What Makes a Just Assassination?

How do we measure evil? And how do we celebrate it?

Soldiers are brave and demand respect, especially those that have been run around the middles east for the past 10 years making oil cheaper for the rest of the world, and making jobs and contracts for weapons and construction industries. These soldiers deserve to celebrate a victory. They were told from the start that this the Afghanistan war was about Osama Bin Laden and weapons of mass destruction were, this was the cause that made many join the fight, whether this is right or wrong is a separate question. These soldiers have been endanger and away from their families over essentially a gigantic lie. The killing of Osama Bin Lade is a moment where these soldiers can claim a victory in the reasons that they joined to fight in the first place, and in the context of their experience we should not detract from this victory, not a victory of violence or a victory over any meaningful or worthwhile military or political goal but a victory psychologically over all of the lies told to soldiers over the course of this war.

Not everything should be made into a political statement. People's identify with conflict and their subsequent measure of victory is a hard thing to challenge, especially in the context of a real experience and a perspective. However, it is important also to consider as a separate issue the ethical and political consequence of actions, especially the military ones that have occurred. As soldiers and citizen this need to happen in the realm of thought not in the realm of statements. There is a serious ethical and political reality to the killing of Osama but, there is also a reality to the individuals who have been their and have lived the lie and the struggle that has been these last couple of wars.  There is little denying that targeted assassinations are unethical. Anyone arguing otherwise and claims that assassination (murder) is justifiable when the person in question is killer of innocent civilians should be ready to assassinate the current and past president of the USA (for explanation see charts).

There is away of respecting both the personal and political contexts of the Osama Bin Laden assassination, some  the both require empathy, reason and a heterodox political understanding that is non-dogmatic nor hypocritical. One group can celebrate something psychological and personal, while another can critique and remand something political.

Osama Bin Laden- 9.11.2001 ---- Civilian Death Toll:  2,752 

President Bush --Iraq War- 0319.2003:

Year	Civilian deaths
2003	12,079
2004	10,834
2005	15,034
2006	27,850
2007	24,677
2008	9,245
2009	4,681
2010	3,576

Afghanistan War Civilian Casualities -- Presient Obama

More: Guardian Afghanistan civilian causalities and who did it

An interview with Noam Chomsky Environment, Market Ecomics, Nuclear War, Tea Party, Identity and Story Manegment, Relationship between Vietnam and Iraq, A hopeful public inteligence...

An interview with Noam Chomsky Environment, Market Ecomics, Nuclear War, Tea Party, Identity and Story Manegment, Relationship between Vietnam and Iraq, A hopeful public inteligence...

WikiLeaks Docs: US Allowed Iraqi Gov’t to Torture & Murder

The United Nations chief investigator on torture is calling on the Obama administration to order a full investigation of the role of US forces in human rights abuses in Iraq. Manfred Nowak’s call came after the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks released nearly 400,000 classified US military documents that detail how US forces did nothing to stop reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers. In addition, the WikiLeaks war logs show at least 15,000 (9/11 claimed around 2,500 lives) more Iraqi civilians have died in Iraq than previously thought. In the streets of Baghdad, local residents say the leaked documents confirm what they have known for years.

Salah, Baghdad resident: "I think there is no new information, because all Iraqis witnessed the events following the invasion and those following the war. At least every family has a detainee who was tortured in prison, whether taken by Iraqi or foreign forces, or they know someone who was killed, either by Iraqi or foreign forces. This is something we all know about. We don’t need documents to know this. The only thing is that these documents are official confirmation."

The United States of America Has Gone Mad - British Author John le Carré

Pentagon Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on Upcoming Iraq War Wikileaks Docs

Noam Chomsky: More Cancer in Fallujah than Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

WikiLeaks Julian Assange: "Start imagining the war or stop supporting it"

Injustice in the age of Obama: Mother Murder by US military, no justice no proof

Since being the defendant in about six trials after I was arrested for protesting the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, it’s my experience that the police lie. Period.

However the lies don’t stop at street law enforcement level. From lies about WMD and connections to "al Qaeda," almost every institution of so-called authority - the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, FBI, all the way up to the Oval Office and back down - lie. Not white lies, but big, Mother of all BS (MOAB) lies that lead to the destruction of innocent lives. I.F Stone was most definitely on the ball when he proclaimed, "Governments lie".

Having clarified that, I would now like to examine a case that should be enshrined in the travesty of the US Justice Hall of Shame.

Pentagon braces for Iraq Wikileaks

The Pentagon has assembled a 120-member team to prepare for the expected publication of some 400,000 Iraq war documents on the Wikileaks website.

The documents are thought to concern battle activity, Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties.

Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the timing of the leak remained unclear but are preparing for it to be as early as Monday or Tuesday - a possibility raised in previous WikiLeaks statements.

The Pentagon said on Sunday it wants the documents back to avoid "potentially damaging" information being released.

'Significant file'

Lapan said the files were from an Iraq-based database that contained "significant acts, unit-level reporting, tactical reports, things of that nature".If confirmed, the leak would be much larger than the record-breaking release of more than 70,000 Afghan war documents in July, which stoked debate about the nine-year-old conflict but did not contain major revelations.

