VA Whistleblower Ignites Firestorm Over Vets’ Illnesses

It’s not every day that a scientist creates such intense drama on Capitol Hill. But Dr. Steven S. Coughlin’s charges that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) officials hid, manipulated, and even lied about research pertaining to Gulf War Illness (GWI) and health problems plaguing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are still causing fallout a month after his stunning testimony before a key House subcommittee. “The implications of his testimony are profound,” declared Anthony Hardie, 45, a Gulf War veteran who serves on the congressionally appointed Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses (RAC). Veterans and their advocates, as well as many in the scientific community, have long believed that the VA avoids responsibility for veterans’ care by downplaying or outright ignoring evidence linking wartime experiences—such as exposure to Agent Orange, chemical weapons, or toxic pollution—to veterans’ chronic medical issues back home. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/va-whistleblower-ignites-firestorm-over-vets-illnesses/

Filling the Empty Battlefield

In the ensuing years, it was as if Scahill had taken Johnson’s observation to heart — that we Americans can’t see our world as it is. And little wonder, since so much of the American way of war has plunged into the shadows. As two administrations in Washington arrogated ever greater war-making and national security powers, they began to develop a new, off-the-books, undeclared style of war-making. In the process, they transformed an increasingly militarized CIA, a hush-hush crew called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and a shiny new “perfect weapon” and high-tech fantasy object, the drone, into the president’s own privatized military. In these years, war and the path to it were becoming the private business and property of the White House and the national security state — and no one else. Little of this, of course, was a secret to those on the receiving end. It was only Americans who were not supposed to know much about what was being done in their name. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2013/04/23/filling-the-empty-battlefield/

Iran Represents a Deathblow to U.S. Global Hegemony

George Kennan, who was one of the main architects of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Second World War era, also noted with candidness and prescience: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” Thus we see how after the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union collapsed the U.S. has been flailing to contrive a replacement “enemy” and pretext for its essential militarism. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent “war on terror” has fulfilled this purpose to a degree, even though it is replete with contradictions that belie its fraudulence, such as the support given to Al Qaeda terrorist elements currently to overthrow the government of Syria. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34586.htm#.UWqkAgqcgcc.email

Neo-Con War Addiction Threatens Our Future

by Ron Paul. The neo-con ideology promotes endless war, but neo-cons fight their battles with the blood of others. From the comfortable, subsidized offices of magazines like the Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives urge the United States to engage in endless war – to be fought by the victims of the “poverty draft” from states where there are few jobs. Ironically, these young people cannot find more productive work because the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing to keep the war machine turning has destroyed our economy. The six trillion dollars that will be spent on the Iraq war are merely pieces of printed paper that further erode the dollar’s purchasing power now and well into the future. It is the inflation tax, which is the most regressive and cruel of all. http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2013/03/24/neo-con-war-addiction-threatens-our-future/

Cut Commitments, Not Muscle

The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union is gone. Mao’s China is gone, though a mightier China has emerged, as America’s share of the global economy is shrinking. Moreover, as ex-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen contends, our greatest strategic threat is not Kim Jong Un or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the soaring national debt. And if, as Republicans insist, we have a debt crisis because we are “spending too much,” spending will have to be cut — discretionary spending, entitlements and defense. And the only question about the defense cuts is not whether they are coming, but where. What is needed is what America, since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, has stubbornly resisted doing: a strategic review of all U.S. commitments abroad to determine which remain vital to the national security. Before we decide what our defense forces should be, let us determine what is in the U.S. vital interest to defend at risk of war. http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2013/02/21/cut-commitments-not-muscle/

Military Cuts and the Global Empire

The mere suggestion that armed services cutbacks are unpatriotic or places the homeland in peril is an invented euphemism to disguise the true nature of the coercive global empire that has replaced our Constitutional Republic. http://batr.org/gulag/021713.html

Seeing the Reality of the Vietnam War, 50 Years Late

Now, in Kill Anything That Moves, Nick Turse has for the first time put together a comprehensive picture, written with mastery and dignity, of what American forces actually were doing in Vietnam. The findings disclose an almost unspeakable truth … Episodes of devastation, murder, massacre, rape, and torture once considered isolated atrocities were in fact the norm, adding up to a continuous stream of atrocity, unfolding, year after year, throughout that country. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175639/tomgram%3A_jonathan_schell%2C_seeing_the_reality_of_the_vietnam_war%2C_50_years_late/

The U.S. War Machine

Throughout American history we see many precursors for U.S. warmaking. Ever since World War I, the United States has maintained an active role in global affairs, at the cost of many thousands of American lives and many domestic freedoms. Yet much more recently than any of those antecedents to the modern war machine, a major shift took place. And that was World War II, the “Good War,” the last clear-cut and most widely celebrated military victory enjoyed by the United States, the one to which liberals unfavorably compare Bush’s adventures, and conservatives invoke as precedents for their own preferred war policies. It was in World War II that the U.S. warfare state blossomed into its modern form. http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/book-review-the-u-s-war-machine/

Drones are Fool’s Gold: They Prolong Wars We Can’t Win

The greatest threat to world peace is not from nuclear weapons and their possible proliferation. It is from drones and their certain proliferation. Nuclear bombs are useless weapons, playthings for the powerful or those aspiring to power. Drones are now sweeping the global arms market. There are some 10,000 said to be in service, of which a thousand are armed and mostly American. Some reports say they have killed more non-combatant civilians than died in 9/11. I have not read one independent study of the current drone wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the horn of Africa that suggests these weapons serve any strategic purpose. Their “success” is expressed solely in body count, the number of so-called “al-Qaida-linked commanders” killed. If body count were victory, the Germans would have won Stalingrad and the Americans Vietnam. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/10/drones-fools-gold-prolong-wars

Propaganda 101: Pentagon to Debut Most Expensive Weapons Program Ever in New Superman Film

The relationship between the military and Hollywood is a cozy one. Filmmakers get access to high-tech, tax-payer funded hardware, and the Pentagon gets to literally re-write the scripts, editing out anything they perceive as portraying the military negatively. http://www.infowars.com/propaganda-101-pentagon-to-debut-most-exve-weapons-program-ever-in-new-superman-filmpensi/

Rumors of Wars

Jobs and the economy are rightly the focus of the upcoming election because of their immediate impact on every American, but it is also essential to address the issue of how a dysfunctional and horrifically expensive foreign and defense policy has made every American poorer and even threatened the continued existence of our republican form of government. It is a discussion that must take place even if the two major parties do their best to avoid it. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2012/09/19/rumors-of-wars/

