Ghost Wars: The Wrap Up

Throughout reading this book many of the ideas I had in my head about the government changed a lot. Nothing in this book surprised me that much because I have always been looking into conspiracy kind of things. I have always liked to think some of the things that people are saying are true even if most of the things are bad things. When I read this book I came to a couple of realizations about our country and our government. I think the one that hit me the hardest was that there are never enough questions to get asked. When they answer one question you have to ask another one and keep picking away at them until you get every little detail out of them. The things that they fear most are the people who are not afraid to ask the serious questions that need to be asked. The more questions you ask the more you will get out of the situation. Another thing that arose from my reading was that the government back in the 50’s and 60’s would give non lethal items such as things to wiretap, and communication taps, spy equipment, etc.. There were so many things that they could use back against us later in the years. The generals would tell their men to pick up scrap metal and broken weapons, vehicles and anything they could bring back and rebuild. They would have mechanics and other people put back together the things and they would then put them to use and use them in battles and wars.

Ghost Wars: Osama

Steven Coll also talks about Osama bin Laden and the plan to go and capture him. The plan was unsuccessful and we did not capture or assassinate Osama. In my opinion I think that going after Osama so fast and so aggressive was stupid. We should have waited a year longer to gather way more information, figure out where he sleeps, eats, meets with generals, stores all of his weapons, etc. There are so many things that they needed to sure up before they went in their and started to blow a bunch of stuff up to go find a man in a huge desert and mountains that we are not native to and have not been traveling or living in for all of our lives. You put a bunch of our soldiers in their no matter how much fire power we have or how many soldiers we have there they will still have a huge advantage until we get acclimated to the area and the terrain. They have all of their bases and forts inside caves and tunnels in the hills where we cannot see them and they are heavily guarded. This was just a calling for us to fail and that is what we have done since we have been there. I think we are there for the wrong reasons at this point since it has been so many years. Like what else is our country trying to take from them or how much money is involved. They just used Osama as an excuse to blame someone for the attacks and to use him for an excuse to start war with another country. The worst part about our government and country is that we try and step into things that we are not needed in and usually just end up making it worse. We need to stop worrying about what other people are doing and worry about getting ourselves out of this huge recession. If we didn’t go to war and used all of that money to spend on things to help our country move forward and maybe get out a little more out of debt and not spend the money we don’t have. I think that going for Osama was a very stupid idea and think that we should have never gone into the way we did. This book helps me realize that we never needed to go in their when we did.

Ghost Wars: Wondering Why

One thing this book made me notice was that no matter what the government is talking about they are always leaving some small detail out of the question. For example, before 9/11 happened the government got a threat from terrorist that talked about American citizens getting hurt by an attack and injured. Even after receiving this threat they did not do that much to try and prevent anything; they did not even raise the threat level to a higher level. How ever no one knew about this until after the attack already happened. Something about this just doesn’t sit right especially because they knew something was going to happen and they did not make their best effort to protect their citizens. It is their priority to protect the citizens of their country from any enemy that comes our way. This just makes me question a lot more of the things the government comes out and says. I think it makes me wonder what else they are forgetting to tell us they know about serious attacks on the country or in another country. I don’t understand how the government expects us to trust them when they do very shady business behind the whole countries back. I feel like sometimes they have no regard for what the citizens think and they just do whatever they want because they have a seat of power. I think that most people would rather not hear the secrets our country has to offer because I think that we would be way more surprised then we think. These days it’s a good thing to keep things under wraps because with all of the social media and internet, it is very easy for important things to get leak all over the internet and when its there its there forever. I still do love the country we live in and the government no matter what they do to us and don’t tell us about they still give us a place of freedom to do a lot of things most countries can’t.  

Ghost Wars: The Maps

Throughout the book there are maps placed that each show a different place and a different thing on them. There are 4 main important ones that have to do with information the United States got and did not act on. The first map is labeled as “The Birth of Modern Saudi Arabia” which shows Saudi Arabia at the close of World War 2. It gives you the 1945 boundaries which gave Saudi Arabia more land and room over all of the neighboring countries. But it also gives the modern boundaries which close down on some of the land that they got back in 1945. It makes the whole country itself smaller which gave them less power. The second map they have is labeled “Massoud at War 1983-1985” which shows Afghanistan and the land around it and where Massoud and his men were. It shows the hills that Massoud and his men went down to attack convoys of Soviet troops that were there. They would come out of the shadows and attack the convoys then disappear until they were alone and took the scrap metal, weapons, and pieces of tanks and other weapons and then bring them back on horseback to Panjshir where they would have mechanics that would put them back together for future rebel use. The third map that they have labeled in this book is called “Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farm” which is a bird’s eye view shot of Osama’s farm from satellites. It shows how close his training facility was to the airport and how it had a direct road to the airport leading from it. There was a 10 foot wall surrounding the entire farm, a six story office building that ended up being bombed out in 2001, and about 80 living structures were inside of these walls. They went back and forth on whether they should raid the place or not because they did not know which building he was in or if they went into the wrong building if he was in the one next to that one. They also did not know what to do with all of the collateral damage that would occur. How they would explain this whole situation to people and other countries and governments that would be wondering what is going on. The final map that they have labeled as “The CIA in the Panjshir, 1997-2000” which shows the routes of flights and driving paths that many of them took to complete these special missions they had to do. They give you arrows from where the journey started which was sometimes up to 770 miles away but also sometimes as close as 230 miles away from the target place. All they were trying to do was to establish a renewed counterterrorism liaison by giving Massoud more cash, more secure communications, listening devices, and other nonlethal spy gear.

