Closing Thought–09Sep21

We all know about this War on Terror…..but do you know what it has cost in funds and lives?

The US-led “war on terror” has killed nearly one million people globally and cost more than $8 trillion since it began nearly two decades ago, according to a report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

The landmark report, which was published on Wednesday, examines the tolls of wars waged by the US in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other regions where the US military is engaged in conflicts referred to as “forever wars”.

“It’s critical we properly account for the vast and varied consequences of the many US wars and counter-terror operations since 9/11, as we pause and reflect on all of the lives lost,” said the project’s co-director, Neta Crawford, in a statement accompanying the report. 

“Our accounting goes beyond the Pentagon’s numbers because the costs of the reaction to 9/11 have rippled through the entire budget.”

The report estimates that the war on terror, which will mark its 20th anniversary on 11 September, had directly killed 897,000 to 929,000 people – including at least 387,072 civilians.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-led-global-war-terror-has-killed-nearly-one-million-people

A staggering cost of lives and funds…..

Somewhere I hope that sanity will finally set in and a new direction for our foreign policy other than shoot first a hope it turns out well….and it seldom does.

(You guessed it…..there will be a post coming about the changes that are desperately needed in our foreign policy)

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Advertisement

Insurrection Update #14

My continuing series keeping watch over the consequences of the 06 January insurrection…..my thought is make them ALL pay for their failed attempt to take over the government.

First the anti-vaxxer lawyer that is defending some of the insurrectionists……

A new Justice Department court filing says John Pierce, the anti-vaxx lawyer representing 17 of the Jan. 6 defendants, “is reportedly ill with COVID-19, on a ventilator, and unresponsive….” bringing his cases to a halt. There’s a bit a of snag, however, with attorney Pierce’s proposed replacement, as described in footnote two: “It is unclear if and when Mr. Marshall [the attorney’s replacement] will be able to obtain a bar license, given that Mr. Marshall currently faces felony criminal charges in two cases…”

counterpunch.org)

The ‘horned warrior’ of QAnon has lost his bid to try and convince the courts that he is looney tunes….

An Arizona man who sported face paint, no shirt, and a furry hat with horns when he joined the mob that stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6 pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge and wants to be released from jail while he awaits sentencing. Jacob Chansley, who was widely photographed in the Senate chamber with a flagpole topped with a spear, could face 41 to 51 months in prison under sentencing guidelines, a prosecutor said. The man who called himself “QAnon Shaman” has been jailed for nearly eight months since his arrest, the AP reports. Before entering the plea, Chansley was found by a DC judge to be mentally competent after having been transferred to a Colorado facility for a mental health evaluation.

His lawyer Albert Watkins said that the solitary confinement that Chansley faced for most of his time in jail has had an adverse effect on his mental health and that his time in Colorado helped him regain his sharpness. “I am very appreciative for the court’s willingness to have my mental vulnerabilities examined,” Chansley said before pleading guilty to a charge of obstructing an official proceeding. US District Judge Royce Lamberth is considering Chansley’s request to remain free until sentencing on Nov. 17. Chansley was among the first wave of rioters to force its way into the Capitol. Photos of him, with his face painted like the American flag, wearing a bear skin head dress, and looking as if he were howling, were among the first striking images to emerge from the riot.

The first guilty verdict for the insurrectionists…..

Paul Hodgkins became the first Jan. 6 defendant to plead guilty to a felony. Now he wants to take it back. In court filings Thursday, Hodgkins’ new attorney Carolyn Stewart said that Hodgkins was rushed into taking a plea deal, which led to an eight-month prison sentence. She alleged that Hodgkins’ former attorney, Patrick Leduc, inaccurately told Hodgkins that all of his charges were felonies and, by pleading guilty, he was unlikely to end up in prison. “One might wonder whose team Mr. Hodgkins’ former attorney was on,” she wrote. Leduc didn’t respond to The Washington Post’s requests for comment, but in emails attached to the court filing, he insisted Hodgkins got the best deal. “My strategy paid off to Paul’s benefit,” he told Stewart. “No other Federal defendant who is pleading to a felony will get a sentence better than Paul.”

Hodgkins is seeking to appeal his sentence, even though the deadline for such a request has passed. He’s the only Capitol rioter with a felony charge sentenced to prison to date.