The Real ‘Defense’ Budget

While everyone knows that the defense budget is large — even in the numbers that the public sees as the formally admitted figures by the Department of Defense — the truth is that when one scratches beneath the bureaucratic veneer, national security spending is much larger, nearly double the amount U.S. citizens are told. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/the-real-defense-budget/253327/#

Washington’s Militarized Mindset

Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us — less than 1% — serves in the military in this all-volunteer era of ours and, on the face of it, Washington’s constant warring in distant lands seems barely to touch the lives of most Americans. And yet the militarization of the United States and the strengthening of the National Security Complex continues to accelerate. The Pentagon is, by now, a world unto itself, with a staggering budget at a moment when no other power or combination of powers comes near to challenging this country’s might. In the post-9/11 era, the military-industrial complex has been thoroughly mobilized under the rubric of “privatization” and now goes to war with the Pentagon. With its $80 billion-plus budget, the intelligence bureaucracy has simply exploded. There are so many competing agencies and outfits, surrounded by a universe of private intelligence contractors, all swathed in a penumbra of secrecy, and they have grown so large, mainly under the Pentagon’s aegis, that you could say intelligence is now a ruling way of life in Washington — and it, too, is being thoroughly militarized. Even the once-civilian CIA has undergone a process of para-militarization and now runs its own “covert” drone wars in Pakistan and elsewhere. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2012/07/05/washingtons-militarized-mindset/

The Naked and the Dead: Raw Hubris is Still the Rule

Every few weeks, we hear another story on the great danger posed to the security of the Republic if there is even a miniscule reduction in the rate of growth in the Pentagon budget. With wringing hands and furrowed brow and tones of stern alarum, they say the spigot must remain at full spate — must even be increased — if the shining city on the hill is to have the slightest chance to hold off the Yellow Peril, the Persian Menace, the Muslim Horde and all the other unknown unknowns that threaten our sacred way of life. This is currently pitched in the context of budget cuts and austerity measures which have sadly been enforced on us all by the moral imperative of saving our financial elites from bearing the slightest tincture of responsibility or discomfort for the global economic meltdown they inadvertently and accidentally caused by years of systematic, deliberate and well-documented fraud. But of course, the Pentagon has been crying poor for years — and never more so than in the 21st century, when it has commanded budgets beyond all human comprehension: trillions piled upon trillions, a floodtide sluicing off in a myriad of rivulets, coursing in all directions. http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2259-the-naked-and-the-dead-raw-hubris-is-still-the-rule.html

Springtime For The Military-Industrial Complex

Military contractors have nothing to fear. Whether it is the Pacific buildup to contain Chinese ambition, or drone strikes in the horn of Africa or Pakistan, or the completely-failed drug war, or using the ghost of Kony to establish a toehold in Africa to compete with China for African minerals, or an attempted deposition of Bashar Assad or Egypt’s new Islamist regime, or bombing Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities, or a conflict over mineral rights in the Arctic, or (as Paul Krugman desires — and what the heck, it’s 2012, why not?) an alien invasion, or a new global conflict arising out of a global economic reset, it’s springtime for the military contractors. It’s everyone else who should be worried. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-springtime-military-industrial-complex

Time to Get Out of the Middle East

So the military-industrial complex — the lobbyists, the weapons makers, the media — may accept it if Obama kills 14 women and 21 children to get one suspected terrorist. More terrorism means more weapons spending. For the lucky few it’s a self-perpetuating stairway to riches. Yet for wider society it means spending time, money and effort on war, instead of on domestic prosperity. It means the constant threat of terrorism. And it means the loss of our liberty, as the security state adopts increasingly paranoid anti-terrorism measures. We should do to others as we would have done to ourselves. That means — unless we are comfortable with the idea of ourselves living under military occupation and drone strikes — getting out of the middle east, and letting that region solve its own problems — forget another costly and destructive occupation in Syria. Slash the war and occupation spending, and redirect the money to making America independent of middle eastern energy and resources. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-time-get-out-middle-east

Drone Warfare in America

How would Obama supporters feel if they learned that their beloved President was running far-to-the-authoritarian-right of arch-hawk Charles Krauthammer on one particular civil liberties issue? Sadly, the answer is that the most Obama supporters probably wouldn’t feel very much at all, because support for Obama has always predominantly been emotion-driven (he promised change “you can believe in”, not “change that I can logically convince you will be beneficial“). But I digress. Charles Krauthammer weighed in on FOX yesterday to telegraph his opposition to bringing drone warfare to the skies of America. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-drone-warfare-america

Brewing a Conflict with China

China’s rise is a great boon to the U.S. military/security complex, which governs America in which there is a pretense of “freedom and democracy.” China is the profitable replacement for the “Soviet threat.” As the days go by, the presstitute media will create in the feeble minds of Americans “The CHINA Threat.” Soon whatever little remains of the U.S. living standard will be sacrificed to Washington’s confrontation with China, along with the seizure of our pensions and personal savings in order to deter “the China threat.” http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/04/30/brewing-a-conflict-with-china/

America’s Lasting Stranglehold on the Middle East

People who actually work for the military empire and aren’t running for office tend to be very honest about America’s monstrous foreign policy. The fact that America has helped prop up barbarous dictatorships throughout the Middle East for decades isn’t really allowed in the polite political debates of the day, never mind that they badly want that system to continue. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2012/04/19/americas-lasting-stranglehold-on-the-middle-east/

SOPA Changes Name to CISPA

After withdrawing the SOPA and PIPA legislation in the face of massive protests, the House & Senate are scheduled to address a much more fascist internet bill by the end of the month, CISPA. CISPA (Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) would classify the internet as national security infrastructure, and place its entire control under the Pentagon and the NSA. http://silverdoctors.blogspot.com/2012/04/sopa-changes-name-to-cispa.html

War: Marching Toward Syria, Eyes Cast on Iran

While all the incessant warmongering directed toward Iran at the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington was grabbing the headlines, the momentum for Western intervention into Syria continued to steadily build. All those neo-con “real men,” it appears, just might prefer to go to Tehran via Damascus. Taking to the Senate floor on Monday, Arizona Senator John McCain, one of the first supporters of arming the Free Syrian Army, upped the ante by calling for a U.S.-led air campaign against Syrian military targets. McCain deemed such an escalation necessary to establish “humanitarian corridors.” http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29641

Hope in the Belly of the Beast

Under our system of elected oligarchy, whoever screams the loudest gets the biggest piece of the policy pie. Since most normal Americans don’t think about foreign policy issues except when it’s thrown in their faces – a major war breaks out, or if the blowback from one of our overseas extravaganzas takes them by surprise – the debate on this subject is dominated by a triad of special interest groups: 1) The military-industrial complex, otherwise known as war profiteers, 2) the neoconservatives, who believe in perpetual war as a matter of high principle, and 3) the well-organized and wealthy Israel lobby, which has as its mandate to keep the US engaged not only with Israel but with the global network of protectorates, alliances, and client states that make up the American Empire. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/02/26/hope-in-the-belly-of-the-beast/

The Merchants of Death and Me

America’s lashing out at the world is the product of a phony narrative that suggests that there are thousands of rabid terrorists standing by waiting to board the next Icelandic Air flight to arrive in Newark and start spreading havoc. It just ain’t so. Most of the people we regard as terrorists are local folks who are fed up with their own governments and wouldn’t be able to do anything if transplanted into another culture in another land even if some obliging FBI agent were to provide them with a phony bomb to use. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/11/02/the-merchants-of-death-and-me/

Is the National Security Complex Too Big to Fail?

