The Information Super-Frog

Ambassador opposes Afghan surge
Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador in Kabul, has written to the White House to oppose sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan. Eikenberry said President Karzai's government should first prove it would tackle corruption.

Obama may be afraid of Blackwater
Blackwater continues to do brisk business in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Obama administration may be too afraid of the firm to do anything about it, says investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.

Bribes to Iraqi officials kept Blackwater in Iraq despite the Iraqi government ordering Blackwater out of the country after the 2007 Nissour Square massacre.

"Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.

" 'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things."

Observer story

Jeremy Sivits was the first scapegoat sentenced by the courts martial: not one of the worst torturers, but the fellow who took the photos that let the world see what was going on. Gotta make an example.

Does anyone really think that commanding officers at Abu Ghraib have no responsibitlity for what was going on? If they didn't order it, they seem to have been negligent as hell. Anyway, I find Seymore Hersh a much more creditable source than Donald Rumsfield.

And some links:
Guardian article: US military prisons treating women as badly as the men

Abuse of reporters I'm linking to a LiveJournal Infojunkies post, as it contains a paragraph apparently since deleted from the Reuters site. Preach to people that "the media" are a monolithic conspiracy enemy, and when undereducated US soldiers get to boss some reporters around with guns, the reporters are "forced to insert a finger into their anuses and then lick it".

Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'

And two articulate rants:

Ted Rall:

"A year and a half late and 30,000 lives short, supporters of the war in Iraq finally admit that they were wrong [...]

They should have known better--lots of us did. Or they did know better and lied about it. Whether their integrity or their intelligence was compromised, they should never again be taken seriously.

The pro-war pundits got the biggest story of their careers dead wrong. Now a lot of people are wrongly dead. The fact that this sorry lot still draw paychecks is a tribute to America's infinite capacity for forgiveness."

Lew Rockwell:

"Peoples of the world - outraged and horrified at the US occupation of Iraq, which has decisively discredited the Bush administration and inflicted deep damage to the image of America in all lands, which has been characterized by martial law, looting, human-rights violations, and more than 10,000 dead civilians - were stunned to find all this mayhem and madness has at last received a characterization by the Commander-in-Chief: "training wheels".

Yes, that's what he called it, in the context of explaining to Republicans how it is that the US is going to transfer sovereignty. "Time to take the training wheels off," he said. The metaphor is revealing in some respect, though it is not clear precisely how. It could reveal the infantile mind of the president. It certainly reveals how the Bush administration regards Arab civilization, as essentially in need of the US Midas touch. Or it might just reveal the way the government looks at all things it is in charge of, which includes you and me. "

Say What?

"White House declares US forces would enter Iraq even if Saddam Hussein obeys order to leave." -- BBC Story More