war archive at FraudWasteAbuse

Archive for the 'war' Category

Apr

In God we trust, all others bring data

By JSwan 17 Comments

Categories: healthcare, War on Terror, government, war, stats, health care and universal healthcare

Since joining FraudWasteAbuse I’ve had several good article ideas, each of which was eventually tossed out for lack of data. (Sorry for the lame coffee article - it was all I had left!)

For example: a few months ago I read two unrelated articles - one that tallied the number of terrorism related deaths in the USA over the last ten years, the other that tallied the number of deaths caused by deer-vehicle crashes in the same time span. While reading the deer article I made a surprising connection: For nine of the last ten years, deer have killed more people on American soil than terrorists (2001 being the exception). For April 17th, I planed on writing an article about fear, death, and taxes based on this data.

Alas, I could not find the data needed to support the article and thus it was nixed. It was not due to a lack of effort.

And that made me wonder: Why is good data so hard to find? With the 2008 elections coming up and all the talk about universal health-care, the war on terror, illegal farm subsidies, and CO2 emissions; isn’t data - which provides us the ability to measure impact and effectiveness - of dire importance?

Without good data analysis to prove or disprove the merits of a particular policy, aren’t we destined to argue endlessly without truly comprehending the significance of our actions as a nation? Isn’t it likely that, without meaningful data, bad policies will continue and good policies will be eliminated simply because the policy fit or didn’t fit into some political ideal that can be proven wrong, but hasn’t been? Isn’t data the key to accountability?

So where is the data politicians keep spouting off about? I want it. Show it to me. I do not want ridiculously misleading statistics, true as they may be. I want raw data that I can analyze myself should I choose to do so. I want to see people like Hans Rosling analyzing the data and debunking myths caused by ignorance. I want to know the facts behind the facts, not perspectives on data designed to manipulate my opinion. Where is it?

Tiger got to hunt,
bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder,
“Why, why, why?”

Tiger got to sleep,
bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Mar

A guide to eating a “delicious” MRE

By FraudWasteAbuse 66 Comments

Categories: fun, military, food, feature and war

Ah, the MRE. That portable, “tasty” meal eaten by US troops in the field, or when one’s unit doesn’t have anything else with which to feed people. As someone who has been in the military, I’ve eaten my share of them. They seem really cool at first, but that coolness factor wears off after about your second or third MRE. That’s when they start tasting the same.

A few years ago, my Air National Guard unit went to South Dakota for a two-week training exercise with the Army. During that time we had three meals a day: one hot meal and two MREs. Because we were in the Air Force and not the Army, we weren’t too keen on playing Army games and pretending we were at war. So we would leave our compound and go to McDonald’s or something similar for one of those meals. This resulted in a large collection of MREs for myself. After sitting in my basement at room temperature for the last three years, a good friend of mine really wanted to try one. So, I decided to document his experience for you all to see.

Continue reading ‘A guide to eating a “delicious” MRE’

Mar

Why I fled George Bush’s war

By FraudWasteAbuse 2 Comments

Categories: news, politics, Islam, military, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, crime, war, Bush, liberty and fascism

[digg=http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Why_I_fled_George_Bush_s_war_2]

Joshua Key, 28, was a poor, uneducated Oklahoma country boy who saw the U.S. army and its promised benefits — from free health care to career training — as the ticket to a better life. In 2002, not yet 24 but already married and the father of two , Key enlisted. He says his recruiting officer promised he’d never be deployed abroad, but a year later he was in Iraq. Only 24 hours after arriving, as Key recounts in The Deserter’s Tale (Anansi), he experienced his first doubts about what he and his fellow soldiers were doing there.

I was scared out of my wits that first day in Ramadi. Our own air force had just finished bombing these people, but as soon as we got out of our vehicles we began patrolling their streets, on foot. With nearly 100 lb. of weaponry, equipment and clothing on my back, I was about as mobile as a cow. It was just my platoon, 20 guys, walking single file through streets full of Iraqis. I could not stop thinking that anywhere, at any time, some half-starved sniper on a roof could have taken me out in no time flat. Iraqi kids surrounded me in swarms, hands out, asking for water and food. I kept hearing the last words [my wife] Brandi said to me before I flew out: “Don’t you let those terrorists near you, Josh. Even if they are kids. Get them before they get you.”

I was awakened at 3 a.m. that first night and told to get my ass up quickly because in one hour we were going to raid a house full of terrorists. Capt. Conde and some sergeants showed me and my squad mates a satellite photo of a house and a drawing of the layout of the inside. Our assignment was to blow off the door, burst into the house, raid it fast and raid it good — looking for contraband, caches of weapons, signs of terrorists or terrorist activity, then rounding up the men and getting out damn fast. The longer we stayed in any one location, the longer somebody would have to put us in the sights of a rocket-propelled grenade or lob mortars at us.

Read the rest here.

Mar

Even the Nazis got a trial

By FraudWasteAbuse 2 Comments

Categories: news, politics, Iraq, War on Terror, law, terrorism, government, Republicans, war, Afghanistan, Bill of Rights, drugs, rights, Bush, civil rights, liberty, constitution, fascism, Nazis, Guantanamo, War on Drugs, Guantanamo Bay, Hitler and Nazi

Even the worst of the Nazis got a trial, even though the trial was a sham. The indictments were created ex post facto and were not based on any nation’s law. Even US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. But I digress.

The top Nazis could get a trial despite plunging Europe into its most destructive war and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people. Yet the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are somehow undeserving of a trial because they’re too barbaric, or happened to be kidnapped and sold to the Americans for a cash reward. Forgive me if I think the Nazis were a bit more dangerous and barbaric than some religious fanatics upset that a foreign military started shooting up their country.

