MetaFilter posts tagged with War and waronterror

United States surrenders, terror, drugs win.

TheOnlyCoolTim — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:10:21 -0800

Without much fanfare, the Global War on Terror has ended. The new name for these military interventions is the Overseas Contingency Operation. Press Q&A. Some Republican representatives discuss. (SPOILER: They are not pleased.) Military blogs discuss. Similarly, the War on Drugs also looks to be on the way out, though no new name for the project has been announced at this time.

bin Laden transcript

ND¢ — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:54:37 -0800

Transcript of the most recent Osama bin Laden tape. [pdf] Likes: Noam Chomsky, Michael Scheuer, Jews, Jesus, Mary Dislikes: the Holocaust, Bush, corporations, global warming

Tell 'em Uncle Alberto Says It's Cool

digaman — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 08:51:01 -0800

'The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House," said Jay Rockefeller, vice-president of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after the committee quashed a broad inquiry into the legality of the NSA spying on Americans -- despite an increasing number of legal scholars coming forward and declaring that the program is "blatantly illegal," in the words of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh. Meanwhile, the GOP proposes giving spying on Americans the "force of law" while subjecting it to "rigorous oversight."

The moderate, conservative, and neoconservative estimates of the cost of the war on Iraq

edverb — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 20:40:34 -0800

What is the cost of the war on Iraq? [more inside]

Let there be peace

loquacious — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 11:57:22 -0800

Arlington West. Photos: 1, 2, 3.

Then and Now: Truth and spin on Iraq

y2karl — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 06:29:51 -0800

To be successful, an occupation such as that contemplated after any hostilities in Iraq requires much detailed interagency planning, many forces, multi-year military commitment, and a national commitment to nation-building... To conduct their share of the essential tasks that must be accomplished to reconstruct an Iraqi state, military forces will be severely taxed in military police, civil affairs, engineer, and transportation units, in addition to possible severe security difficulties. The administration of an Iraqi occupation will be complicated by deep religious, ethnic, and tribal differences which dominate Iraqi society. U.S. forces may have to manage and adjudicate conflicts among Iraqis that they can barely comprehend. An exit strategy will require the establishment of political stability, which will be difficult to achieve given Iraq's fragmented population, weak political institutions, and propensity for rule by violence.

From the US Army War College in February 2003: Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (PDF). From June 2005, Anthony Cordesman's analysis of factual misstatements in the President's recent address: Truth and spin on Iraq. Foresight is 20/20. Irresponsibility and mendacity are timeless.

Salah-ad-Din, legend and modern context

fatllama — Sat, 07 May 2005 13:00:09 -0800

Saladin (Salah-ad-Din) is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the latest less than great Hollywood historical epic. A leader who seems to have viewed war as the means to a more perfect peace, his namesake now belongs to the Iraqi provence containing Tikrit, his birthplace and a city now all too familiar to us. The modern context of his story is important and obvious.

From The Never Ending Story - The Torture Papers

y2karl — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:55:00 -0800

While the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions, the internal government memos collected in this publication demonstrate that the path to the purgatory that is Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, has been paved with decidedly bad intentions. The policies that resulted in rampant abuse of detainees first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay, and later in Iraq, were product of three pernicious purposes designed to facilitate the unilateral and unfettered detention, interrogation, abuse, judgment, and punishment of prisoners: (1) the desire to place the detainees beyond the reach of any court or law; (2) the desire to abrogate the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of persons seized in the context of armed hostilities; and (3) the desire to absolve those implementing the policies of any liability for war crimes under U.S. and international law.

Regarding the Torture Papers, which detail Torture's Paper Trail, and, then there's Hungry for Air: Learning The Language Of Torture, and, of course, there's ( more inside)

‘Staying the Course’ Isn’t an Option

specialk420 — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 18:34:10 -0800

‘Staying the Course’ Isn’t an Option "If Bush is re-elected, there are only two possible outcomes in Iraq:

Four years from now, America will have 5,000 dead servicemen and women and an untold number of dead Iraqis at a cost of about $1 trillion, yet still be no closer to success than we are right now, or The U.S. will be gone, and we will witness the birth of a violent breeding ground for Shiite terrorists posing a far greater threat to Americans than a contained Saddam."

Are we winning?

TNLNYC — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 07:24:50 -0800

An interesting assessment of the war on terrorism. I love it when blogs seem to be filling a void in media coverage. This one is taking a critical look at the war on terrorism and seems to be finding some holes. If you go past the partisan talk (and it seems like that blog is slanted, even though it claims to be centrist), there's a lot of interesting links in there.

World War IV

Meridian — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 18:41:30 -0800

World War IV

1914-1918: World War I
1939-1945: World War II
1945-1990: World War III (Cold War)
2001 ongoing: World War IV

Every generation has their war to end all wars. Welcome to ours. World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win. [via GlobalSecurity.org]

Thousandth U.S. soldier dies in War on Terror.

insomnia_lj — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 05:52:19 -0800

Over a thousand U.S. soldiers have died in the War on Terror. As of today, 872 soldiers have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and 129 in Operation Enduring Freedom. Time for a moment of silence, perhaps, before sharing your reflections on the subject.

