Tainted Saints

Senior US officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in the city of Quetta — a city with some 850,000 people, according to a report Monday.

The Obama Administration is eyeing Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta in an effort to decapitate the Taliban, according to the LA Times. But the prospect of launching a major attack in a highly populous city has struck some officials as unwise, officials who apparently leaked news of the program to a major US newspaper.

Pakistani officials have also warned that the fallout would be severe.

“We are not a banana republic,” the Times quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying. If the United States follows through, the official said, “this might be the end of the road.” [more...]

The United States’ involvement in Afghanistan is growing deeper and more costly–30 US soldiers have died there since the start of July, making it the deadliest month since the US invasion in 2001. Vice President Joe Biden was probably right when he said in a radio interview on Thursday that the war is “worth the effort.” Still, now is a good time to better understand exactly why it has been so hard to turn Afghanistan into a more peaceful place. A new book by two US journalists explores some less well-known historical explanations.

In 1981, Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald were the first US journalists to enter Afghanistan after the Western press corps had been expelled from the country a month after the 1979 Soviet invasion.  The footage that they shot for CBS News painted a far different picture of the occupation than had been portrayed in the US media. Yet they say that the story that Dan Rather aired that spring buried the most important revelations–a problem that they’ve seen with US media coverage of Afghanistan ever since. In January 2009, they published “Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story,” a book that Selig Harrison, the Washington Post’s former South Asia bureau chief, calls “a much needed corrective to five decades of biased journalistic and academic writing about Afghanistan that has covered up the destructive and self-defeating US role there.” Mother Jones spoke with Gould and Fitzgerald last month. [more...]

WASHINGTON — U.S. unemployment rose by more than expected in October to hit its highest level in more than 26 years and employers cut more jobs than forecast, a sign the labor market continues to struggle as the economy emerges from its deep recession.

The unemployment rate, calculated using a survey of households as opposed to companies, rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2%, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast an increase to 9.9%.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by 190,000 last month, with the largest job losses in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade. Economists had expected a 175,000 decrease. [more...]

[I guess embracing it would have reversed 60 years of U.S. policy... -Ed.]

The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge. [more...]

Barack Obama has been busy – offering the Jewish People blessings for Rosh Hashanah, and recording a flattering video for the President’s Conference in Jerusalem and another for Yitzhak Rabin’s memorial rally. Only Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah surpasses him in terms of sheer output of recorded remarks.

In all the videos, Obama heaps sticky-sweet praise on Israel, even though he has spent nearly a year fruitlessly lobbying for Israel to be so kind as to do something, anything – even just a temporary freeze on settlement building – to advance the peace process.  [more...]

CHICAGO – Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.

The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis. [more...]

Israel and the United States launched a major air defense drill [ten days ago] which will include a preparation for a faceoff with Iran.

During the two-week maneuvers, dubbed Juniper Cobra, some 1,000 American personnel will mesh ground- and ship-based missile interceptors like the Aegis, THAAD and Patriot with Israel’s Arrow II ballistic shield, defense officials said…

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel and the United States launched a major air defense drill Wednesday as part of what Israeli public radio called preparation for a faceoff with Iran.

During the two-week maneuvers, dubbed Juniper Cobra, some 1,000 American personnel will mesh ground- and ship-based missile interceptors like the Aegis, THAAD and Patriot with Israel’s Arrow II ballistic shield, defense officials said.

Spokesmen on both sides insisted the biennial drill was unrelated to world events, but Israel Radio quoted an unnamed commander as saying it served “to prepare for a nuclear Iran.”

[Because, really, we just want their oil and their natural gas. - Ed.]

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Monday vowed to “retaliate” against the United States and Britain after accusing them of backing the perpetrators of a suicide bombing that killed six Guards… [which threatens] to overshadow talks between Iran and global powers in Vienna on Monday intended to tackle a standoff about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.