The biggest threat to America: ourselves HOW TO TELL IF YOU'VE WON: A guide for would-be empires TIME FOR A WAR ABOLITION MOVEMENT WHY AFGHANISTAN IS SO IMPORTANT MISSION CREEP: We foretold the militarization of America a decade ago MARTIAL LAW: Excerpts from an an article in a defense journal THE THREE WARS WE'LL NEVER WIN WHY MORE SECURITY DOESN'T WORK THE REAL WAR: BETWEEN MYTH & REALITY ALL WAR ALL THE TIME: THE PENTAGON'S PLAN BRING THE GUARD HOMETHE U.S. ARMY IN AFGHANISTAN A VETERAN SPEAKS: "I killed innocent people for my government" THE U.S. AND TORTURE DEPLETED URANIUM: RECYCLING DEATH MORE ESSAYS ON WAR, PEACE & IN BETWEEN
JUST THE NUMBERS: COSTS OF THE WAR ON TERROR U.S SPENDS MORE ON MILITARY THAN REST OF THE WORLD PUT TOGETHER (IN MONTHS )
U.S. military spending almost doubles in ten years List of countries bombed by the United States
The Tillman Story: Tillman, as he is being fired on by fellow American soldiers, says "I'm Pat fuckiing Tillman."
When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home by Paula J. Caplan.. When veterans who make it home from Afghanistan or Iraq have psychological issues, the assumption often is that they need therapy and psychiatric drugs. A Harvard-based psychologist argues that in many cases what they are experiencing is a healthy reaction to an inhumane experience, and that therapy and drugs isolate them at a time when they most need honest communication with loved ones, neighbors, and co-workers. She gives detailed, practical advice for non-veterans about how to ask the right questions and how to listen, both so veterans will be able to share what they’ve been through and so the society that sent them will have a better understanding of the wars’ realities.Work Site Reasons to Kill: Why Americans Choose War by Richard E. Rubenstein: From the American Revolution to the end of World War II, the United States spent nineteen years at war against other nations. But since 1950, the total is twenty-two years and counting. On four occasions, U.S. presidents elected as "peace candidates" have gone on to lead the nation into armed conflicts. Repeatedly. In Reasons to Kill noted scholar Richard E. Rubenstein explores both the rhetoric that sells war to the public and the underlying cultural and social factors that make it so effective. War is a Lie by David Swanson
War is the joint exercise of things we were trained not to do as children. War is doing things overseas that we would go to prison for at home. Anyone can start a war. Starting a peace is really hard. Therefore it is much harder to be a peace expert than a war expert. The media treats war as just another professional sport. War has rules, which means that we can change the rules. Murder, rape and slavery still exist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have banned them. The same is true of war. Telling a country we won't negotiate with it until it does what you want is like saying you won't play a game unless you are allowed to win. There is no evidence that supporting war, or telling presidents to do so, improves your testosterone level, so Ivy League professors are better advised to stick to tennis. There is one way to deal with guerilla warfare and that is to resolve the problems that allow it to thrive. The trick is to undermine the violence of the most bitter by dealing honestly with the problems and complaints of the most rational. Of course, there can be peace with so-called terrorist organizations; it's just a matter of whether one waits the better part of a century, as the British did in Northern Ireland, or whether you start talking and negotiating now. Three thousand people is, of course, far too many to die for any reason. But it is also far too weak an argument for the end of democracy. Peace is a state of reciprocity, of trust, of empirically based confidence that no one is about to do you in. It exists not because of intrinsic goodness or rampant naivete but because of a common, implicit understanding that that it works for everyone. Implicit in the "what about their violence?" argument is the idea that what we do wrong is excusable because it has been matched by the other side. Of course, the other side sees it the same way so you end up with a perfect stalemate of violence. When I raised a similar argument as a kid, my mother's response was, "If Johnny were to jump off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff, too?" I never could come up with good answer to that and so eventually had to concede that somebody else's stupidity was not a good excuse for my own. From the moment we commence a moral intervention we become a part of the story, and part of the good and evil. We are no longer the innocent bystander but a full participant whose acts will either help or make things worse. Our intentions become irrelevant; they are overwhelmed by the character of our response to them. The morality of the disease is supplanted by the morality of the cure. In fact, every moral act in the face of mental or physical injury carries twin responsibilities: to mend the injury and to avoid replacing it with another One of the reasons America is in so much trouble is because it happily makes all sorts of compromises in order to get along with large dictatorships such as Russia and China, but thinks it can handle smaller operations like Hamas, North Korea, and Iran by simple obstinacy and belligerence. In other words, it is happy to talk with big terrorists, but not little ones. In fact, most of these small entities - and those who lead them - suffer from extreme inferiority complexes. By threatening war, imposing massive embargos and so forth, America merely feeds the sense of persecution and encourages the least rational reaction. A more sensible approach would be to constantly negotiate with these leaders and edge them towards reasonable participation in world affairs. Imagine if we had told Israel and Palestine a few years ago that if they would just make nice we would give them enough money to equal Israel's GDP for one year and Palestine's for three. Take the time off, go to the Riviera or the Catskills, forget about productivity, and just party on thanks to the American taxpayer. Or if Israel and Palestine wanted to be really sensible, they could have invested in their countries' future instead. Think how much safer we would be today. . . But where would such a large sum of money come from? Well, all we would have had to have done was to cancel the invasion of Iraq and used the money as a carrot rather than as a bludgeon. For that is just what it has cost us so far. (2007) The people who built castles and walled cities and moats are all dead now and their efforts at security seem puny and ultimately futile as we visit their unintended monuments to the vanity of human presumption. Like the castle-dwellers behind the moat, we are now spending huge sums to put ourselves inside a prison of our own making. It is unlikely to provide either security for our bodies nor solace for our souls, for we are simply attacking ourselves before others get a chance. Empires and cultures are not permanent and while thinking about the possibility that ours is collapsing may seem a dismal exercise it is far less so than enduring the dangerous frustrations and failures involved in having one's contrary myth constantly butt up against reality - like a boozer who insists he is not drunk attempting to drive home. Instead of defending the non-existent, we could turn our energies instead towards devising a new and saner reality. Places like Harvard and Oxford - and their after-school programs such as the Washington think tanks - teach the few how to control the many and it is impossible to do this without various forms of abuse ranging from sophism to corporate control systems to napalm. It is no accident that a large number of advocates of war - in government and the media - are the products of elite educations where they were taught both the inevitability of their hegemony and the tools with which to enforce it. It will, therefore, be some time before places such as Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations are seen for what they are: the White Citizens Councils of state violence. Castro, in his early days, spoke at the UN. But the hotels of New York refused him space. The result: Malcolm X found him a hotel in Harlem and a key early step was taken in the alienation of a man who, with just a little respect and effort, might not have tormented every American president since by refusing to die or fade away. Respect is important because it is a door wide enough for peace to enter. We need to try it more often. |