Stop Making Sense

jonmc — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:26:21 -0800

Rumsfeld fears U.S. losing long-term fight against terror. The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists -- whom he termed "zealots and despots" bent on destroying the global system of nation-states -- are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them. "It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this," Rumsfeld said at an international security conference. Who are you and what have you done with Rumsfeld? And Can you do it some more? via the illustrious oliver willis.

Worth Sharing II

David Dark — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 01:45:02 -0800

Remarks by President Bush Long, but worth it.

radical militias

amberglow — Sat, 18 Oct 2003 15:25:08 -0800

Not in Iraq or in Afghanistan, but right here at home. The forgotten front in the War on Terror™? Agents found an underground bunker, thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of pounds of gunpowder and manuals on guerrilla warfare, "booby traps" and explosives....

Who are these neo-conservatives? Pat Buchanan tells all

Voyageman — Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:10:09 -0800

Who are these neo-conservatives? Pat Buchanan tells all.

Semi-concrete proof that America resorts to torture?

taumeson — Fri, 07 Mar 2003 06:38:57 -0800

Does America Torture? "The men's death certificates, made public earlier this week, showed that one captive...died from 'blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease' while another ...from [a] blood clot in the lung that was exacerbated by a 'blunt force injury'." What steps are we taking in our "war on terror"? What if other countries decide to treat our civilians as "enemy combatants"? Is the Pax Americana so important that we must resort to torture, or, as is most often the case, giving up prisoners to countries that are known torturers?

American killed by American government in anti-terrorism campaign

skoosh — Wed, 13 Nov 2002 17:23:47 -0800

Ten days ago in Yemen, a car carrying several men, including an American citizen, was blown up. They were deliberately killed by a missile fired from a CIA drone aircraft. The American is from Lackawanna, New York, about nine miles away from my house. When I first heard about this bombing, I thought of Orlando Letelier. Where are the lines now separating law enforcement and war, targeted strikes and murder?

Tiger_Lily — Fri, 18 Oct 2002 14:51:05 -0800

A "spiritual perspective frappé" for the war weary. Some things are perfect, just as they are. Go now and refresh your weary soul with wisdom and a wry smile or two.

GriffX — Thu, 03 Oct 2002 17:17:01 -0800

The eXile's Gary Brecher, as offensive and amusing as usual, pondering the future of war: "The only enjoyable wars will be the mismatches, when the machine armies are unleashed on the savages. We've seen some of them lately: the NATO air forces working out on Serbia, the US and British planes playing with the Iraqis like a couple of kittens with a half-dead mouse. They're the wars people will enjoy, because the targets are so easy, so undefended, that there are lots of good gun-camera shots. But these wars have a little weakness: they never solve the problem."

moonbiter — Mon, 30 Sep 2002 17:18:04 -0800

"They were acting like bin Laden was hiding behind every door. That just wasn’t the way to be acting with civilians." According to this Newsweek article, some members of U.S. Special Forces seem to think the military's recent operations to track down Al Qaeda went a bit awry.

tgrundke — Wed, 21 Aug 2002 14:12:18 -0800

Is Preemption a Nuclear Schlieffen Plan? The greatest and most difficult task facing a statesman in international affairs is reconciling the natural tension between the constructive nature of a nation's grand strategy with the destructive character of its military strategy. The emerging doctrine of preemption should be examined in the context of this challenge. With this in mind, the author continues with a "Dr. Strangelove" type warning. Are our leaders "doing themselves in" (and us with them) in the current 'war' on terrorism?

tranquileye — Fri, 19 Apr 2002 08:05:02 -0800

A bit of a sea change at CNN.com: the "War on Terror" news heading, which has been part of the right column of CNN's home page since late September 2001, is gone, and not coincidentally, the massive non-news of the arrest of actor Robert Blake is the lead story. Not the growing world outrage over the Israel action in Jenin, nor the death of four Canadian soldiers by an errant US bomb.

insomnia_lj — Mon, 04 Mar 2002 14:49:04 -0800

Nine US soldiers killed, forty wounded in this mountain ~~debacle~~ battle.
Surprise, surprise. Our enemies can still shoot up convoys and shoot down helicopters. (Many of them did the same thing to the Soviets.) Why are we sending our troops to the front in rented pickup trucks and 4-wheel drive vehicles? What ever happened to the Bradley? Don't they know that helicopters make great targets... especially when your enemy has Stingers? Why rush back into ground combat against a larger-than-expected enemy force anyways?
o/` "All we are saying... is give bombs a chance!"

Gilbert — Sun, 03 Mar 2002 23:18:36 -0800

Not to complain about the ever-expanding war on terror, but... Afganistan just might become a little stickier than our leaders had hoped. A recent raid on regrouping troops went not too well, with a combined force of Afgan and U.S. troops beating a quick retreat. Is the U.S. miring itself in not one but several Vietnam's?