A few years later, after we’ve captured Hussein, we’re told bin Laden isn’t all that important and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the evil mastermind behind 9/11. He was, apparently, part of al-Qaida, so there was still a need to capture bin Laden, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the person who is responsible for the entire mess we have gotten ourselves into. He has now confessed to numerous plots ranging from the Daniel Pearl murder to the Richard Reid shoe bombings.

Read the rest of my article at The Daily Censored.

The Arlington-based company announced it will no longer be known as Xe Services and is now called Academi. The name is inspired by Plato’s Academy in ancient Greece and is designed to connote elite, highly disciplined warriors who are thinkers as well as fighters.

Wright, who came to Academi from government contractor KBR, also said he has promised customers that he’ll be taking a lower profile and that they won’t be seeing negative newspaper headlines about Academi. One of his first hires after becoming CEO in June was a newly created position of compliance officer, whose job is to ensure the company’s work is done ethically and legally.

Wright said the company can maintain that level of protection even as it sheds the gung-ho culture of its past. The company continues to provide security or training in more than half a dozen countries around the world, most notably in Afghanistan. And it wants to get back into Iraq, where Wright said the business opportunities are promising. “I have every confidence we’ll be operating in Iraq again,” Wright said, arguing that the Iraqi and the U.S. governments will recognize his company’s culture change.

Since the US military is officially pulling out of Iraq and the US is relying on contractors for security, it is likely Academi will find its way back into the country.

When the company was known as Blackwater, Iraqi citizens feared them because they operated without impunity. They could do and say whatever they wanted until people started to speak out

Make no mistake, Academi are a company of assassins hired by corporations to do their bidding. They are sociopaths hiding behind a pseudo-legal company. They are not a legitimate company. They are mercenaries. They can change their name a hundred times, but their basic mission will remain the same; hired killers.

• In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop “sniveling.”
• Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.
• The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman’s death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn’t recall details of his actions.
• No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene — no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

If anyone believes that Pat Tillman was shot three times in the forehead by three different people with all the wounds close together while he was moving around is an idiot. The fact that the government has continued to push this story says there is an ongoing coverup to what really happened.

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In case you’d like to learn more about Pat Tillman and his unfortunate and untimely death, you can read Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer and Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman by his mother, Mary Tillman. You can also watch the movie, The Tillman Story and read government documents about the incident. It’s available on Netflix. Inform yourself and make your own decision about what happened.

A soldier aims a new XM25 weapon system at Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland. The XM25 is an airburst grenade launcher equipped with a laser rangefinder and programmable grenade that can be set to detonate at a precise distance, for example, directly above an enemy hidden behind a wall. After years of development, the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System has now been deployed to US units on the battlefields of Afghanistan, where the Army expects it to be a “game-changer” in its counterinsurgency operations. Photo taken on July 30, 2009. (AFP/Getty Images) #

We must remember, however, that this is the result of war.

A child receives medical attention during a Medevac mission in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province November 13, 2010. The child was injured in an explosion. (REUTERS/Peter Andrews) #

Photos from The Big Picture.

We saw the photos of Abu Ghraib that the government wanted us to see, but there were worse photos to be seen. These were deemed so terrible that our fragile little “America is the best nation ever” eyes could not see. At least that is how the government thinks. If we had seen, heard, read about the rape and torture, particularly women, in Abu Ghraib, the nation would have turned against the government and demanded all troops return home immediately. Instead, we’ve been kept in the dark about what really happens there.

Read the rest of my article at The Daily Censored.

We spend the hour with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, talking about the biggest leak in US history: the release of more than 91,000 classified military records on the war in Afghanistan. As the Pentagon announces it is launching a criminal probe into who leaked the documents, Assange asks what about investigating the “war crimes” revealed in the leaked military records? He also talks about the media, why he isn’t coming to the US anytime soon, and what gives him hope. “What keeps us going is our sources. These are the people, presumably, who are inside these organizations, who want change,” Assange says. “They are both heroic figures taking much greater risks than I ever do, and they are pushing and showing that they want change in, in fact, an extremely effective way.”

Transcript here.

Wikileaks editor Julian Assange, in an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News said he believes this is “the most comprehensive history of a war ever to be published – during the course of the war”.

The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.

The White House is condemning the release. No surprise there.

Reaction in Washington political circles is already beginning. The Times posted a White House memo to reporters sent Sunday evening, without naming which Obama aide wrote it, seeking to downplay the disclosure as not surprising, and saying that “Wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan.” And Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, said the release demonstrates that “calibrations” to the U.S. policy toward Afghanistan were necessary.

The time line and spin from the White House at the New York Times.
The Guardian has an interactive map detailing events related to the leak.  They have some of the best coverage detailing the events and the leak.
Channel 4 has several stories and the video below about the unseen Afghan war.

CNN has an article. If CNN does what it usually does, there will be pentagon officials speaking on the news about how bad the leak is and not discussing what’s actually in the leak.
Boing Boing has a story with several links to other places to read and digest the information.
Spiegel also has a story and some photos.
Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece last week about the motives behind the whistle-blower prosecutions. It’s highly relevant to this story.
Reddit also has a very lively discussion on the matter.

WikiLeaks is down at the moment, unable to sustain the weight of the hits it’s receiving over this current leak. The documents in question can be found here and a dedicated website for the information can be found here. In the meantime, you can also grab a torrent of the files and download it. This will help decrease the load on the WikiLeaks page.

One of the more interesting aspects to this entire story is the recurrent question of why does WikiLeaks now do the investigative journalism that the newspapers should be doing? Yes, they are reporting on the story, but it is WikiLeaks that is gathering information and it is Julian Assange that is putting his ass on the line. Granted, he had some major help from places, such as the Guardian, in figuring out what it was that he had, but regular journalists used to perform this task. WikiLeaks essentially become the middleman as the newspapers are afraid to take a stand. Still, credit needs to be given to the Guardian for taking a small stand and sifting through and categorizing the information and helping Assange.

Anyone with even a passing interest in the quagmire that is Afghanistan should be reading this. Then, consider donating to WikiLeaks so they can continue their work.