100 Firefights, Three Weeks: Inside Afghanistan's Most Insane Fight "In its first three weeks in Afghanistan’s Sangin district, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines got into more than 100 firefights and sustained 62 casualties. The insurgents managed to negate the Marines’ night-vision gear, and rendered their traditional close-combat tactics useless. Things got so bad, the 3/5’s superior officers even suggested pulling their troops back. That didn’t happen. Instead, the 3/5 went after the militants, hard. When the 3/5 came home, they told counterinsurgency historian Mark Moyar all about their deeply unconventional approach to what was already an unconventional war."
This is an excerpt in Wired of Moyar’s
74-page after action report.
(pdf) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 12, 2011 -
23 comments
Robert F. Gallagher served in the United States Army's 815th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Third Army) in the European Theater during WWII. He has posted his memoir online:
"Scratch One Messerschmitt," told from numerous photos he took during the war and the detailed notes he made shortly afterwards.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 23, 2010 -
7 comments
Security alerts have been declared at Airports in the US, UK and Middle East after the discovery of suspicious packages originating in
Yemen. The packages, modified toner cartridges, have been
described as "definitely not a complete bomb" but being "potentially sinister".
posted by Artw
on Oct 29, 2010 -
291 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
Standard & Poor’s changed the
UK's credit outlook from stable to negative a few days ago, and warned that there is a chance the UK could lose its AAA rating. Meanwhile, Moodys, another of the
big 3 rating agencies, has warned that
the US might also eventually lose its AAA rating. The UK announcement
caused sterling to drop by 1% and the FTSE by 2%. However,
many blame the same rating agencies for their part in
triggering the subprime crisis. The irony of this is not lost on the
Wall Street Journal, who note that "After all, those governments are jacking up spending, in part, to bail out the financial firms who gobbled up those 'AAA' asset backed securities duly blessed by the credit ratings firms."
[more inside]
posted by memebake
on May 26, 2009 -
38 comments
The Obama administration has repeatedly threatened to conceal future information of terrorist threats from the British government, unless the British government disobeys the High Court ruling requiring them to release information about the US government's acknowledged torture program. This may be a breach of the Convention Against Torture.
Glenn Greenwald has new evidence.
Previously.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94
on May 12, 2009 -
282 comments
Craig Murray (Previously:
1 2)
Attends the Formal Evidence Session on UK Complicity in Torture on Tuesday 28 April 1.45pm UK time.
You can (hopefully) watch it on
Parliament TV.
If you want to have a good look at UK / US complicity in torture,
this might be a good place to start...
Please note he has said "There is absolutely no way I am going to kill myself. Just thought it might be wise to get that out in public!". Hopefully statements like that won't be necessary.
posted by debord
on Apr 28, 2009 -
9 comments
A Disturbance in the Blogosphere: Publishing the UK/US/Uzbekistan Torture Memo. Braving arrest,
bloggers have broken the UK’s law of silence with the truth about torture.
Bloggers are mass publishing the leaked UK/US/Uzbekistan Torture Memos. The memos are from the correspondences of Craig Murray who was the United Kingdom's ambassador to Uzbekistan.
These memos are evidence and a memorandum of record outlining the rendition and torture of US-arrested prisoners in Uzbekistan.
From Craig Murray's Memo:
12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the [UN] Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful.
posted by Dunvegan
on Dec 29, 2005 -
246 comments
Five years ago, Robert Lilly, a distinguished American sociologist, prepared a book based on military archives. Taken by Force is a study of the rapes committed by American soldiers in Europe between 1942 and 1945. He submitted his manuscript in 2001. But after September 11, its US publisher suppressed it, and it first appeared in 2003 in a French translation. We know from Anthony Beevor about the sexual violence unleashed by the Red Army, but we prefer not to know about mass rape committed by American and British troops. Lilly suggests a minimum of 10,000 American rapes. Contemporaries described a much wider scale of unpunished sex crime. Time Magazine reported in September 1945: "Our own army and the British army along with ours have done their share of looting and raping ... we too are considered an army of rapists." An Ethical Blank Cheque... So,
How Good Was The Good War ? And from the Eastern Front:
Uncensored Memories From Alfredo Perez's Political Theory Daily Review
posted by y2karl
on May 11, 2005 -
104 comments
Trusting The Redcoats: How many independent-minded Americans actually rely on the BBC (specially the
World Service) for accurate coverage of American politics? Not to mention
The Guardian. Is it a strictly an elitist, liberal/left-wing phenomenon? What does it mean? What does it say about better-informed liberal newspapers and media of the U.S.? If so, why aren't like-minded Europeans just as cosmopolitan and, say, pay the same attention to news sources like The New York Times, NPR and others, rather than stolidly sticking to their own national staples?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Jan 14, 2004 -
71 comments
How to love the US is a story on the newly redesigned BBC pages, just recently mentioned
here. I was struck by the tone of the piece, which seemed to me to be a desperate bid to find good things to say about the US.
Have things really sunk so low? Is the US so despised that it needs the BBC to pimp it?
posted by jpburns
on Feb 19, 2003 -
86 comments
A sign of Global recession? For the first time I can remember, it's cheaper to buy a console in the UK than it is the States. Over here, we're used to seeing straight dollar to pound conversions ($299 = £299), so this is a first.
Do you think it's sign of recession or just Sony developing a conscience?
posted by jiroczech
on Sep 28, 2001 -
10 comments
In a
throwaway comment the Telegraph reports an unprecedented criminal charge. "
Last week her colleague, Lindis Percy, 59, a former Greenham Common protester, was acquitted of criminal misuse of an American flag". An
earlier Independent article covers the background "
[T]he Crown Prosecution Service has accused Lindis Percy of being motivated by racist hatred of the American people when she "trailed" the US flag on the road at the US military eavesdropping base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire."
posted by Cuppatea
on May 3, 2001 -
6 comments
