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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.20 The Death of American Populism 03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away 03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm Media Watching
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire 03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel 03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia 03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion 03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax 03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives" 03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium High Crimes?
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid 03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda 03.16 America's Secret Prisons 03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem 03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue 03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children 03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks 03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity 03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network 03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees International
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception 03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Terrorist Nation? It Takes One to Know OneAmericans need to wake up to what the rest of the world already knows: The United States is indisputably the number one terrorist nation in the world today.
The idea that the US could be considering classifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist” organization, based upon some dubious evidence that the organization is supplying some weapons—in particular those shaped charges that have been so effective in roadside bombs against US military vehicles—is pretty preposterous when you consider the source.Whatever the truth about the activities of the Iranians, certainly when it comes to terror, the US is unrivalled in the world today. Nor are we getting any figures on the numbers of dead innocents in Afghanistan, where the blackout on reporting is even more effective than in Iraq.What is clear is that American tactics are causing an unending slaughter in both places—a slaughter that is clearly not just part of but central to the policy, and that is so serious that it has led to protests from Britain and other NATO countries that have soldiers in Afghanistan. And let’s be honest: this is no matter of “collateral damage.” It is a deliberate policy of terror. As I’ve written before, when your army is killing vastly more civilians than enemy fighters, the deaths of innocents cannot be termed “collateral damage.” It’s the deaths of enemy fighters which are the “collateral damage.” The innocents are the targets. Just consider one of the weapons being used by American forces, the so-called GBU-31. Marc Herold, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, who has been documenting the violence in Afghanistan, has investigated the use of this weapon and in a new article available at the Traprock Peace Center offers this description of how it works: “Dropped from a plane and hurtling toward its target at 300 mph, the 14-foot steel bomb uses small gears in its fins to pinpoint its path based on satellite data received by a small antenna and fed into a computer. Just before impact, a fusing device triggers a chemical reaction causing the 14-inch-wide weapon to swell to twice its size. The steel casing shatters, shooting forth 1,000 pounds of white-hot fragments traveling at speeds of 6,000 feet per second. The explosion creates a shock wave exerting thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch (psi). By comparison, a shock wave of 12 psi will knock a person down; and the injury threshold is 15 pounds psi. The pressure from the explosion of a device such as the Mark-84 JDAM can rupture lungs, burst sinus cavities and tear off limbs hundreds of feet from the blast site, according to trauma physicians. When it hits, the JDAM generates an 8,500-degree fireball, gouges a 20-foot crater as it displaces 10,000 pounds of dirt and rock and generates enough wind to knock down walls blocks away and hurl metal fragments a mile or more.“ 10-year-old victim of "successful" US bombing Herold notes that several of these terror weapons were dropped by a B-1B bomber earlier this month on a group of Afghans during an open air market outside the town of Baghran, killing an untold number of civilians, including children. The US military described this bombing as a “successful” raid on a gathering of Taliban leaders, and claimed no civilians were present, but the severely injured men, women and children delivered to various hospitals following the attack gave the lie to this cover-up. Furthermore, given the extensive 2600-foot radius of this weapon’s kill-range, it clearly is no “precision” weapon for targeting fighters, if any were even present.![]() Nor is this weapon the only example of American terror. Far from it. Stan Goff, in his excellent report on the killing of Cpl. Pat Tillman in Counterpunch magazine, notes that one reason Tillman was killed by his own unit is that the members of his own separated team that fired on him had launched their attack upon a village despite the fact that not a shot had been fired from that village—a clear violation of the Geneva Accords, but an instructive example of how US forces are actually operating in the field. (Tillman himself was also shot while standing up with his arms raised in a sign of surrender—another violation of international law.) Reports are mounting that make it clear that the US is using a deliberate strategy of terror in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The documented (and illegal) use of white phosphorus bombs, which spray wide areas with a substance that burns through flesh down to the bone, first disclosed in the devastating assault and leveling of the city of Fallujah in 2004, the widespread use of helicopter and fixed-wing “gunships” that inundate football-field-sized areas with bullets and fragmentation weapons, the use of delayed action cluster bombs and shells, the use of concussion weapons and napalm, all speak to a policy of indiscriminate killing. Americans need to wake up to what the rest of the world already knows: The United States is indisputably the number one terrorist nation in the world today. Indeed, the very administration that is talking about calling Iranian Republican Guard troops “terrorists” is at this moment developing plans for an unprovoked aerial assault on Iran that would feature the dropping of 30,000-lb bombs, all manner of anti-personnel weapons, and possibly even tactical nuclear weapons, on Iranian targets, many of them in populated areas. There is a word for this kind of behavior: terrorism. About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is co-author, with
Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for ImpeachmentCopyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on August 15, 2007. |
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