The dimensions of the National Security Complex now beggar the imagination. In fact, everything about it should make it the global yardstick for “too big to fail.” The Pentagon budget is, for instance, about 50% higher today than the Cold War average and accounts for nearly half of all military expenditures globally. And yet it has kept right on growing; and if bailed-out bankers continue to take home their bonuses as thanks for practically sinking the country, top Pentagon types continue to take home their golden pensions with future revolving-door opportunities in the military-industrial complex always available. If you really want to grasp the enormity of the National Security Complex, just consider this stat: today, 4.2 million federal workers and employees of private contractors have security clearances — about, that is, the population of New Zealand or Lebanon. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/10/20/is-the-national-security-complex-too-big-to-fail/

Obama’s Imperial Arrogance

Candidate Obama promised peace. As president, he double downed Bush and then some, waging multiple direct and proxy wars. The business of America is war. Washington has a permanent war policy. Republicans and Democrats perpetuate it. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29464.htm

Two Sides (Republican and Democrat), of the Same Bloated War-Mongering Military Over-Spending Debate

There is not much difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to military spending. Most likely your representative is for maintaining bloated military expenditures no matter what their party affiliation. Moreover, key Republicans are even willing to raise your taxes to support this bloat. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/10/two-sides-republican-and-democrat-of.html

Supercommittee Co-Chairman Patty Murray Accepts Award from Defense Industry as She Mulls Cuts to Pentagon Budget

When Senator John Kyl, a Republican member of the “supercommittee” charged with reducing the federal deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, threatened to walk out on the panel if cuts to the defense budget were open for discussion, it was big news. Far less attention, almost none, in fact, has been paid to Democratic Senator Patty Murray, a co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. But a recent award that the senator from Washington received may say more about the likelihood of cuts to the defense budget than the Arizona Republican’s tough talk. So, perhaps, does Murray’s refusal to discuss it. http://www.alternet.org/world/152611

U.S. to Build Massive New Prison in Afghanistan

As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. http://www.uruknet.com/?p=m81592&fb=1

For Officials, 9/11 Means Gushing About Wars and Demanding Continued Funding

President Obama raised more than a few eyebrows with his declaration yesterday that 9/11 made the US “stronger,” but officials past and present seem to have all fallen in line with the general narrative of 9/11 as the start of a glorious new period of American history, defined exclusively by endless wars and runaway military spending. Admiral Michael Mullen, the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, cheered the past decade as “America’s military ventured forth as the long arm and clenched fist of an angry nation at war,” celebrating the “vengeance” visited upon assorted enemies over that period. The “all’s well and ends well” sentiment was shared by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who declared that the terrorist attacks had changed America “mostly in good ways.” For those hoping to look past the gushing, the various self-congratulatory interviews also afforded ample time to shill for more wars going forward, with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisting a terrorist attack was “imminent” if Congress dared to cut the record military budget, which dwarfs even the massive budgets Rumsfeld had to work with. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/11/for-officials-911-means-gushing-about-wars-and-demanding-continued-funding/

Shadow Warriors: Movin’ On Up

For decades the U.S. military has waged clandestine war on virtually every continent on the globe, but for the first time, high-ranking Special Operations Forces (SOF) officers are moving out of the shadows and into the command mainstream. Their emergence suggests the U.S. is embarking on a military sea change that will replace massive deployments, like Iraq and Afghanistan, with stealthy night raids, secret assassinations, and death-dealing drones. Its implications for civilian control of foreign policy promise to be profound. http://original.antiwar.com/hallinan/2011/08/21/shadow-warriors-movin-on-up/

No Early End to Libya War Expected

Which is great news for the arms merchants and the madmen behind the U.S. policy of permanent war with the Arab world. http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2011/07/19/no-early-end-to-libya-war-expected/

Petraeus Credited With Ramping Up Afghan Killing

After his repeated escalations left the situation dramatically worse, Gen. David McKiernan was replaced as commander in Afghanistan, leaving in failure. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his replacement, escalated the war further, and after another year of rising death tolls, he was asked to resign in failure. Officials were keen on Gen. David Petraeus, the next replacement, was seen as the silver bullet solution for this war. So after another year of escalation, and worsening violence, Petraeus is leaving too. Incredibly, however, ramping up the killings is being spun as a great success. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/07/19/petraeus-credited-with-ramping-up-afghan-killing/

Why the War Machine Keeps on Running

Today, the United States is locked in a throes of perpetual war, and our politics are dominated by its political handmaiden, perpetual fear. If you doubt this, just think about the recent expansion of drone assaults to Libya and Somalia or your next invasive pat down in an airport or the continuation of the onerous Patriot Act. Some critics believe perpetual war is driven primarily by the lust for empire. No doubt, empire lusting is a factor, but for the reasons I explained in The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War, I believe perpetual war is primarily the issue of a deadly mutation of domestic politics, particularly the imperative to prop up a sclerotic Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) — a political-economic faction that lost its raison d’être when the Cold War ended, and now needs the perpetual threat of war, to pump money through it, if it is to survive and flourish on its own terms, at the expense of others. http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney07052011.html

U.S. Cost of War at Least $3.7 Trillion and Counting

When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America’s wars. In addition to the incalculable cost of human life, the financial cost to support ten years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq will likely exceed $4 trillion. Worse still, there’s no end in sight. (AP) Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/29-0

American Wars Will Be Increasingly Secret

The ability of the President to go to war against the wishes of Congress and the American people has expanded dramatically over the years. But technological advances in airpower are beginning to allow entire wars to be conducted without the introduction of United States Armed Forces into any field of conflict. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/06/16/american-wars-will-be-increasingly-secret/

CNAS Conference Becomes ‘Thumbsucker’

