The UN has confirmed this, and it is another indicator of how ill suited and ill prepared the 4 US fixed wing air forces* for counter insurgency.
They killed 90 civilians, and probably created 3x that number of insurgents.
*USAF, USN, and USMC but particularly the USAF.
Because Bush/Cheney is unwilling to take the DPRK off a terror watch list, as it has promised, they have stopped dismantling their facilities, and are threatening to reconstitute them.
Because Cheney wants to swing his dick around*, about the only thing remotely like a positive foreign policy accomplishment is about to go down the drain.
It’s behavior like this which make North Korea a paranoid nuclear power. It makes them believe that the US is just waiting to attack them.
*Sorry for that image.
Karzai just condemned a USAF led airstrike in Afghanistan and fired two commanders in the region.
A representative of the Karzai administration nails it:
“This puts us in a very difficult position,” said a government official, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the matter. “It provides propaganda to the Taliban, and if they don’t take responsibility, it actually helps the Taliban.”
Of course, even when coalition troops engaging in a training exercise are targeted by pilots hopped up on amphetamines, or a pilot joy riding below altitude minimums kills 20 people in a cable car, there is at best a slap on the wrist (note that the latter were Marines, not USAF).
The three US air services need to stop behaving in a way that aids the insurgents.
We now have Robin Leach excusing John McCain for not knowing how many homes he has, because he would, “call it honest confusion.”
Let’s see….Robin Leach, former host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, is defending John McCain for not being able to remember how many homes he owns….Seriously, ou cannot make this sh&% up…really.
This is beyond even the Nostradamus-Like genius of The Onion.
We are talking about the UH-1Y and AH-1Z programs, which entailed a new propulsion pack, 4 bladed rotor, and avionics.
12 years…and 140% over budget……I need a tax refund.
There hasn’t been a correction or clarification yet.
Of course, the “completely fair” Andrea “Bubbles” Mitchell, and the rest of the Beltway bunch will figure out a way for it not to be him being confused, or actually suggesting that he would restart the draft.
It appears that there is a rumor that Caroline Kennedy’s name is being floated as a VP pick for Obama.
She is on the selection committee, and the author of the article, Alexander Mooney, draws a comparison to Dick Cheney, who was on the selection committee.
The problem is that she ain’t Dick Cheney. It would be another Kennedy affirmative action hire, like Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in Maryland, or Sargent Shriver for McGovern’s running mate after Tom Eagleton bowed out.
Please, God no.
As has been known for some time, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) is underfunded as a result of pension obligations that it has had to assume over the past few years, and now its management is looking toward a more aggressive, and hence riskier, investment strategy.
It was 75% to 85% bonds and 15% to 25% in stocks, and it’s going to 45% stocks, 45% bonds, and 10% in “alternative investments”.
Alternative investments? What’s that, rare coins?
I’m a bear by nature, but to me it looks like this has EPIC FAIL written all over it.
He, of course, paraphrases Senator Joseph Biden, when he says, “A Noun, A Verb, POW in response to the story that John McCain was in a position to hear the questions that Saddleback church pastor Rick Warren put to Barack Obama, and so get a leg up on his responses.
The response to the allegations from McCain Spokesman Nicolle Wallace:
The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.
A noun, a verb, and POW.
That should be a talking point from the Obama campaign, but direct it at the McCain campaign, not at the candidate, so it won’t seem disrespectful.
I’m an engineer, that this makes me feel like a complete lamer.
Why do we pretend that sex is as dangerous as plutonium?
He says sometime in the first half of 2009.
Here is another prediction of his about the housing market, in October 2006, “I suspect that we are coming to the end of this downtrend”.
They you are either insane, comatose, or ready to vote for the sick old man, John Sidney McCain III, but I repeat my self, because he just said, “In The 21st Century Nations Don’t Invade Other Nations.”
Irony is not only not dead, but it is thriving among the fertile soil (all that bullsh&%, you know) that is the irony impaired Republican party.
For saying that Barack Obama is somehow elitist for going to Hawaii, where his grandmother lives.
I spent 10 of my first 18 years on the west coast. Hawaii is not an exotic vacation location….It’s firmly middlebrow…Unless, of course, you think that going outside the DC beltway is a long trip.
Hawaii’s Congressional delegation weighed in too:
The comments, received a lot of backlash from Hawaii’s representatives in Washington.
“She’s a bit of a fool that’s the only thing you can say,” said Rep. Neil Abercrombie. ” Don’t forget Cokie Roberts and the whole Washington crowd live in a kind of an incestuous relationship to one another, they talk to one another, they see one another, they know nothing about ordinary people.”
In a statement, Senator Daniel Akaka said calling Hawaii “foreign” does a disservice to the hardworking patriotic Americans who call Hawaii home.
(emphasis mine)
I rather imagine that Senator Daniel Inouye, who lost his arm serving this country, did not have a quote suitable for publication.
Back in 1996, Thomas “The Mustache of Pablum” Friedman had a theory:
So I’ve had this thesis for a long time and came here to Hamburger University at McDonald’s headquarters to finally test it out. The thesis is this: No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.
The McDonald’s folks confirmed it for me. I feared the exception would be the Falklands war, but Argentina didn’t get its first McDonald’s until 1986, four years after that war with Britain. Civil wars don’t count: McDonald’s in Moscow delivered burgers to both sides in the fight between pro-and anti-Yeltsin forces in 1993.
You know, you would do more for the betterment of humanity, if you flipped burgers, as opposed to writing OP/EDs for the Times.
H/T Matthew Yglesias, who gives us this picture of the Tbilisi McDonalds:
Courtesy Miss Cellania
MaryAnne Geivett Tebedo Republican state senator from Colorado Springs….But of Course.
Let’s see…John Sidney McCain III cheated on his first wife, with his second wife, and somehow this is a problem for Obama?
Seriously, this guy is why Rachael Maddow doesn’t have her own show? Disgraceful.
Verified Identity Pass, Inc., which operates the “Clear” program lost 33,000 customers’ records when an unencrypted laptop was stolen.
While it was recovered a week later, what happened to the data is unclear.
Among the data was:
Which one could describe as an “identity theft kit” for 33,000 people, and since the program also collects the following:
It could have been much worse.
Security expert Bruce Schneier analyzes this sort of “trusted traveler” program, and finds it wanting from a security standpoint:
I think of Clear as a $100 service that tells terrorists if the F.B.I. is on to them or not. Why in the world would we provide terrorists with this ability?
Andrea Mitchell, Roger Simon and Mike Barnicle are all sitting around saying that John Sidney McCain III is an honorable man, and that the only way that he would sign off on the current attack ads is if he were completely out of the loop.
Because he’s just so honorable…..and, it appears, so bloody senile.
Wankers and tools.
We have a winner in the wanker press competition, coming, not surprisingly, from the Wall Street Journal.
Writer Amy Chozick is suggesting that with much of the American public overweight, that Barack Obama might be too fit to be president!!!!
But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.
So, this is the new meme of the Kule Kidz inside the Beltway, huh? as opposed to this adulatory coverage of Bush and Rice about their “intense” exercise regimes.
So, is Obama too skinny, or too black?
This time, it’s his chief foreign policy guy, Randy Scheunemann, who Achmed Chalabi, Iranian agent, corrupt banker, and general con man calls a “Close Friend.”
As Lionel Beehner puts it, “What puzzles me is his long and distinguished résumé of being wrong on pretty much every major foreign policy issue of our time.”