Cant Keep Quiet!

On May 31st, I posted a story about how the United States government had funded terrorist broadcasting on al Hurra television network in the Middle East. This happened because not a single one of the executives or officials at al Hurra spoke Arabic.

Why? Why don’t they have any Arabic speakers among their personnel?

I can’t say for sure but I can say that over 11,000 service members have been discharged from the military in the last 14 years. It continues to happen to this day even though the military is having trouble meeting recruiting quotas and desperately needs members to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of these 11,000, 300 were speakers of critical languages.

Why were they discharged? They were openly gay.

When the military acts against their own best interests because of a archaic anti-gay policy something needs to be done.

Robert Greenwald at Brave New Foundation has a new video out about the ban.

You can also help by signing the petition to your Member of Congress to sign the Military Readiness Enhancement Act.

When I read about our army giving weapons to Sunni insurgents earlier this week I was confused. After all, weren’t these the same people who were fighting and killing U.S. troops? Why would we want to help them kill more of our troops.

Apparently, a promise to use the weapons to fight Al Qaeda is enough to win over the commanders of our troops.

When I first read about this I thought of the saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It turns out I wasn’t the only one. There is, however, a bit of a problem with this type of thinking. It ignores the fact that when your “enemy” is no longer around, your “friend” may revert back to being your enemy.

It turns out I wasn’t the only one to remember that saying in regards to this story. Jon Stewart over at The Daily Show had this very funny spin on the issue. Click on the picture below to be taken Crooks and Liars to see the clip of the show.

The U.S. military death toll in Iraq has reached passed 3,500. The Department of Defense has confirmed the deaths of 3,492 troops. Eleven more have been reported but are as yet unconfirmed.

As of 8:00 PM Eastern time there have been 3,503 military deaths in Iraq.

Information obtained by Iraq Coalition Casualties

Doonesbury had a great Memorial Day cartoon yesterday. I thought I’d share it with you all in the remote chance you didn’t see it.

Sadly, there are so many names in a little over a year that this will have to be continued next week.

A year ago this Memorial Day I posted a very lengthy but simple post to honor those who had fallen in Iraq or Afghanistan. All I did was post the year headings and then all the names of those who had died. It took three days to compile the list and was over 2,500 names for both wars combined.

Since that Memorial Day a year ago, 980 troops have died in Iraq alone. Bush has promised that this summer will be “bloody.” He’s not the only one promising a “bloody” summer.

Stephen Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of a group that spent weeks in Iraq assessing the situation for Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, agreed that more American deaths were likely.

“The biggest change in their (insurgent and militia) tactics is that they’ve changed to exploit the vulnerabilities we’ve opened ourselves up to. They see a new, small American base in their neighborhood, three blocks away, and they’re going to car bomb it,” said Biddle.

“We’re going to see a spike in the short term,” said Biddle. “But the likelihood is that in six months we’ll see a drop in casualties as these areas become more secure. The problem is, what about the rest of the country?”

I can’t even think of anything else to write at this time.