Medtube.net Review:

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Country: North America, US, United States

City: Ashburn, Virginia

  • J. Tate - My 14 yr old loves it!My daughter played all day. The animals are adorable which you can pretty much see. I think they are so cute when they pout because you told them no to a game they ask to play, & some of the tricks they do like playing dead. I am tempeted to try it too, but I doubt it would keep an adults interest as long as it will keep my daughters.

    Oerall, if you have a kid who loves games like nintendogs, etc., I think they will adore this one (& you might play it occassionally too)!
  • Devin Ogle "Devin O." - Many usesAfter having a 50 dollar tablet this is a huge advancement, very fast and smooth operating system with the jelly bean os
  • S Wood - Murder Inc InternationalJournalist, Jeremy Scahill, author of the best selling expose of leading mercenary corporation Blackwater, has in his sights a somewhat larger prey in "Dirty Wars": namely the series of Covert Wars the United States has run in parallel with its more overt ones in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.

    The book begins by looking at precedents and experiences of U.S. covert operations and wars in the post-Vietnam War era, particular regard is giving to the Reagan administrations attempts to subvert the restrictions congress placed on its ability to act covertly in Central America, during which not a few of the figures in the Bush II administration (eg. John Negroponte) gained experience that would be put to chilling effect in years to come (see Greg Grandin's Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism for a detailed look at the continuity between Reagan's Central/Latin American warriors and the Bush II years). The attacks of September 11th 2001 are of course the turning point - the "Pearl Harbour" moment that the Neo-Cons have waited for arrives with a bang - all sorts of plans are dusted off and put into action: from augmenting the power of the presidency at the expense of congressional oversight (restricted after the debacle of the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration), the curtailing of freedoms (from torture, illegal imprisonment, the right to due process, freedom of information) in the name of national security, to the launching of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (which had approximately zero to do with the on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon). The two personalities in the Bush II administration that Scahill focuses on are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (see Andrew Cockburn's excellent Rumsfeld: An American Disaster for a fine summary of Rumsfeld's career). Both played a critical role in pushing forward the military solution in response to the attacks of 9/11 - an expansive military response that was eventually to regard the world as a battlefield where U.S. forces can go anywhere, at anytime, to conduct operations, regardless of issues of sovereignty, human rights or international law.

    So beyond the disastrous wars in Afghanistan (now well into its thirteenth year) and Iraq the American military and the C.I.A. moved to conducting covert operations in a growing list of countries. The two which Scahill particularly focuses on are Somalia and Yemen. He makes a convincing case that American actions in both countries were destabilising: for example in Somalia the US used Warlords to implement its program of capturing and assassinating alleged al-Qaeda operatives, in reality providing them with the means to create increasing levels murder and mayhem, and the context for a largely indigenous Islamic backlash in the form of the Islamic Courts Union, which the United States - in cahoots with Ethiopia - consequently attacks; this in turn creates space for the most radical elements of the I.C.U. - Al Shahab - who have links with Al Qaeda to come to the fore, thus creating an excuse for more intervention, more drone and special ops forces attacks, and more deaths... This is the disaster of American intervention. It is not only countries but individuals that are radicalised: the case of the American Anwar Awlaki is interwoven with the larger tale of institutions, governments and wars: over the course of "Dirty Wars" he changes from a Muslim who plays the part of an interlocutor between Islam and America, who condemned the attacks of 9/11 in mainstream U.S. media to one who - after spending time in a Yemeni jail at U.S. request - is alleged to have become an active member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (albeit in the realm of propaganda) and is eventually - despite being an American citizen - murdered in a drone attack. Unaccountably and with no explanation, his 16 year old son, along with a number of his young cousins, are murdered in a further drone attack a number of weeks later.

    Scahill covers the change from Bush to Obama (see Tariq Ali's The Obama Syndrome: Surrender At Home, War Abroad for an excellent short review of the Obama phenomena towards the end of his first term). His argument that there was a great deal of continuity between the two administrations is convincing, as is his point that the Obama administration carried the logic of covert actions and the doctrine of a world-wide battlefield against "terrorism" further than the Bush II administration, for example there were more drone strikes in the first year of the Obama than in all the years of Bush. Other subjects covered include an account of the assassination of Bin Laden; the formation of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; covert operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (which eventually spread to Pakistan); the infighting and jurisdictional turf wars between different American military/foreign policy institutions such as the CIA/State department and the Special Operations Forces/Defence department; the torture regimes (Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib and so on including the lesser known base at Baghdad airport where special ops forces conducted torture) as well as the extraordinary rendition (polite terms for kidnap followed by outsourced torture) program; and the Night Raids in Afghanistan and Iraq, often the fruit of flawed intelligence which caused the deaths of innocents and further ratcheted up hostility towards the U.S. among the people of both countries.

    In "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield" Jeremy Scahill has shown himself to an accomplished journalist and writer, he has collated his own original work along with a great deal of work from other writers, to create what must surely be the best single volume of material on the American Global War on "Terror". It has some limitations despite 520 pages of text, in particular geographically where coverage is concentrated on Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan with occasional forays into neighbouring countries but no coverage of for example American actions in the Philippines, or other locations in the far east. Otherwise this is a fantastic book, that sheds a great deal of light on the murderous and murky world of Covert Actions as conducted by the United States in the post 9/11 era that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.
  • Moppy - Pharmaceutical Word BookI am a medical transcriptionist and this is an invaluable tool for me. I live in a small rural community and our transcription department was only given access to the internet about a year ago. Even so, I can find medications much quicker with this book than looking for them online, and I use the book more often than not. It is very easy to find what I need with this book. I always order one for myself, but the entire department uses it. It's a GREAT book! Love it.