Posts tagged as Iraq
What Could Possibly Go Wrong with a Biometrics Database of 3 Million Iraqis?
"The troops have come home, the flag has been been lowered, and the Iraq War is officially in the past for the U.S. military. But the military is holding on to a major souvenir of the war: a massive database packed with retinal scans, thumb prints and other biometric data identifying millions of Iraqis."
The Greatest Photo of the "End" of the "Iraq War"
Ha ha, here's the greatest picture of the end of the Iraq War, by Al-Jazeera's Gregg Carlstrom: the assigned seats at the "Yay The Iraq War Is Over" ceremony also informed attendees in which bunker they should take shelter, in case they were all bombed or shot at or whatever. Enjoy your war zone with no war (sort of)!
The "War" Is "Over"
And now we get to prematurely place behind us another quite troubling incident in our recent history. Secret prisons? Eh, let's forget about those. Torture? Let's just move on. A incredible transformation of huge chunks of the military into a privately contracted mercenary army? La la la la la! Years and years of National Guard reservists being unexpectedly called up for active duty in Iraq? Oh well! Thousands of soldiers having had their service contracts forcibly extended, creating a stop-lossed conscription army, under a policy that somehow no judge would find illegal? Sorry guys and gals! (And sorry families of dead guys and gals.) Operation New Dawn: the war we had after the war? Deadly. A decade of a wildly, wildly, crushingly expensive invasion, that involved more than a million Americans in combat, and the occupation of a country under false pretenses? Let's just agree to not talk about it anymore. The CNN crawl says "Ceremony Ends Nine Years of Conflict," which isn't actually what happened either: we actually didn't have a "conflict." America's great at putting things behind us, so guess we'll just file this under "things that are already over," though we still have billions of dollars to spend in ongoing operations. But at least we should let the Iraq War have an asterisk for "things that should never have happened." READ MORE
Blackwater and the "Military Aged Males" of Iraq
John Cook's 4500-page Blackwater document dump is incredibly engrossing. These little stories! It's like, "we shot this dude's car, then everything was okay." What a nightmare Baghdad must have been (for Iraqis, I mean).
The American Influence in Iraq
"Security companies have started to use Iraqi guards because they work cheaply and know the area. These Iraqi security contractors now try to imitate Americans in their clothing, by wearing trousers with several outside pockets, half-length boots, dark sunglasses and rolled-up sleeves. They have absorbed the way that American contractors look so much that sometimes we Iraqis cannot differentiate between an Iraqi and an American by the way he dresses." READ MORE
Local Columnist Explains What Invasion Of Iraq Was All About
"He took 11 bullets and lost a leg in Iraq, defending the right of silver-spoon scum at Columbia University to heckle and laugh in his face. Former Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Maschek was treated shamefully by a mob of soft-palmed slime as he appeared last week at a town-hall meeting, urging the return of ROTC to campus. This is conduct unbecoming human beings."
The American Experiment on the Last Day of the War
According to the government, the war in Iraq ends tonight at midnight. Given the war's inescapable presence in our politics over the last eight years, you would think we'd take this as the occasion for, if not celebration, at least some sort of commemoration. But so far, there's not even been much media coverage. Earlier in the month, the Pentagon staged a nighttime movement of combat troops from Iraq to Kuwait, timed to coincide with the evening news broadcasts, but aside from cutaways on NBC's cluster of channels (with some definite enthusiasm from MSNBC), it received about as much attention as a state visit to Senegal. A factoid about the impending end of aggressions made it onto the cable networks' bottom-of-the-screen crawl on Saturday, but then it was topped literally and figuratively by Glenn Beck's elaborate prank on Washington. Tonight, Obama will make with the official End of the War speech, to who knows what kind of ennui. No only do people think that the substantial residual force remaining in Iraq means that the occupation is continuing, many just simply seem to not believe the government when it says that the war is over. READ MORE
Just Random Folks, Protecting 'Fortress America'
We have GOT to get jobs as overseas government contractors. The improbably named Triple Canopy-are we still sure that's not some artsy Silicon Alley startup?-has the contract to guard the US Embassy in Iraq, writes Spencer Ackerman, whipping out a damning in-house State Dept. report on our pals over there. They don't send the Delta Force boys for this-I mean, you're not even required to be proficient in English, which is awesome, as I am not. And? "The contracting ofï¬cer's representative in Baghdad does not verify either the guards' attendance at their posts or the accuracy of personnel rosters (muster sheets) before they are submitted, to ensure contractor charges for labor are accurate.... [The State Dept's Bureau of Diplomatic Security] lacks standards for maintaining training records. As a result, Triple Canopy's training records are incomplete and in disparate locations making it difï¬cult for the Bureau to verify whether all personnel have received required training." You don't say! I actually would love to know more about the process of hiring folks from Central America and shipping them to Iraq as inexperienced contractors. I bet these people have amazing life stories. And what's the deal on April 15? Do they get 1099s or what? Do they all get together and use Turbotax?
Blackwater Settlement: $100K Per Corpse
"Xe, the US security firm formerly known as Blackwater, has reached a settlement in a number of lawsuits over the killings of Iraqi civilians." And how much? "Two sources with inside knowledge of Blackwater's settlement with Iraqi victims of a string of shootings, including the Nisour Square massacre, have confirmed to me that Blackwater is paying $100,000 for each of the Iraqis killed by its forces and between $20-30,000 to each Iraqi wounded.... Based on the number of dead and injured named in the civil lawsuits, the total amount paid by Blackwater is likely in the range of $5 million."
'Avatar' Part 1: How We Deal with Iraq War II, with Seth Colter Walls
Fun reviews are fun. You know how much fun? Sometimes we start writing them before we see the movie. The other afternoon, I started thinking about an Avatar piece headlined "Avatar Is the Greatest Movie of All Time For People Who Love Wearing Glasses." Right? I had a whole set piece ready about how, during hour 17 of the movie, I got distracted and started wondering if friction from the Costello-grade thickness of the 3D specs was causing a zit on the patch of skin between my skull and left ear. I thought this was fine to conceive ahead of time, because Avatar is obviously just a mass entertainment, and don't get it twisted: let's all have some fun, no? READ MORE