Pentagon misdiagnosed thousands of troops to save medical costs Pentagon privatizing its international war on drugs Pentagon sees nothing wrong with rigging TV news What the government is really afraid of: us Secret files reveal dirty games of Blackwater and other mercenaries Inside Romania's secret CIA prison The biggest threat to America: ourselves The military is a lousy way to create jobs
At least our military is winning the star wars  Banks may have illegally foreclosed on 5,000 members of the military  For profit colleges ripping off military students Government agency hides contracting fraud from public view for 20 years
Obama Has Awlaki’s 16-year old son, friends killed at dinner  BRUCE EGGUM How the war on terror did us in (with lots of help from Republicans) How to tell you're no longer an empire John Mueller, Foreign Affairs: An al Qaeda computer seized in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated that the group’s budget for research and weapons of mass destruction, almost all of it focused on primitive chemical weapons work, was some $2,000 to $4,000.” Pentagon working on war with China Virginia as heart of military complex Study finds little difference in Obama and Bush troop deployment Nuke for Jesus Air Force course shut down Pentagon wants to use social media for propaganda Left-right coalitions against the wars... Grand jury looking into Abu Ghraib Boeing ripping off government for spare parts Real costs of our wars: $3.7 trillion Why Manning's solitary confinement violates international law Government harrassing Bradley Manning supporters Pentagon wants to change military pensions
A complete guide to the West's foreign policy The sick way we count war deaths Obama adminstration backs down on torture of Private Manning New leaked files on GItmo list U.S. misdeeds The record: regime change efforts are a bust Retired generals & admirals double dipping big time Army testing soldiers for 'spiritual fitness' Cost of caring for Iraqafpak veterans will rival Social Security & Medicare U.S. and Canada agree to share military against civil unrest Obama's use of mercenaries would make Bush blush 2010 Businessman claims Blackwater paid him to buy steroids and weapons on black market IF YOU WANT TO HELP TO MAKE TERRORISTS MORE PEACEFUL, IT'S A CRIME MILITARY TO SPY ON WHAT ITS TROOPS ARE THINKING ARMY DENIES PURPLE HEARTS TO SOLDIERS WITH BRAIN INJURIES HIGH SCHOOL DRAFTS STUDENTS INTO JROTC TROOPS PUT ON LOCKDOWN FOR REFUSING TO ATTEND CHRISTIAN EVANGELICAL CONCERT MILITARY SPENDING: THE BIGGEST YET MOST UNDISCUSSED CONTRIBUTOR TO OUR DEFICITS PENTAGON CENSORS AFGHAN COVERAGE BIG TIME OUTSOURCING WAR: THE HIDDEN MERCENARY FACTOR PENTAGON CAN'T ACCOUNT FOR $8.7 BILLION IN IRAQ FUNDS U.S. HAS LOST 75% OF ITS GITMO HABEAS CASES ONE THOUSAND AMERICAN TROOPS FOR EACH MEMBER OF AL QAEDA PETREAUS GEARS UP FOR ANOTHER WAR A GENERAL GIVES WESLEY CLARK'S EGO A RUN FOR THE MONEY THE PENTAGON EXPLAINS HOW TO MAKE BROWNIES SECRET TAPE OF BLACKWATER OWNER REVEALED THE THREE WARS WE'LL NEVER WIN SECRET PRISON DISCOVERED IN BAGHDAD WAR AGAINST IRAN ON JOINT CHIEF'S OPTION LIST MILITARY SUICIDES OUTPACE BATTLE DEATHS BUSH GANG KNOWINGLY DUMPED INNOCENTS INTO GITMO AMERICA'S WAR CRIMES KILL CHILDREN, TOO MAINE'S LARGEST CITY VOTES TO END WAR FUNDING AMERICA NOW HAS TO RENT ITS ALLIES WIKILEAKS VIDEO SHOWS U.S. COPTERS KILLING IRAQI CIVILIANS PETREUS, OTHERS PLANNING 80 YEAR WAR WIMPY COMMANDANT APPARENTLY AFRAID GAY MARINES MIGHT RAPE HIS STRAIGHT TROOPS OBAMA CONSIDERING USING ABU GRAB EAST FOR GITMO PRISONERS TERRORISM IS MORE DANGEROUS TO AMERICANS THAN SHARKS - BUT NOT MUCH ELSE THE UNDECLARED NUCLEAR WEAPONS STATES YOU DON'T HEAR ABOUT PENTAGON HIRED ANALYST WHO THOUGHT HUSSEIN WAS TO BLAME FOR 9/11 TO WRITE MAJOR REPORT ON AL QAEDA MILITARY RIFLE-SIGHT MAKER INCLUDES BIBLE REFERENCES ON PRODUCTS OBAMA APPOINTS MASTER OF COVERUP TO INVESTIGATE XMAS DAY BOMBING A FEW QUESTIONS FOR BARACK OBAMA
 WHY MORE SECURITY DOESN'T WORK A GUIDE TO COUNTRIES WHERE OUR MILITARY IS OPERATING ARMY ARRESTS GI MOTHER ASSIGNED TO AFGHANISTAN WHO CAN'T FIND CARE FOR HER 11-MONTH OLD SON COULD HASAN HAVE DONE IT BY HIMSELF? HOW STUDENTS ARE ABUSED BY MILITARY RECRUITING FBI WHISTLEBLOWER POINTS FINGER AT BUSH OFFICIALS NOVEMBER 2009 MILITARY BENEFITING FROM PAUPER DRAFT OCTOBER 2009 LESS THAN HALF OF ELIGIBLE VETS HAVE GOTTEN MONEY FOR TUITION AND EXPENSES BLACKWATER OFFERS TO TRAIN FAITH BASED ORGANIZATIONS DEFENSE SECRETARY TELLS MEDIA NOT TO SHOW PHOTOS OF DYING SOLDIER SEPTEMBER 2009 WILD WACKENHUT ALSO GUARDING NUCLEAR SITES US MILITARY LARGEST SINGLE CONSUMER OF OIL IN THE WORLD MILITARY BACKS DOWN ON RATING REPORTERS OBAMA ADMIN ENGAGED IN MAJOR WAR NEWS CENSORSHIP AUGUST 2009 MILITARY CAUGHT SPYING ON WEST COAST PEACE ACTIVISTS JULY 2009 WAR KILLS TROOPS AND OUR ECONOMY SUICIDE PREVENTION MANUAL PUSHES CHRISTIANITY HONDURAS COUP LEADER TRAINED AT NOTORIOUS AMERICAN SCHOOL FEDERAL JUDGE SAYS MILITARY CAN PRESSURE MINORS WHOM DID WE KILL TODAY? TRACKING US. BOMBS JUNE 2009 THE NEW MILITARY PERVERSION: REMOTE WARFARE MAY 2009 HUMAN RIGHTS SUPPORTERS ATTACK MILITARY COMMISSIONS EVANGELICALS SUBVERTING MILITARY U.S. TROOPS PUSHED CHRISTIANITY IN AGHANISTAN TAPED EVIDENCE THAT ARMY IS CONCEALNG POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER AMONG VETS MARCH 2009 PENTAGON WANTS PACKS OF ROBOTS TO HUNT DOWN 'NON-COOPERATIVE' HUMANS LIKE DOGS SUBS THAT COLLIDED CARRIED MISSILES EQUAL IN POWER TO 1,248 HIROSHIMA BOMBINGS AMERICA'S LAST FLAG OFFICER TO ACTUALLY WIN A WAR FEBRUARY 2009 BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY CHALLENGES WAR ON TERROR IS THE MILITARY SUPPRESSING FRIENDLY FIRE DEATHS? JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DESIGNS NEW TORTURE WEAPON JANUARY 2009 PENTAGON SEEKS TO OVERTURN INITIATIVES AGAINST RECRUITING EXCESSES CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN INTELLIGENCE THE NON-COMBAT TROOP TRICK Sam Smith Barack Obama has repeatedly talked about removing all combat troops from Iraq but neither the media nor his supporters have paid much attention to the critical adjective: combat. Left in Iraq will be an uncertain number of "non-combat" troops. Among these will be 100,000 mercenaries that Minnesota Public Radio politely calls "the parallel army. . . filling in the gaps." Given that we have about regular 150,000 troops there now - both combat and non-combat - that's quite a few gaps being filled. The other group being left in Iraq are "non-combat troops" estimated at somewhere around 30,000 to 70,000 - or about the same number of troops we had in Vietnam in early 1965. According to war secretary Robert Gates, the number will be "several tens of thousands." What's the difference between combat and non-combat troops? The former are assigned to offensive operations while, as Amy Zalman puts it, non-combat troops "may provide training and mentoring, assist Iraqi troops, conduct intelligence and communications functions, among other tasks." It is worth noting, however, that the troops left behind are good enough at combat to "provide training and mentoring," not to mention their ability to "assist Iraqi troops" that presumably will want, from time to time, to engage in combat. Writes Zalman, "The New York Times notes that the plan may seek to meet Obama's plan by 'remissioning' combat troops as non-combat forces and, moreover, that some may continue to conduct patrols with Iraqi forces, which is essentially a combat function. Admittedly the Status of Forces Agreement provide for a total departure by the end of 2011, but that's a long way off. In any case, what is clear is that Obama's verbal sleight of hand is more than a little misleading. DECEMBER 2008 AMERICA SPECIAL FORCES INVADING COUNTRIES ILLEGALLY ARMY'S NEW PLAN FOR TROOP MIND CONTROL INTERNAL BRITISH SPY AGENCY REPORT CHALLENGES TERROR MYTHS NOVEMBER 2008 MILITARY RECRUITING VIOLATES INTERNATIONAL CHILD LAW Global Research In violation of its pledge to the United Nations not to recruit children into the military, the Pentagon "regularly target(s) children under 17," the American Civil Liberties Union says. The Pentagon "heavily recruits on high school campuses, targeting students for recruitment as early as possible and generally without limits on the age of students they contact," the ACLU states in a 46-page report titled "Soldiers of Misfortune." This is in violation of the U.S. Senate's 2002 ratification of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Pentagon recruiters are enrolling children as young as 14 in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps in 3,000 middle-, junior-, and high schools nationwide, causing about 45 percent of the quarter of million students so enrolled to enlist, a rate much higher than in the general student population. Clearly, this is the outcome of underage exposure. In some cities, such as Los Angeles, high school administrators have