Drones for hire

If you need drones, we've got drones. Apparently, this shoudl be our new national motto, according to this NYT article:

"Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies."

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Quality versus quantity of heartbeats

In this thoughtful article at Pro-publica, Charles Ornstein discusses our need to come to grips with end of life decisions:

[T]he high cost of end-of-life care is an issue worthy of discussion. About a quarter of Medicare payments are spent in the last year of life, according to recent estimates. And the degree of care provided to patients in that last year — how many doctors they see, the number of intensive-care hospitalizations — varies dramatically across states and even within states, according to the authoritative Dartmouth Atlas. Studies show that this care is often futile. It doesn't always prolong lives, and it doesn't always reflect what patients want.

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Onion: Nation is shocked to learn that a bloody war is occurring in Afghanistan

The headline from The Onion: "Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal."

WASHINGTON—As they scoured the Internet for more juicy details about former CIA director David Petraeus’ affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, Americans were reportedly horrified today upon learning that a protracted, bloody war involving U.S. forces is currently raging in the nation of Afghanistan.

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What would Iran actually do with a nuclear weapon?

If Iran had a nuclear weapon, would it use it? Of course not. That would be suicidal. Then why do the United States and Israel fear that Iran might create a nuclear bomb? That is the question Glenn Greenwald asked and answered today:

That Iran will use its nuclear weapons against the US and Israel is rather obviously the centerpiece of the fear-mongering campaign against Tehran, to build popular support for threats to launch an aggressive attack in order to prevent them from acquiring that weapon. So what, then, is the real reason that so many people in both the US and Israeli governments are so desperate to stop Iranian proliferation? Every now and then, they reveal the real reason: Iranian nuclear weapons would prevent the US from attacking Iran at will, and that is what is intolerable. The latest person to unwittingly reveal the real reason for viewing an Iranian nuclear capacity as unacceptable was GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the US's most reliable and bloodthirsty warmongers.

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