Mario Piperni dot Com

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This guy’s craziness has no bounds.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the United States is attempting to thwart the return of mankind’s savior, according to reports from Al Arabiya, a television news station based in Dubai.

Ahmadinejad reportedly claims he has documented evidence that the U.S. is blocking the return of Mahdi, the Imam believed by Muslims to be the savior.

“We have documented proof that they believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world,” Ahmadinejad said during a speech on Monday, according to Al Arabiya.

“They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the grounds for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule.”

As frighteningly ridiculous as his words are, what is more frightening is that I agree with this madman on his next point.

“In Afghanistan, they are caught like an animal in a quagmire. But instead of pulling their troops out to save themselves, they are deploying more soldiers. Even if they stay in Afghanistan for another 50 years they will be forced to leave with disgrace — because this is a historical experience.”

I fear he is right.

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Another reason to be glad John McCain is not president.

The Afghanistan troop surge…

Well, I’m not so much concerned about the number because I understand that it may be additional allied troops to help out, too. I’d like to look at the overall strategy. I would like to see the emphasis on succeeding, not on an exit strategy.

Greta, the exit strategy takes care of itself once you succeed just as it did in Iraq. But I’d like to hear the whole thing. I hope the president will make the right decision here. And I would like to support him if he does.

Way to go, John. Approach Afghanistan with the same blind idiotic passion as you did with Iraq. Send in more American troops in without a clue as to how you’ll get them out or as to what a victory would even look like.  As for “success” in Iraq, last time I checked, there were still 130,000 American troops in that godforsaken country.

This is the same John McCain who claimed he’d have no problem with American troops being in Iraq for another 100 years. Having served in the military and as a POW does not necessarily make one a competent military strategist.  John McCain, fraud extraordinaire, demonstrates this point every time he opens up his silly mouth.

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It appears a decision has been made on Afghanistan.

President Obama has conducted a final meeting on his military review for Afghanistan, administration officials said, and he is planning to explain his decision in an address to the nation next Tuesday.

“After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision, and he will announce that decision within days,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday morning.

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The conversation settled around sending about 30,000 more American troops, two officials said, the first of which would deploy early next year to be in place in southern or eastern Afghanistan by the spring. The troop reinforcements would most likely be sent in waves, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss war strategy.

The entire Afghanistan situation is a lose-lose situation for Obama.  History as well as the last eight years tells us that this war is almost impossible to win.  Yet pulling out leaves Afghans in the hands of the Taliban. As well it would weaken the president’s national security credentials and leave him open to claims that he is not fighting the war on terror.

Sending in more troops will only extend the war and put more American soldiers in harms way.  There is no immediate clear way out of this disastrous war and there probably never will be.

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One of our readers and contributors wrote this piece back in July. With the holidays and festivities soon upon us and American soldiers still fighting two wars, Janine asked if I’d repost her article in tribute to friends and family in Iraq and Afghanistan and to all brave men and women fighting for peace and freedom everywhere.

Janine, gladly.

-mario

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A close friend told me he joined the Army to see the world and joked he didn’t realize how much of the world was covered in desert. His comment brought to mind the beginning of the War on Terror and resulting 24/7 news channels’ courting of War. There were ceaseless maps, diagrams, experts, embed reports, and when war casualties ensued– reports of how many died that particular day complete with a profile or two of selected fallen. All other news was relegated to bottom screen crawls or sound bite news seconds.

Over the last six years News has lost interest. It’s taken more glamorous mistresses than old ugly conflicts and relegated its war maps, diagrams, experts, and embedded sweethearts to the country house. News’s most recent 24/7 paramours have been a celebrity death complete with medical and death experts, familial gets, and a grave expert (huh?); the Sotomayor hearings with legal and reverse racism experts; the Dem/Repub health care reform stalemate with health care and political experts; the policeman/homeowner incident with legal and racism experts; and the most gleaming inamorata of all, News consorting with its own self. Did it over cover a story? Is its reporting balanced? All these stories are absolutely newsworthy but should news of troop and civilian war casualties be consigned to bottom screen crawls or sound bite seconds?

Our troops have been dispatched around the world by this Nation to defend her interests. Sometimes these individuals are in mid-desert with no amenities or hygiene products, living with sand in their eyes, mouth, ears and soul. When they do return to Base the store shelves are often empty and some of our troops have no mail, no pedestrian news of home. When these individuals die, their deaths impact whole families and towns. We can but imagine the impact on significant others who have had their lives fragmented in a roadside bomb instant, on now motherless/fatherless children who are either too young to understand anything beyond Mommy or Daddy won’t be home to push them on a swing anymore or old enough to understand one parent can no longer attend their life events.

No matter your feelings about war, about violence, these enlisted men and women deserve our everyday thanks and recognition. They deserve to be more than a news afterthought or statistical crawl at the bottom of the screen. They deserve to know our Nation’s people appreciate them. Hence, if moved to do so, adopt a soldier if you can, or send the occasional anonymous care package or write letters, anything to let these men and women who fight and die to protect how we live know we acknowledge their sacrifice, that they aren’t an afterthought, they are lead stories in our hearts and prayers, let them know they will never be reduced to a news crawl at the bottom of our thoughts.
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Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is one of the brighter and more honest guys in Congress. Here he is explaining why Dick Cheney’s comments on Afghanistan should be ignored…along with everything else The Dick has to say about anything.
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Perhaps as history suggests, the Afghanistan conflict is not a winnable war and to accuse the President of dithering is hypocrisy of the highest order. Cheney’s Iraq folly has much to do with the current problems in Afghanistan.

