Re: US strike options on TSP

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ramana
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by ramana »

A few minutes ago ie 8:45 am Saturday, 9 Feb 2013, NPR had a three liner on Afzal Guru hanging in New Delhi. Is it that important to read out on a weekend in US?
NPR said Afzal Guru claimed to be innocent. Does any terrorist claim have done the deed? Didnt OBL claim he didnt do 9/11 but knew the guys who did it. And didn't US execute OBL in Abbortabad without due process that India gave Afzal Guru? And what about Awalaki killed by a drone in Yemen again without due process? India had trial all the way to the Supreme Court and kept the Paki sponsored terrorist Afzal Guru on state funded kabab and biryani for 12 years and then executed him after the appeals process was exhausted.

I think the delay in hanging Afzal Guru had US duplicity hand in it. It was also a CBM to TSP to stop the execution of their terrorist. This does not deny the INC panderinng to the mythical Muslim vote. Its a travesty to Indian Muslims that a terrorist criminal is stopped by INC from getting justice as a votebank sop. They are better than that.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Rudradev »

ramana wrote:A few minutes ago ie 8:45 am Saturday, 9 Feb 2013, NPR had a three liner on Afzal Guru hanging in New Delhi. Is it that important to read out on a weekend in US?
Moreover, NPR yesterday (show "On the Media") had vastly more than the usual share of Islamic apologism on display. One story was a sanctimonious report by some Stain-Ford perfesser who had conducted a study of "Drone Strikes", and advised that 75% of Pakis are anti-US today because of them. He said that short-term victories of killing terrorists with drones should not override the long term picture that drones are a "recruiting tool for Al Qaeda" (irrelevant, of course, that Al Qaeda faced no shortage of "recruiting tools" before the drones started flying.)

Second story, a soft-peddling of Jihad and what it really means for the Modern Muslim... young Saudi women's magazines run ads that say "My Jihad to lose 50 pounds was over!" etc.

Change in the wind. US liberals have always been Islam-sympathetic but the pitch of apologism is ratcheting up substantially. John Kerry might have a role (it is well known that NPR has a media content adviser from the GOTUS vetting their stuff.) Maybe the new (allegedly Muslim) head of the CIA, John Brennan, is also orchestrating a domestic propaganda campaign to support ending drone strikes... as a prelude to the 2014 exit from AfPak.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Prem »

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat ... story.html
At CIA, a convert to Islam leads the terrorism hunt
For every cloud of smoke that follows a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, dozens of smaller plumes can be traced to a gaunt figure standing in a courtyard near the center of the agency’s Langley campus in Virginia.
The man with the nicotine habit is in his late 50s, with stubble on his face and the dark-suited wardrobe of an undertaker. As chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center for the past six years, he has functioned in a funereal capacity for al-Qaeda.Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington — the principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In many ways, he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration’s embrace of targeted killing as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism efforts
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Lilo »

^^WP upto its usual Psy Ops ?
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by devesh »

one gets the feeling that the US Establishment has become as compromised by the Islamics as the UK one.
the UK elites got so enamored, now they are confused about internal growth of Islam. the intellectual compromise has paralyzed them.
in US, it seems the elites are following the same path. interesting.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by abhishek_sharma »

svinayak
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by svinayak »

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics ... ity/62187/


The Emerging Pro-Weed Majority
Marijuana could be the next gay marriage -- a contentious social issue that suddenly picks up broad, bipartisan support for change. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell came out in favor of legalizing hemp, joining Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and fellow Kentucky Republican Rand Paul to cosponsor a bill that would allow Americans to grow it, NBC News' Kasie Hunt reports. Of course, hemp is not the same as regular marijuana. Industrial hemp has much less THC, the chemical that gets people high. But right now, hemp is classified in the same category as drugs like heroin and LSD. On Thursday, the Kentucky state senate voted to legalize hemp if the federal government legalizes it too. Oregon has legalized hemp cultivation, but farmers risk federal prosecution.

Again, hemp is not the same thing as marijuana, "but some law enforcement groups say it is a step that could lead to the legalization of marijuana," Hunt writes. Other lawmakers -- yes, even conservative Republicans! -- have addressed legalizing the drug itself. The most fascinating example was last week, when Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said twice he was "evolving" on the issue of marijuana legalization when political science students at the University of Virginia asked him about voters legalizing weed in Colorado and Washington last fall. "I’m not sure about Virginia’s future [in terms of marijuana legalization]," Cuccinelli said. "But I and a lot of people are watching Colorado and Washington to see how it plays out." He explained it as a federalism thing: "I don't have a problem with states experimenting with this sort of thing. I think that's the role of states."
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Prem »

http://news.yahoo.com/thanks-lincoln-mi ... 20825.html
Thanks to 'Lincoln,' Mississippi Has Finally Definitely Ratified the Thirteenth Amendment
A middle-aged recent immigrant from India recently set into motion a series of events that eventually led to Mississippi finally ratifying the Constitutional amendment banning slavery. The rousing finale of the movie Lincoln served as inspiration. It sounds like a joke, but it's true. And even though it's been nearly 150 years since that fateful day in the Capitol in 1864, Mississippi's becoming the final state to officially ratify the Thirteenth Amendment serves as the final punctuation mark on a dark chapter in American history.

