My following lead book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald: INFERNAL TRIANGLE Paul McGeough Allen & Unwin, $32.99 This unblinking collection of dispatches separates the rhetoric from the reality of the post-September 11 battlefields. The new US Defence Secretary and former CIA director, Leon Panetta, recently told journalists the Obama administration was ”within reach”…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
At least some in US Congress recognise toxic culture of mercenaries in war zones
As we learn that the US has wasted tens of billions on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11, few American politicians are opposed to this explosion of privatisation. Here’s a statement by Bernie Sanders, US Senator from Vermont: Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) today introduced legislation that would phase out private…
US wastes billions on dodgy contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan
The future of Western warfare is corporations making billions on the suffering of citizens under occupation: The United States has wasted some $34 billion on service contracts with the private sector in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a study being finalized for Congress. The findings by a bipartisan congressional commission were confirmed…
The Guardian’s Nick Davies on how Murdoch punishes friends and enemies
Speaking on Democracy Now!: JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Nick Davies, many of us here in the United States who watched the hearings this week were really surprised at the extent to which the members of Parliament really were dogged in their questioning and fairly confrontational in their questioning. Could you explain to us the degree of…
This is what Iraqis have been given; unaccountable mercenaries
Sigh: By January 2012, the State Department will do something it’s never done before: command a mercenary army the size of a heavy combat brigade. That’s the plan to provide security for its diplomats in Iraq once the U.S. military withdraws. And no one outside State knows anything more, as the department has gone to…
10 questions the British MPs will not ask Murdoch
And it’s all about Iraq and Tony Blair’s desperate need to receive the backing of the media mogul.
Targeting the contracting leeches in the “war on terror”
Since 9/11 countless corporations are making a killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the US and beyond. It’s a privatised dream, as the US war machine now couldn’t survive without outsourcing help (including, according to a new report, Pentagon contractors writing their own contracts). Hackers and trouble-makers Anonymous have attacked Booz Allen Hamilton (a company with quite…
Strong reasons Murdoch should be shunned from decent society
One: Throughout his years in power, Blair had regular secret meetings with Murdoch, many abroad, and was in regular telephone contact. Price has gone as far as to claim that Murdoch “seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet”. Blair insisted no record was ever kept of the meetings or calls, so they were totally…
Australia and Abu Ghraib; a cosy relationship
Years after this scandal exploded, we’re still receiving details on US allies being far too willing to excuse and defend abuses: Secret Defence documents obtained under freedom of information laws show an Australian officer, Major George O’Kane, was far more deeply involved in the operations of Abu Ghraib prison when terrible abuses of prisoners occurred…