been enrolling reluctant students involuntarily in JROTC as an alternative to overcrowded gym classes. In Buffalo, N.Y., the entire incoming freshman class at Hutchinson Central Technical High School, (average age 14), was involuntarily enrolled in JROTC. In Chicago, graduating eighth graders (average age 13) are allowed to join any of 45 JROTC programs. . . The Pentagon also spends about $6 million a year to flog an online video game called "America's Army" to attract children as young as 13, "train them to use weapons, and engage in virtual combat and other military missions…learn how to fire realistic Army weapons such as automatic rifles and grenade launchers and learn how to jump from airplanes," the ACLU reports. As of Sept., 2006, 7.5 million users were registered on the game's website, which is linked to the Army's main recruiting website. Angus Crawford, Common Dreams - On 3 December, more than 100 countries, including the UK, will sign a treaty banning cluster bombs. . . Cluster bombs have been used in countries including Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Lebanon, and were used in the conflict in Lebanon in 2006. Those who ratify the convention in December will then have eight years to get rid of their stockpiles of the weapons. . . But the world's biggest users - Israel and the USA - will not sign this treaty. Nor, it's thought, will China, Russia, India and Pakistan. FORTY PERCENT OF MILITARY WOMEN
AT HOSPITAL JROTC TEACHING SCHOOL CHILDREN HOW TO KILL EACH OTHER OCTOBER 2008 MILITARY HEAVILY CENSORING PHOTOS OF THE WAR FORMER GITMO PROSECUTOR SAYS TRIALS ARE RIGGED HOW TO TELL THE RANK OF SOMEONE IN THE AIR FORCE'S BATTLE AGAINST TERRORISM SEPTEMBER 2008 BUSH USING PRIVATE CONTRACTORS TO INVESTIGATE PRIVATE CONTRACTORS THE AMERICAN WAR MOVES TO PAKISTAN Alternet - A VA report acknowledged that suicide rates for young male Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans hit a record high in 2006, the last year for which official records are available. . . After five years of war in Iraq, Marine suicides doubled between 2006 and 2007, and Army suicides are at the highest level since records were first kept in 1980. Reported suicide attempts jumped 500 percent between 2002 and 2007. SEARS TO START SELLING LINE OF OFFICIAL U.S. MILITARY GARB PR Watch - Sears has entered into a first-ever deal with the United States military to market a new line of officially sanctioned, military-styled clothing to men, women and boys. The military has officially licensed a "soldier chic" line of clothing to Sears called the "All American Army Brand First Infantry Division" collection. The garb, to be launched in 550 Sears stores in October -- just in time for the holiday season -- consists of "authentic lifestyle reinterpretations" of regulation uniforms and military-issued gear like T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, denim and other outerwear. The partnership is part of a marketing strategy to raise the public profile of the U.S. military. Sears already carries some military-themed merchandise on its Web site, like a Modern Military Figure Special Forces Soldier toy for ages 8 and up, a musical DVD titled "Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes, Vol. 2," which lists song titles like "Cadaver Recovery Man" and "Mud & Guts," and a Self-esteem Zip Military Style Vest for Juniors. AUGUST 2008 INTERNAL BRITISH SPY AGENCY REPORT CHALLENGES TERROR MYTHS HUGE BLACKWATER GETS
$110 MILLION IN SMALL BUSINESS CONTRACTS FORTY PERCENT OF MILITARY WOMEN AT HOSPITAL REPORT BEING SEXUALLY ASSAULTED JULY 2008 IN THE AIR FORCE'S BATTLE AGAINST TERRORISM   We recently ran pictures of flight accomodations (top) for high Air Force brass provided by the Project on Government Oversight. POGO has now come up with the enlisted equivalent. Troops have sat for hours on long flights in mangled seats and on netting inside cargo aircraft. This photo (bottom) was taken at Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar. Al Udeid is a major logistics hub for U.S. operations in Afghanistan, and is a command center for operations in Iraq. It is home to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the U.S. Air Force. 86,000 PENTAGON STAFFERS WENT TO WORK FOR WAR CONTRACTORS SAUDI FINANCIER WANTED BY FBI GIVEN $80 MILLION U.S. WAR CONTRACT AMERICA PRIVATIZES ITS WARFARE PENTAGON RESISTED IRAN AIR ATTACKS PIMP MY RIDE -- AIR FORCE EDITION  Project on Government Oversight The Air Force brass is pushing lush travel accommodations for themselves while troops put up with mangled seats on cargo aircraft, POGO and the Washington Post revealed. A cache of internal Air Force documents and emails show that Air Force generals frivolously blew hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars because they didn't like the color of seat belts, carpet, leather and wood used in work and living space units being developed for use on cargo planes. The two little-known programs are called the Senior Leader In-transit Conference Capsule and the Senior Leader In-transit Pallet. Earlier, SLICC was called Senior Leader In-transit Comfort Capsules, with the "Comfort" being dropped in favor of "Conference" at one point in late 2006. SLICCs are two connected chambers with first class amenities on a pallet that can be loaded onto a C-17, KC-10, C-130 and KC-X aircraft. These SLICCs are modeled on two existing "Steel Eagles" which are currently used for the most senior Pentagon officials (and are replacing the previous two "Silver Bullets" which are customized Airstream trailers). Each SLIP is made up of four leather business class chairs with tables that fit on a pallet that can be loaded on a cargo plane. The program began under General Duncan McNabb's tenure as commander of Air Mobility Command, a part of the Air Force that is responsible for air transport. General McNabb originally sought ten SLICCs and was involved in choosing the original color and material choices for the SLICC and SLIP leather, wood and carpet, which General Robert H. McMahon later changed at the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Disgust towards the generals' requests grew inside the Air Force, leading the acquisition effort to be moved when one part of Air Mobility Command refused to make some of the costly changes. "In Mar 07, Gen McMahon requested A4 [Air Mobility Command's Logistics Directorate] take over the acquisition effort when he could not get support from A5 [AMC's Plans and Programs Directorate] for updates and cooperation on making the equipment 'world class' which was one of his goals," according to an Air Force email. In one email it states, "Gen McMahon's concern is so significant that we need assurance by the end of the week from [Air Force Research Laboratory] that the SLICC will be 'world class' inside. While we know the requirements document says 'business class', we all know there are levels of that." The "world class" emphasis entailed the costly aesthetic redesign of the interior of an already existing system known as Steel Eagle. After the first SLIP was procured, General McMahon expressed dissatisfaction with the color of the seat leather and type of wood used. He directed that the leather be reupholstered from brown to Air Force blue leather and to replace the wood originally used to cherry. The cost alone to reupholster the seats on the first SLIP is about $21,000 - one estimate of the total cost of wood and leather changes to all the first four SLIPs (16 chairs total) was about $113,000. The cost was so appalling to General Kenneth Merchant that he wrote, "How'd we get to $113K for 4 pallets? Pls tell me this is for all 4 pallets. . . I could carpet and upholster a couple of houses for $113K. . . " As of March this year, the total cost increase for retrofit and further customization -which goes beyond wood and leather - for the SLIPs, directed by Air Mobility Command headquarters, is $493,000. Knowledge of the acquisition went even above General McNabb -- then-Chief of Staff T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley was briefed on the SLICC program. And as an email states, "the expectation was high" for the program. Moseley was canned by Defense Secretary Robert Gates about a month ago. US MILITARY PLANNED TO TEST DEADLY NERVE GAS ON AUSTRALIAN SOLDIERS MAY 2008 AMERICA PRIVATIZES ITS WARFARE GALAL NASSAR, AL AHRAM There are now more than 50 private security firms currently operating in Iraq and their number is likely to increase, according to recent reports. Officially their function is to protect vital facilities (from government buildings to oil wells) and important persons (the US ambassador, for example). Some of these companies have special information gathering and analysis departments whose staff has access to