RELATED: This Congressman Fact-Checked 'Lincoln' and Won

The circumstances for Dr. Ranjan Batra almost inadvertently inserting himself into Mississippi state history are accidental at best. After seeing Lincoln in theaters last November, he went home and did a little bit of Internet research only to discover the Mississippi never got around to actually ratifying the amendement. The state did vote to ratify the amendment back in 1995, nearly 20 years after Kentucky, the second-to-last state to ratify the amendment, held its vote. However, through an apparent clerical error, Mississippi never officially notified the United States Archivist of the ratification, meaning that they've officially been on the side of slavery for a century-and-a-half. (That sounds kind of sensational when you put it like that, but heck, you'd think the state would double check on an issue as big as this.) Batra and his friend Ken Sullivan reported the mistake up the chain of command, and this month, Mississippi finally sent in the paperwork to complete its belated ratification of the Thirteen Amendment.

RELATED: 'The Rough Upbraider of Moronic Turpitude'!
In a funny way, Batra's adventure fact-checking his state history is the opposite of what Connecticut congressman Joe Courtney's fact-checking the movie. Courtney recently noticed that the movie showed a pair of Connecticut congressmen voting against the amendment, an unthinkable thing for a staunchly abolitionist state like Connecticut. Now, the congressman is wrestling with Steven Spielberg and the studio in an attempt to get the film fixed so that it doesn't cast his state in poor light. But when it's your state that's already cast itself in poor light, like in Mississippi's case, things get serious. Sullivan even got a certificate for setting this one straight.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth: By JOSEPH STIGLITZ
According to research from the Brookings Institution, only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top. Economic mobility in the United States is lower than in most of Europe and lower than in all of Scandinavia.

Another way of looking at equality of opportunity is to ask to what extent the life chances of a child are dependent on the education and income of his parents. Is it just as likely that a child of poor or poorly educated parents gets a good education and rises to the middle class as someone born to middle-class parents with college degrees? Even in a more egalitarian society, the answer would be no. But the life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in almost any other advanced country for which there is data.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Prem »

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 17129.html
John Kerry Is Visiting Nine Countries but Not Israel. What's Up?

The question is relevant, because it immediately stirs memories of what happened in 2009. In June of that year, just a few months into his historic presidency, Barack Obama visited Cairo for good and important reasons but then refused to take advantage of geography and make the short hop to Jerusalem. He might at the time have been angry about Israel’s settlements policy. The upshot was that Obama got off on the wrong foot in his dealings with Israel, and nothing much happened in U.S.-Israel relations for the next four years, even as the Mideast neighborhood itself became engulfed in uncertain democracy-building, violent upheavals and what looked like a determined Iranian move toward nuclear weapons.Kerry, by skipping Israel, is missing an opportunity to create a better relationship with Israel. That’s too bad, because Kerry could have done what his boss did not do at the beginning of his first administration—namely, ease Israel’s chronic uneasiness by coordinating policy in the Middle East. It’s always easier when the U.S. and Israel are playing from the same sheet of music. Without Israel’s cooperation or at least understanding, the United States cannot do very much to advance the Palestinian issue, and the Arab world has always said that the U.S. can solve nothing in the Middle East without first solving the Palestinian problem.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Gangster’s Paradise: The Untold History of the United States and International Crime

Despite media hoopla, cross-border crime -- illegal drugs sales, evasion of taxes, intellectual property theft, and money laundering -- is hardly a new phenomenon. For much of history, moreover, the United States was as much perpetrator as victim. Recognizing this awkward truth should help cool down overheated debates about today’s transnational problems and how to respond to them.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Philip »

The new US def. min. to be confirmed has just said that it is India who has been playing games in Afghanistan to the detriment of Pak! The dear Lord help us if he and Kerry are to be the US's troubleshooters for foreign and defence affairs worldwide.I can see immediately Indo-US relations plummet.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by pentaiah »

Not Defence minister but Secretary of Defence

no offense to you Philip saar ji
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by RajeshA »

Philip wrote:The new US def. min. to be confirmed has just said that it is India who has been playing games in Afghanistan to the detriment of Pak! The dear Lord help us if he and Kerry are to be the US's troubleshooters for foreign and defence affairs worldwide.I can see immediately Indo-US relations plummet.
I had written
RajeshA wrote:Obama has brought together a great team of John Kerrorist and Sucker Hagel! Now both funds and weapons can flow freely to the Paki Terrorist Army!
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Philip »

Tx Pent.,even though his task might be the same. But what sh*ts! What blatant falsehood,as if Pak is the aggrieved party,a paragon of virtue.This jerk of an ignoramus will soon say that all terrorism worldwide originates from India,that Osama too was actually found in India,the Oscar winning film notwithstanding-everyone knows that Hollywood is anything but factual with the truth (remember how they had a WW2 story about a sub,which was British in fact,but made it American for the film?),that Indians were behind 9/11.Guys,if this travesty of the truth is ever confirmed as Sec.Def.,we will have to take to the shelters.We will have drone strikes planned against us and the US and Pak might even gang up in a joint op to liberate Kashmir.

