`But the way our media talks about the war it sounds like a stroll through Candy Land. A hot, dusty, ghetto Candy Land. The muffin man lives in downtown Baghdad in a mud house that has a plastic tarp for a door and in his spare time watches bakery porn on satellite television.
I can tell you that this place isn’t Candy Land. Car bombs are going off killing civilians, people are blowing up mosques, the kidnapping and subsequently beheading of people, these fuckers don’t wear identifiable uniforms, and friends of friends are getting killed over here. I personally find it insulting that what little amount of news I’m given isn’t realistic. I feel like the main character in “Clockwork Orange” with his eyelids held open while being brainwashed. Maybe I’ll start chasing people around with a giant porcelain penis, too.’
`North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States, according to the North’s official news agency. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had built atomic weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.
“As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike,” the spokesman said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. “Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.”
Last week, the communist country warned that it had the right to launch a pre-emptive strike, saying it would strengthen its war footing before joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises scheduled for this weekend.
The North’s spokesman said it would be a “wise” step for the United States to cooperate on nuclear issues with North Korea in the same way it does with India.’
`The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that’s now the home of as many as 120 U.S. helicopters, a “heli-park” as good as any back in the States.
At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.
At a third hub down south, Tallil, they’re planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.
Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.
“I think we’ll be here forever,” the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.’
`Strategy Page columnist James Dunnigan says that CROWS (Common Remotely Operated Weapons Systems) — which are big guns manned remotely by someone inside an armored vehicle with a joystick and live cam — have proved highly successful in Iraq because the soldiers operating them grew up playing (presumably first-person shooter) video games. Experienced gamers have no difficulty gaining total situational awareness and whipping around the video camera on the guns, spotting hints of trouble and blasting anything that moves.’
`Saddam Hussein’s fear of internal rebellion led him to distrust his military commanders even after U.S. forces began their invasion in 2003, crippling the country’s defenses, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
Citing a classified U.S. military report as well other documents and interviews, the Times also said that top Iraqi commanders were shocked when Saddam told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction. [..]
The report also said that Saddam put a general considered to be an incompetent drunk in charge of the elite Republican Guard because he considered him to be loyal. It said commanders were in some cases banned from communicating with other units and were unable to get maps of areas near the airport because those would have disclosed the locations of Saddam’s palaces.’
`Iraq is in the middle of civil war, the country’s former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has told the BBC. [..]
The UK and US have repeatedly denied Iraq is facing a civil war, but Mr Allawi suggested there was no other way to describe the sectarian violence. [..]
“If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.”‘
‘It’s not just that America is being ruled by small and venal men, or that its reputation has been demolished, its army overstretched, its finances a mess. All of that, after all, was true toward the end of Vietnam as well. Now, though, there are all kinds of other lurking catastrophes, a whole armory of swords of Damocles dangling over a bloated, dispirited and anxious country. Peak oil — the point at which oil production maxes out — seems to be approaching, with disastrous consequences for America’s economy and infrastructure. Global warming is accelerating and could bring us many more storms even worse than Katrina, among other meteorological nightmares. The spread of Avian Flu has Michael Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, warning Americans to stockpile canned tuna and powdered milk. It looks like Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon, and the United States can’t do anything to stop it. Meanwhile, America’s growing religious fanaticism has brought about a generalized retreat from rationality, so that the country is becoming unwilling and perhaps unable to formulate policies based on fact rather than faith.’
`The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders who explained that the “largest air assault since 2003” in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.
But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. (“Air Assault” is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What’s more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the U.S. and Iraqi commanders.’
`The human rights scandal now known as “Abu Ghraib” began its journey toward exposure on Jan. 13, 2004, when Spc. Joseph Darby handed over horrific images of detainee abuse to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID). The next day, the Army launched a criminal investigation. Three and a half months later, CBS News and the New Yorker published photos and stories that introduced the world to devastating scenes of torture and suffering inside the decrepit prison in Iraq.
Today Salon presents an archive of 279 photos and 19 videos of Abu Ghraib abuse first gathered by the CID, along with information drawn from the CID’s own timeline of the events depicted. As we reported Feb. 16, Salon’s Mark Benjamin recently acquired extensive documentation of the CID investigation — including this photo archive and timeline — from a military source who spent time at Abu Ghraib and who is familiar with the Army probe.’
`Detective Danny Johnson was on patrol outside Tampa, Florida, when a report came through of a possible shooting in a junkyard three blocks away. Arriving on the scene, he found an elderly man sitting on a tractor, with a large hole in his leg that was bleeding profusely.
Realising it would be some time before the ambulance arrived, Johnson opened a packet of sand-like material and poured it into the wound. Within seconds the bleeding had practically stopped, and the man survived. “The medic told me that had I not put the substance in there, the guy would probably have bled out and died,” he says.
