Private mercenaries have been integral to the “war on terror”, so much so that Western aid groups are warning the Afghan government that without them the country will miss billions of dollars in aid: More than a billion dollars worth of aid projects in Afghanistan will have to be cancelled by the end of the…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Wikileaks Iraq logs reveals democracy an after-thought (at best)
Mmm: In a telling, if not surprising finding, Der Spiegel reports that, in the 391,832 documents, the word “democracy” appears only eight times—improvised explosive devices are mentioned 146,895 times.
Does Obama really want to know that his army kill innocents?
What a government with accountability would do is determine what its soldiers may have done in war and investigate. Not stonewall or ignore or deny. “Our boys”, from Britain, America and Australia, have committed countless abuses in the last ten years in the “war on terror”: The UN has called on Barack Obama to order…
Australia misses the Wikileaks story entirely
So the Australian government is not interested in investigating any potential war crimes in Iraq but the messenger who brought the news. Don’t be surprised: Defence Minister Stephen Smith says the release of almost 400,000 US documents about the Iraq War could create a security risk for Australia. The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published classified…
What Iraq looked like for Iraqis in 2006
The UK Guardian unpacks the latest Wikileaks Iraq logs, interactively: 17 October 2006 was a typical day in one of the bloodiest years of the Iraq conflict – 136 dead Iraqis, 10 dead Americans and hundreds of violent incidents. Watch the 24 hours of carnage unfold, log by log, minute by minute.
Wikileaks Iraq logs show our damned contempt for Arabs
Welcome to our legacy in the Middle East: A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of…
How easy was that? Visit Syria and see for yourself
Behold a rarity. An Australian commentator, Richard Ackland, visits Syria and writes sympathetically about Iraqi and Palestinian refugees.
A one-eyed view of Sri Lanka
My following article appears today in ABC’s The Drum Unleashed: A Western journalist visits the Sudanese capital Khartoum to interview President Omar al-Bashir. The reporter, after calling him “controversial” due to his “bloody” record in fighting terrorism, gives the leader a platform to explain his views and tactics. The only other voice featured in the…
Who knew that occupation caused Muslims to hate us?
Robert Pape tells us what we should already know. When the West occupies and kill Muslims, they may want to respond in kind. Funny that: More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and…