Rememebr,U heard it from moi first!
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by svinayak »

Philip wrote: We will have drone strikes planned against us and the US and Pak might even gang up in a joint op to liberate Kashmir.

Rememebr,U heard it from moi first!
Apart from everything else this part may be true. They had a plan for joint invasion which was floating in the internet in the early 90s. This was a clod war plan and they could revive it
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by chetak »

pentaiah wrote:Not Defence minister but Secretary of Defence

no offense to you Philip saar ji
Wonderful country the US!

Defense dept headed by a Secretary and the Postal department headed by a General. can their priorities be any more skewed (or screwed!).
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by g.sarkar »

Not to forget Dr. C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general who even put on a general's uniform.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by abhishek_sharma »

The CIA has nothing on Noam Chomsky (no, really)
This month, a two-year-long investigation into CIA records on Noam Chomsky concluded with a surprising result: Despite a half-century of brazen anti-war activism and countless overseas speaking engagements, the Central Intelligence Agency has no file on the legendary MIT professor.

"Our searches were thorough and diligent, and it is highly unlikely that repeating those searches would change the result," reads an agency reply to a Freedom of Information Act request for any and all CIA records on Chomsky. The request, obtained by Foreign Policy, was submitted by Portland-based writer Frederic Maxwell, who's writing a book about the renowned linguist.

At stake is not so much the CIA's reputation (the agency's forays into domestic spying in the 60s and 70s are well-documented), but Chomsky's: For what's a towering leftist dissident without a lengthy CIA file -- that ultimate rite of passage for 60s-era dissenters?

Was Chomsky maybe even a little disappointed by the lack of a CIA file? Last, week, I presented him with the CIA's findings, which he hadn't been privy to.

"I don't care," said Chomsky, refusing to take the bait during a phone interview. "I had nothing to do with the request." While not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of being seen as envious of CIA surveillance, he did insist that he was the focus of another federal entity's dragnet. "I'm sure the FBI has a big file," he said.

But hold on. No CIA file? And Chomsky's not suspicious? I reminded him of his impeccable qualifications for such surveillance.

Over the years, Chomsky's broad criticisms of the U.S. government (a "terrorist state") made him the only person on both Richard Nixon's Enemies List and the Unabomber's kill list. In the 60s and 70s, he undertook frequent overseas speaking engagements in countries that included Cambodia and Vietnam. He contributed to the leftist political magazine Ramparts, itself a target of CIA surveillance. Detailing the agency's obsession with the magazine's writers, former CIA director Stansfield Turner wrote in his 2006 book Burn Before Reading that "the CIA investigation of the staff of Ramparts was definitely illegal." He added: "It was also just a small part of a much larger [President Lyndon] Johnson-initiated project that went by the codeword CHAOS."

Indeed, that program, initiated in 1967 under Johnson and expanded under Nixon, targeted the anti-war movement on U.S. college campuses, in which Chomsky was a major player. In total, the CIA program collected files on at least 10,000 American citizens. But nothing on Chomsky?

Kel McClanahan, a seasoned national security lawyer who submitted the FOIA request on behalf of Maxwell, was surprised by the CIA's final findings. It was "not a Glomar response, not 'we can't tell you if we have records,' an actual 'no records' response," he told me. In fact, the CIA's first denial about a Chomsky file came back in September 2011. McClanahan then appealed the outcome and received another denial letter this month.

"The Agency Release Panel (ARP) considered Mr. Maxwell's appeal and determined that despite thorough and diligent searches of the appropriate records systems, we were unable to locate any records responsive to his requests," read the Feb. 1 CIA letter.

Interestingly, Chomsky, a man forever mistrustful of U.S. government statements, actually believes the CIA's denial. But it's not because he's warming to the agency as he grows older: It's because he's convinced of its incompetence.

"These agencies are good at killing people, targeted assassinations and overthrowing governments," he told me. "But if anyone were to honestly look at intelligence records, they'd find it all to be a very dubious affair as far as competence is concerned." That is to say, the agency may have had no ethical qualms about spying on Chomsky, but whether it did, and successfully organized that information into its databases, is another story. "We shouldn't be overwhelmed at their pretense of superhuman knowledge," he added. "That's mainly for spy novels."
Chomsky FOIA request by John Hudson

CIA Response 1 CIA Response 2
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by lakshmikanth »

America's 21st Century Slavery
In the 1880s, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida passed laws making it a crime for a black man to change employers without permission. It was a crime for a black man to speak loudly in the company of a white woman, a crime to have a gun in his pocket, and a crime to sell the proceeds of his farm to anyone other than the man he rented land from. It was a crime to walk beside a railroad line, a crime to fail to yield a sidewalk to white people, a crime to sit among whites on a train, and it was most certainly a crime to engage in sexual relations with -- or, God forbid, to show true love and affection for -- a white girl. {this is one of the main reason for most of the lynchings, especially the case of Emmet Till}

