The Senate votes to stop production of the useless F-22s and rejects a bill to allow concealed guns across state lines. The F-22 is a another example of corporate welfare gone awry, not to mention the F-35 will replace all jobs lost by mothballing the F-22.

More fun about the media accusing Obama’s 4% defense budget increase of gutting defense

About bloody time. The country has been spared the images of the fallen warriors for too long.

The Pentagon will relax its ban on media coverage of returning U.S. war dead by allowing families to decide whether to allow photos and television footage of the flag-draped coffins of their loved ones, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday.

Gates ordered the change after reviewing a 1991 ban that prevents news organizations from recording images of war dead arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the Pentagon has its main mortuary.

After the humiliating rebuke by Paul Wolfowitz (who never served in the military), for daring stand up to Donald Rumsfeld (who also never served in the military) and insist that we needed more troops on the ground in Iraq, Shinseki has been appointed to head Veterans Affairs by Obama. For more on the disgraceful manner in which General Shinseki was treated please read James Fallows in The Atlantic.

The showdown came just before the war began. Shinseki, who had direct experience with land warfare (in Vietnam) and post-combat occupation (in the Balkans), was urging that the U.S. go in with a force large enough to ensure that it could maintain order and genuinely control Iraq’s sizable territory and potentially fractious society after it ousted Saddam. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz hated this whole idea.

Rumsfeld rightly suffered his own well deserved disgrace when he was forced out of office after the GOP were slaughtered during the 2006 election cycle. That slaughter being widely attributed to the poor handling of the Iraq war as envisioned in Rumsfeld’s ‘lighter, faster, deadlier’ doctrine which turned out to be a disaster.

Warning! Graphic video
This story holds some special significance for me. While I did not know the soldiers killed or their families I do have a good friend who was also lied to by the military regarding his son’s death in Fallujah. His death was not a friendly fire incident, Alex was killed after running out of ammo despite calling for two days for resupply. The military shows a huge lack of respect for the families when they lie to cover their own errors, not just lie but shred the evidence.

Salon has a powerful article up regarding one such incident and the stress it causes all the soldiers involved.

Last month, Salon published a story reporting that U.S. Army Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Roger Suarez were killed by U.S. tank fire in Ramadi, Iraq, in late 2006, in an incident partially captured on video, but that an Army investigation instead blamed their deaths on enemy action. Now Salon has learned that documents relating to the two men were shredded hours after the story was published.

This video contains graphic video and coarse language. It was very hard for me to watch because I know that my son lived this life almost daily in Iraq… hearing the adrenalin in the soldiers’ voices is very painful. Please note their is a mortally wounded soldier straining in this video, you may not want to watch.

On August 22, 2008 it was reported that a US air strike on a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan had resulted in thirty deaths.

AP) U.S.-led troops attacked a compound where Taliban leaders were meeting in western Afghanistan, killing 30 militants, American and Afghan military officials said Friday.

The coalition was striking back against insurgents opposed to the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai who have stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan troops.

The coalition said its troops called in airstrikes on the compound in the Shindand district of Herat province on Thursday.

Some 30 militants were killed and five others were detained, spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said. The troops found a haul of weapons and ammunition inside the compound, he said.

Afghan officials issued contradictory statements about what had happened and it was not immediately clear why they offered such differing accounts.

Now we hear the discrepancy is that more than ninety civilians, women and children, died in the air strikes.

President Hamid Karzai sacked two Afghan military commanders working with the US-led coalition after more than 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were reported to have been killed in a botched operation.

He dismissed the two men, including a senior general in western Afghanistan, for “negligence and concealing facts” following the incident in Herat province, which could prove to be one of the deadliest attacks on civilians since 2001.

We are really not accomplishing anything in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is time to step aside.

Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) consists of families with loved ones who have or are currently serving in Iraq. MFSO is often mistakenly believed to be an anti-war organization yet many members are third and fourth generation military with a proud tradition in the ideals of serving their country and are deeply entrenched in military culture, dedicated to protecting their country and first and foremost, defending the constitution.
Now 3,400 families strong, MFSO arose a few months prior to the invasion of Iraq out of concern that their loved ones dedication and sacrifice were being misused. Families questioned the legality of invading a sovereign country, claims that Iraq was an imminent threat, and feared involvement put their loved ones at risk of violating that first oath to the constitution, committing war crimes or both.
Like any organization, MFSO has suffered growing pains with huge rifts formed over issues like whether the organization should support conscientious objectors or what policy to take regarding military recruiting. The single uniting issue is that our military, our loved ones, should never have been deployed to Iraq and we need to bring our troops home at all cost.
Recent revelations that intelligence claiming Saddam Hussein was a threat were deliberately, not just mistakenly, presented to the American people to incite a build up to war have deepened the resolve of MFSO and other groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). These are our loved ones and our friends being sacrificed and misused and the sanctity of their oath defiled by deliberate factual manipulations and forgeries and we stand united to bring them home and take care of them when they get here.
Now another rift has formed splitting MFSO down the middle regarding the continued deployment and occupation of Afghanistan. MFSO has in general accepted that like World War II, Afghanistan was ‘the good war’. Lt Ehren Watada, the first officer to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq believing to do so would violate his first oath to the constitution, pleaded with his superiors to change his orders to Afghanistan so he could serve his country legally.
Our military completed their mission in Afghanistan. The Taliban were effectively run off, allowed to escape along with al Qaeda to Pakistan by our leaders, leaving our military in Afghanistan without a mission. MFSO members agree that a clear mission must be defined to honor their courage and show respect to the military serving in Afghanistan if they are to stay. Anything less is an immoral disregard for their safety.
The issue of Afghanistan has arisen again, in part because Senator Obama has suggested pulling our troops out of Iraq and refocusing upon the resurgent Taliban. Oregon MFSO, of which I am active, is amongst those chapters calling for the return of our troops, in particular our citizen soldiers, from Afghanistan.
We believe that the presence of American forces in Afghanistan depletes the already limited resources of our military and National Guard, subjects the men and women of our armed forces to unnecessary, severe attacks and serves as a recruiting tool for terrorist organizations. We believe that the continued occupation of Afghanistan threatens our national security, weakens our ability to respond to legitimate provocations and attacks and dishonors the brave service of our American forces in Afghanistan.
Oregon MFSO, IVAW and Veterans for Peace, with whom I proudly stand every Wednesday to remind people that we are at war and soldiers are dying, oppose putting more troops in harm’s way and call for a phased withdrawal of all forces in Afghanistan.