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


Monday, January 9, 2012

War News for Monday, January 09, 2011

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier apparently from an ANA soldier in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, January 8th.


Hammond soldier the lone survivor of Afghanistan explosion

Official: Beheaded bodies of 10 Pakistani soldiers found

Security developments in Iraq, January 9, Jan 8th.


Reported security incidents
#1: Seven suspected Taliban militants have been killed in a special operation in Afghanistan, a government spokesman said. A unit of the Afghan National Directorate of Security launched an operation Sunday on a Taliban hideout in Mirmandab area of Gereshk district in the southern province of Helmand, Daud Ahmadi told Xinhua. An exchange of fire broke out shortly after the intelligence agency forces arrived at the compound, leaving seven militants dead. Four of them were later identified as Malawi Mansour, Abdul Raziq, Mullah Maluk and Shekari. No members of the security force or civilians were injured in the raid, he said.

#2: Three civilians were killed and another sustained injuries as a suicide bomber blew himself up in Khost city, the capital of Khost province 150 km southeast of capital city Kabul Sunday evening, police said. "A man strapped explosive device in his body blew himself up next to a police checkpoint in Khost city last evening killing three civilians including two children," senior police officer in Khost city Sardar Mohammad Zazai told Xinhua. Another civilian was injured in the blast, he said, adding the suicide bomber was also killed in the explosion. There were no casualties on police, he added.

#3: According to local authorities in northern Afghanistan, at least four militants including two Taliban commanders were killed following an air raid by NATO-led coalition forces in northern Jowzjan province.

#4: Afghan Defense Ministry officials following a press release on Monday said, at least 5 Afghan National Army soldiers were injured during the past 24 hours. The source further added, the soldiers were injured during military operations at Sabari district of eastern Khost province.


DoD: Senior Airman Bryan R. Bell

DoD: Tech. Sgt. Matthew S. Schwartz

DoD: Airman 1st Class Matthew R. Seidler

6 comments:

Dancewater said...

From BBC:

Baghdad: Car bomb attacks 'kill at least 14'

Two parked car bombs in the Iraqi capital have killed at least 14 people and wounded many more, officials say.

The attacks appear to have targeted Shia pilgrims who were travelling through the city.
Officials said one of the bombs went off in the northern Shaab district of Baghdad on Monday evening. The second went off in the western area of Muwasalat, near a Shia mosque.
Police and hospital sources said that 52 people had been injured.
++++++++++++++
sure hope they catch the shits who are doing this....

Dancewater said...

Iraq - A Country in Shambles

Bechtel, a multi-billion dollar US-based global engineering and construction company - whose board members have close ties to the former Bush administration - received $2.3bn of Iraqi reconstruction funds and US taxpayer money, but left the country without completing many of the tasks it set out to.

Bechtel's contract for Iraq had included reconstruction of water treatment systems, electricity plants, sewage systems, airports and roads.

Managers at water departments around Iraq say that the only repairs they managed during the US occupation were through UN offices and humanitarian aid organisations. The ministry provided them with very little chlorine for water treatment. "New projects" were no more than simple maintenance operations that did little to halt collapsing infrastructure.

Bechtel was among the first companies, along with Halliburton (where former US Vice-President Dick Cheney once worked), to have received fixed-fee contracts drawn to guarantee profit.

Ahmed al-Ani who works with a major Iraqi construction contracting company told Al Jazeera the model Bechtel adopted was certain to fail.

"They charged huge sums of money for the contracts they signed, then they sold them to smaller companies who resold them again to small inexperienced Iraqi contractors," Ani said. "These inexperienced contractors then had to execute the works badly because of the very low prices they get, and the lack of experience."

According to a March 2011 report by the UN's Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit, one in five Iraqi households use an unsafe source of drinking water, and another 16 per cent report daily supply problems.

The situation is even worse in rural areas, where only 43 per cent have access to safe drinking water, and water available for agriculture is usually scarce and of very poor quality. These facts have led more Iraqis than ever to leave rural communities in search of water and work in the cities, further compounding already existing problems there.

The UN report states: "Quality of water used for drinking and agriculture is poor, violating Iraq National Standards and WHO guidelines. Leaking sewage pipes and septic tanks contaminate the drinking water network with wastewater. Eighty per cent of households do not treat water before drinking. Furthermore, just 18 per cent of wastewater is treated, with the rest released directly into waterways."

And this is exactly what many Iraqis experience first-hand.

"Sometimes we turn on the tap and nothing comes," explained Baghdad resident Ali Abdullah. "Other times the colour is brown, or yellow, or sometimes even smells of benzene."

++++++++

yeah, Americans sure know how to fuck things up....

Dancewater said...

Attacks across Iraq on Monday killed six people and wounded dozens of others, including 15 Afghan pilgrims visiting the country for religious commemorations, officials said.

Dancewater said...

Photo exhibit memorializes victims of war on Iraq

A photo exhibition dedicated to the victims of the Iraq war received a large audience on its opening day in Fallujah on Sunday.

The exhibition is currently being held at the martyr’s cemetery, where 2,500 people are buried. The venue was once a sports club until its transformation in 2005.

Dancewater said...

Western Oil Firms Remain in Iraq

While the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain.

On November 27, 38 months after Royal Dutch Shell announced its pursuit of a massive gas deal in southern Iraq, the oil giant had its contract signed for a $17bn flared gas deal.

Three days later, the US-based energy firm Emerson submitted a bid for a contract to operate at Iraq's giant Zubair oil field, which reportedly holds some eight million barrels of oil.

Earlier this year, Emerson was awarded a contract to provide crude oil metering systems and other technology for a new oil terminal in Basra, currently under construction in the Persian Gulf, and the company is installing control systems in the power stations in Hilla and Kerbala.

Iraq's supergiant Rumaila oil field is already being developed by BP, and the other supergiant reserve, Majnoon oil field, is being developed by Royal Dutch Shell. Both fields are in southern Iraq.

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq's oil reserves of 112 billion barrels ranks second in the world, only behind Saudi Arabia. The EIA also estimates that up to 90 per cent of the country remains unexplored, due to decades of US-led wars and economic sanctions.

"Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, US and other western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq's oil market," oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told Al Jazeera. "But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back inside Iraq and producing oil there for the first time since being forced out of the country in 1973."

Anonymous said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-we-ignore-the-civilians-killed-in-american-wars/2011/12/05/gIQALCO4eP_print.html

Washington Post

Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?


quite accurate analysis

J BR