(dailybeast.com)

Here is one of my favorite reports….the US is picking on the insurrectionists….they want everyone to stop using the insurrection….and yet the idiots perform like this in court….

Accused Capitol insurrectionist Brandon Fellows, who was recently sent back to jail after leaving a probation officer an obscene voicemail, asked a federal judge on Tuesday to allow him to represent himself.

During a status hearing in his case, Fellows reportedly read a nine-minute statement, saying he’s been studying at the prison law library for two weeks and has made a “huge and life-altering decision,” according to a report from WUSA9’s Jordan Fischer.

“Your honor, you were spot on when you said last hearing that I was impulsive. But now that I have studied self-representation, it is what I want,” Fellows told the court, citing late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who once wrote: “If there is any truth to the old proverb ‘one who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client,’ the Court by its opinion today now bestows a constitutional right on one to make a fool of himself.”

“Although, as Justice Blackmun says, I may be a fool to represent myself, I am nowhere near as big a fool as Joe Biden,” Fellows told the court.

https://www.rawstory.com/capitol-rioter-brandon-fellows/

Really?

You idiot bastards tried to storm the Capitol and take prisoners….and now your feelings are butt hurt because you got caught through your own stupidity.

I for one refuse to let this failed coup slip from my mind and hopefully from others as well…..and I have NO sympathy for idiots that cannot stand the rule of law.

Finally those bombs placed around DC the day before the breach and the FBI is asking for the help of the public…..

The FBI has released new video footage of a suspect accused of planting two pipe bombs near the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, the night before the US Capitol riot.

The new information includes a virtual map that highlights the route the suspect walked while placing the two bombs between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on January 5, the night before the insurrection. Since then, the FBI has been unsuccessful in identifying the individual, despite a $100,000 reward being offered by the agency and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The video footage released Wednesday shows the suspect sitting on the bench near the DNC, in the area where the pipe bomb was later placed, according to the FBI.
“Reviews of the suspect’s behavior in video footage and interviews with residents in the Capitol Hill neighborhood have led the FBI to believe the suspect is not from the area,” according to a news release from the FBI Washington Field Office.
 
Watch the footage and help if you can…..
 
Watch This Blog!
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

Is It Money Well Spent?

Let’s just step back and take a look at just what the War on Terror has cost this country.

The War on Terror has been a money pit since 9/11.

So just how much money has been spent in the years after 9/11 attacks?

A damn good question, right?

Well hang on to your jock strap……

In the 20 years since the September 11 attacks, the United States government has spent more than $21 trillion at home and overseas on militaristic policies that led to the creation of a vast surveillance apparatus, worsened mass incarceration, intensified the war on immigrant communities, and caused incalculable human suffering in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere.

According to State of Insecurity: The Cost of Militarization Since 9/11 (pdf), a report released Wednesday by the National Priorities Project, the U.S. government’s so-called “War on Terror” has “remade the U.S. into a more militarized actor both around the world and at home” by pouring vast resources into the Pentagon, federal law enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency established in response to the September 11 attacks.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/01/911-us-has-spent-21-trillion-militarism-home-and-abroad

Can you imagine what $21 trillion could have done to help the people of this country?

Beyond that let’s look at the war in Afghanistan since 9/11……

the Cost of War Project at Brown University estimates that the war in Afghanistan cost U.S. taxpayers $2.3 trillion to date and resulted in the deaths of 2,324 U.S. military personnel, 4,007 U.S. contractors and 46,319 Afghan civilians — but those costs weren’t shared by everyone.

While the American people financed the war with their tax dollars, and in some cases their lives, the top five Pentagon contractors enjoyed a boom in growth in federal contracts over the course of the war in Afghanistan. Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, found that Congress gave $2.02 trillion to the top five weapons companies — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman — between 2001 and 2021.

And between 2002 and 2020, federal funding for those five weapons companies grew by 188 percent

Top defense firms spend $1B on lobbying during Afghan war, see $2T return

Not a bad return on investment, huh?

The federal deficit runs about $3.3 trillion…..and fiscal conservatives (the hypocritical wing of our government) scream about the deficit and yet continue to fund a failed war on terror.

Just like the War on Drugs the War on Terror is a money pit and corporations profit from the misery the loss of funds for programs that aid the people of this country.

I realize that no one cares about this….it is far more important to focus on wedge issues instead on the pissing away of taxpayer funds.

When will we ever learn?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”