The material, called QuikClot, which is issued routinely to police officers in Hillsborough county, Florida, was developed for the US military to cut down the number of soldiers who bleed to death on the battlefield. [..]’
`The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets.
Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be “switched off” by the Americans without warning.’
`A B.C. man spent the weekend detained at a military base in California after being arrested for deserting the U.S. Marine Corps four decades ago during the Vietnam War.
Allen Abney, who was born in the United States but became a Canadian citizen in 1977, was arrested at a border crossing on Thursday while trying to enter Idaho from southeastern British Columbia. [..]
He and his wife were on their way for a holiday in Reno, Nev., when U.S. officials accused him of desertion and took him into custody.
In 1968, Abney was a 19-year-old marine when he fled to Canada because he didn’t want to fight in Vietnam.’
`Facing problems in its efforts to train insects or build robots that can mimic their flying abilities, the U.S. military now wants to develop “insect cyborgs” that can go where its soldiers cannot.
The Pentagon is seeking applications from researchers to help them develop technology that can be implanted into living insects to control their movement and transmit video or other sensory data back to their handlers.’
`The UK supplied Israel with quantities of plutonium while Harold Wilson was prime minister, BBC Newsnight can reveal.
The sale was made despite a warning from British intelligence that it might “make a material contribution to an Israeli weapons programme”.
Under Wilson, Britain also sold Israel tons of chemicals used to make boosted atom bombs 20 times more powerful than Hiroshima or even Hydrogen Bombs.’
`Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal.
The tribunal said he had been found dead in his cell on Saturday morning. The cause of death is not yet clear. [..]
The tribunal last month rejected a request by Mr Milosevic to go to Russia for medical treatment. He had high blood pressure and a heart condition.’
‘News reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate, officials said.
There’s no specific timetable for that transfer or for closure of the Baghdad prison, they said. Decisions regarding Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq will be based largely on two factors: the readiness of Iraq’s security forces to assume control of them and infrastructure improvements at the facilities.’
`It’s bad enough that they overcharge domestic customers but we have alternatives. The soldiers don’t because, according to The Prepaid Press, AT&T has an EXCLUSIVE contract to put payphones in PXes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, you ask, can’t the soldiers get cheap calling cards to call the US? No! Because AT&T is using (abusing!) its position as monopoly supplier of payphones to block the 800 numbers necessary to use nonAT&T calling cards.
This blocking is illegal in the US but, AT&T told our friend Gene Retske, editor of The Prepaid Press, the rules are different in Iraq. Right.’
`Meet BigDog, a mechanical mutt that does more than snare Frisbees and irrigate fire hydrants. It totes hundreds of pounds of gear so soldiers won’t have to, and it will never spook under fire. Developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the U.S. military, the BigDog prototype is arguably the world’s most ambitious legged robot. Its stability and awareness of its own orientation make it the first robot that can handle the unknown challenges of the battlefield. The Great Dane–size ’bot can trot more than three miles an hour, climb inclines of up to 45 degrees, and carry up to 120 pounds—even in rough terrain impenetrable to wheeled or tracked vehicles. But this one is just a puppy; Boston Dynamics expects the next iteration, ready this summer, to be at least twice as fast and carry more than twice as much.’
‘A US soldier who raped a Nigerian woman in Italy has been given a lighter sentence because the court deemed his tour of duty in Iraq made him less sensitive to the suffering of others.
According to an Italian court document, James Michael Brown, a 27-year-old paratrooper from Oregon stationed in northern Italy, was sentenced to five years and eight months for rape in February 2004.
Brown beat and handcuffed the woman, a Nigerian resident in the town of Vicenza. He raped her vaginally and anally and left her to wander the streets naked in search of help.’
`A large “mothership,” closely resembling the U.S. Air Force’s historic XB-70 supersonic bomber, carries the orbital component conformally under its fuselage, accelerating to supersonic speeds at high altitude before dropping the spaceplane. The orbiter’s engines fire and boost the vehicle into space. If mission requirements dictate, the spaceplane can either reach low Earth orbit or remain suborbital. [..]
Exactly what missions the Blackstar system may have been designed for and built to accomplish are as yet unconfirmed, but U.S. Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) officers and contractors have been toying with similar spaceplane-operational concepts for years. Besides reconnaissance, they call for inserting small satellites into orbit, and either retrieving or servicing other spacecraft. Conceivably, such a vehicle could serve as an anti-satellite or space-to-ground weapons-delivery platform, as well.’
‘A radical Islamic group is infiltrating Australian mosques, distributing inflammatory pamphlets urging Muslims to rise up against Australian troops in Iraq and support the insurgency.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is telling local Muslims that coalition forces in Iraq are responsible for the mosque bombing in Samarra last month that left the nation on the brink of civil war.
