Tuesday Update

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only site on the Internet that I know of devoted to all things related to Un. By now, if you have been looking at this site, you'll know that it's stuff that I find interesting to write about. So if this isn't your cup of tea, you can always press the BACK button(the one that looks like an arrow pointing to the left) on your browser or you can go to Google and redo the search that got you here. For those of you who actually want to be here on this site, read on.


It's time to have fun with news items that I find to be...well...I'm not sure how to describe them. I could say "stupid" or "obvious" or some other words or phrases, but it wouldn't encompass every news item. So let's just say I make some comments about the news item and pound some information into your heads with irony, sarcasm, and other good literary devices. The Un-Zone Bully Pulpit.

Just like President Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" comment and sign referring to the Invasion(Liberation or whatever you want to call it) of Iraq, NATO has made a similar comment about the Taliban in Afghanistan. Actually, they made a comment along the lines of "There are no more Taliban in a certain part of sourthern Afghanistan." Sort of like VP Cheney and other Bush officials saying that the insurgency(which was brewing in Iraq before the US declared "victory" by the way) was on the decline and about to be crushed by American military might. Oddly enough, guess what happens? Yes indeedy. The Taliban sets off a string of suicide bombings that kill NATO peacekeepers, soldiers, and Pakistani civilians, including children. The soldiers were involved in Operation Medusa. Maybe they should have called in Hydra, after the multi-headed monster with heads that grew back after they were cut off.
On a related note, the British admitted that they and NATO underestimated the tenacity of the Taliban. They were surprised that the Taliban would fight back with everything they got, despite going against the US military, the British, and NATO peacekeepers? Haven't they read about the recent history of Afghanistan? Don't they remember about the Afghani-Soviet War that occured during the 1980's? If Wikipedia isn't accurate enough for your tastes, how about this from the US government or maybe this? Guess what? The Taliban used to be the mujahadeen from the Afghanistan-Soviet War. The United States gave them weapons like Stinger missiles so they could shoot down Russian Hind attack helicopters. Basically, they learned their lessons from the best out there: the United States. They're going to know how to fight in their own turf using whatever weapons they have. As the History News Network so clearly states, the people we armed are the CIA armed are

[S]ome of the same people who in 1996 killed 19 American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; blew a hole in the side of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden harbor in 2000; and on Sept. 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, the world awaits what is almost certain to happen soon at some airport -- a terrorist firing a U.S. Stinger low-level surface-to-air missile (manufactured at one time by General Dynamics in Rancho Cucamonga) into an American jumbo jet. The CIA supplied thousands of them to the moujahedeen and trained them to be experts in their use. If the CIA's activities in Afghanistan are a 'success story,' then Enron should be considered a model of corporate behavior.

Even as I write this, three US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Nothing like a good ol' mission accomplished in Afghanistan.

From the New York Times, an article stating that the Canadians are blaming the United States for it's role in a torture case.
To quote from the article:

American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to Syria.

To add a little cynicism to this, where did the Canadians think the US was going to take a suspected terrorist? Disney World? Apparently, he was sent (wait, it was a "rendition" according to the President) to Syria (a country not known for its use of humane interrogation techniques) where he was put in a cell and beaten with electrical wires for nearly a year. And then the Syrians realized he had no connections to terrorism. Ooops. Sorry. Honest mistake.
After all, G.W. Bush says the Geneva Conventions are too vague and we have to define what's acceptable or not. A little use of force isn't too bad if it prevents terrorist attacks. If you're not a terrorist, sorry for the beatings. It was for national security reasons.


That's all for now.