The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea’s ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.

It is hard to exaggerate how devastated the Korean peninsula was in 1953; Gen. Douglas MacArthur said he vomited after he looked "at that wreckage." Three years of conflict killed about 3 million people, most of them civilians. One-third of all homes and two-fifths of all factories were destroyed. Seoul, Pyongyang and all other cities were little more than rubble. Food was scarce, orphans plentiful.

The US may have killed 20% of the population of Korea, said General Curtis Lemay, who was involved in the US air war on Korea. If so, that is a higher rate of genocidal slaughter than what the Nazis inflicted on Poland or the Soviet Union. The Korean War may be unknown ancient history to us, but it is no more ancient history to Koreans than the Nakba is to Palestinians.

Syria Rebels Reject US-Russia Dialogue Calls - Najib Ghadbian, a representative of one of the US-backed rebel factions, insisted blah blah blah . ..
Najib Ghadbian is a professor at the University of Arkansas who has written articles for Qatar's Al Jazeerah for ten years. He is currently on paid leave, probably financed by Qatar, and wouldn't know a "rebel" if he saw one.

Regime change in Syria is an illegal, unauthorized position.

UN Security Council resolutions from April last year called “upon all parties in Syria, including the opposition, immediately to cease all armed violence in all its forms” in order to seek a diplomatic remedy.

But the US and its petro-despot allies are not complying with the UN resolutions. Instead they are arming the rebels, the most powerful being the al-Qaeda faction, and continuing to call for the Syria president to leave office — which is NOT a UN requirement (nor should it be).

So, faced with this US intransigence, the second UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has announced that he has failed and so he will quit at the end of the month. What choice did Brahimi have, given US lawlessness, its refusal to abide by UN resolutions?
–Apr 21, 2013, US to boost military support, continues to call for Assad to leave office
–May 2, 2013, Lakhdar Brahimi tells U.N. diplomats he plans to resign as Syria envoy
–May 4, 2013, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel confirmed yesterday that the US was reexamining its consistent opposition to arming the Syrian rebels*

Now to call for US military intervention to correct an already illegal, unworkable policy is stupid illegal (against the UN Charter) warmongering. But that’s nothing new for the NY Times.

* Footnote: Of course the Hagel bit about the US consistent opposition to arming the Syrian rebels is baloney. Even the NY Times has reported that the US is arming al-Qaeda. Arming the opposition was what US Ambassador Chris Stevens was engaged in when he was killed in Benghazi on September 11-12, 2012.

everyone agrees that the Taliban are insurgents
Not quite everyone.
To describe the US military efforts in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as counterinsurgencies is of course a misnomer. According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms:
*insurgency — An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict.
*insurgent — Member of a political party who rebels against established leadership.
*counterinsurgency — Those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and
civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency. Also called COIN. http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp1_02....

So the resistance by the citizens of a country to a foreign military occupation -- not to a constituted government -- is not an insurgency, and the occupying force's effort to defeat that resistance is not a counterinsurgency. In other words, the occupation resistance forces are not aiming to overthrow a government but to resist an alien occupation. For example, nobody would claim that the French Resistance to Nazi occupation and its puppet Vichy government was an insurgency.

But COIN does sound better. You can take it to the bank.

Exactly -- all or nearly all of the domestic "terror plots" to date have been FBI-instigated, with confused young men as the targets for prosecution so as to make the Feebers look good.

I'm really surprised that Raimondo didn't consider this angle as a strong posibility, given that the FBI knew Tamerlan long ago, and his mother has said that the FBI maintained contact with him (and set him up, she says).

Excellent summary -- short and exact.

it is not clear what purpose US intervention on the Korean peninsula ultimately served" – a point brought home by the current Korean crisis
Let me clarify it. The U.S. gained--
1. Military airbases one air-hour from Shanghai and Beijing.
2. An endless war with an enemy which can be provoked at any time, especially at budget time, with war-games and B-2 bombers. Another "threat" which requires the U.S. government to Keep Us Safe.
3. A reason to "pivot" military forces to the Asian theater to help cajole Asian countries (except China) into a new trade pact (TPP) wanted by corporations who need protection.
--SecDef Panetta: The second element of our defense strategy is to maintain our force projection where we need it, in the Middle East and in the Asia Pacific region. . . So that's why we're rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific because we confront real threats here from -- from North Korea.
4. Leverage to get more bases in the Asian theater. The Philippines defense minister recently suggested that if the scary NorKor threat develops further, Philippines might again allow U.S. bases in that country. also Marines in Australia.
5. Reason to spend more money building worthless warships, as the NorKor threat is used to get back to a 300-ship Navy. (PS: The Navy would still have more admirals than ships.)
6. Increased leverage over the United Nations, since the 1953 Armistice Agreement which the UN is a party to (the U.S. isn't) is still responsible while the U.S. is really in control.
7. Similar with South Korea (ROK). The U.S. still commands ROK military and won't allow ROK to command its own troops. This situation is unique recently in the world -- the U.S. hasn't commanded Iraq or Afghan troops --except in Europe (NATO) of course, the other U.S. military puppets. This U.S. control of ROK military allows the U.S. to control ROK foreign policy.
8. Political leverage over China -- "We need you to control your dangerous ally North Korea -- just do it."

Kerry: US Won’t Hesitate to Attack Iran . . . US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that the Obama Administration would “not hesitate” to launch a military strike on Iran
Kerry didn't say "not hesitate."

Quoting the Lebanon Daily Star which cites KCNA news agency w/o a link, for this scary headline? Sorry, I don't buy it. This is similar to Iran -- propaganda posing as news. And I thought antiwar.com was AGAINST war. Then why parrot this sensational rubbish?

Lousy article - development and production contracts are apples and oranges. (And mixed fruit, as with the F35, is wrong.)