And that's how it happened. Within a few years of the passage of these laws, tens of thousands of black men and boys, and a smaller number of black women, were being arrested and sold into forced labor camps by state officials, local judges, and sheriffs. During this time, some actual criminals were sold into slavery, and a small percentage of them were white. But the vast majority were black men accused of trivial or trumped-up crimes. Compelling evidence indicates that huge numbers had in fact committed no offense whatsoever. As the system grew, countless white farmers and businessmen jostled to "lease" as many black "criminals" as they could. Soon, huge numbers of other African Americans were simply being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

The forced labor camps they found themselves in were islands of squalor and brutality. Thousands died of disease, malnourishment, and abuse. Mortality rates in some years exceeded 40 percent. At the same time, this new slavery trade generated millions of dollars for state and local governments -- for many years it was the single largest source of income for the state of Alabama. As these laws and practices expanded across the South, they became the primary means to terrorize African Americans, and to coerce them into going along with other exploitative labor arrangements, like sharecropping, that are more familiar to twenty-first-century Americans.
To think that these people take pride in liberating the world (read white oiropeans) from concentration camps of Hitler, is ridiculous to say that least. Even more ridiculous are the same idiots who criticize India's past of "untouchability". We had reforms before them, and that is something that I just realized today :)
ramana
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by ramana »

A dated blog post on OBL phenomenon:

http://acharya-analysis.blogspot.com/
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by svinayak »

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/when-y ... picks=true
When you say Budwater, you’ve said it all
Commentary: Americans tolerate a lot, but not watered-down beer

By Al Lewis
DENVER (MarketWatch) — Americans are willing to suffer declines in income, net worth, lifestyle, health, and even the integrity of their corporate and political leaders — but one thing they will not tolerate is a decline in alcohol.

The maker of Budweiser went into crisis-communications mode over the weekend following allegations in a phalanx of federal lawsuits that it waters down its beer.


Anheuser-Busch
Following complaints about watered-down beer, Anheuser-Busch scoffed and said “they must have tested” one of the 71 million cans of drinking water the company has donated to Red Cross relief efforts.
Anheuser-Busch BUD -0.25% took out full-page ads in newspapers across the nation on Sunday, claiming “the beer in your hand is the best beer we know how to brew. We take no shortcuts and make no exceptions. Ever.”

Earlier this month, Maker’s Mark addressed the extreme blowback it received from customers after announcing it would reduce the alcohol content in its whiskey because of a supply constraint.

Maker’s Mark is owned by Deerfield, Ill.,-based Beam Inc. BEAM +0.10% , which also owns the Jim Beam label. When the company very transparently announced it would cut back the alcohol content from 45% to 42%, its customers went into a rage. The company very quickly issued a press release reversing its decision. It read, “You spoke. We listened.”

“We’ve been more than humbled by the overwhelming response,” Maker’s Mark Chief Operating Officer Rob Samuels told USA Today. “This was about the worst four or five days of my life.” (Yes, when you are a top executive for a whiskey company, this is as bad as life gets. I am guessing Samuels could not face an entire army of angry drunks, so the alcohol level went right back to 90 proof.)

In a sluggish economy, where job creation is mostly just an empty boast, people will always want more alcohol. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States estimates a 3% growth in volume and a 4.5% growth in revenue for 2012. It says distilled spirits are still taking market share away from beer, which has a lower alcohol content. U.S. beer shipments were up 1.9% in the first eight months of 2012 after falling for three straight years, according to the Beer Institute.


In this environment, St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch cannot afford headlines about watered-down beer. So it doesn’t just deny this allegation, it scoffs at them.

Its ads showed a can of water that the brewing giant said it donated to the American Red Cross for disaster relief “71 million times.” The ads said anyone complaining about watered-down beer “must have tested one of these.” (Maybe lawyers for the American Red Cross should test Anheuser-Busch water to be sure there isn’t any beer in it.)

Click to Play
Mercedes-Benz woos young buyers
Mercedes is seeking to lure the coming wave of Generation Y consumers with a new compact sports sedan making its premiere at the Geneva motor show. Called the CLA, the model aims to woo them with a sleeker look. WSJ's Vanessa Fuhrmans has the details. Photo: Bloomberg

Anheuser-Busch also has been defending itself in social media. “Thanks to all of our #Budweiser fans for your support in the face of the groundless alcohol content lawsuits,” reads one tweet on Budweiser’s Twitter account.

In a coordinated legal attack in courts across the nation, lawsuits allege several Anheuser-Busch products misrepresent their alcohol content: Budweiser, Bud Ice, Bud Light Platinum, Michelob, Michelob Ultra, Hurricane High Gravity Lager, King Cobra, Busch Ice, Natural Ice and Bud Light Lime.

The lawsuits are quick to blame the megamerger. Anheuser-Busch is owned by Belgian brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, which was formed in the November 2008 of two brewing giants. “Following the merger, AB vigorously accelerated the deceptive practices ... sacrificing the quality products ... to reduce costs,” one of the lawsuits reads.