state-of-the-art military and security technologies. Global Risks is one such company. Charged with protecting Baghdad International Airport, it has hired for this purpose 500 Nepalese and 500 Fijian soldiers who are apparently the cheapest of the 30 nationalities of mercenaries currently in Iraq. The existence of these types of firms in Iraq was first brought to public attention by the London Times, which reported in May 2004 that the number of British employees such firms posted to Iraq had doubled to 1,500 since the previous year. Among these employees were former British police, navy and paratrooper officers and soldiers. Iraqi officials at the time admitted to having no idea of how many mercenaries were operating in the country. A year later, former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that they were by then in the neighborhood of 100,000 and that they were needed because coalition forces were unable to supply the number of forces necessary to protect foreign diplomats and businessmen. . . It has apparently become Pentagon policy to hire mercenaries in American wars, despite official denials. According to Peter Singer, a security analyst at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors, private companies offering specialized military services for hire played a major support role in most of the wars in which the US was involved in the 1990s, including Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, the Balkans and East Timor. But this role has increased exponentially in America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. . . The firms themselves, the majority of which are American or British owned, offer services ranging from guarding important persons and facilities, and supplying equipment and provisions, to intelligence gathering and actual field combat. The growth of this phenomenon has added a new term to the late 20th century military lexicon. On top of "remote control warfare", "proxy wars" and "pre-emptive war", we now have "privatized war", or war fought or supported by forces and personnel subcontracted from private military firms and who are not subordinate to the official military hierarchy. . . Soldiers of fortune could also come in handy for operations that fall outside the pale of international law because recourse to them would spare members of official occupation forces from being brought before international courts on charges of crimes against humanity or violating international humanitarian law governing occupation. If Washington continues the pursuit of the American global enterprise, one could well envision an increasing reliance on privatized military forces, or PMFs -- a term that certainly has a more respectable ring than "mercenaries", reflecting a business that has become a legal and increasingly lucrative industry. . . Not all personnel are British or American; they could just as well be from South Africa, Nepal, Chile, Columbia, San Salvador, Honduras, Ireland, Spain, Poland, Brazil, Israel and, more recently, Russia and Lebanon. . . Not a few Arabs have signed up with mercenary outfits, which have been linked to some of the most atrocious crimes against Iraqi civilians, and for less money than their fellow mercenaries from other countries. . . It appears, too, that mercenaries have begun to fill the ranks of the US army itself. So desperate has the US military become that it has recruited more than 35,000 soldiers who are not US citizens. Instead, these recruits possess or have been awarded the much-coveted "Green Card" and the promise of naturalization if they should be fortunate enough to live out their tour of duty in Iraq. . . NAVAL BLOCKADE OF IRAN WOULD BE AN ACT OF WAR VETERANS' PSYCHOLOGIST TELLS STAFF TO STOP STRESS SYNDROME DIAGNOSES: "REALLY DON'T HAVE TIME" MORE THAN 43,000 MEDICALLY UNFIT TROOPS SENT TO WAR REVIVING THE GI BILL OF RIGHTS SUICIDES & MENTAL RELATED DEATHS MAY TOP IRAQ BATTLE FATALITIES THE COST OF PREJUDICE: 2-3 BATTLE BRIGADES PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - As the military sends 43,000 troops it defines as medically unfit into battle because it can't keep up with its personnel requirements, it has dumped the equivalent of two to three battle brigades from its rosters because the troops were gay or lesbian. Over a ten year period ending in fiscal 2003, the Pentagon separated nearly 10,000 troops because of its anti-gay policies. This from a 2005 GAO report: "The estimated training costs for the occupations performed by Navy members separated for homosexual conduct from fiscal year 1994 through fiscal year 2003 was about $48.8 million ($18,000 per member). The comparable Air Force cost estimate was $16.6 million ($7,400 per member). The Army estimated that the training cost of the occupations performed by Army members separated for homosexual conduct over the 10-year period was about $29.7 million ($6,400 per member). The Marine Corps was not able to estimate occupation-related training costs. . . "The military services
separated 9,488 members pursuant to the homosexual conduct policy
statute from fiscal year 1994 through fiscal year 2003. . . Seven
hundred fifty-seven (about 8 percent) of these separated servicemembers
held critical occupations ("voice interceptor," "data
processing technician," or "interpreter/translator"),
as defined by the services. About 59 percent of the members with
critical occupations who were separated for homosexual conduct
were separated during their first 2.5 years of service, which
is about 1.5 years before the expiration of the initial service
contract of most enlistees. Such contracts are typically for
4 years. Also, 322 members (about 3 percent) had some skills
in an important foreign language. APRIL 2008 MAKING A KILLING ON THE WAR ON TERROR FREE THINKING SOLDIER SUES ARMY OVER THREATS  PENTAGON HEAVILY MANIPULATED TELEVISION MILITARY COVERAGE MARCH 2008 US AIR FORCE ADOPTS NAZI MOTTO US AIR FORCE - The Air Force has a new advertising campaign to recruit the next generation of Airmen as well as better inform people about the Air Force mission: "Above All." "The new slogan is admittedly a bold one," said Col. Michael Caldwell, deputy director of Air Force public affairs, "but so are Airmen." This campaign accurately portrays Airmen and how they're executing the Air Force mission to ensure the security and safety of America now and in the future. "'Above All' is about what we do and how we do it," Colonel Caldwell said. "The job of the Air Force is to defend America and we do that by dominating air, space and cyberspace. The new campaign and slogan captures our roots, but also illustrates where we're going as a service as the Air Force prepares to contend with future threats." Although the phrase 'uber alles' describing Germany well precedes the rise of Hitler, any one who lived through World War II would easily associate it with its Nazi use. The adoption by the Air Force is either stupid or scary. http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123087033 HEARING LOSS A MASSIVE PROBLEM AMONG TROOPS WHAT IF THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME? SOLDIER CLAIMS PROMOTION DENIED BECAUSE OF HIS ATHEISM FEBRUARY 2008 ARMY UPGRADES 'NATION BUILDING' TO LEVEL OF COMBAT IN ITS LATEST MANUAL PENTAGON LAWYER WHO TRIED TO RIG GITMO CASES RESIGNS AIR FORCE BANS ALL SITES WITH WORD 'BLOG' IN THEM NOW THE PENTAGON WANTS TO MAKE YOU CRAZY SHARON WEINBERGER, DANGER ROOM - Of all the crazy, bizarre less-lethal weapons that have been proposed, the use of microwaves to target the human mind remains the most disturbing. . . A newly declassified Pentagon report, Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons Weapons, obtained by a private citizen under the Freedom of Information Act, provides some fascinating tidbits on a variety of exotic weapons ideas. Among those discussed are weapons that could disrupt the brain, as well as my longtime obsession, the "Voice of God" device, which creates voices in people's heads. As the report notes, "Application of the microwave hearing technology could facilitate a private message transmission. It may be useful to provide a disruptive condition to a person not aware of the technology. Not only might it be disruptive to the sense of hearing, it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard 'voices within one's head.'". . . http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/report-nonletha.html PENTAGON: TREAT INTERNET LIKE AN ENEMY WEAPONS SYSTEM SHORT-CHANGING MASSACHUSETTS FOR BAGHDAD JANUARY 2008 HOW THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES MISLED ON ROTC AND CAMPUS RECRUITING JOHN K. WILSON, INSIDE HIGHEER ED, 2007 - The Solomon Amendment prohibits a college from receiving federal funds if it bans military recruiters, prevents