This is the fourth year I’ve attended and written about the perennial flocking of Washington’s military courtier class, otherwise known as the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) annual conference, always at the luxurious Willard Continental Hotel, always attended by thousands of dark blue suits and an impressive contingent of active duty military officers. I’m afraid it might be my last. The event I once said was “so pumped up by its own mission of salvation for the broader Middle East and Central Asia that it could take off like a rocket ship of its own self-satisfaction into the stratosphere,” has become so thin and milquetoast it seems at risk of floating away—period. It really did leave one almost wishing for the near-giddy arrogance of the old COIN cheerleader days circa 2009. Back then you could say there was a “buzz,” now there’s hardly a pulse. http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2011/06/06/cnas-conference-becomes-thumbsucker/

Gates: U.S. Military Will Always Have a ‘Full Menu’

Gates also said that even though he “hopes” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually wind down, the US military “has never been at a loss in being told to find things to do,” seeing a number of potential conflicts on the horizon. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/06/03/gates-even-after-iraq-afghanistan-military-will-find-plenty-to-do/

The American Deep State

Lake’s “deep state” critique seems to center on the ability of this network of retirees to excessively influence state policy and even work to undermine the national interest for their own benefit. The U.S. defense budget is the largest piece of the budget and unceasingly increases despite a lagging economy and crippling levels of federal debt. America’s bloated, corporatist, military-industrial complex disproportionately influences policy and results in a violent and oppressive military empire of global reach which manifests in various ways that endanger the American people. As for the intelligence community, it is well known to be, as a Washington Post investigation put it, “so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” “Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies,” reported the Post, “work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence.” This is a monster, unelected intelligence world that is clearly beyond the grasp of any President or Congressman and, since it maintains its employees beyond election cycles it almost surely operates with a level of autonomy that would make most voters and policymakers cringe. In a post-9/11 world where our highest enemies are the result of blowback, these realities are not rocket science. http://original.antiwar.com/jglaser/2011/05/26/the-american-deep-state/

1994: Army War College Paper Proposes Use of Computer Generated Insurgents

In 2008, Old-Thinker News reported on a 1994 strategic paper published by the U.S. Army War College titled “Revolution In Military Affairs And Conflict Short Of War,” written by Dr. Steven Metz (who works for the RAND Corporation) and James Kievit. Recent events have made this paper even more precient than ever. The document outlines an eerily familiar scenario in which a group of revolutionaries within government hijack control of the levers of power and begin a program of pre-emptive war, psychological operations at home and abroad, and false flag attacks blamed on “…computer generated insurgent leader[s]“. http://www.oldthinkernews.com/?p=1272

Washington’s Endless War Shuffle

Someday, when historians look back, they will undoubtedly be struck by the utter inanity, not to say collective insanity, of the United States fighting what our president has called a “war of necessity,” now in its tenth year, in Afghanistan, as well as a “covert” war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. It will undoubtedly look like a classic case of a declining empire overextending itself, squandering its treasury, and then, in its moment of crisis, extending itself yet further. After all, the date to get U.S. “combat troops” out of Afghanistan has already been officially put off to the end of 2014, more than three years away, and that doesn’t even include U.S. trainers and other supposedly noncombat troops, possibly numbering in the tens of thousands, who may remain for years more. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/04-1

The U.S. Maxes Out Its Credit Card

The U.S. dollar sank further last week and gold hit $1,500 an ounce, frightening investors and destabilizing financial markets. A leading credit rating agency warned the US AAA rating might be downgraded. While Rome burned, President Obama and the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress traded childish taunts and hot air. Both parties refused to tell Americans the painful truth: government’s yawning $1.4 trillion US budget deficit had to be slashed to prevent a financial meltdown. That would mean pain for everyone. But the two political parties are deadlocked: Obama’s Democrats want to raise taxes. Republicans demand tax cuts. They want to cut health, education and welfare, all three sacred cows to the Democrats, while increasing military spending when 40 million Americans draw government food aid. This dishonest debate mostly ignores the 800-lb gorilla in the room: America’s bloated $750-900 billion annual military spending. Some experts put total annual US military and intelligence spending at $1.2 trillion. Few American politicians dare suggest seriously trimming the Pentagon’s runaway spending. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27950.htm

Shunning the Word ‘Permanent’ and With Good Reason

Military bases R U.S. Or so it seems. After the invasion of 2003, the Pentagon promptly started constructing a series of monster bases in occupied Iraq, the size of small American towns and with most of the amenities of home. These were for a projected garrison of 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops that top officials of the Bush administration initially anticipated would be free to hang out in that country for an armed eternity. In the end, hundreds of bases were built. (And now, hundreds have been closed down or handed over to the Iraqis and in some cases looted). With present U.S. troop strength at about 47,000 (not counting mercenaries) and falling, American officials are now practically pleading with an Iraqi government moving ever closer to the Iranians to let some American forces remain at a few giant bases beyond the official end-of-2011 withdrawal date. Meanwhile, post-2003, the U.S. went on a base-building (or expanding) spree in the Persian Gulf, digging in and enlarging facilities in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, “home” to the U.S. Fifth Fleet. In that island kingdom, an Obama administration preaching “democracy” elsewhere has stood by in the face of a fierce Bahraini-Saudi campaign of repression against a majority Shiite movement for greater freedom. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/22

Insider Reveals Diabolical Secrets Of The The Rand Corporation

Cuban-born journalist and author Alex Abella was allowed exclusive access inside the RAND Corporation to view their archives. What he discovered was a plot driven by mad scientists, behaviorists, and generals who were intent on starting world war three and fleecing the American people in the process. Once he was a skeptic on the subject of conspiracy theories and the new world order, but after his work with the RAND Corporation he is now convinced that this top secret think tank has been pulling the strings of American government for at least 60 years. http://truth11.com/2010/12/18/insider-reveals-diabolical-secrets-of-the-the-rand-corporation/

The Obama-Gates Scam on Military Spending

Obama is not a “socialist,” he’s a stooge of Wall Street and the Pentagon. http://www.counterpunch.org/porter04212011.html

The U.S. War on China

Press TV has interviewed Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of U.S. Treasury from Panama City, who gives his insight on the revolution in Libya and why U.S. President Barack Obama needs to overthrow Qaddafi when no other U.S. presidents did. http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts300.html

Morale to the Left, Morale to the Right, and Not a Stop to Think

Ever wonder why the US military can’t win wars? Why a few ragtag guerillas could send it running out of Somalia (Black Hawk Down)? Why one guy with a truck bomb could chase the Marines out of Lebanon? Why the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran was such a disaster? Why the world’s most expensive military can’t win its unending wars against peasants with rifles? How is this possible? http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed204.html