The global conglomerate brews about 10 billion gallons of malt beverage a year, so cutting the alcohol content just a little bit here and there can save millions, the lawsuit alleges.

If true, this represents a form of inflation that the Federal Reserve does not measure: Bud-flation. You have to drink more Bud to feel the same sense of relief from this economy.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Who was right about invading Iraq?-- Steve Walt
The ten-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is generating a variety of post-mortems and reflections from many of the participants in the pre-war debate. Andrew Sullivan has been especially forthright in acknowledging his own errors during that time and has a lively thread up and running probing what some famous people like Bill Clinton had to say on the matter a decade or so ago.

Going to war is a fateful decision for any country, but it is now clear that most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment performed abysmally during the run-up to the war. Top officials in the Bush administration told several important lies to bolster the case for war, such as the claim that there was no doubt Iraq had WMD -- indeed, they said they knew where they were - -and the charge that Saddam was in cahoots with Al Qaeda.

The majority of prominent Democrats and plenty of card-carrying liberals backed the war as well. Indeed, almost all of the top foreign policy officials in Obama's first term were vocal supporters of the invasion, with the president himself being a notable exception. Denizens of the usual Washington think-tanks -- including supposedly "moderate" organizations like Brookings and bipartisan organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations -- were also filled with pro-war cheerleaders. The same was true of the New York Times and Washington Post, whose editors and reporters swallowed the Bush team's sales pitch hook, line, and sinker. All in all, the decision to invade was taken with a degree of carelessness and callowness unworthy of any country with pretensions to global leadership. And one should never forget that this reckless decision cost more than $1 trillion and led to thousands of American battlefield casualties and many ruined lives. Of course, the Iraqi people have suffered even more over the past decade.

But not everyone thought invading Iraq was a good idea. In September 2002, thirty-three senior scholars who specialize in security affairs published a quarter-page ad on the New York Times op-ed page, declaring, "War with Iraq is Not in America's National Interest." You can read the original ad here. It is striking how accurate its warnings were. At the risk of sounding like I am bragging, I was one of the signatories, although I certainly take no pleasure in having anticipated the trouble ahead. It would have been better for the United States, not to mention Iraq, if the hawks had been proven right. Sadly, this was not to be.

As the ten-year anniversary nears, I want to call attention to the other people who signed the ad and helped pay for its publication. Some of them are no longer with us, but their prescience and their willingness to resist the stampede for war should not go unremembered. Here are the other signatories, with their professional affiliations at the time.

Robert Art, Brandeis

Richard Betts, Columbia

Dale Copeland, Univ. of Virginia

Michael Desch, Univ. of Kentucky

Sumit Ganguly, Univ. of Texas

Alexander L. George, Stanford

Charles Glaser, University of Chicago

Richard K. Hermann, Ohio State

George C. Herring, Univ. of Kentucky

Robert Jervis, Columbia

Chaim Kaufmann, Lehigh

Carl Kaysen, MIT

Elizabeth Kier, Univ. of Washington

Deborah Larson, UCLA

Jack S. Levy, Rutgers

Peter Liberman, Queen's College

John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago

Steven E. Miller, Harvard University

Charles C. Moskos, Northwestern

Robert A. Pape, University of Chicago

Barry R. Posen, MIT

Robert Powell, UC-Berkeley

George H. Quester, Univ. of Maryland

Richard Rosecrance, UCLA

Thomas C. Schelling, Univ. of Maryland

Randall L. Schweller, Ohio State

Glenn H. Snyder, Univ. of North Carolina

Jack L. Snyder, Columbia

Shibley Telhami, Univ. of Maryland

Stephen Van Evera, MIT

Kenneth N. Waltz, Columbia

Cindy Williams, MIT

It is worth noting that none of the signatories on this list has held a government position since then, and my guess is that none is likely to do so in the future. Instead, it is mostly people who backed the war who have occupied key policymaking positions in both the Bush and Obama administrations. Even today, a reputation for hawkishness is a prerequisite for being taken seriously in Washington.

Policymakers and pundits love to disparage "ivory-tower" academics for being aloof, out-of-touch, or insufficiently sensitive to how the real world works. Sometimes those charges are valid. But in this case -- and many others -- it was the "experts" inside-the-Beltway who got it tragically wrong and the academics who got it right.

Postscript: A subsequent effort to critique the Bush administration's handling of the war -- organized under the aegis of "Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy" -- produced an open letter signed by 851 people. The text is here; an account of this group's activities can be found here.
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Philip »

Now one can understand the US truly!

O-Bomb-er now has the right to murder..sorry,execute US citizens ion US soil using drone strikes,says the AG.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -soil.html

Barack Obama 'has authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans on US soil'
President Barack Obama has the authority to use an unmanned drone strike to kill US citizens on American soil, his attorney general has said.
Barack Obama 'has authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans on US soil'
Eric Holder, left, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee as Code Pink demonstrator Medea Benjamin protests against the use of drone strikes Photo: Getty Images
Jon Swaine

By Jon Swaine, Washington

6:52PM GMT 06 Mar 2013

Eric Holder argued that using lethal military force against an American in his home country would be legal and justified in an "extraordinary circumstance" comparable to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"The president could conceivably have no choice but to authorise the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland," Mr Holder said.