The group – a hardline political faction banned in Britain, Germany and other countries — is using Friday prayer meetings, traditionally compulsory for all Muslims, to distribute flyers inciting hatred against the West.’
`Iran threatened America with “harm and pain” if sanctions were imposed as Tehran was finally referred to the UN Security Council for action over its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
A senior Iranian official warned: “The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wishes to choose that path, let the ball roll.”‘
`The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes – the lethal “flying gunships” of the Vietnam War – to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, The Associated Press has learned. [..]
The left-side ports of the AC-130s, 98-foot-long planes that can slowly circle over a target for long periods, bristle with a potent arsenal – 40 mm cannon that can fire 120 rounds per minute, and big 105 mm cannon, normally a field artillery weapon. The plane’s latest version, the AC-130U, known as “Spooky,” also carries Gatling gun-type 20 mm cannon.
The gunships were designed primarily for battlefield use to place saturated fire on massed troops. In Vietnam, for example, they were deployed against North Vietnamese supply convoys along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where the Air Force claimed to have destroyed 10,000 trucks over several years.
The use of AC-130s in places like Fallujah, urban settings where insurgents may be among crowded populations of noncombatants, has been criticized by human rights groups.’
`Prime Minister Tony Blair has told how he prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq.
Mr Blair answered “yes” when asked on ITV1 chat show Parkinson – to be screened on Saturday – if he had sought holy intervention on the issue.
“Of course, you struggle with your own conscience about it… and it’s one of these situations that, I suppose, very few people ever find themselves in.” [..]
Mr Blair told show host Michael Parkinson: “In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people… and if you believe in God, it’s made by God as well.”‘
`It costs more than $900 million and looms more than 28 stories over the ocean — about 10 stories taller than Aloha Tower.
Longer than a football field, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar is a high-tech, fifth-generation semisubmersible oil-drilling platform that is self-propelled and can be positioned any place in the world. [..]
Although much of what the mobile radar platform can do is classified, Pam Rogers, spokeswoman for the Missile Defense System in Huntsville, Ala., said its radar system is so sensitive that “if a baseball was launched on the West Coast, it could be detected on the East Coast by this radar.”‘
`It certainly was not part of Britain’s plans to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. But the Foreign Office has been apparently paying for an adult sex chatline in a Baghdad street for 17 months without knowing it.
The Foreign Office has had to tell MPs that an investigation into how a diplomat lost two satellite phones in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism but more to do with a budding entrepreneur and a telephone porn network.
FO officials had already admitted that the lost phones had cost them £594,000 in unauthorised phone bills but it is now bracing itself for an extremely critical report from the Commons public accounts committee on how it came to pay phone bills, which at one stage hit £212,000 in one month, without asking questions.’
`Several groups around the world have gained approval to develop implants that can monitor and control the behavior of a wide range of animals.
In the United States a team funded by the military has created a neural probe that can manipulate a shark’s brain signals or decode them. More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to use remote-controlled sharks as spies.
The neural implant is designed to enable a shark’s brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal’s movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.’
`SAS troops were last night poised to storm into Afghanistan and capture Osama bin Laden.
Special forces have “good intelligence” the al-Qaeda boss or a senior henchman is holed up in a Taliban enclave.
Two squadrons are on stand-by waiting for the go-ahead from reconnaissance troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
Specialist counter-terrorist soldiers in the rapid-deployment group are on high alert at the SAS’s Hereford base.
The other team consists of troops serving around the world.’
`DefenseReview.com has received video footage of a weaponized version of the AutoCopter self-stabilized unmanned mini-helicopter being tested for the first time in sunny Huntsville, Alabama (The download link for this video is further down in this article.). The AutoCopter is made by Neural Robotics Incorporated (NRI), and the weapon portion of the package is a 12-gauge Military Police Systems (MPS) Auto Assault-12 Full-Auto Shotgun (a.k.a. AA-12 Full-Auto Shotgun), which DefRev first reported on back in June of last year (2005). NRI is calling the newly-weaponized AutoCopter the “AutoCopter Gunship”. Catchy.’
`A Gulf War veteran undergoing medical treatment said he was given placebos — or sugar pills — instead of real medicine.
Like thousands of other soldiers, Army veteran Mike Woods said he developed bizarre symptoms after serving in the first Gulf War — blackouts, chest pain and numbness in the extremities.
Woods looked to the Veterans Administration for help. He said his VA doctor prescribed him a drug called Obecalp.
“She told me there was this new drug out that would really help me with all of my physical conditions, and my pain. She really wanted me to try it,” said Woods.
But when the pill provided no relief, Woods did some research and learned that Obecalp isn’t a medicine at all, but a sugar pill. He was shocked to learn the word “obecalp” is placebo spelled backward.’
