Tag: Operation Enduring Freedom

A friendly fire death, a platoon’s 20 years of trauma

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Bryan O’Neal has spent two decades grinding his way up the U.S. Army ranks, from lowly private to command sergeant major — the highest rank for a non-commissioned officer. He could write a textbook on modern warfare history — and his own unique place in it — but much of what he’s seen and done could be hard for anyone to hear. Significant numbers of the men and women under his command weren’t even born until after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that inspired him to enlist.

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In the spring of 2004, perhaps the last thing President George W. Bush’s administration needed was another war-related PR problem. No one could find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which the administration had used to build a case for war. Less than a month before Tillman’s death, four contractors for the Blackwater private security firm in Iraq were ambushed and dragged through the streets, and their corpses were hung from a bridge. In April came shocking images of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison.

A friendly fire death, a platoon’s 20 years of trauma

Related:

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Reflections on war propaganda

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

I told myself that I wasn’t going to listen to these “think tanks” for a while. I guess I wasn’t ready, as the following angered me. This is just normal thinking inside “The Blob,” though.

Full video

Wikipedia:

Demonizing the enemy, demonization of the enemy or dehumanization of the enemy is a propaganda technique which promotes an idea about the enemy being a threatening, evil aggressor with only destructive objectives.

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Dan Crenshaw’s measure greenlighting psychedelics to treat PTSD part of defense bill + More

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The legislation would allow supervised clinical studies with active-duty members.

Dan Crenshaw’s measure greenlighting psychedelics to treat PTSD part of defense bill

Related:

First-ever provision for psychedelic studies included in defense bill

National Defense Authorization Act, pp. 402-406, p. 1817 ($50,311 allocated for R&D)

CIA MKULTRA / Mind Control Collection

FDA Weighs New Application To Approve MDMA As First-Ever Psychedelic Medicine For PTSD + More About MAPS

By giving Ukraine cluster bombs, the US is admitting that it’s OK to kill civilians

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By giving Ukraine cluster bombs, the US is admitting that it’s OK to kill civilians

The estimated dud rate is disputable. According to the Congressional Research Service, “There appear to be significant discrepancies among failure rate estimates. Some manufacturers claim a submunition failure rate of 2% to 5%, whereas mine clearance specialists have frequently reported failure rates of 10% to 30%. A number of factors influence submunition reliability. These include delivery technique, age of the submunition, air temperature, landing in soft or muddy ground, getting caught in trees and vegetation, and submunitions being damaged after dispersal, or landing in such a manner that their impact fuzes fail to initiate.”

The United States has a huge stockpile of cluster munitions — 4.7 million containing hundreds of millions of bomblets — that it is dusting off to deliver to Ukraine after a “difficult decision” by President Joe Biden.

The U.S. last used these munitions in its military excursion in Afghanistan. Trouble was that the little bombs resembled in color and shape the humanitarian aid packets that the U.S. dropped from planes. This confusion, which obviously left many civilians maimed or dead, led to the curtailment of cluster bombs for our next military adventure.

This did not stop Israel from using cluster bombs in its 2006 campaign against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. According to a March 2022 Congressional Research Service report, Israel used them in the “last 3 days of the 34-day war after a U.N. cease-fire deal had been agreed to — resulting in almost 1 million unexploded cluster bomblets to which the U.N. attributed 14 deaths during the conflict.” Israel’s use of the bombs “supposedly affected 26% of southern Lebanon’s arable land and contaminated about 13 square miles with unexploded submunitions. One report states that there was a failure rate of upward of 70% of Israel’s cluster weapons,” the agency said.

Related:

The Packaging Color for Air-Dropped Humanitarian Rations was Changed from Yellow to Salmon Since Yellow was the Same Color as Air-Dropped Cluster Bombs.

Biden to name a US military operation for Ukraine

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | August 26, 2022

Amid the news about the admin’s multi-year weapons investment, a general will be appointed for a separate command, too.

Two things that point to the notion that Washington is supporting a long war in Ukraine, and truly doesn’t think there will be a diplomatic solution or cessation of violence there anytime soon: one, the $3 billion in recently announced military transfers is a “multi-year military investment” including weapons that won’t be available via defense contractors for at least three years.

Biden to name a US military operation for Ukraine

Afghanistan earthquake exposes disaster caused by decades of US occupation

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

by Jean Shaoul, WSWS, Jun 24 2022

A 6.1-magnitude earthquake in a remote area of Afghanistan has killed at least 1,000 people and injured at least 1,500. While the worst affected area is the mountainous Paktika province, deaths have also been reported in the eastern provinces of Khost and Nangarhar. Many more bodies are thought to be buried in mud as heavy rain hampers rescue efforts.

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With the ever-expanding US war against Russia, the US is preparing to bring the type of devastation wrought upon Afghanistan and Iraq to Europe, at an even greater cost in lives and treasure.

Afghanistan earthquake exposes disaster caused by decades of US occupation

[2021] 1st Area Medical Laboratory Soldiers train with Ukrainian military doctors

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

1st Area Medical Laboratory Soldiers train with Ukrainian military doctors (Archived)

KYIV, Ukraine – Soldiers from the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland-based 1st Area Medical Laboratory and Fort Detrick, Maryland-based U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases trained with Ukrainian military medical professionals.

Six 1st AML Soldiers and a USAMRIID Soldier deployed to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv from June 3 – 18.

Maj. Jang-woo Lee, the 1st AML chief of Endemic Disease and Biological Warfare Assessment, said the American Soldiers supported the establishment of a Ukraine Ministry of Defense Biological Mobile Diagnostics Unit.

The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency training initiative focused on polymerase chain reaction diagnostic testing and field identification of biological agents. Lee said the U.S. troops delivered training lectures, hands-on training and field training exercises with Ukrainian troops in laboratory and field environments, using commercially available materials.

“U.S. subject matter experts trained their Ukrainian counterparts who will provide the training to their Soldiers to increase the readiness of the deployable mobile laboratories,” said Lee, an Operation Enduring Freedom veteran who is originally from South Korea. “I believe that the impact and influence of this effort will be greater than the two-week training.”

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The 1st Area Medical Laboratory is part of the 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives (CBRNE) Command, the U.S. Department of Defense’s only multifunctional all hazards headquarters.

From 19 military installations in 16 states, 20th CBRNE Command units deploy globally to take on the world’s most dangerous weapons and hazards.

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The one-of-a-kind U.S. Army laboratory has deployed often to support military operations, including the 2014-2015 effort to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Soldiers from 1st AML also served in seven different overseas locations to support the COVID-19 response, including U.S. military hospitals in Germany, South Korea and Japan.