Let me illustrate again the only place where Cheney and his toady George belong.

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Gets you thinking…

The United States spends about $3.6 billion a month in Afghanistan, according to data provided by the Congressional Research Service.

The average cost per month is calculated at an average 51,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but that number likely will go higher with the 68,000 troops the Obama administration already is planning on having in that country, and could double if President Barack Obama backs a reported request from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, to send as many as 40,000 more troops to the country.

The cost of sending one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for one year is $1 million versus an estimated $12,000 for an Afghani soldier, according to Steve Daggett, a specialist with the Congressional Research Service. Those numbers fall within the calculations that the Obama administration has been using. The Obama administration is calculating $1 billion per 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan.

I know it’s unfair to compare the cost of running a war with the battle for health care reform but those are crazy numbers they’re throwing around.  If a war in Afghanistan cannot be won, at what point do they say, Enough! Continuing that war for another 10 years will equal the entire cost of the Baucus health care proposal for the same period of time.

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This is disturbing.

Private security guards at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were pressured to participate in naked pool parties and perform sex acts to gain promotions or assignment to preferable shifts, according to one of 12 guards who have gone public with their complaints.

[A] U.S. military veteran, said top supervisors of the ArmorGroup were not only aware of the “deviant sexual acts” but helped to organize them.

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The State Department said it was investigating the allegations and the circumstances surrounding the photographs which show naked and barely clothed men fondling one another. The guard who spoke with ABC News said the drunken parties had been held regularly for at least a year and a half.

In June 2007, the State Department warned “the security of the US embassy in Kabul is in jeopardy” because of “deficiencies” on the part of ArmorGroup.

ABC video.

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There is a lot to admire in the way President Obama is handling the dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  True to his campaign promise of listening to his commanders on the ground, he has adjusted his actions in keeping with the military advice he’s receiving.

While still committed to ending American involvement in Iraq, he has changed the timing of troop withdrawal.  Troop levels should stay at where they now are until year’s end unless there’s reason to remove them earlier.  This is a shift from his campaign talk of withdrawing a brigade a month but consistent with what Obama has said about how he’d handle Iraq.

“Let me be clear: Ending this war is not going to be easy. There will be dangers involved — just as there would be dangers involved with staying indefinitely. We will have to make tactical adjustments, listening to our commanders on the ground, to ensure that our interests in a stable Iraq are met, and to make sure that our troops are secure.”

The president’s decision to not release torture photos was on the advice of his commanders who felt it would put American troops in further danger.  No doubt, another reason is the president’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia and the understanding that there is no need in inflaming Muslims at this time.

As for Afghanistan, Max Boot writes…

President Obama and his aides continue to impress with their handling of Afghanistan. Not only have they approved a major troop increase and a de facto commitment to nation-building, but now they have shifted personnel to make the most effective use of the added resources and turn around a failing war effort.

As John Cole notes, Obama’s role as commander in chief is in strike contrast with that of Bush.

If you don’t understand how this mindset is a recipe for more unflinching and resolute automatons like Bush, marching us into oblivion because they are determined to “not blink” or “show weakness,” then you are part of the problem.

How do we know this?  Here’s one example…

The so-called Sunni Awakening, in which American forces formed tactical alliances with local sheikhs, has been credited with dampening the insurgency in much of Iraq. But new evidence suggests that the Sunnis were offering the same deal as early as 2004—one that was eagerly embraced by commanders on the ground, but rejected out of hand at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

See what happens when you actually elect a president with a functioning brain.

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Obama's Policy on Afghanistan/Pakistan

“And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you.”  -President Barack Obama

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that President Obama is dead-down serious in taking on the threat of terrorism head on. Today he announced his Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy.

The highlights:

• An additional 4000 troops will be sent into Afghanistan on top of the 17,000 previously announced.
• Obama described the mission as follows.  “So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”
• Hundreds of civilians will be sent to the region to aid in the effort.
• No timeline was given as to when the U.S. will withdraw its troops.
• American casualties in Afghanistan increased by 35% in 2008.
• The Pakistani government must make a greater effort in dealing with the terrorist haven on its Afghan border.
• The $2 billion in annual funding for the war will increased by 60% this year.

The days of chest pounding are over as is the belief that terrorism can be defeated with guns and bullets alone.  Here is how the president described it.

“There is an uncompromising core of the Taliban. They must be met with force, and they must be defeated. But there are also those who have taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price. These Afghans must have the option to choose a different course. That is why we will work with local leaders, the Afghan government, and international partners to have a reconciliation process in every province. As their ranks dwindle, an enemy that has nothing to offer the Afghan people but terror and repression must be further isolated. And we will continue to support the basic human rights of all Afghans – including women and girls.”

Smart.

Here’s the speech.

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