Obama’s Terror War On Libya

Since WW II, America’s gone to war as much to wage as win them because so many profiteers benefit. The prospect of peace, in fact, terrifies government, military officials, and corporate predators, so new enemies are invented when old ones are vanquished, are no longer of interest, or conflicts end for other reasons. Wars are solely for wealth and power, never humanitarian intervention to liberate oppressed people or promote democracy. They’re notions, in fact, US leaders won’t tolerate, notably Obama, doubling down on Bush, waging his Iraq and Afghan wars, fighting two others in Pakistan and Libya, another allied with Israel against Palestine, as well as proxy wars in Somalia, Central Africa, Yemen, Bahrain, Haiti, Honduras, and Colombia. http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman040411.htm

Stealing from Social Security to Pay for Wars and Bailouts

by Paul Craig Roberts. The U.S. dollar’s value is likely to fall further in terms of other currencies, because nothing is being done about the U.S. budget and trade deficits. Obama’s budget, if passed, doesn’t reduce the deficit over the next ten years by enough to cover the projected deficit in the FY 2012 budget. Indeed, the deficits are likely to be substantially larger than forecast. The military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans a half century ago, is more powerful than ever and shows no inclination to halt the wars for U.S. hegemony. The cost of these wars is enormous. The U.S. media, being good servants for the government, only reports the out-of-pocket or current cost of the wars, which is only about one-third of the real cost. The current cost leaves out the cost of life-long care for the wounded and maimed, the cost of life-long military pensions of those who fought in the wars, the replacement costs of the destroyed equipment, the opportunity cost of the resources wasted in war, and other costs. The true cost of America’s illegal Iraq invasion, which was based entirely on lies, fabrications and deceptions, is at least $3,000 billion according to economist Joseph Stiglitz and budget expert Linda Bilmes. The same for the Afghan war, which is ongoing. If the Afghan war lasts as long as the Pentagon says it needs to, the cost will be a multiple of the cost of the Iraq war. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27644.htm

Prisoners Help Build Patriot Missiles

This spring, the United Arab Emirates is expected to close a deal for $7 billion dollars’ worth of American arms. Nearly half of the cash will be spent on Patriot missiles, which cost as much as $5.9 million apiece. But what makes those eye-popping sums even more shocking is that some of the workers manufacturing parts for those Patriot missiles are prisoners, earning as little as 23 cents an hour. (Credit Justin Rohrlich with the catch.) The work is done by Unicor, previously known as Federal Prison Industries. It’s a government-owned corporation, established during the Depression, that employs about 20,000 inmates in 70 prisons to make everything from clothing to office furniture to solar panels to military electronics. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/prisoners-help-build-patriot-missiles/

War Uber Alles

The United States government cannot get enough of war. With Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime falling to a rebelling population, CNN reports that a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is looking at all options from the military side. http://original.antiwar.com/paul-craig-roberts/2011/02/25/war-uber-alles/

The Empire’s Out of Control ‘Defense’ Budget May Increase Yet Again

Despite calls on Capitol Hill for major defense budget cuts, the Pentagon next week will unveil the largest budget in its history — driven by an expanding list of what defines national security. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said his proposed $553 billion budget “represents, in my view, the minimum level of defense spending that is necessary, given the complex and unpredictable array of security challenges the United States faces around the globe.” Those challenges now include pandemic diseases, piracy, human trafficking, rising oceans, national debt, education, cyber warfare, the wars on terrorism and traditional state-to-state threats. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/02/10/v-print/108449/pentagon-budget-multiplies-as.html

Overkill: Future Weapons, Future Wars, and the New Arms Race

In the future, the power of magnetism will be harnessed to make today’s high explosives seem feeble, “guided bullets” will put the current crop of snipers to shame, and new multi-purpose missiles will strike targets in a flash from high-flying drones. At least, that’s part of the Pentagon’s battlefield vision of tomorrow’s tomorrow. Ordinarily, planning for the future is not a U.S. government forte. A mere glance at the national debt, now around $14 trillion and climbing, or two recent studies showing how China’s green technology investments have outpaced U.S. efforts should drive home that fact. But one government agency is always forward-looking, the Department of Defense’s blue skies research branch, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/01-0

The Battle for Conservative Hearts and Minds

News that a clear majority of conservatives want to reduce the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, plus reports of an emerging right-left coalition against the war, have served as hopeful signs in the heretofore quixotic pursuit to arrest the giant gears of the American war machine. http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2011/01/24/the-battle-for-conservative-hearts-and-minds/

Lockheed Gets Big Bucks to Prep Soldiers for Urban War

By the end of the year, the U.S. Army will leave Iraq. But Iraq isn’t going to leave the U.S. Army. American soldiers spent seven years patrolling the urban neighborhoods of Iraq; its troops battled insurgents there block-by-block and house-by-house. Now that the Army is getting out of Iraq, it wants to make sure its urban combat skills don’t wither away. So it today it gave Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $287 million to build Urban Operations Training Systems — essentially, giant simulation facilities and modules to help soldiers get ready for life in the big, bad city. http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/01/lockheed-gets-big-bucks-to-prep.html

From Military-Industrial Complex to Permanent War State

Fifty years after Dwight D. Eisenhower’s January 17, 1961 speech on the “military-industrial complex”, that threat has morphed into a far more powerful and sinister force than Eisenhower could have imagined. It has become a “Permanent War State”, with the power to keep the United States at war continuously for the indefinite future. http://www.opednews.com/articles/From-Military-Industrial-C-by-Gareth-Porter-110117-859.html

Hollywood and the War Machine

War is hell, but for Hollywood it has been a Godsend, providing the perfect dramatic setting against which courageous heroes win the hearts and minds of the movie going public. The Pentagon recognises the power of these celluloid dreams and encourages Hollywood to create heroic myths; to rewrite history to suit its own strategy and as a recruiting tool to provide a steady flow of willing young patriots for its wars. http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/empire/2010/12/2010121681345363793.html

Evil Empire

Even after Reagan’s vision was fulfilled, the Cold War did not end. The events of 1989 should have offered the West some breathing room, a time to rethink the purpose of our nation and reinvigorate republican ideals. Instead, the past two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, have revealed America and the West as morally and spiritually bankrupt. Plunder and torture best symbolize the bloated American Empire of the last 20 years, a force that exists merely for the sake of self-perpetuation. Our standing in the world has declined precipitously. At home, many are angry and want to change, organize, and harangue. Despite their best intentions, they stand impotent, comprehending neither the past nor the present, looking at the future—when not navel-gazing—with understandable dread. http://www.amconmag.com/blog/evil-empire/

