What say you to the progressive, 37-year-old, gay mayor of a mid-western city with barely 100,000 people—a man with an unpronounceable last name—as President?...

25 February, 2019

Salon's Glenn Greenwald digs out a prescient morning-after column by Hunter S. Thompson of all people, published on 9/12/2001: The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare...

13 September, 2010

The clarity and detail of the rebuttal Richard Colvin filed with the House of Commons this morning stand in stark contrast to the government's flimsy response. With devastating thoroughness, Colvin documented factual errors and faulty logic underlying the testimony of government witnesses who tried to explain away Ottawa's studied indifference to the likely torture of prisoners our soldiers handed over to Afghan authorities. Download his statement—it's well worth the read—or check out Kady O'Malley's summary and the Toronto Star's account. In response, the best Dan Dugas, spokesman for Defense Minister Peter MacKay, could offer was another jingoistic attempt to portray criticism of government...

17 December, 2009

James Fallows, the Atlantic writer who is a thoughtful observer of US foreign affairs and an admirer of President Obama, says the president's newly announced war strategy rests on two "judgment calls." 1) Whether Al Qaeda/related terrorist groups really do depend so heavily on a specific geographic base in Afghanistan that, if the U.S. can disrupt them there, we won't have to apply similar efforts later on in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or anyplace else. 2) Whether a limited increase in U.S. troops, for a limited amount of time, really can make a decisive difference -- in the long-term stability of the Afghan...

08 December, 2009

Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin told the Commons Committee on Afghan Detainees today that virtually all the prisoners Canada turned over to Afghan security forces in 2006 and 2007 were tortured. Colvin says senior Canadian military and civilian ignored his warnings about the abuse, and Red Cross officials who tried to intervene could not get their phone calls returned for three months. Here is: The Canadian Press account of Colvin's testimony. A transcript of his opening statement. Video of Bob Rae questioning Peter MacKay on the allegations in Question Period. Stories from CBC, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail. If anyone...

18 November, 2009

Who said this? There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another. Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize. Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills...

29 October, 2009

Hats off to Murray Brewster of Canadian Press for his chilling story on the Harper Government's determined campaign to prevent a Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry from getting to the bottom of allegations that Canadian troops in Afghanistan abetted torture. The commission is investigating complaints by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association that Canadian troops knowingly handed over prisoners to torture in Afghan prisons. But federal lawyers invoked a little known national security clause in the Canada Evidence Act to bar a key government witness from testifying. Their fig leaf? They claimed Richard Colvin, who was political director at...

30 September, 2009