kerkko.fi

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan. The previously unknown deposits -- including iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium -- are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, US officials believe.

The Afghan war has gained a fresh and dubious distinction: it is the longest war in US history, surpassing the conflict in Vietnam. 103 months passed between passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the withdrawal of the last American combat forces from Vietnam. As of today, the Afghan war has lasted 104 months.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/afghan-war-now-longest-war-us-history/story?id=10849303

A fight broke out between hussars and infantrymen of the Austrian army campaigning against the Ottomans in Wallachia in 1788. An officer shouting "Halt! Halt!" was misheard as "Allah! Allah!" causing a mass panic. Two days later, the Ottoman army arrived. They discovered 10,000 dead and wounded soldiers.

Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord, who is seen running with an Iraqi child in his arms in a video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad, talked to the World Socialist Web Site about the impact of this and similar experiences in Iraq.

McCord and another former member of the company addressed an open letter to the Iraqi people, in which they insisted that "the acts depicted in the video were everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how US-led wars are carried out in this region."

My platoon leader yelled at me for [evacuating a wounded child from the scene]. He told me to "stop worrying about these motherfucking kids and start worrying about pulling security." So after that I went up and pulled security on a rooftop.

Our rules of engagement were changing on an almost daily basis. But we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].

He goes, "If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherfucker on the street." We were just sitting there looking at each other like, "Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?"

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/emcc-a28.shtml

I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your mind's eye. This was a perfectly healthy twenty-two-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. This is some American mother's son, her little boy, he may be gay or straight or transgender but his life is fucked forever. I think that is important, I think that is newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it is more important than chocolate cake recipes and comic book reviews.

How did this come to happen to this poor mother's son? It came to happen because the people in the media who are supposed to foster a public debate on such public issues as war instead used their franchise to promote articles about chocolate cake and comic book reviews. They see their free press as free to choose not to look when bad things happen. They feel no need to explain to his parents or to anyone else that the war that blew off half of this poor boy's head was based on out and out lies.

http://open.salon.com/blog/david_cox/2010/02/25/the_picture

Clare Short, Britain's former international development secretary, today accused Tony Blair of lying to her and misleading parliament in the build-up to the Iraq invasion. She told the inquiry that she had a conversation with Blair in 2002. He told her that he was not planning for war against Iraq and that the evidence has since revealed that he was not telling the truth at that point, she said.

A secret plan to foster an internal coup against Saddam Hussein was drawn up by the British government two years before the invasion of Iraq. Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. The document was finalised on 11 June 2001 and approved by ministers.

Besides waging direct or proxy wars against elusive enemies on multiple fronts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, and Sudan, Yemen is now a new front in America's "war on terror" under a president, who as a candidate, promised diplomacy, not conflict, if elected.

The claim that Western embassy staff are being withdrawn from Yemen because of an alleged threat of a terrorist attack is utter rubbish. The embassies are being evacuated ahead of a major strike against Yemen's anti-government rebels by the US and its ally, the authoritarian government in Sana'a.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/imperium/2010/01/201014122549187202.html