the military "from maintaining, establishing, or operating" an ROTC unit at that college or prohibits a student from enrolling at an ROTC unit at another college. But what does it mean to establish an ROTC unit? For example, no college prohibits any students from enrolling in ROTC at another college. Likewise, to my knowledge, there is no college that has actually banned the military from renting space on campus like any other group and holding ROTC training sessions. The proposed rule explicitly rejects the concept of equal treatment; instead, the military is demanding special rights to control curriculum and faculty that no other outside group is ever granted. It's common to refer to campuses "banning" ROTC, but it apparently never happened. For example, in 1969, Yale University never "abolished" ROTC; it simply denied ROTC academic credit and faculty rank, and the military chose to withdraw under these conditions. In 1970, Stanford's Faculty Senate voted to end academic credit for ROTC courses because the courses were not open to all Stanford students, and the military (instead of Stanford) chose the teachers. The proposed rule not only prevents a college from prohibiting ROTC, but also bans a campus from doing anything that "in effect prevents" an ROTC unit from operating. This would include neutral rules applied to everyone on campus, such as nondiscrimination rules, faculty control over the curriculum, or academic freedom. According to the proposed rule, "The criterion of 'efficiently operating a Senior ROTC unit' refers generally to an expectation that the ROTC Department would be treated on a par with other academic departments." Since in other academic departments, professors are given faculty rank and students receive college credit, this provision would effectively revoke faculty and campus control over the curriculum. It appears likely that the military will demand academic credit for ROTC classes (including those held at other campuses) and faculty rank for instructors who are selected and controlled by the military. Yet there is nothing in the Solomon Amendment to require this. If colleges allow students in ROTC classes to receive credit, they should be careful to impose the same conditions offered for all other classes: the faculty must be appointed by the college, not the military; the faculty, not the military, must determine the content of the classes; and all qualified students, regardless of sexual orientation or enrollment in the military, should be able to take the class. Nothing in the Solomon Amendment reverses these common rules, and if it did so, it would be unconstitutional, as this proposed rule is. . . The military seems unwilling to give up control over the selection of ROTC faculty and the curriculum. The choice of faculty and content for courses must remain the authority of faculty at each campus, and not be handed over to the government. Decisions on whether a particular department or course is legitimate must be determined by the faculty, not by a government fiat. Nor should military recruiters be exempt from protest or criticism. The proposed rule makes it a violation if the college "has failed to enforce time, place, and manner policies established by the covered school such that the military recruiters experience an inferior or unsafe recruiting climate, as schools must allow military recruiters on campus and must assist them in whatever way the school assists other employers." It is essentially impossible
for any college to prohibit an "inferior ... recruiting
climate" for military recruiters without banning all such
protests. .  BLACKWATER LEAVES MERCENARY TRADE ASSOCIATION BECAUSE ETHICS STANDARDS ARE TOO TOUGH NOVEMBER 2007 'HIDDEN COSTS' DOUBLE PRICE OF TWO WARS COMPLETE GUIDE TO UNCLE SAM'S RECRUITING INCENTIVES GOP SENATOR CALLS FOR MILITARY DRAFT THE MYSTERY OF IRAQ NON-COMBAT DEATHS AND MEDIVACS GREG MITCHELL, EDITOR & PUBLISHER - Pretty much alone in the media, E&P for weeks had been charting a troubling increase in non-combat deaths among U.S. troops in Iraq. . . According to Pentagon figures, 29 soldiers lost their lives in August for non-hostile reasons, and another 23 died of non-combat causes in September. Compare that with the average for the first seven months of this year: fewer than nine per month. The spike has coincided with extended 15-month deployments, one senior military official said. The military officially counts about 20% of the nearly 3900 U.S. fatalities in Iraq as "noncombat." It has officially confirmed 128 suicides in Iraq since 2003, with many others under investigation (and still more taking place on the return home). . . As I've noted repeatedly, the military releases little news to the press when a service member dies from a non-hostile cause, beyond saying it is "under investigation." When that probe ends, many months later, the military normally does not tell anyone but family members of the deceased. For more than four years, however, E&P has kept close tabs on non-combat deaths. . . [From a letter Mitchell received] Thank you for addressing the non-combat deaths issue. I've been struck by the number of people killed when vehicles drove into canals (Michael Kelly of the Washington Post being the best known of these). . . Another mystery you should call attention to is the medivacs of people for non-combat injuries and illnesses, which far exceed those for combat injuries. Icasualties.org reports 24,912 non-hostile medivacs, which means the people were flown out or Iraq and to Germany (or perhaps other military hospitals). Some 18,741 of the patients suffer from disease/other (as opposed to the 6,171 for non-combat related injuries, presumably trauma). Three times as many of our troops are being flown out of Iraq for disease than wounds in battle (6,354), and yet we hear nothing about this epidemic, or whatever it is. . . OCTOBER 2007 BLACK RECRUITMENT TO ARMY PLUMMETS THINK TANK: WAR ON
TERROR HAS BEEN A DISASTER WAR PROFITEERING HITTING NEW RECORDS SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, AU - Arms manufacturers are making record profits from the war on terrorism and unprecedented spending on weapons programs. . . The world's biggest arms maker, Lockheed Martin in the US, maker of fighter jets including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which Australia is buying, announced last week it had increased third-quarter profits by 22 per cent to $US 11.1 billion. Northrop Grumman, maker of aircraft carriers, submarines and bombers, increased profits 62 per cent to $US 489 million. At General Dynamics, maker of the Abrams tank, which Australia has just bought, profits climbed 24 per cent to $US 544 million. . . http://snipurl.com/1t511 BUSH'S WAR ON TERROR HAS COST AMERICA $94 BILLION IN TOURIST DOLLARS AFP - "Since September 11, 2001, the United States has experienced a 17 percent decline in overseas travel, costing America 94 billion dollars in lost visitor spending, nearly 200,000 jobs and 16 billion dollars in lost tax revenue," the Discover America advocacy campaign said in a statement. . . Last year, only 56 percent of Britons had a positive opinion of the United States compared with 83 percent in 2000, the Pew Global Attitudes report for 2006 shows. Thirty-nine percent of French people saw the United States in a positive light last year, compared with 62 percent in 2000. In Turkey 12 percent had good things to say about the United States last year -- 40 percentage points down on 2000.  JUN 2007  ONE MAN'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE ILLEGAL MERCENARIES IN IRAQ WASHINGTON POST - A federal judge yesterday ordered the military to temporarily refrain from awarding the largest security contract in Iraq. The order followed an unusual series of events set off when a U.S. Army veteran filed a protest against the government practice of hiring what he calls mercenaries, according to sources familiar with the matter. The contract, worth about $475 million, calls for a private company to provide intelligence services to the U.S. Army and security for the Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction work in Iraq. The case, which is being heard by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, puts on trial one of the most controversial and least understood aspects of the Iraq war: the outsourcing of military security to an estimated 20,000 armed contractors who operate with little oversight. . . Brian X. Scott, a 53 - year - old Colorado man, filed the complaint in early April. He argues that the military's use of private security contractors is "against America's core values" and violates an 1893 law that prohibits the government from hiring quasi - military forces. Scott's challenge set off a domino effect, prompting the Government Accountability Office to dismiss protests brought by two major private security contractors the Army had removed as potential bidders - - Erinys Iraq, a British firm, and Blackwater USA of North Carolina. . . In his court protest, Scott relied on the Anti - Pinkerton Act, which Congress passed more than a century ago to thwart businesses that had hired mercenaries to disrupt labor groups. 