The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Saturday, March 5, 2011

War News for Saturday, March 05, 2011

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier from an IED attack in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Friday, March 4th.


CNN blog: Counting The Wounded -- Despite all the talk about how things are getting better in the war zones, new Pentagon figures show that there were more traumatic brain injuries in 2010 than in any year since the wars began. U.S. troops suffered 605.9 TBIs per month last year -- about 20 a day -- just edging out 2008's 605.3 monthly toll. Symptoms of TBI can range from fatigue, dizziness and memory loss in mild cases, to aggression, depression, emotional instability and chronic pain in severe ones.

This is grim news, indeed, especially given the Pentagon's problems dealing with TBI. On the good news front: amputations are down from their war-time peak (although the 2010 toll of 15.2 per month is more than double 2009's 7.3).


Reported security incidents

Shirqat:
#1: A bombing targeting an army patrol in central Shirqat District, northern Tikrit, left three people among killed and wounded, a police source from Salahuddin Province told Alsumaria News.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: At least five policemen have been injured in an IED (improvised explosive device) blast in west Iraq’s Falluja city on Saturday, a Falluja police source said. “An IED, planted on the roadside in Amiriya township, west of western Iraq’s city of Falluja, blew up on Saturday against a police parol, wounding five of its policemen and causing damage to its vehicle,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: A policeman was injured in grenade attack at a checkpost in Bara Sheikhan in Peshawar on Saturday. Unidentified people flung a hand grenade at a police and FC checkpost in Bara Sheikhan. Police cordoned off the area and also started a search operation.

#2: Three soldiers with the Afghan National Army (ANA) were killed Friday in the war-torn Afghanistan, Ministry of Defense said in a statement released here on Saturday. "Three soldiers of ANA were martyred Friday during military duties in Parwan and Kandahar province," the statement said. According to the statement, one of the soldiers was killed in Parwan province, some 55 km north of capital Kabul, but two other troopers were killed in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

#3: Security forces raided a Taliban hideout and eliminated two militants including a shadowy district chief in Kunduz province, some 250 km north of capital city of Kabul, a local government official confirmed Saturday. "A unit of special operation forces of Afghan army and NATO-led forces raided a Taliban hideout in Barzangi village of Imam Sahib Distinct in the wee hours of Saturday, killing two Taliban rebels including Baz Mohammad, the shadowy district governor of Imam Sahib District," spokesman for the provincial administration Mahbubullah Sayedi told Xinhua.


DoD: Spc. Jason M. Weaver

Posted by whisker at 3:47 AM

1 comments:

Dancewater said...

WikiLeaks analysis suggests hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths unrecorded

The implications of the WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs for the US standing in the Middle-East are profound. The only public estimate of the Iraqi death toll ever provided by the US was President Bush’s response at a public forum in December of 2005 in which he said, "I would say 30,000 more or less have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," with the Whitehouse spokesmen later attributing this estimate to media accounts. This number matched the IBC estimate at that time. WikiLeaks’ War Logs suggest the US had information to know that this estimate was only a small fraction of the reality.


********

I personally know of several deaths of Iraqi civilians that are not on the WikiLeaks data and not on Iraq Body Count and not found on any FOIA that the ACLU obtained. They are all killed by US military actions.

I imagine this information will be consistently ignored by the US media and the US nutcases that supported this hideous illegal war of aggression. May they rot in hell when they die, and may the dead children visit them in their dreams to show them what their last shrieks of paid sounded and looked like.

March 5, 2011 at 3:55 PM

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