His statement was described as "more than frightening" by Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, who had demanded to know the Obama administration's position on the subject.

"It is an affront the constitutional due process rights of all Americans," said Mr Paul, a 50-year-old favourite of the anti-government Tea Party movement, who is expected to run for president in 2016.

Mr Holder wrote to Mr Paul after the senator threatened to block the appointment of John Brennan as the director of the CIA unless he received answers to a series of questions on its activities.
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Mr Paul on Wednesday evening took to the floor of the Senate to launch an old-fashioned filibuster in an effort to delay a vote on the approval of Mr Brennan for CIA director. “I won’t be able to speak forever, but I’m going to speak as long as I can,” he said, before embarking on several hours of criticism of Mr Obama's compliance with the US constitution.

Mr Obama has been sharply criticised for the secrecy surrounding his extension of America's "targeted killing" campaign against al-Qaeda terrorist suspects using missile strikes by unmanned drones.

The secret campaign has killed an estimated 4,700 people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. A quarter are estimated to have been civilians prompting anger among human rights campaigners.

According to research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone strikes killed between 474 and 881 civilians – including 176 children – in Pakistan between 2004 and last year.

Criticism within the US has focused on the implications for terror suspects who are also US citizens, after Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric born and educated in the US, was killed in Yemen in 2011.

The administration claims it has the legal authority to assassinate Americans provided that they are a senior al-Qaeda operative posing an imminent threat and it would be "infeasible" to capture them.

This justification emerged only last month in a leaked memo from Mr Holder's department of justice. Mr Obama this week agreed to give Congress his full set of classified legal memos on the targeting of Americans.

Civil liberties campaigners accuse the president and his aides of awarding themselves sweeping powers to deny Americans their constitutional rights without oversight from Congress or the judiciary.

Mr Holder stressed in his letter that the prospect of a president considering the assassination of an American citizen on US soil was "entirely hypothetical" and "unlikely to occur".

Yet "it is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorise the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States," he wrote.

Appearing in front the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, Mr Holder reiterated that "the government has no intention to carry out any drone strikes in the United States".

Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, told him his reference to "extraordinary circumstances" such as September 11 or the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbour were "extremely concerning".

"It is imperative that we understand the operational boundaries for use of such force," Mr Grassley said. "American citizens have a right to understand when their life can be taken by their government absent due process."

Daphne Eviatar, a senior counsel at Human Rights First, said: “It’s hard to see how authorities could not be in a position to arrest someone yet be able to kill them.

“The administration should publish all its legal memos on targeted killing. Classified information can be redacted if necessary. There is no reason for legal opinions justifying ongoing US programmes to be kept secret.”
So watch out guys who live in the US and are critical of GB America,your time may be up without warning thanks to O-Bomb-er!
Satya_anveshi
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Satya_anveshi »

Philip ji, a related news doing rounds
Drone came within 200 feet of airliner over New York
Agnimitra
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Agnimitra »

The exceptionally high rates of incarceration in the US correlate with other demographic trends:

X-posting from Islamism & Islamophobia thread:

Huff Post: Growing Faith: Prisons, Hip-Hop and Islam
Islam is described as the fastest growing religion in the U.S. There are various factors that contribute to this phenomenon, including immigrants arriving in recent decades from Muslim countries, including India, Pakistan, and in the Middle East. In addition, many individuals convert to Islam. This is particularly true among African Americans and more recently, Latinos.

Why is conversion so prevalent among these groups? The answer to this question is complicated and involves ideological factors, such as attraction to Islam's message of peace and social justice. Some are attracted by the cultural links among Islam, Africa, and Moorish Spain. Still others embrace the faith as a way of distancing themselves from Christianity. But what facilitates their conversion, practically?

Two important but often overlooked factors are prisons and hip-hop music, which are deeply interconnected. In fact, hip-hop culture's very birth in the U.S. coincided with an incarceration explosion in the 1970s. The harsh impacts of imprisonment would become an ever-present menace to the hip hop generation, which felt the first-hand effects of losing friends and family to the "belly of the beast." Imprisonment would go on to become a multi-billion dollar industry with two million inmates and counting, at roughly the same time hip hop grew into a multi-billion dollar industry of its own.

As African Americans began consuming hip-hop music, prisons began consuming African Americans. This dramatic prison expansion led the U.S. to become home to the largest prison population in the world, with African Americans consisting of nearly half of those imprisoned.

Prisons would also become major centers for Islamic outreach. Today, prison officials, prison chaplains and scholars claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion behind bars. Although there are no reliable statistics, estimates suggest that 35,000-40,000 inmates convert to Islam each year, and nationwide, it is estimated that 15 percent of the U.S. prison population is Muslim, or as much as 350,000 current Muslim inmates.