Spencer Ackerman, a journalist who has covered Wikileaks extensively, told Al Jazeera this particular release of documents would dwarf Wikileaks' July publication of more than 70,000 Afghan war files.

Afghanistan: Does anyone in the US still care?

The invasion of Afghanistan’s ninth anniversary passed in DC this week with hardly a notice. 

Media desperate to illustrate the story flocked to a small demonstration of less than two dozen veterans of the so-called global wars on terror.  A rag-tag group of angry, disillusioned and, most of all, disappointed vets gathered in front of Walter Reed Army Medical Center where thousands upon thousands of service members have returned from war to treat their wounds.

The veterans there for the demonstration held a ceremony at the gates of the iconic hospital and placed nine yellow roses - one for each year of the war in Afghanistan - with almost military precision, the occasional salute replaced with a peace sign, before setting off on a six-mile march to Capitol Hill. 

At UN Summit, Brazil Criticizes US Invasion of Iraq

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim spoke at the UN and openly criticized the US invasion of Iraq.

Celso Amorim: "When President Lula first spoke in this hall in 2003, the world lived under the shadow of the invasion of Iraq. We hope that we learned the lessons from that episode. The blind faith in intelligence reports tailored to justify political goals must be rejected. We must ban, once and for all, the use of force inconsistent with international law."

Iraq and Afghanistan

At Least 56 Killed in Iraq Violence

In Iraq, at least fifty-six people were killed Sunday in a string of attacks. Six car bombings were carried out in Baghdad, and a suicide bomber struck in Fallujah. More than 100 people were wounded. It was Iraq’s worst day of violence since the US declared the nominal end of combat operations earlier this month. 

NATO Bombing Kills 7 in Afghan Village

In other Afghan news, at least seven people were killed in a NATO bombing hours after the polls closed. The US-led NATO force says the victims were Taliban militants, but local residents said at least some, if not all, of the dead were civilians. One man said he had just helped an elderly victim cast his vote in the elections earlier that day.

Villager: "The government asked us to come and vote to put a candidate in parliament, but why are they bombing us? Yesterday I carried this old man to cast his vote, and this is the result: they dropped a bomb on him."

US Grants itself Global Assassination Permit

Obama Administration Sued over Plan to Assassinate US Citizens

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have sued the Obama administration over its claim to have the authority to assassinate US citizens accused of terrorism links abroad. Earlier this year, the Obama administration added the US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to a CIA list of targets for capture or killing. Al-Awlaki is currently living in Yemen.

Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU: "One of the dangers with this kind of program, a targeted killing program, is that we will end up killing the wrong people. Dozens of times we’ve detained people as terrorists only to find out later that the evidence was weak, nonexistent or wrong. At least with detention there’s the possibility of a court challenge or the possibility of appeal, but there’s no appeal from a drone. There’s no appeal from a death sentence after it’s imposed."

Vince Warren is executive director at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Vince Warren: "If we were to set the precedent of going around the world and killing people that the United States thinks are suspects, that would be setting probably one of the most dangerous precedents out there, because there would be nothing to stop, for example, China from targeting its citizens in the United States.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and the Future of War

Obama to Declare End to Combat Operations in Iraq

President Obama is preparing to officially declare the end of US combat operations in Iraq seven-and-a-half years after the US invasion. Obama will make the announcement in a nationally televised speech tonight from the Oval Office. He gave a preview of his speech in his weekly radio address over the weekend.

President Obama: "On Tuesday, after more than seven years, the United States of America will end its combat mission in Iraq and take an important step forward in responsibly ending the Iraq war. As a candid ate for this office, I pledged I would end this war. As president, that’s what I’m doing." (bull shit)

US war- Afghanistan and Iraq

US Withdraws Last Combat Brigade from Iraq, But 56,000 Troops Remain

The US has officially withdrawn its last designated combat brigade from Iraq, two weeks ahead of a deadline for the withdrawal of some 14,000 troops. In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon said the last combat brigade crossed over into Kuwait earlier today. Although the withdrawal has been hailed as a major milestone in the Iraq war and an end to combat operations, most of the remaining 56,000 US troops are still trained in combat and will continue to carry out armed attacks. The Obama administration also plans to double its private military force in Iraq to an estimated 7,000 contractors. According to the New York Times, the bulk of the private military force will be deployed at five compounds across Iraq, where they’ll perform duties including operating drones, deploying reaction forces and operating radars to detect militant attacks. In an interview on Democracy Now!earlier this month, independent journalist Jeremy Scahill said the Obama administration’s withdrawal plan amounts to a rebranded occupation.

Jeremy Scahill: "What is essentially unfolding here is a downsized and rebranded occupation, Obama-style, that is going to necessitate a surge in private forces. The State Department is asking for MRAP vehicles, armored vehicles, for Black Hawk helicopters and for these paramilitary forces. So, yes, you can say that officially combat has ended, but in reality you’re continuing it through the back door by bringing in these paramilitary forces and classifying them as diplomatic security, which was Bush’s game from the very beginning."

News?

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NY Limits "Stop and Frisk" Database
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US Citizen Remains on No-Fly List After Returning Home
Appeals Court Upholds Sentence for Gitmo Whistleblower