The Nuclear Regulator Commission is considering an application by the US Army for a permit to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, and at the Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu. In fact, what the Army is asking for is a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each contained close to half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa alone.

But that’s only a small part of the story. Continue reading →

How absurd is it that we have the government on the one hand pulling back from using a hollowed out mountain in Nevada to store nuclear waste because of a remote fear (legitimate I grant) that hundreds or thousands of years hence, some earthquake or other catastrophe might cause the stored waste to leak into the water table, while on the other hand we have this same government deliberately taking some of the most dangerous waste–the actual uranium from the used fuel rods–and putting it into bombs, shells and bullets to be splattered and burned all across the landscape?

Iraqi soldier, body carbonized by depleted uranium shell Continue reading →

President Barack Obama has staked his presidency on winning his “necessary” war in Afghanistan. Coming into office, one of his first acts, on Feb. 18, was to boost US troop levels in that country by 17,000, bringing the total number of soldiers and Marines in the country to about 57,000, to which one must also add 74,000 private contractors, most of them in the role normally handled by military personnel, and about 33,000 other soldiers from NATO countries and Australia.

That’s 164,000 foreign soldiers fighting against Taliban fighters. Continue reading →

You see, here’s the thing. When you hear about the sick, twisted things that America’s torturers have been doing, courtesy of President George W. Bush and Vice President Darth Cheney, you have to remember that the US military and the CIA were not really all that reliable when it came to picking up the real terrorists. In fact, their batting average was pretty lousy.

According to even the Pentagon’s own reckoning, for example, probably 85% of the captives being held at Guantanamo over the past eight years were not terrorists at all, and a fair number–probably the majority–weren’t even fighting anyone when they were captured. I’m sure that the averages at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, or at the secret prison in Iraq are no better. The military was offering bounties in Iraq and Afghanistan for alleged terrorists, you see, and probably still is, but in both of those lawless, tribal countries, many people have used the offer to settle old feuds, turning in people they wanted to punish or dispose of, and many others just turned in random people to get the reward money. Continue reading →

The point about the arrest Monday by a Cambridge Police sergeant of Harvard Distinguished Professor Henry “Skip” Gates is not that the police initially thought the celebrated  public intellectual, PBS host and MacArthur Award winner might have been a crook who had broken into Gates’ rented home.  Anyone capable of seeing a 58-year-old man with a cane accompanied by a man in a tux as a potential burglar might make the same mistake, given that a neighbor had allegedly called 911 to report seeing two black men she thought were breaking into the house.

But after Prof. Gates had shown the cops his faculty ID and his drivers’ license, and had thus verified his identity, and after he had explained that he had just returned home on a flight from China and had been getting help from his limo driver in opening a stuck door, the cops should have been extremely polite and apologetic for having suspected him and for having insisted on checking him out. Continue reading →

There’s always the possibility that the reason only five percent of people released from Guantanamo are “returning to terrorism” and only another nine percent are returning to the fight against American forces in their homelands is that they were the only ones who were actually terrorists and enemy fighters in the first place, and the other 86 percent of released detainees were just innocent people captured, detained, tortured and finally released. FULL ARTICLE

There may have perhaps have been a time when America was a land of at least some brave people. although arguably a nation that celebrates as heroic a history that features lots of people with modern guns and cannons conquering and destroying another people who were living in the stone age and fighting back with bows and arrows, and that built its economy on the backs of men and women held in chains certainly has a tough case to make. What is clear though is that there is nothing brave about modern-day America. FULL ARTICLE

When doctors started reporting that some of the victims of the US bombing of several villages in Farah Province last week – an attack that left between 117 and 147 civilians dead, most of them women and children – were turning up with deep, sharp burns on their body that “looked like” they’d been caused by white phosphorus, the US military was quick to deny responsibility. FULL ARTICLE

Featured Post for 05-/15-05/22: Obama at this point, by covering up for official torture, and by signing on to and expanding the war in Afghanistan, is dooming his presidency, further staining the reputation of the United States, and ultimately furthering the decline of the country that was set in motion by his predecessors.

The illogic of Obama’s position on these photos is stunning. Since we know the photos exist, the refusal to make them public can only feed a sense that they must be worse than the horrific photos of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison which were already released. Nobody is going to assume that the photos in the White House’s possession are less offensive than what has already been discovered and made public–for why would the administration be worried about that?

The truth is always better than a cover-up, and what we now have the president advocating is a cover-up of American torture.  FULL STORY

Whether Democrats in Congress, who in recent years have demonstrated an astonishing lack of courage and respect for the Constitution, will rise to the occasion is another matter, especially with a new Democratic president who has made it clear he is loath to hold the prior administration to account for any of its crimes or clearly unconstitutional behavior. FULL ARTICLE