Islam's growth in prison is matched only by its influence on hip-hop culture. For many young Americans, hip-hop leads to their first encounter with Islam. Although listeners are not always aware of the religious underpinnings, hip-hop music has brought Islamic artists, themes and symbols to the center of American pop culture. Groups identifying with Islam include classical heavyweights like Afrika Bambaataa, Public Enemy and Rakim, and include more modern acts like WuTang Clan, Erykah Badu, Busta Rhymes and Mos Def.

But this just scratches the surface.

Hip-hop's influence among prisoners is noteworthy, and for some who turn to Islam in prison, a foundation for conversion was likely set long before they stepped through the prison gates. For decades, musical motifs involving Islam, both doctrinal and heterodox, have been setting the table and providing a cultural context for conversion.

...Hip-hop lyrics illustrate a deep consciousness of prisons. In some songs, there are shout-outs to incarcerated Muslims and words of encouragement, as in Brother Ali's "Shadows on the Sun": "Tell my man Hasim in prison keep grinnin' because he's innocent, and tell him that the tests we get are heaven-sent." At other times, an entire song or album can revolve around prison themes, as in No More Prisons Volume I and its sequel, Volume II, which each features a roster of Muslim rappers. Sometimes the lyrics take radical tones like DJ Krush & Company Flow's Vision of Art: "Unsheathe the jihad blade and become animalistic, authority walks the plank, that's implicit, the shambles of the gifted, dismantled and imprisoned."

Prisons and hip-hop music contribute to Islam's status as the fastest growing religion in the country. In prison, Islam continues to attract a vibrant following and prisons have made the African-American male convert a staple of African Americana, from Malcolm X to H. Rap Brown to Mike Tyson. Likewise, hip hop music has been fertilizer for the greening of America, comparable to reggae music's role in propagating the Rastafarian faith. Often described as the "official religion" of hip-hop, Islam continues to influence the music, which shows no signs of diminishing anytime soon.
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by abhishek_sharma »

^^ From the article posted above:

These are two articles in the Harvard Law Review which provide the legal analysis of the issues involved:

Part 1

Part 2
member_19686
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by member_19686 »

‘Strong’ Catholic Identity at a Four-Decade Low in U.S.

Widening Gap with Protestants

ANALYSIS March 13, 2013

The percentage of U.S. Catholics who consider themselves “strong” members of the Roman Catholic Church has never been lower than it was in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the General Social Survey (GSS). About a quarter (27%) of American Catholics called themselves “strong” Catholics last year, down more than 15 points since the mid-1980s and among the lowest levels seen in the 38 years since strength of religious identity was first measured in the GSS, a long-running national survey carried out by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

The decline among U.S. Catholics is even starker when they are compared with Protestants, whose strength of religious identification has been rising in recent years. About half (54%) of American Protestants – double the Catholic share (27%) – described their particular religious identity as strong last year, among the highest levels since the GSS began asking the question in 1974...

http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Catho ... in-US.aspx
More at link.
Prem
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Prem »

