Posts tagged “military”

Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama is powerful throughout, but his story of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq at 20, is the most moving moment of the entire two-year campaign. It reframes the Muslim smear not just as false, but as fundamentally un-American.

Tanks apparently rolled into LA to intimidate anti-war protesters. The video looks real, sourced from IndyMedia via AlterNet. Protesters immediately struck Tiananmen Square poses, which is both funny and depressing. I'm skeptical but can't explain away the footage.

The US Army's free recruiting video game is working: 30% of young people with favorable views of the military credit America's Army for shaping that opinion. Dear god.

Don't tell me we're "winning by numbers" in Iraq. With 25 million Iraqis, if even 1% want to fight us, that's 100,000 insurgents. We're killing 20 at a time. Do the math. Numbers are precisely the argument you don't want to make here.

G Takahashi's weblog has great war coverage, including a soldier's email home that vividly captures life in combat. Written March 29th, the soldier mentions "upcoming weeks" ahead, proving the media's quick-victory narrative was nonsense. Also fascinating: how the internet and Al-Jazeera have dethroned CNN as the war's trusted voice.

We're going to win in Iraq -- everyone says so. But guerrilla warfare could stretch the conflict, eroding public support until we're forced to withdraw. A victorious Saddam would destabilize the entire Middle East. None of this was at stake before we invaded. Now we have no choice but to win.

Procrastinating from revision by sharing SatireWire gems: the Pentagon wants remote-controlled rat spies, and you can eat a koala in retaliation unless you're a hinjew. I love SatireWire.