Freyburg

Not exactly “a year in Provence,” is it? Documentarian Julian Sher spent a year making films for the CBC, and in the process got to experience war both in Iraq and Afghanistan. What he saw in both places left him less than optimistic for further progress.

One of Donald Rumsfeld’s big goals for the American military was “transformation,” a process by which the armed forces modernized and adopted a more “network-centric” approach to combat. It worked spectacularly during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with Special Forces troops laser-targeting opposing forces and ground commanders getting a God’s-eye view of their operations theatre. But network-centric warfare has turned out to be a bust for winning the peace, as Wired Magazine details.

There’s a village in Morocco called Tetouan that’s the home town of a disproportionate number of young jihadis, including some of the men responsible for the Madrid train bombings in 2004. The New York Times Magazine investigates (at length) what turns normal young men from Tetouan into suicide bombers.

Ah, more shaping of questionable intelligence to fit Dick Cheney’s homicidal whims. How delightful!

Remember the news about a week ago about State Department employees being forced to serve time in Iraq? Turns out they’re not very happy with the idea, likening the task to a “death sentence.”

According to Newsweek, very few State department officials feel a strong urge to volunteer to work at the American Embassy in Iraq. But soon they won’t have any choice, as 200 to 300 diplomats will be identified as “prime candidates” and shipped over to Baghdad whether they like it or not. Fun!

Nope, it doesn’t involve duct tape or keeping an eye on your neighbours for possible un-American activities. Wired magazine profiles a suburban Montana woman who spends her days at an office, but her nights monitoring jihadi activity online.

With Blackwater already in trouble for shooting Iraqi civilians, more stories are coming to light of arrogance and recklessness regarding the private security firm. The latest involves Blackwater operatives getting into a car crash with U.S. soldiers, then forcing the soldiers to lie down at gunpoint until help arrived. Not that there’s any real legitimate power structure in Iraq, but you’d think U.S. soldiers would be the last word in authority in a war zone, just by dint of hardware and history.