Mark Steyn: An unstable truce with the Axis of Crazy
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/war-4 ... clear.html
( Buttt,lets bring India into shittyBitty and other Craxy treaties :lol: )
I greatly enjoy the new Hollywood genre in which dysfunctional American families fly to a foreign city and slaughter large numbers of the inhabitants as a kind of bonding experience. Liam Neeson takes his estranged wife and their teenage daughter for just such a vacation in "Taken 2," in which the spectacular mountain of corpses in Istanbul brings the family back together again and ends with them (spoiler alert) enjoying a chocolate malt back at the soda fountain in California and getting to know the daughter's new boyfriend. "Don't shoot this one, Dad," she cautions. "I really like him." And they all have a good chuckle over it. In "Die Hard 5" or whatever we're up to, Bruce Willis and his estranged son fly to Moscow and do to the Russians what Neeson does to the Turks and Albanians. I gather that in the forthcoming "Finding Nemo 2," Marlin and Dory's marriage is going through a rocky patch until Nemo is kidnapped by a Ukrainian sex cartel, and Marlin and Dory swim up the Dnieper River and gun down every pimp in Kiev.
Meanwhile, back at the GOP, Sen. Rand Paul is no Dick Cheney, either: At CPAC this week, the narrow bounds of his smash-hit filibuster – questioning drone assassinations of Americans in America – broadened somewhat, not just to questioning drone assassinations of Americans anywhere, nor to questioning drone assassinations of anyone, nor even to questioning the "war on terror" or war in general, but to questioning the very assumptions of American global order, starting with our bankrolling of Mohamed Morsi in Cairo. The Egyptians send mobs to torch the U.S. embassy, the Saudis wage ideological warfare against Western civilization, the Turks call Israel a "crime against humanity" and threaten a cultural and demographic takeover of Europe, the Pakistanis are ramping up nuke production to sell to any loon in town – and those are just our "allies." With friends like these, who needs foreign policy? There are fewer and fewer takers for the burdens of global superpower, and whoever wins the nomination in 2016 will be considerably less Cheney and more Randy.
And, to be fair, even Dick Cheney isn't Dick Cheney, at least in the sense that Dick Cheney isn't Darth Vader. After a decade of inconclusive war, Americans are understandably receptive to the notion that it's time to "come home." Thus, newly appointed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces, in the words of the Associated Press, "the jarring difficulties of shutting down a war in a country still racked by violence." "Shutting down"? Yes, the Defense Secretary is now doing to the Afghan war what Romney's Bain Capital did to Midwestern factories. Its business model no longer makes sense. Some personnel can be reassigned, but thousands of EU nation-building consultants, cousins of Hamid Karzai and tribal pederasts enjoying free **** from Washington (seriously) may have to be laid off.
"Shutting down" Afghan wars can be a tricky business, as the British discovered during their 1842 retreat from Kabul, when the locals offered them "safe passage" and then proceeded to massacre all 4,500 troops plus 12,000 wives, children and attendant locals, leaving only Dr. William Brydon and his horse to make it through to Jalalabad. His mount died upon arrival; Dr. Brydon lived to tell the tale, albeit missing part of his skull, sheared off by a Pushtun tribesman.As one war "shuts down," are any others likely to open up? This week Obama told Israel's Channel 2 TV that "we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon." So Tehran, fresh from playing the bad guys in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning blockbuster, is going nuclear? Hey, relax, says the president: "I continue to keep all options on the table." And, every time he says that, you get the vague feeling he continues to keep the table somewhere in the basement. The best option would be if the Israelis just got on with it, absolving everyone else from a tough decision and simultaneously affording them the deliciously irresistible frisson of denouncing the Zionists for their grossly disproportionate response.
More likely, Iran will be permitted to go nuclear – followed shortly thereafter by Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and anyone else who dislikes being conscripted under the Shia Persian nuclear umbrella. North Korea and Pakistan both anticipate a lively export market.
Pakistan has a nominal per capita GDP of about $1,200, with North Korea's barely detectable. By comparison, Sweden's is about $58,000 and the Netherlands' about $50,000. But North Korea is a nuclear power, and the Netherlands isn't, and has no plans to become one, and any party so minded to propose otherwise would soon find itself out of power. The assumption that developed nations will get richer under Washington's defense welfare has been the central tenet of the American era. So now the wealthiest countries in history cannot defend their own borders, while economic basket-cases of one degree of derangement or another are nuclear powers.
Perhaps this improbable division will hold. Perhaps the Axis of Crazy will be content just to jostle among itself, leaving the Axis of Torpor to fret about lowering the retirement age to 48 and mandatory transgendered bathrooms and other pressing public policy priorities. But, even under such an inherently unstable truce, the American position and the wider global economy would deteriorate.
As the CPAC crowd suggested, there are takers on the right for the Rand Paul position. There are many on the left for Obama's drone-alone definition of great power. But there are ever fewer takers for a money-no-object global hegemon that spends 46 percent of the world's military budget and can't impress its will on a bunch of inbred goatherds. A broker America needs to learn to do more with less, and to rediscover the cold calculation of national interest rather than waging war as the world's largest NGO. In dismissing Rand Paul as a "wacko bird," John McCain and Lindsay Graham assume that the too-big-to-fail status quo is forever. It's not; it's already over.
ramana
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by ramana »

Mark Steyn wrote:
Pakistan has a nominal per capita GDP of about $1,200, with North Korea's barely detectable. By comparison, Sweden's is about $58,000 and the Netherlands' about $50,000. But North Korea is a nuclear power, and the Netherlands isn't, and has no plans to become one, and any party so minded to propose otherwise would soon find itself out of power.
This begs the question that it was the Netherlands uranium enrichment centrifuge technology that Pakistan stole via A.Q. "Xerox" Khan and is peddling it fast and furious with Noko supplying the delivery vehicles!!!

So what outrage does Steyn have for the Netherlands for being lax fast and loose with nuke technology!!!
ramana
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by ramana »

One thing is despite the Revolutionary War for Independence there is a great desire to claim relationship and descent from English Kings for whoever gets elected as President. Very convlouted family trees are traced to show a common ancestor for all the Presidents including the current incumbent in King John who was forced to sign the Magna Carta!
-----------------------

A 2009 NYT graphic on immgrant workers from 1990-2007.

~17.5 M came in that period. Of whihc ~358K were software workers.

Yet the Democrats go on tirades about how Indians are snatching jobs from the US!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009 ... .html?_r=0
Prem
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by Prem »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -book.html
General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book
The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home.But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".His book, "Target Patton", contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.Mr Wilcox told The Sunday Telegraph that when he spoke to Mr Bazata: "He was struggling with himself, all these killings he had done. He confessed to me that he had caused the accident, that he was ordered to do so by Wild Bill Donovan."Donovan told him: 'We've got a terrible situation with this great patriot, he's out of control and we must save him from himself and from ruining everything the allies have done.' I believe Douglas Bazata. He's a sterling guy."
Mr Bazata led an extraordinary life. He was a member of the Jedburghs, the elite unit who parachuted into France to help organise the Resistance in the run up to D-Day in 1944. He earned four purple hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre three times over for his efforts.
ramana
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Re: Understanding the US-2

Post by ramana »

Edited. :oops:
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