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    afghanistan war

    Operation Buzzard Vehicle Search Operations

    'Lots of Psychotic Murderers': Ex-Elite UK Troops Break Silence on Iraq, Afghanistan War Crimes

    "They handcuffed a young boy and shot him," said one Special Air Service veteran.

    Brett Wilkins
    May 12, 2025

    Dozens of former United Kingdom Special Forces troops or those who served with them have broken their silence to describe alleged war crimes they witnessed—including the execution of children—during the U.S.-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

    BBC's "Panorama"—which has repeatedly aired episodes focused on war crimes committed by British soldiers during the so-called War on Terror—on Monday featured testimonies from 30 former U.K. Special Forces (UKSF) members, including Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS), and supporting troops who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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    News
    war crimes
    U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Dominguez stands guard next to a burning oil well on March 27, 2003 in Rumayla, Iraq.

    Endless War and the American 'Ghost Budget' That Pays for It

    Prior to 2001, U.S. wars were financed through a mixture of higher taxes and budget cuts, and funded mostly through the regular defense budget. The post-9/11 war funding pattern was completely different.

    Linda Bilmes
    Jan 07, 2024

    The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were enabled by a historically unprecedented combination of budgetary procedures and financing methods. Unlike all previous U.S. wars, the post-9/11 wars were funded without higher taxes or non-war budget cuts, and through a separate budget. This set of circumstances – one that I have termed the “Ghost Budget” – enabled successive administrations to prosecute the wars with limited congressional oversight and minimal transparency and public debate. I adopted the name “Ghost Budget” because the term “ghost” appeared frequently in post-9/11 government reports in reference to funds allocated to people, places, or projects that turned out to be phantoms.

    The Ghost Budget was the result of an interplay between changes in the U.S. budgetary process, a more assertive military establishment, and the conditions in global capital markets. It has had far-reaching implications for the conduct and course of the post-9/11 wars and for defense policy today.

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    Opinion
    endless war
    Protests along the Israel-Gaza border with smoke in the distance.

    Nonviolent Rebellion Is the Way off the Hamster Wheel of War

    Where is the wisdom in doing the same murderous thing again and again, each time expecting a different outcome?

    Rebecca Gordon
    Nov 29, 2023

    When I was in my early 20s, I seriously considered murdering someone. He had given my best friend genital herpes, which many health practitioners then believed was the agent responsible for causing cervical cancer in women. (It wasn’t.)

    Back in the 1970s, though, I believed that, by infecting my friend, he might have set in motion a process that would someday kill her. That he was an arrogant jerk made it that much easier for me to contemplate murdering him. But there was a larger context to my private dream of revenge. My anger was also fed by a growing awareness that so many of us were just then acquiring of the history of systematic patriarchal threats to, and constraints on, the lives of women. And in those heady days of second-wave radical feminism, I could imagine killing that man as a legitimate response, however brutal, to the male violence that seemed to surround me, and as part of a larger uprising of women.

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    Opinion
    war & peace

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