70% OF CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE BUDGET GOES TO CORPORATE CONTRACTS TIM SHORROCK, SALON - More than five years into the global "war on terror," spying has become one of the fastest - growing private industries in the United States. The federal government relies more than ever on outsourcing for some of its most sensitive work, though it has kept details about its use of private contractors a closely guarded secret. Intelligence experts, and even the government itself, have warned of a critical lack of oversight for the booming intelligence business. On May 14, at an industry conference in Colorado sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. government revealed for the first time how much of its classified intelligence budget is spent on private contracts: a whopping 70 percent. Based on this year's estimated budget of at least $48 billion, that would come to at least $34 billion in contracts. . . "Those numbers are startling," said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and an expert on the U.S. intelligence budget. "They represent a transformation of the Cold War intelligence bureaucracy into something new and different that is literally dominated by contractor interests." NEO - CONS - INCLUDING WOLFOWITZ - PRESSED FOR CONFRONTATION WITH CHINA AS WELL AS IRAQ JEFF STEIN, CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY - The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap - frogged Washington's foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S. - China relations-creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell's chief of staff through two administrations, said in little - noted remarks early last month that "neocons" in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China - an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike. The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan at the time, Douglas Paal, backs up Wilkerson's account, which is being hotly disputed by key former defense officials. . . With the election of George W. Bush in 2000, some of Taiwan's most fervent allies were swept back into power in Washington, particularly at the Pentagon, starting with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. They included such key architects of the Iraq War as Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy, and Steven Cambone, Rumsfeld's new intelligence chief, Wilkerson said. President Bush's controversial envoy to the United Nations, John Bolton, was another. While Bush publicly continued the one - China policy of his five White House predecessors, Wilkerson said, the Pentagon "neocons" took a different tack, quietly encouraging Taiwan's pro - independence president, Chen Shui - bian. "The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on," Wilkerson said, referring to pre - 1970s military and diplomatic relations, "essentially to tell Chen Shui - bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing." http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110 - 000002523531.html MAY 2007 WAR ON TERROR A FISCAL DISASTER, TOO JOHN MCCASLIN, WASHINGTON TIMES - The Government Accountability Office has just sent Congress a breakdown of financial obligations to continue fighting the global war on terrorism. . . Prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks the Defense Department's reported annual cost to fight global terrorism was $0.2 billion. By fiscal 2006, that amount grew to $98.4 billion. Thus far in fiscal 2007, Congress has provided the Defense Department with another $70 billion in annual anti-terrorism funds. . . But the Pentagon has since requested an additional $93.4 billion supplemental for this year, on top of a $141.7 billion request for fiscal 2008. In its correspondence, the GAO tells Congress that U.S. commitments to the GWOT will likely involve "continued investments of significant resources, requiring decision-makers to consider difficult trade-offs as the nation faces an increasing long-range fiscal challenge." http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm STUDY FINDS CANADIAN MILITARY RECRUITS INCREASINGLY SOCIAL DYSFUNCTIONAL NEWS, AUSTRALIA - An increasing number of would-be recruits to the Canadian military are prone to displaying traits of social disobedience, intolerance toward ethnic groups and being fatalistic, a new report says. The report cautions that such recruits could put the Canadian Forces' positive public image at serious risk. The analysis, delivered to the Department of National Defense in March, warns of the "increasingly socio-dysfunctional profile of military aspirants." It goes on to suggest the military's reputation could be "easily shattered by the actions of a few or even just one Canadian Abu Ghraib" - a reference to the abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. military. The report raises the specter of the Canadian military scandal in Somalia, in which the Canadian Forces covered up the 1993 murder of a young Somali prisoner for several weeks. The incident led to criminal charges, a public inquiry and a decade of soul-searching for the military. A profile drawn up in the study shows that today's average potential military recruit is "proud and intense," a "crude hedonist" and drawn to transgressive behaviour - or breaking the rules. Potential recruits are also driven by the need for social status and "to belong," and feel a lack of confidence in the future. Male candidates are "macho," while women have "a strong masculine side." The potential recruits tend to show an affinity for social Darwinism, characterized by the view that only the strongest members of society will survive. Violence and sex are also prominent interests associated with potential soldiers, according to the study, by Montreal-based polling firm CROP Inc. 70% OF FOREIGN TRAVELLERS FEAR US OFFICIALS MORE THAN TERRORISTS OR CRIMINALS PETER HUCK, NEW ZEALAND HERALD - In a recent poll of international travelers, commissioned by Discover America Partnership, a coalition of US tourist organizations, 70 per cent of respondents said they feared US officials more than terrorists or criminals. Another 66 per cent worried they would be detained for some minor blunder, such as wrongly filling out an official form or being mistaken for a terrorist, while 55 per cent say officials are "rude." Such fears are fuelled by the horror stories. Earlier this year a friend of mine was detained for hours and strip-searched at LAX for a minor visa infraction. He was finally allowed to enter the US, on the condition he departed the next day. "I won't be coming back," he said. In a January Listener article New Zealand journalist Marilyn Head described how she missed a flight after being treated like a criminal by US airport guards. "I left the US vowing never to return," she wrote. "I'm not alone.". . . Before September 11, US airport staff often seemed to err on the laid-back rather than on the vigilant side. Now some overzealous officials appear to regard all tourists as potential terrorists. Entering America can feel like running the gauntlet. . . Such comments, and the poll results - which rate the US by a 2:1 margin as the world's "most unfriendly" destination for foreign travelers - are found in "A Blueprint to Discover America," unveiled in January by Discover America Partnership to halt a dramatic decline in foreign visitors. According to the blueprint overseas travel to the US has slumped 17 per cent since 2001, even as world travel to other countries reaches historic growth levels. The decline has cost US $94 billion in visitor spending, US $16 billion in tax receipts, and some 194,000 American jobs. Many poll respondents said that visiting the US had become a hassle and that they would take their holiday money elsewhere. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10436518 JUNIOR OFFICERS UNHAPPY WITH GENERALS' HANDLING OF IRAQ THOMAS E. RICKS, WASHINGTON
POST - An active-duty Army officer is publishing a blistering
attack on U.S. generals, saying they have botched the war in
Iraq and misled Congress about the situation there. "America's
generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq,"
charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy
commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. "The intellectual
and moral failures . . . constitute a crisis in American generals.".
