Antiwar.com’s Editorial Director Justin Raimondo will be interviewed on the Bill Meyer Show Friday, June 18th at 8:10am Pacific/11:10am Eastern, for KMED, Medford, OR. The topic will be Mr. Raimondo’s recent column, Afghan Bling, regarding the curiously timed announcement on Afghanstan’s untapped mineral riches.
Listeners can enjoy the audio stream as well as a video feed from the host here.
Update: The archive of the interview can be heard here.
On his Twitter feed, Glenn Greenwald commends Rep. Barney Frank for these recent comments:
In an interview with the Boston Herald, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said that that “‘as a Jew,’ Israeli treatment of Arabs around some of the West Bank settlements ‘makes me ashamed that there would be Jews that would engage in that kind of victimization of a minority.'”
I, too, thank Rep. Frank for his candor and his willingness to rise above tribalism. (Though I also agree with Jeremy that individuals have no reason to apologize for or feel ashamed of acts they oppose simply because those acts are committed under the auspices of a collective, whether legal, religious, or ethnic, that they “belong” to. As an official of the U.S. government, Rep. Frank has plenty to feel ashamed about; as a Jew, nothing.) Sadly, though, Frank turned right around the next moment with this:
In defense of Israel, Frank added there are people “howling for Israel to pay a price [for the Gaza aid ship attack] that don’t seem disturbed that North Koreans killed 46 South Koreans by torpedoing a South Korean boat. I think we have a right to ask for some consistency.”
Now lest it be said that my vicious, throbbing anti-Semitism has blinded me to the greater sins of Kim Jong-Il (and it will be said anyway), let me go on record as condemning the attack by a government that my tax dollars do not subsidize on a military vessel during what is technically still an ongoing war. Yes, Rep. Frank, it does appear to me that one of the two attacks is worse than the other, but I’ll let you guess which one.
The most ominous thing about Obama in Afghanistan is that Bush at least did us the courtesy of lying about Iraq as if “we the people” actually mattered. –Serious Soundbytes
Although several news outlets spent the day barking about the Afghanistan death toll crossing the 1,000 mark, the truth is that casualty counting is a little more complicated. Icasualties.org is where the media are grabbing that 1,000 figure. The Web site does report that that the death toll in “Operation Enduring Freedom” has crossed that many deaths, but with one caveat: “U.S. fatalities In and Around Afghanistan remain under this benchmark.”
Clicking one more link will take you to their actual toll for Afghanistan (including neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan), which is still 70 shy of the millennium mark. The rest of the servicemembers died in such far away countries as Cuba (Guantánamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen.
Some have asked me why I care where they died, as it’s still one war. True, but that’s 15 other countries where our relatives, friends and neighbors are dying in this worldwide war. It may not bring them back to notice the details, but it underscores how absurdly spread out the war machine has gotten. And for what purpose?
How’s this for a recipe that defies the seeming laws of common sense:
First, take Blackwater, otherwise known as “Xe,” a private security contractor that has been accused of abusive, hostile and violent behavior against the indigenous population of Iraq — including murder — not to mention corruption and intimidation of its employees, throughout the Iraq conflict. Then take the Afghan National Police, probably the most derided institution in all Afghanistan today for its legendary corruption and abuse of the Afghan population. Put them together and what do you get? Well, perhaps we don’t even want to know — but I’d bet money it don’t smell like “victory.”
Apparently the Department of Defense knows better. Laura Rozen over at Politico is reporting that Xe is poised to win a HUGE police training contract in Afghanistan:
Controversial defense contractor Blackwater, now known as Xe, is being told that it is likely to win a major contract to do police training mentoring and logistics in Afghanistan, a source tells POLITICO.
According to the well-informed source, U.S. authorities in Iraq including Gen. Stan McChrystal and US Ambasador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry had urged the Defense Department to issue the police training contract through DoD as opposed to through State/International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. DoD decided to use existing contract vehicles, where there are only five primes to use: Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrup, Arinc (owned by the Carlyle Group), and Blackwater.
None of them know anything about police training, the source said. Of those five, several decided not to bid, including Raytheon. Arinc’s parent company, Carlyle, got cold feet, was fearful that the contract could hurt the company’s reputation if people got killed. Lockheed was close to making a deal with DynCorp to do the police training, but decided against it. Instead it bid on the logistics part of the contract. (The contract has two parts- TORP 150 –Â police training; TORP 166 is logistics).
The only company to bid on both parts of the contract — the police training, and logistics parts — was Blackwater, the source said. Northrup decided to bid on the police training with MPRI.
I’m no expert, but if this war over there is all about doing battle with the Taliban for the “hearts and minds” of the people, then hiring Blackwater – whose name is so synonymous with arrogance and brutality that they had to change their own moniker – to train the Afghan police might not be very good “strategic communications.”
UPDATE: Maybe when Blackwater gets the contract, they’ll give the Afghan police back their guns.
On January 15, the ACLU won a FOIA suit demanding information about the prisoners held at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Now British journalist Andy Worthington has reproduced the list (Many of the detainees were abducted and from who-knows-where and brought to Afghanistan in order that the CIA and military could take advantage of the lawlessness of the current “battlefield” there.) along with notes on approximately 100 of them who he had previously identified and investigated.
Worthington calls it a “co-operative project” and invites any information people may be able to add.
