Wikileaks: C.I.A. Secret Memo Proposed Using Female Victims To Drum Up Support For Afghanistan War: “Afghan Women Could Serve As Ideal Messengers In Humanizing The ISAF Role In Combating The Taliban”…Next Thing You Know, Time Magazine Cover Features Afghan Woman To Humanize War…Can American Corruption Get Any Cruder (Or Stupider) Than This? Stay Tuned To The “Collapse Of The American Empire” Comedy Show… - By

What You Should Know / August 19, 2010

Wikileaks: C.I.A. Secret Memo Proposed Using Female Victims To Drum Up Support For Afghanistan War: “Afghan Women Could Serve As Ideal Messengers In Humanizing The ISAF Role In Combating The Taliban”…Next Thing You Know, Time Magazine Cover Features Afghan Woman To Humanize War…Can American Corruption Get Any Cruder (Or Stupider) Than This? Stay Tuned To The “Collapse Of The American Empire” Comedy Show…

www.observer.com -- Let’s just get this out of the way: The CIA doesn’t hire working journalists. Not American ones, anyway. It stopped in 1976 after an embarrassing investigation by Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) revealed that infiltrating news teams was just one of several bad habits dating to the 1950s. But we can’t help imagining the clinking of glasses at a certain Langley, VA, office suite over last week’s provocative Time cover story, the one treating NATO’s Afghanistan war as synonymous with standing up for maimed 18-year-old beauty Bibi Aisha.A “straightforward reported piece,” Time’s spokesman protested after an Observer investigation explored whether the shocking cover story constituted a questionable strain of advocacy journalism, compromised by bureau chief Aryn Baker's likely profits from NATO-enabled war contracts and ties to an Afghan minister's $100 million investment project. Last week Time's defense of its work as cooly objective seemed at odds with editor Richard Stengel's concession, in an Aug. 2 interview with CBS's Katie Couric, that the no-nose piece carried a “strong point of view.”

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1. captain america | August 19th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
they do kind of have a point, you know. about the whole women-oppressed under the taliban thing.
just saying.
2. Tam | August 20th, 2010 at 12:23 am
Good to have it confirmed how feminism is being used to promote some seriously dodgy agendas but it’s clear that’s been happening from the very start of this war in Afghanistan in 2001. Pretty much every mainstream liberal ‘feminist’ commentator in the US and UK were wildly in favour of bombing the fuck out of Afghans on the grounds that ‘it would be good for women’s rights there’.
I don’t know whether they were just too dumb to realise they were being cynically manipulated by warmongers or they just didn’t care. Either way, it wasn’t (and isn’t) exactly feminism’s finest hour.
3. Plamen petkov | August 20th, 2010 at 2:00 am
It’s funny, you know? Just yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the date when women were given the “right” women to vote in USA.
USA is the nastiest biggest hypocritical country in the world.
4. Rubicon | August 20th, 2010 at 8:48 am
Remember when Code Pink was protesting constantly against the military and getting air time? All that miraculously went away when the feminism canard was dragged out. So it became acceptable to have your son (or daughter) die in order to bomb the shit out of a place so it’ll become as liberal as Berkeley. I’d like to see Time have a cover page of the maimed or homeless vets if we’re going to make Americans confront the true costs of war.
5. franc black | August 20th, 2010 at 9:08 am
How are you helping them, by killing them with bombs instead of Taliban knocking off the occasional facial feature?
I’d rather lose my nose than my entire fucking head.
The dumber American become, the more people around the World, male and female, will die.
just saying
6. Wenjo | August 20th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Afghanistan’s womens’-rights campaign lasted all of about two weeks. Even if we wipe out the Taliban the women will still be treated like dogs, while their teenage sons will be treated like women.
7. empire in decline | August 20th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
The mean ol’ Taliban only came along when the whole world left the Afghan people to rot after 1 million died fighting the Soviets. The United States had ten years after the Soviets left to give them billions worth of building materials, medical supplies, and schools. Note how this wonderful alternative to the Soviets promised after decades of supporting terrorists, dictators, deaths squads and overthrowing democratically elected governments has yet to materialize (note Central America for example).
And this “concern” for women only came when a few thousand people died on 9/11. If the Taliban would have just negotiated like Sudan they would still be in power. The Sudanese gave up Osama bin laden and cooperated on the war on terror so they can support Janjaweed militias who gut pregnant women, gang rape and kill children and commit genocide.
The United States does not and never has cared about the holocaust or human rights or freedom and democracy. The Taliban aren’t being killed because they committed crimes against humanity, they’re being killed because they didn’t realize the United States doesn’t care about crimes against humanity.
8. dermotmoconnor | August 20th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Time’s mendacious headline: “What happens if we leave Afghanistan” really takes the palao.
Even allowing for the fact that we live in an age of mass enstupidation and poor reading comprehension, this headline is rank. The young lady, now 19, was 16 at the time of her mutilation. That puts the attack somewhere around 2007, give or take a year.
So the crime occurred while “WE” (damn that fucking word) were already in Afghanistan.
So, a more accurate headline might be:
“What happens EVEN MORE FREQUENTLY if we leave Afghanistan”.
How about this for a recruiting poster:
“Join the Marines – and help reduce mutilation of women by a few percent, though only in certain regions of the country which are temporarily under our control, until such time as our Rulers decide that the country is no longer worth fighting over.”
Yeah, that’ll do the job nicely. Get ye to a recruiting office.
9. Roland | August 23rd, 2010 at 2:16 am
When it comes to Afghanistan, Western feminists declare, “No Means Harder!”