. . APRIL 2007 CONGRESS TURNS 'BOUTIQUE VEHICLE' INTO HALF BILLION DOLLAR SPECULATION CHRISTIAN, DEFENSE TECH - Well it looks like the first spasm of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle orders has been launched, with the Pentagon inking a - get this - $481 million contract for 1,000 vehicles this week. That's a half a billion dollars for 300 of the 15-ton Cougar Cat-1 vehicles and 700 of the 16-ton Cat-2 behemoths - all going to Force Protection Industries, Inc. . . The MRAP is not a tactical vehicle. It is a specialized armored truck designed primarily for protecting EOD units and their gear from explosions while diffusing bombs or mines. The Marine Corps' top gear buyer, Brig. Gen. Mike Brogan, admitted last month the MRAP was viewed by the Corps as a "boutique vehicle" for certain specialties. They asked for a limited quantity of these vehicles in the 2008 budget and 2007 wartime funding request based on that view. Then what happened? You guessed it, Congress stepped in. After browbeating every service and DOD official they could over the meager number of MRAPs in the budget, Army and Marine officials snapped to and revamped their request to satisfy lawmakers' new infatuation. . . I know I'll probably get a lot of crap for this, but I think the services recognize that the MRAP isn't what they need but they're responding to the congressional love affair with the vehicle because they have to. . . http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003456.html MARCH 2007 A QUARTER OF RETURNING VETS HAVE MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS REUTERS - High rates of mental health disorders are being diagnosed among US military personnel soon after being released from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to investigators in San Francisco. They estimate that out of 103,788 returning veterans, 25 percent had a mental health diagnosis, and more than half of these patients had two or more distinct conditions. Those most at risk were the youngest soldiers and those with the most combat exposure. . . In addition to the high rate of mental health disorders, about one in three (31 percent) were affected by at least one psychosocial diagnosis. The most frequent diagnosis was post-traumatic stress disorder. Other diagnoses included anxiety disorder, depression, substance use disorder, or other behavioral or psychosocial problem. http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTON27935120070312  MOST YOUTH INELIGIBLE FOR ARMY GINA CAVALLARO, ARMY TIMES - Close to three-quarters of American youth are ineligible to serve in the Army and patriotism among the country's recruitable population has been sliding since 2002. That was the assessment of a series of recent surveys . . . presented Thursday by Gen. William S. Wallace, commanding general of Training and Doctrine Command. . . According to Wallace, only 27 percent of youth between the ages of 17 and 24 are eligible for recruiting. The remaining 73 percent, he said, "are morally, intellectually or physically" unfit for service. "It's the lowest it's been in more than 10 years." College, he said, is now the preferred post-high school activity and youths surveyed said they perceived the Army as "ordinary." According to Wallace, those surveyed considered the Marine Corps "elite but dangerous." They considered the Navy "somewhat elite but safer" and the Air Force was considered "elite and highly technical." http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/03/ATrecruitsurvey070308/ CBS - Its own auditors
admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion
in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted. $2.3 trillion - that's
$8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand
how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case
of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened
to a mere $300 million.
FEBRUARY 2007 AMERICAN EMPIRE HAS OVER 700 BASES ABROAD [From Chalmers Johnson's new book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic"] CHALMERS JOHNSON - The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up. Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 -- mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets -- almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. . . Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic . . . During fiscal 2005, the military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners. The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords. http://www.alternet.org/stories/47998/ IT'S NOT JUST THE BUILDINGS THAT ARE BAD AT WALTER REED KELLY KENNEDY, AIR FORCE TIMES - In 2001, 10 percent of soldiers going through the medical retirement process received permanent disability benefits. In 2005, with two wars raging, that percentage dropped to 3 percent, according to the Government Accountability Office. Reservists dropped from 16 percent to 5 percent. Soldiers go to VA to try for more benefits, but the department had a staggering 400,000-case backup on new claims in fiscal 2006, according to VA. . . Perhaps more important, many of the soldiers leaving Walter Reed face post-traumatic stress disorder. Studies have shown that if soldiers receive treatment within a year, they fare much better. Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, the number of soldiers wading through the paperwork, physicals and appointments has doubled at Walter Reed. According to a Defense Department directive, it should take a total of 120 days from start to finish, but the average stay for Walter Reed soldiers is 270 days. The soldiers navigate a complicated system with the help of counselors with little more experience -- or rank -- than they have, and who lack training, according to a March 2006 Government Accountability Office report. On March 2, 2006, Col. Robert Norton, deputy director, Government Relations, for the Military Officers Association of America, told the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs that since October 2003, medical evaluation boards have averaged 67 days and physical evaluation boards have taken between 87 and 280 days. . . On Feb. 17, 2005, Lt. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck, former deputy chief of staff for personnel, told the House Committee on Government Reform that the Army did not have nearly the resources it had during the Vietnam War http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/0 2/tnsmedboards070217 PENTAGON TRIES TO CENSOR '24' ANDREW BUNCOMBE, INDEPENDENT UK - In the hugely popular television series 24, federal agent Jack Bauer always gets his man, even if he has to play a little rough. Suffocating, electrocuting or drugging a suspect are all in a day's work. As Bauer - played by the Emmy Award winner Kiefer Sutherland - tells one baddie: "You are going to tell me what I want to know - it's just a matter of how much you want it to hurt.". . . The US military has appealed to the producers of 24 to tone down the torture scenes because of the impact they are having both on troops in the field and America's reputation abroad. Forget about Abu Ghraib, forget about Guantanamo Bay, forget even that the White House has authorized interrogation techniques that some classify as torture, that damned Jack Bauer is giving us a bad name. The United States Military Academy at West Point yesterday confirmed that Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan recently traveled to California to meet producers of the show, broadcast on the Fox channel. He told them that promoting illegal behavior in the series - apparently hugely popular among the US military - was having a damaging effect on young troops. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2264632.ece JOSH WHITE, WASHINGTON POST - Nationwide enrollment in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps has slipped more than 16 percent over the past two school years, leaving the program, which trains and commissions more than six of every 10 new Army officers each year, with its fewest participants in nearly a decade. SAIC IS KING OF SWEETHEART DEALS WITH FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PR WATCH - With 44,000 employees, Science Applications International Corporation "is larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development combined," Donald Barlett and James Steele write, in an in-depth profile of the military contractor. "SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts," more than any other company. But "several of SAIC's biggest projects have turned out to be colossal failures," including "Trailblazer," a system to manage incoming intelligence for the National Security Agency, and the "Virtual Case File," a centralized data repository for the FBI. "SAIC executives have been involved at every stage . . . of the war in Iraq," from pushing WMD claims to helping "investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously wrong." Under "yet another no-bid contract," SAIC created the Iraqi Media Network, supposedly a "free and independent indigenous media network" that quickly became "a mouthpiece for the Pentagon." Eventually, "the network was turned over to Iraqi control. Today it is a tool of Iraq's Shiite majority and spews out virulently anti-American messages." Moreover, SAIC's work on the Iraqi Media Network was criticized by the Pentagon's Inspector General as having "widespread violations of normal contracting procedures." http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703 JANUARY 2007  for use despite questions U.S. MERCENARIES NOW SUBJECT TO COURT MARTIAL DEFENSE TECH - Since the start of the Iraq war, tens of thousands of heavily-armed military contractors have been roaming the country -- without any law, or any court to control them. That may be about to change, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow P.W. Singer notes in a Defense Tech exclusive. Five words, slipped into a Pentagon budget bill, could make all the difference. With them, "contractors 'get out of jail free' cards may have been torn to shreds," he writes. They're now subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the same set of laws that governs soldiers. But here's the catch: embedded reporters are now under those regulations, too. Over the last few years, tales of private military contractors run amuck in Iraq -- from the CACI interrogators at Abu Ghraib to the Aegis company's Elvis-themed internet "trophy video" -- have continually popped up in the headlines. Unfortunately, when it came to actually doing something about these episodes of Outsourcing Gone Wild, Hollywood took more action than Washington. The TV series