11 Reasons Why The Threat From Al-Qaeda is Not Real

The United States government has repeatedly stated that the threat from Al-Qaeda against America is very real, and that all action is being taken to eliminate that threat. Nobody in their right mind would question such a serious assessment about a sensitive national security matter from the world’s leading democracy. But the truth is that over the past fifty years America’s democratic institutions like the press have been weakened, and an elitist National Security State has risen, and taken control over all aspects of government. Since World War II U.S. leaders have consistently lied to the American people about foreign threats in order to feed the military machine’s appetite for war. All of these wars are unjust and unwarranted but that does not stop the self-interested criminals who control U.S. foreign policy. A recent example of a lie they told was their assertion that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. That episode revealed to many people the true nature of the American government. Simply put, it does not care about the truth, or the American people, or the members of the military. http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2010/12/11-reasons-why-threat-from-al-qaeda-is.html

Oceans of Blood and Profits for the Mongers of War

According to Israeli historian Illan Pappé, since 1949, the US has passed to Israel more than $100bn in grants and $10bn in special loans – more than Washington hands out to North Africa, South America and the Caribbean. Over the past 20 years, $5.5bn has been given to Israel for military purchases. But for sheer self-abuse, it’s necessary to read of the Midas-like losses in the entire Middle East since just 1991 – an estimated $12,000,000,000,000. Yup, that’s a cool $12trn and, if you don’t believe me, take a look at an unassuming little booklet that the “Strategic Fortnight Group” published not long ago. Its statistic caught a few headlines, but was then largely forgotten, perhaps because it was published in faraway Mumbai rather than by some preposterous American “tink-thank” (as I call them). http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26930.htm

How Veterans Day Became a Farce

Afghan war veteran Todd Nelson

If the rest of America could finally resist the pressure to spend Veterans Day in an intellectual stupor, they might see Kristol & Co. for what they really are. They might recognize them as collaborating with the military and other self-interested parties in Washington to quietly extend this unpopular war for another four years with absolutely no input from the citizenry – what writer Stephen Walt aptly recognizes as the old “Bait and Switch.” Simply put, Veterans Day and its springtime counterpart, Memorial Day, have become nothing but an institutionalized distraction from the truth. A temporary salve on our conscience, and a decoy for the war-makers. http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/11/15/how-veterans-day-became-a-farce/

Reject the Welfare/Warfare State

by Ron Paul. Last week’s midterm elections have been characterized as a victory for grassroots Americans who are fed up with Washington and the political status quo. In particular, the elections are being touted as a clear indicator that voters demand reductions in federal spending, deficits, and debt. http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul702.html

Morning Again in America – For Islamophobes

Right now, all the news chatter is about domestic policy (health care, tax cuts, etc.), but count on the Republicans — Rand Paul aside — to light out after the president sooner or later at least as hawkishly on foreign policy as they have domestically. Already, Senator John McCain and others are preparing the ground to launch what’s likely to become a jihad against Obama’s civilization-busting “mistake” in announcing a vaguely “conditions-based” drawdown of vague numbers of U.S. troops in Afghanistan for July 2011. And that’s just a start. On a whole host of issues from the Iraq and Afghan wars to Israel, Iran, and North Korea, buckle your seatbelts and hold onto your hats. The critical weather in Congress, especially in the House, is going to get fiercer, and a president with a most un-Harry-Truman-ish tendency to placate is unlikely to stake his fighting future on foreign policy. So expect war drums and alarums to the horizon (i.e. 2012) from congressional Republicans. And when it comes to the famous Republican urge to cut every budget in sight, be assured of one thing: our wars, the Pentagon budget, and the industrial part of the military-industrial complex — in other words, our next generation weaponry, however ill-conceived — will surely be removed from the “table” where “all options” are always placed. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/09

Slaughter as ‘Stimulus’

With the current depression growing deeper and nastier, the Obama administration and the banking cartel controlling it have run just about every option in the Keynesian playbook, save one: The “Hail, Ares!” play Broder suggests. All that’s necessary to make this happen is the arrival of a Congress under the influence of the most militaristic element of the GOP. It’s quite likely that those nostalgic for the reign of FDR’s nation-breaking war commissars will soon have reason to erupt in a chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w177.html

Pentagon Struck by Bullets in Early Morning Shooting

The Pentagon’s main building was struck by several bullets probably from a high-powered rifle about 5 a.m. Washington time today and officials are looking for the shooter, Defense Department officials said.

Pentagon police heard five to seven rounds in the south parking lot area, prompting officials to shut down the building for about 40 minutes, said Colonel David Lapan, a department spokesman.

“There was some minor damage to the exterior of the building but no penetration,” Lapan said. He said he doesn’t know how many bullets hit the building.

Steve Calvery, the head of the Pentagon’s security force, said at a later press conference that two windows “were shattered but they were not penetrated” and investigators are reviewing surveillance tapes for clues. The incident is considered a “random event,” he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-19/pentagon-struck-by-bullets-in-early-morning-shooting-no-injuries-reported.html

The War Addicts

So here’s one way to think about all this: like people bingeing on anything, the present Pentagon and military cast of characters can’t stop themselves. They really can’t. The thought that in Afghanistan or anywhere else they might have to go on a diet, as sooner or later they will, is deeply unnerving. Forever war is in their blood, so much so that they’re ready to face down the commander-in-chief, if necessary, to make it continue. This is really the definition of an addiction – not to victory, but to the state of war itself. http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt407.html

Obama: ‘The Generals Made Me Do It!’

All Washington is atwitter: the grand old man of the Court Historians, Bob Woodward, has come out with yet another “book” – i.e. another long-winded press release on behalf of the Powers That Be – explaining, “reporting,” and rationalizing the war policies of the current regime. Oh, glory be! Drop everything and run to the nearest bookstore – or just go online and download the excerpts at the Washington Post‘s incredibly cumbersome web site, loaded down with so many ads, pop-ups, and pop-outs that one imagines his next book will be out before your computer stops grinding. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/09/28/obama-the-generals-made-me-do-it/

Pentagon Paid $47,000 to Buy-Up Copies of Veteran’s Memoir – and Destroy Them

The Department of Defense paid $5 per book to burn the 9,500 copies of “Operation Dark Heart,” Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s memoir about going undercover in Afghanistan that the Pentagon claims revealed too many national security secrets.

A source confirmed to Fox News that while the Defense Department is making significant budget cuts, it spent in excess of $47,000 in taxpayer money to destroy the book that had earlier been cleared by the U.S. Army.