Supporters of detaining alleged terrorists without trial posit that we did the same things with captured Germans and Japanese during World War II. The problem with trying to classify captured terrorists as prisoners of war is that we are not at war. Terrorism is still considered a federal crime, and sending the military to fight the crime of terrorism doesn’t make us any more at war than sending the military to fight drug cartels makes us at war. The government doesn’t consider arrested drug dealers to be POWs, nor does declaring a “War on Drugs ” strip accused drug dealers of their right to a fair trial.

Feb

To whom does the US Constitution apply?

By FraudWasteAbuse 25 Comments

Categories: politics, Islam, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, war, Bill of Rights, rights, Bush, civil rights, liberty and constitution

There is a great debate in the United States over whether or not terrorists have the same rights as American citizens, or even if terrorists have any rights under the Constitution at all. President Bush has maintained that captured terrorists are enemy combatants, and do not have the rights an privileges guaranteed by the Constitution. Bush is so adamant that terrorists do not have rights under US law that they are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, where Cuba technically has sovereignty even though the United States has effective legal control.

Another popular claim is that captured terrorists are actually prisoners of war. Prisoners of war do not typically get to challenge their detention and so captured terrorists must be held until hostilities have ceased.

Some even go as far as claiming that not even illegal immigrants have rights under the Constitution, because the Constitution only applies to American citizens.

There are several flaws in these claims. I’ll address the first one in this post and cover the others later. First, let’s evaluate the notion that non-Americans do not have constitutional rights. If one reads through the Constitution it becomes apparent that all references to “citizens” in the Constitution have nothing to do with the rights of the people. Most references are rules as to how one can participate in the political/election process. In fact, the Bill of Rights makes no distinctions between citizens and non-citizens.

Consider this: How can we be sure of our government’s claims that a suspected foreign terrorist is indeed a foreign terrorist until that person has had a fair and impartial trial to determine his status? What is to prevent an American citizen from being arrested, detained, and accused of being a foreign terrorist? That person would have no way to confront his accusers and prove his innocence.

This leads me to my conclusion. In truth, the Constitution does not apply to non-Americans. It doesn’t even apply to American citizens. The Constitution is a contract between the federal government and the states, and thus applies to the federal government. The Constitution itself is a list of rules and powers of the federal government. It is specifically enumerated and if it isn’t listed, the government isn’t allowed to do it. The Bill of Rights is a list of things the federal government may not do. Nowhere does it make an exception for non-citizens, terrorism, etc.

Feb

Americans more likely than Muslims to support attacks on civilians

By FraudWasteAbuse 16 Comments

Categories: politics, Islam, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, war and Osama bin Laden

According to a recent poll done by the University of Maryland, Americans are more likely to support attacks against civilians than citizens of every other Muslim country except Nigeria. This poll challenges the popular belief that Islam is a religion of war and the United States is a nation of peace.

Percentage of population agreeing that “bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” are “never justified:”

Pakistan: 86%
Bangladesh: 81%
Indonesia: 74%
United States: 46%

WASHINGTON - Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.

The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland’s prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that “bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” are “never justified,” while 24 percent believe these attacks are “often or sometimes justified.”

Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world’s most-populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are “never justified”; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.

Click here to read more.

Feb

Why do they hate us?

By FraudWasteAbuse 11 Comments

Categories: politics, Islam, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, war, Afghanistan, Bush and Osama bin Laden

For a while after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 George Bush made the claim that the terrorists attacked us because they hate our freedoms. Here’s an excerpt from a speech George Bush gave in 2002:

You just need to know it’s still a dangerous period in Afghanistan. There’s still a lot of killers roaming around, and they hate America. They hate us because we’re free. Then cannot stand the thought that we have freedom of religion in America; that we respect each other based upon our personal religious beliefs. They cannot stand the thought that there’s honest political discourse. There’s free press — confident they hate that. They hate us. And so, wherever they try to hide, we’re going to get ‘em. There’s no cave dark enough or deep enough from the United States of America.

However, this meme doesn’t seems to be as played up as much as it used to be. Even Osama bin Laden himself has discounted it:

If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn’t attack Sweden, for example.

The current conventional “wisdom” among supporters of the president seems to be that the terrorists hate us and want to kill us because they are Muslims and we are not. But how much truth does this assertion really have?[digg=http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Why_do_the_terrorists_hate_and_want_to_kill_us]

It is true that much of the Muslim world finds many aspects of Western and American culture highly offensive. But it’s hard to find much evidence to support the claim that we are being attacked because they find us offensive. Most people typically are not going to be motivated to kill people on the other side of the planet because they watch trashy TV.

We can gather evidence for what motivates terrorists from looking at history. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan offers us some clues. In 1979 the Soviet Union, a communist and atheistic state, invaded the Muslim country of Afghanistan. In response to this, Osama bin Laden and other non-Afghan Muslims came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, not because the Soviets were non-Muslim atheists, but because they were waging a brutal invasion. Once the last of the invading troops left in 1989, war with the Soviet Union was not pursued.

The US government has a hard time learning from history. In this case, the US government is caught in a vicious cycle. Their solution to terrorism is to do more of the very thing that motivates terrorists in the first place.

The terrorists have made it very clear as to why they attack us. It is not because of our freedoms or because we are not Muslim. The two grievances that form a common theme among terrorist groups are our government’s bullying and meddling in the Middle East and its lopsided support for Israel.

Unfortunately, it is not easy to have true debate with those who support the war in Iraq and the war on terror unwaveringly. To them, the very idea that the United States might be partly to blame for terrorism is unacceptable and cannot or should not be considered, and the United States is only seen as a force of good in the world.

We will have to see how long our government can play with fire before it realizes how much the American people are getting burned.