Photographer Richard Mosse has gone to Iraq and returned with some remarkably contemplative images of the post-apocalyptic scenery. It’s a rare glimpse behind the lines that transports you there in moments of silence. Beautiful and important work.
Watch, read and weep at the statistics in Bran Dougherty-Johnson’s, motion piece, Costs Of War.
What happens when you give a bunch of adolescent boys automatic weapons and the authority to use them at their discretion? Well, let me clarify this first, most of the time they do their job the best they can and follow their orders. However, in war time, you do sometimes have instances of animal abuse and the abuse of innocent civilians. Case in point, the video above shows soldiers firing on a herd of sheep as an innocent sheepherder watches helplessly. The following videos here, show our soldiers at their lowest.
Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr may let a 6 month cease-fire expire as soon as this coming Saturday. The move could send Shiite militia fighters back into the streets of Bagdhdad and pose a major threat to the recent appearance of success from the U.S. led surge. He ordered the cease-fire last August, and it has been credited for reducing violence in Iraq by as much as 60 percent in the last six months. If the cleric remains silent until Saturday it will be assumed that the cease-fire has been lifted and be seen as an order to commence Shiite guerilla fighting.
We will have to see what this does to the U.S. occupation. If the order ends and the violence rises dramatically, will it be enough for us to finally pull out, declare a loss and bring our boys home? Something like this begs the question, ‘Why are we still there and what are we trying to accomplish?’
Time will tell.
NOTE: THIS IS AN UPDATE. THE CEASE FIRE WAS EXTENDED THURSDAY THE 22ND FOR ANOTHER 6 MONTHS. IT WAS A SIGH OF RELIEF FOR THE AMERICAN MILITARY.
So, what exactly has the Iraq war done to our economy besides the glaringly obvious 9 trillion dollar deficit. Well, it is also destabilizing our currency, that’s what. If you think of the Iraq war as a business venture, which I am sure some people in the administration do, then you have to wonder who is profiting here because it most certainly isn’t America. The problem is, the more we spend the more in debt we go, and that doesn’t exactly make us look attractive to lenders. Would you loan someone money who owed 9 trillion? Better yet, would you loan someone who owed 9 trillion and was still in the process of pissing what money that had left down the toilet. Worser still, if that said person actually printed their own currency, would you really trust it’s value?
Well, if you can jive on that simple logic than you can see the systemic problem and also probably envision how it is probably going to get worse before it gets better.
How exactly is the war effecting our currency, well here is a short list. Get ready to trade those Benjamins for Euros and get ready to be beat down at the pump.