Ghost Wars: Intro

This book is definitely for the reader who likes conspiracy. It’s written by a Pulitzer Prize winning author Steven Coll who along with writing this book wrote the book the Bin Laden’s. This book covers topics from a vast variety of time from the CIA back in 1979 to present day issues. Anything from the soviet invasion to the attacks on the world trade centers. It talks about who was actually responsible for the attacks and who knew about them before they happened and didn’t act on the threat. It also gives the people some sort of an idea of what has been happening over the past couple of years and it shows them how much our government actually knows and doesn’t act on. It made me as a reader question a lot of information I get from the news and any other media source because it makes me think what they are failing to tell us. How bad the situation actually is over in the Middle East and what is going on. Why we are chasing Osama bin laden around the deserts of his home country to try and kill him and fail at that which caused us to waste millions upon millions of dollars on trying to kill a single man. Reading this book makes me think about and makes me angry at our government because of the things that they think they can do to other places and people and think that they can get away with it without consequence. The whole war in Afghanistan and in Iraq is an outcome to something they thought would not get this bad.  It shows that there are consequences to actions that you take in places you have no right to be. The reason I think this book got an award is because the author does a great job at giving an entire overview of the whole situation that was and is going on and writes it in a way that people can understand.

Death Penalty #3

The stages in a case about this starts with a crime that qualifies for capital punishment. These crimes usually are never walked up upon by police and always relies on evidence and pictures to solve the case. the next step in the case is to make an arrest. This is the part of the process that can mess the whole life up for an innocent person. The police are usually pressured to arrest someone as fast as they can to settle the neighborhood and everyone around the case. After this the person is brought in front of a court to gets the plea and the charges that are being brought against them. They than have to be proven guilty or "Death Qualified". After they are proven guilty they get the burden of trying to show how bad a mistake they made to sentence them to death. They also get the chance to get a clemency hearing. However if they fail to prove their innocence they have to wait until they get served their warrant for death.

The most humane way is through lethal injection which is when certain chemicals are injected into their body. It first puts them to sleep, than they get a chemical that stops all muscle movement. Eventually they get a shot that stops their heart and that is the end of the process. I think that hanging and firing squad are the two most inhumane ways to kill someone. These can both be considered "cruel and unusual" because there are way to many things that can go wrong, which could make the situation turn into torture. These both can cause very slow painful deaths also.

All of the statistics about other states and the death penalty really surprised me. I think it was the amount of people on death row in some of the states. For example in California there has been 669 death row inmates and only 13 executions, in Texas there has been 370 inmates and 405 total executions. The stats could keep going on and on. These numbers are really surprising because that is so many people to have waiting on when they are going to die or even if they will ever get off death row. All this info shows me is more reasons why the death penalty should not be put in because there is way to many flaws in the system to where it is not fair enough for everyone that comes through the process.

This info just supported my reason to abolish the death penalty because there are simply way to many people on death row. For example there are 3261 death row inmates throughout the whole country. The system is also very racist. With most of the inmates being black with white victims. I think that everyone should take a look at these statistics and realize that this is doing more bad than good and is costing the people as taxpayers so much extra money that is not needed to be spent.

Boggess

While watching the Front line video about Clifford Boggess I knew what decision I would have made. On one side he was clearly a cold blooded killer who had no remorse for what he did until after he committed the crimes. On the other side he said he was a changed man and that his stay on death row changed him for the better. In my opinion only certain people change for the good while they go to jail, prison, death row, whatever it may be. Only the certain people who really want forgiveness for what they have done and actually want to change their life for the better. I believed this about Boggess until the interview with his Girlfriend when she said that she knew he was a threat to society and that she wanted him dead because he had been threatening her to. I think that the death penalty is pointless. We are trying to show how killing people for crimes is supposed to deter it, but in reality it is not even doing that. Criminals will keep killing and committing capital crimes no matter what their sentence is and a life sentence would be way worse than dieing. It gives them so much time to think about what they have done and to be bothered by it for the rest of their life.