The Defense Intelligence Agency objected to the book’s publication, spurring a review that resulted in its being blocked over recollections in the book about the controversial pre-Sept. 11, 2001, data mining project called “Able Danger.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/26/pentagon-paid-destroy-sept-memoir/

Economic Collapse Leading to Privatized Police and Corporate Mercenaries

As America continues to implode, it appears that security will go to the highest bidder, leaving average citizens to fend for themselves. Perhaps we should have seen it coming with the start of the privatization boom of security and intelligence gathering since the War on Terror was declared, which resulted in a massive “Top Secret” Surveillance-Industrial Complex. The ramifications of this privatization are only now becoming clear, as it was reported that an Israeli-owned organization was in charge of tracking, tracing, and databasing peaceful American activists on behalf of the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania. It’s already obvious that property taxes are no longer sufficient to pay the security bills. http://www.activistpost.com/2010/09/economic-collapse-leading-to-privatized_22.html

The American Way of War Quiz

Yes, it would be funny if it weren’t so grim. After all, when it comes to squandering money and resources in strange and distant places (or even here at home), you can count on the practitioners of American-style war to be wildly over the top. Oh, those madcap Pentagon bureaucrats and the zany horde of generals and admirals who go with them! Give them credit: no one on Earth knows how to throw a war like they do – and they never go home. In fact, when it comes to linking “profligate” to “war,” with all the lies, manipulations, and cost overruns that give it that proverbial pizazz, Americans should stand tall. We are absolutely #1! http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/09/14/the-american-way-of-war-quiz/

Blaming Obama

As long as Obama’s been in office, Obama’s progressive supporters “and even some sensible conservatives” have been “surprised and dismayed” that his military and diplomatic posture seems nearly identical to that of his predecessor in the White House. Was he merely a good actor, or are there hidden factors chaining him to the “missteps of the Bush White House? Has he cracked, or is he “trapped”? http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/09/14/blaming-obama/

Will U.S. Generals Ever Shut Up?

Robert Gates

To grasp the changing nature of military influence domestically, consider the military’s relationship to the media. Its media megaphone offers a measure of the reach and influence of that behemoth, what kinds of pressures it can apply in support of its own version of foreign policy, and just how, under its weight, the relationship between the civilian and military high commands is changing. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/09/07/will-our-generals-ever-shut-up/

Somebody’s Son or Daughter is Our Tragedy

Americans should realize that they have come 180 degrees from the views of the Founding Fathers about the dangers of a standing army when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen can call a sinking economy the nation’s greatest security threat because it does not generate enough money to support the Pentagon’s “needs.” America’s political culture, increasingly on a permanent war footing, is fueled by the fact that the status quo is painless for the country’s elites, almost none of whom have children in the military and many of whom actually benefit personally from the military industrial complex that exists symbiotically with the unending conflict. They are immune to the consequences of their bad decisions. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/09/01/somebodys-son-or-daughter-is-our-tragedy/

Canada Opens Arctic To NATO, Plans Massive Weapons Buildup

With the melting of the polar ice cap and the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans for the first time in recorded history, the scramble for the Arctic – reported to contain 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of undiscovered oil according to last year’s U.S. Geological Survey – is under way in earnest. The military value of the navigability of the passage is of even greater and more pressing significance. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20808

Ten Needed Steps for Obama to Start Dismantling America’s Gigantic, Destructive Military Empire

The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment will condemn the U.S. to devastating consequences. http://www.alternet.org/world/147964

Runaway Military Spending

With $549 billion requested for basic military expenditures and another $159 billion requested for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the record $708 billion military spending called for by the Obama administration for fiscal 2011 will be nearly equivalent to the military spending of all other nations in the world combined. When it comes to military appropriations, the U.S. government already spends about seven times as much as China, thirteen times as much as Russia, and seventy-three times as much as Iran. http://www.hnn.us/articles/130258.html

Obama Warned Israel May Bomb Iran

We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war. Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel. This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens. http://consortiumnews.com/2010/080310c.html

Navy Admiral: White Men Need not Apply?

Gary Roughead

The latest national security leak is a shocking e-mail from a Navy admiral on “Diversity Accountability.” The message, sent to a list of other flag officers, notes that “a change in focus of this year’s diversity brief is the desire to identify our key performers (by name) and provide insight on each of them.” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, who apparently originated this order, “is interested in who are the diverse officers with high potential and what is the plan for their career progression. He may ask what is being done within to ensure they are considered for key follow on billets within the Navy.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/30/high-seas-segregation/

Illegal Invasion “Fans” Disrupt Baseball Game

NEW YORK – Two men carrying Mexican flags in protest of Arizona’s immigration law ran into the outfield during the seventh inning of the New York Mets’ game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night at Citi Field. Prior to the game, about 40 people across the street from the ballpark chanted “Oppose racism!” and “Boycott Arizona!” http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/queens/men-run-onto-citi-field-with-mexican-flags-20100731

WikiLeaks: Who’s Hiding What and Why

In recent decades the military has almost achieved its wettest dream, the separation of wars from the American population. The fielding of a small volunteer army prevents the riots on campus that helped to end the adventure in Asia long ago. “Embedding” reporters with combat units pretty much prevents coverage that might upset people. The media for whatever reasons are now complicit, declining to air what really happens on the ground. All of this allows ghastly behavior, which is what wars always produce, to go forward with little opposition. Ah, but leaks, YouTube, holes in the wall of silence – these pose real threats to the flow of contracts. If you don’t think that contracts – money – have a great deal to do with wars, reflect that all those hundreds of billions of dollars end up in pockets, and those pockets do not belong to soldiers. Makers of body armor, boots, ammunition, helicopters, on and on, are rolling in gravy. All this half-watched loot flows in cataracts at the price of at most sixty dead American kids a month (and lots of brain-damaged droolers, but what the hey). A bargain. Afghans don’t count. http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed183.html

Terror’s Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

The post-9/11 environment has been a boon for defense and intelligence contractors who fattened up at the government feeding trough before trying to show their worth in the mission of “defeating transnational violent extremists,” like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and others too many to mention. And the feeding trough won’t disappear anytime soon, if ever. We are told that this “war” will not end like World War II with a surrender ceremony on the battleship Missouri; indeed, it will be impossible to tell when (or if) it is over — since the “war” is so vaguely defined as to guarantee its continuation in perpetuity as long as there are some angry Islamists out there, enflamed over all the people the U.S. government has been killing. http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2010/07/23/terrors-self-licking-ice-cream-cone/

Psychopathy Legitimized

On Antiwar.com, I find a loutish American general, James Mattis, martial feminist, talking about the fun he has killing Afghans. Yes, fun, wheeee-oooo! and ooo-rah! too. He says, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” adding “guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyways. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” What must he do with prisoners? A joyous killer, possibly orgasmic. Note mandatory flagly background, pickle suit, and stupid colorful gewgaws so he looks like a goddam stamp collection. Stern gaze is necessary to become a general. From defending the Constitution to the pleasure of watching Afghans die: The military has come a long way. http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed182.html

