Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Home of the Brave?
by Dave Lindorff Several years ago, I warned that as the Bush/Cheney administration sought to reduce politically problematic casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would resort to increased use of air attacks to combat the growing insurgency in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
I also predicted that the result of this switch in tactics would lead to higher civilian casualties in those two countries.
We're now seeing those results.
In the latest reports from Iraq, we had 15 women and children
slain, mostly in their homes by rockets and bullets fired from
helicopter and fixed-wing gunships which were allegedly in pursuit of
some supposed "al Qaeda" fighters, and as many as 17 civilians killed
in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood when US forces called in air
strikes after seeing a group of men they deemed to be hostile. Again
those airstrikes ended up killing more civilians than alleged enemy
fighters.
The casual use of the term "air strikes" belies the
horror of what is happening. It's one thing to call in airstrikes
during a battle out in the desert or the mountains, where the enemy is
isolated and readily identified. It's another to call in the bombers
and gunships in the heart of a densly-populated city. Such tactics are
guaranteed to kill innocent people in large numbers.
In
Afghanistan, meanwhile, where there is even less media coverage than in
Iraq, the casual slaughter of innocents by American forces has become
routine--so much so that even British officials are complaining. The US
command simply "regrets" the "loss of innocent life," making it sound
like the after-effects of a natural disaster, when it fact the killings
are the predictable result of the cold calculus of mass murder by a
technologically advanced military inflicted on an impoverished Third
World country. It is unacceptable to argue, as the Pentagon does all
the time, that the enemy "uses civilians as shields." Maybe they do,
but that's the reality, and the military has to accept it, not ignore
it. If a gunman is holding a baby, you can't just shoot the baby and
blame the gunman.
In both countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, the
slaughter of civilians by US forces has been so outrageous that even
their puppet leaders have been compelled to speak up, demanding that
the US stop being so aggressive and indiscriminate.
The problem
is, if the US stops using its gunships and its fighter-bombers to do
its fighting, it will have to either quit and go home, or put more
troops out on patrol, where they are vulnerable to attack. In fact, the
Pentagon may not even have that option. Already, it has been reported
that troops in Iraq have coined the term "search and avoid" for
missions where they go out under orders, but then spend their time
avoiding danger.
What would one expect? The rank-and-file troops
know that the war is lost in both countries, and that the American
public doesn't support what they are doing anyhow, so who's going to
want to die for that? You'd have to be a real chump to let yourself be
killed just to provide political cover for a politically challenged
president and vice president--especially a president and vice-president
who famously ducked their own duty during the Vietnam War.
Dave
Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death
Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns titled
"This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment", co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
Writings 
Several years ago, I warned that as the Bush/Cheney administration sought to reduce politically problematic casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would resort to increased use of air attacks to combat the growing insurgency in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
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