to 800
of Florida’s almost 10,000 Guard members are serving honorably in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Kuwait.

Yet other students at Dunedin High School thought they heard the
recruiter say this, too, and some of them signed up. If you are 18 you
can sign for yourself, but if you’re 17 your folks have to sign too. Continue reading “Recruiting SHENANIGANS”

It’s unclear exactly what is going on south of Baghdad other than utter chaos, but here are two bizarre stories in the news today:

• At least 10 Iraqi policemen were killed in a gun battle with insurgents south of Baghdad on Thursday, police sources said.

  The battle, near the town of Salman Pak, about 65 km (40 miles) southeast of Baghdad, continued for several hours. Earlier police sources said at least 65 officers had been wounded.

  The fighting was so fierce that police reinforcements were unable to reach many of the wounded or recover the dead, who were left lying in the road.

• The bodies of more than 20 Iraqi drivers and security forces from a convoy of government trucks carrying sugar have been found south of Baghdad, police said.

  The drivers had all been burned in their vehicles. Police said they believed the convoy was attacked at least two days ago.

  “This morning a police patrol was in the Suwairah region and found about 20 vehicles that were taking sugar to Baghdad. They were all burned,” said a police official.

  Suwairah is about 60 kilometres south of Baghdad.

  As well as the drivers, two policemen and two soldiers who were protecting the convoy were also killed, the official told AFP.

  “The bodies were rotting in the vehicles which indicates the attack was at least two days ago,” he added.

UPDATE: A little more info on these two related incidents is coming out:

BAGHDAD : US helicopters attacked an Iraqi police station overrun by rebels as the Islamic new year started with dozens more deaths at insurgent hands.

At least six police were killed in the rebel assault on the police station, while the rotting bodies of more than 20 drivers from a government food convoy were found in the same region south of the capital, dubbed the triangle of death, and a dozen people were killed in other violence.

The US military sent in helicopters after insurgents overran the police station at Salman Pak, following a siege that lasted several hours.

The rebels had fired anti-tank rockets at the building, police said.

“The insurgents did assume control of the police station temporarily,” a US military spokesman told AFP. “We attacked them with helicopters, which fired missiles, and the insurgents fled.”

The US spokesman said six police and an unknown number of insurgents were killed. An official at Kindi hospital in Baghdad said earlier that 42 police were wounded in the fighting and two had died in hospital.

The bodies of more than 20 truck drivers and four Iraqi police and soldiers were found in the same region. Their convoy had been attacked at least two days earlier, police said, but no one had dared touch them.

The convoy had been taking sugar to Baghdad for food warehouses which distribute monthly rations. They were attacked on the road from Salman Pak to nearby Suwairah.

I added a new feature to our Quotables that appear on most pages. Just find a page that has a random quote on the top (see here), click on the quote’s author and you are sent to that specific quote on our quotes page. As we continue to update the database, this will become a effective way to find out the source or history of a certain quote. Here are some more examples.

Ballot-counting in Iraq isn’t going very well:

Iraqi officials said Wednesday they must recount votes from about 300 ballot boxes because of various discrepancies, delaying final results from the landmark national elections. Hundreds perhaps thousands of other ballots were declared invalid because of alleged tampering.
[…]
Officials had promised final results from the elections by Thursday, the end of the Iraqi work week. On Wednesday, however, election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said the deadline would not be met because of the recount.

”We don’t know when this will finish,” he said. ”This will lead to a little postponement in announcing the results.”
[…]
Commission official Adel al-Lami said the ballots in 40 boxes and 250 bags would not be counted because they appeared to have been stuffed inside them or, in some cases, improperly folded. Some of the boxes were not those approved by the commission, and others were improperly sealed, he said.

Already some factions have dismissed the election as illegitimate based on the fact that it was held under occupation. Thousands of Iraqis have protested the election because they weren’t allowed to vote due to shortages of ballots and in some cases, polling centers that were never opened. Now there appear to be some substantial issues with a large number of ballots.

I’d like to thank the Pentagon for providing yet another in a seemingly endless string of great material on which to comment. The Nazis had Leni Riefenstahl to make their propaganda, and now the US has … The Pentagon Channel (I didn’t make that name up; that’s what they’re calling it). That’s right, the symbol of US Empire is now going to be broadcasting to millions of US homes free of charge!
The channel is marketed thusly; “Dish viewers will be kept up to date with current military news and information including Department of Defense news briefings, military news, interviews with top defense officials, and short stories about the work of military people.”
Yes, I can see how that might be necessary. The Fox/CNN cretins don’t do much of that, do they? We need BALANCE against those anti-war forces!
This opens up a number of intriguing possibilities, does it not? How about a new reality show – Rummy’s World – in which the camera follows the Defense Secretary around as he berates and fires subordinates, eats breakfast, argues with the President about whether Mr. Bush should be reading the memos coming from DoD, and disseminates intelligence to try to find something positive to tell the press.
And since Rumsfeld is apparently a sex symbol, how about a contest – Win a date with Rummy. That’ll attract the soccer moms, I’ll tell you.
How about a nightly news broadcast hosted by Robert McNamara?
Or an infomercial – How to shred sensitive documents before the press or congress get their grubby hands on them. The Pentagon could start marketing its own brand of shredder, only $19.95.
Then there are the shows I’m sure we will not be seeing on this channel; Great US War criminals from Wilson to Bush, Why the Defense Department isn’t called the War Department anymore, A history of disastrously failed US Military Vehicles, and how much they cost, and even Lying us into war: How the Feds have dummied up a reason for every war the US has fought.
Those shows will be reserved someday for the Antiwar.com channel.