The National Security Product

Those who are agonizing over whether Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri was a double agent or just an agent or whether he was kidnapped or a defector are really missing the point. Amiri was just a small cog in the Greatest Show on Earth, the $100 billion a year US intelligence community. United States intelligence is a huge and expensive bureaucracy and the information it produces must be consumed even when it does not necessarily make Americans safer. More important than that, it is a product that must have enough bells and whistles to impress Congress, the media, and the White House to keep the money flowing. What that all translates to is that every success, no matter how minor or even debatable, must be spun and promoted to the fullest while every failure must be concealed. The tendency to do so is not unique to the intelligence community and one has only to look at the military’s contrived narratives relating to Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, both of which were completely fictitious but supportive of a tale of heroism and self-sacrifice that the Pentagon was promoting. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/07/21/the-national-security-product/

Hillary Clinton’s Latest Lies

The BBC reported on July 4 that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. ballistic missile base in Poland was not directed at Russia. The purpose of the base, she said, is to protect Poland from the Iranian threat. Why would Iran be a threat to Poland? What happens to U.S. credibility when the Secretary of State makes such a stupid statement? Does Hillary think she is fooling the Russians? Does anyone on earth believe her? What is the point of such a transparent lie? To cover up an act of American aggression against Russia? In the same breath Hillary warned of a “steel vise” of repression crushing democracy and civil liberties around the world. U.S. journalists might wonder if she was speaking of the United States. http://original.antiwar.com/roberts/2010/07/09/hillary-clintons-latest-lies/

America’s Tragic Descent Into Empire

Tom Engelhardt’s new book, “The American Way of War,” explores the U.S.’s jaw-dropping transformation into a global military empire. http://www.alternet.org/world/147428

America Detached from War

As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment. The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/24-7

Making It McChrystal Clear

The war system’s response to Gen. McChrystal’s Rolling Stone interview is instructive. It is a reminder that every Memorial Day should begin by honoring the first victim of every war: truth. But as all wars are grounded in lies – the bloodier the war the more enormous the falsity of its foundation – truth becomes not only a casualty, but the enemy itself. Whether McChrystal’s assessment was correct is not the point: it is the threat to the war racket of having insiders purporting to address the reality of war that so disturbs the state. Men of the general’s stature are expected to have greater access to evidence supporting their opinions, thus enhancing their credibility. The public acceptance of war is the default position that perpetuates its insanity. “Truth” is the input that “does not compute” within the logic of the war system, and the state undertakes every precaution – such as censorship, labeling documents and other discomforting facts as “top secret” – to silence any doubts that might be raised as to the validity of the propagandized campaign on behalf of death and destruction. http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer218.html

McChrystal Sideshow Masks Murderous Reality

Some people seem to think that the question of which uniformed goober is in charge of the imperial bloodbath in Afghanistan is a vitally important issue, worthy of endless exegesis. It is not. It is a meaningless sideshow. What does matter, vitally, deeply, urgently, is the imperial bloodbath itself, and the fact that it will go on, and on, no matter what Barack Obama does or doesn’t do about Stanley McChrystal. http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1982-termination-notice-mcchrystal-sideshow-masks-murderous-reality.html

Washington Drunk on War

Successive American administrations would blindly head down the very path that had led the Soviets to ruin. They would serially agree that, in a world without significant enemies, the key to U.S. global power still was the care and feeding of the American military and the military-industrial complex that went with it. As the years passed, that military would be sent ever more regularly into the far reaches of the planet to fight frontier wars, establish military bases, and finally impose a global Pax Americana on the planet. http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog//175261/

A Lullaby of Lies

While most Americans were sitting out on their decks barbecuing over the Memorial Day weekend, our leaders were planning to barbecue a few Pakistanis, as the Washington Post reported. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/30/a-lullaby-of-lies/

Switch On Your BS Detector

This annual national security strategy document is pure propaganda, aimed – first and foremost – at the American people. It is they, after all, who are paying for the implementation of this grand strategy: a world empire of bases, occupied countries, and interlocking alliances that enables U.S. hegemony. Reading these national security strategy documents in chronological order, from beginning to end, is not only sure to produce a splitting headache, but apt to impress the reader with the remarkable consistency with which our rulers pursue their dream of global domination. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/27/switch-on-your-b-s-detector/

Attack of the Cyborg Insects

Militarism distorts the development of civilization, deforming the natural evolution of culture and even science: the end result is the birth of misshapen monsters, such as nuclear technology, the love child of war and the Leviathan. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/20/attack-of-the-cyborg-insects/

Mainstream Meteorologist: The Military Is Spraying Our Skies

The video below features a weatherman talking about the military using aircraft to spray “chaff”. The video has been getting cheers from those of us who look up and notice the spraying of our skies, but it is less likely a rogue weatherman uncovering the big chemtrail mystery and is more likely a script to pacify the masses.

http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/agenda/weather-modification/2259?task=view

Heart of McDarkness

Stanley McChrystal

The latest bunker mentality bunk to emanate from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is that he has too many civilian contractors hoofing around on his turf. Back in June 2009, a “civilian surge” was a key component of his strategy. What made him change his mind? Maybe his attitude adjustment has something to do with the recent announcement that five former Blackwater employees, including former president Gary Jackson and former vice-presidents William M. Mathews Jr. and Ana Bundy, have been indicted on charges of illegally obtaining automatic weapons and then lying about it. Also indicted was former Blackwater general counsel Andrew Howell. Some general counsel he turned out to be: Your honor, my clients maintain that the weapons in question only become automatic after their triggers are held in the firing position for a specified interval, therefore. . . Mercenary icon Blackwater has been in legal extremis for some time. http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2010/04/19/heart-of-mcdarkness/

The Pentagon Church Militant and Us

The powerlessness of ordinary Americans in military matters is no accident. Recall the one-word reply – “So?” — Dick Cheney offered in March 2008, when asked to comment on popular opposition to the war in Iraq. The former vice president was certainly far blunter than Washington usually is, and for that we may owe him a measure of thanks. By highlighting the arrogant dismissiveness of Washington’s warrior-elite when it comes to American public opinion, he revealed more than he intended. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/03/18/the-pentagon-church-militant-and-us/

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 — Derailing the Gravy Train for the Dogs of War

Perpetual war for perpetual peace for perpetual war. Who benefits from this cycle of violence? The video at the bottom of this post provides an artistic perspective – an opportunity for us to reflect upon what we’ve become here in Amerika. I ask “who benefits?” because I personally do not. In fact I’m losing liberty which means no pursuit of happiness and it is now American policy to deprive American citizens deemed “terrorists” of their life. http://americansjourney.blogspot.com/2010/03/video-consolidated-america-number-one.html