Law and Order punished fictional contractor crimes, while our courts ignored the actual ones. Leonardo Dicaprio acted in a movie featuring the private military industry, while our government enacted no actual policy on it. But those carefree days of military contractors romping across the hills and dales of the Iraqi countryside, without legal status or accountability, may be over. The Congress has struck back. . . Previously, contractors would only fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, better known as the court martial system, if Congress declared war. This is something that has not happened in over 65 years and out of sorts with the most likely operations in the 21st century. The result is that whenever our military officers came across episodes of suspected contractor crimes in missions like Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, or Afghanistan, they had no tools to resolve them. As long as Congress had not formally declared war, civilians -- even those working for the US armed forces, carrying out military missions in a conflict zone -- fell outside their jurisdiction. The military's relationship with the contractor was, well, merely contractual. . . With the addition of just five words in the law, contractors now can fall under the purview of the military justice system. This means that if contractors violate the rules of engagement in a war zone or commit crimes during a contingency operation like Iraq, they can now be court-martialed. http://www.defensetech.org/ THE TECHNO-CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST CHUCK SPINNEY - There is no mention of the fact [in the Baker Hamilton reports] that this all happening while we are spending more on the military than we did at the height of the Vietnam war, even after the effects of inflation are removed. This debilitating burden is a direct consequence of the increasing technical complexity of weapons based on a variety of cockeyed theories of "transformation," all premised on the idea that that technology can substitute for both manpower and thinking on the battlefield ... This can be seen in the claims about revolutions in military affairs, "network centric warfare, and the all-electronic, all-seeing, all-knowing command and control system that can control precision strikes from a distance." My prediction: the ultimate price of withdrawing our forces from Iraq will include a "bipartisan" political agreement that the Pentagon (really the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex) needs yet another huge semi-permanent increase in the defense budget. So much for the end of the Cold War and fiscal responsibility in Versailles on the Potomac. [Spinney was a long official at the Pentagon] U.S. MILITARY HAD PLANS FOR WIDESPEAD ILLNESS IN HOSTILE CITIES DEFENSE TECH - The middle years of the Cold War were, in many ways, a Silver Age of bad weapons ideas -- from nuclear bazookas to one-man "aerocycles." But this has to be just about the worst I've heard yet: Developing "biological agents" -- including ones that can lead to "inflammation of the brain, coma and death" -- for "incapacitating" enemies on the battlefield or "neutralizing hostile cities." It's one of a number of head-scratching ideas University of Bradford researcher Neil Davison reveals in his new report, "The Early History of 'Non-Lethal' Weapons." . . . US military, for example, standardized viral agents Coxiella burnetii (Q fever) and Venezuelan equine encephalitis [whose symptoms range from "mild flu-like illness to...inflammation of the brain, coma and death," according to the CDC -- ed.] bacterial agent Brucella suis (brucellosis), and toxin agent staphylococcal enterotoxin B, as incapacitating biological weapons... The political advantages of these agents were that their foreseen limited "lethality", (the aim was to develop agents with a 1-2% lethality), would enable greater freedom in the use of force. From a tactical perspective these agents might be used to cause large-scale incapacitation and thus overwhelm medical and logistical services. They may also be used in situations where there was a risk to civilian or friendly forces... Thankfully, no one ever got the chance to try out this tactic. Biological weapons were banned under international law by the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. http://www.defensetech.org/archives/cat_lesslethal.html DECEMBER 2006 BUSH DEVELOPING ILLEGAL BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS SHERWOOD ROSS, TRUTH OUT - In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb. So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002. . . Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!" . . . For fiscal years 2001-2004, the federal government funded $14.5 billion "for ostensibly 'civilian' biowarfare-related work alone," a "truly staggering" sum, Boyle wrote. Another $5.6 billion was voted for "the deceptively-named 'Project Bio Shield,'" under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterror agents, wrote Boyle. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, "one of the fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare." http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122006R.shtml THE TECHNO-CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST CHUCK SPINNEY - There is no mention of the fact [in the Baker Hamilton reports] that this all happening while we are spending more on the military than we did at the height of the Vietnam war, even after the effects of inflation are removed. This debilitating burden is a direct consequence of the increasing technical complexity of weapons based on a variety of cockeyed theories of "transformation," all premised on the idea that that technology can substitute for both manpower and thinking on the battlefield ... This can be seen in the claims about revolutions in military affairs, "network centric warfare, and the all-electronic, all-seeing, all-knowing command and control system that can control precision strikes from a distance." My prediction: the ultimate price of withdrawing our forces from Iraq will include a "bipartisan" political agreement that the Pentagon (really the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex) needs yet another huge semi-permanent increase in the defense budget. So much for the end of the Cold War and fiscal responsibility in Versailles on the Potomac. [Spinney was a long official at the Pentagon] HOMELAND SECURITY SORT OF ADMITS IT LIED, BROKE LAW - The Homeland Security Department admitted Friday it violated the Privacy Act two years ago by obtaining more commercial data about U.S. airline passengers than it had announced it would. Seventeen months ago, the Government Accountability Office, Congress' auditing arm, reached the same conclusion: The department's Transportation Security Administration "did not fully disclose to the public its use of personal information in its fall 2004 privacy notices as required by the Privacy Act." Even so, in a report Friday on the testing of TSA's Secure Flight domestic air passenger screening program, the Homeland Security department's privacy office acknowledged TSA didn't comply with the law. But the privacy office still couldn't bring itself to use the word "violate." Instead, the privacy office said, "TSA announced one testing program, but conducted an entirely different one." In a 40-word, separate sentence, the report noted that federal programs that collect personal data that can identify Americans "are required to be announced in Privacy Act system notices and privacy impact assessments." NOVEMBER 2006 FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSTS CALL WAR ON TERROR A FAILURE LYNDA HURST, TORONTO STAR - - Washington is failing to make progress in the global war on terror and the next 9/11-style attack is not a question of if, but when. That is the scathing conclusion of a survey of 100 leading American foreign-policy analysts. In its first "Terrorism Index," released yesterday, the influential journal Foreign Policy found surprising consensus among the bipartisan experts. Some 86 per cent of them said the world has grown more, not less, dangerous, despite President George W. Bush's claims that the U.S. is winning the war on terror. The main reasons for the decline in security, they said, were the war in Iraq, the detention of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, U.S. policy towards Iran and U.S. energy policy THE ARMY'S WATER PROBLEM DAVID HAMBLING, DEFENSE TECH - According to one US Army estimate, up to 65% of military road traffic in Iraq is taken up with transporting water to the troops. Cutting the number of trucks used for water will reduce the number of convoys that need protecting, and Allied Command Transformation Headquarters aims to do that by generating drinking water in the field. They recently demonstrated a mobile bottling plant that fits into a C-130 which can generate, purify and bottle 700 liters of water an hour. Further down the line, DARPA [is] pursuing a project called 'Water From Air', looking at ways of extracting potable water from the atmosphere or from vehicle exhaust (water is one of the by-products when any hydrocarbon fuel is burned. . . . But there is one big, rather simple problem, as explained in this piece on logistics in Iraq: "Dependence on bottled water in Iraq turned out to be a major sustainment and quality of life issue, Chambers said. Bottled water made up 30 percent of the distribution requirement even though bulk water was available, he said." Because the bottom line is:"Soldiers do not like to drink purified water." Which is why the idea of recycling urine into drinking water is even less likely to catch on, something that the Army has looked at on the grounds that "The technology is there. NASA is doing it." However, Thomas Bagwell, acting executive director for research at TARDEC, admitted that the last time he put this idea to soldiers, "they chased me out of the room." Water may be technically safe and potable, but it can still taste terrible and troops are understandably not going to want to drink it. If you can solve that problem, you can take out a huge amount of the logistics overhead. Maybe they should look at additives (flavoring? caffeine?), or maybe it needs some branding and an advertising push ("Real Water For Real Men"). But I suspect it will take a lot more to persuade people to give up bottled water for purified. And if you can work out how to do that one, you're a better man than I am. ARMY CENSORING TROOP WEBSITES BIG TIME DEFENSE TECH - "Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be," according to the Army. The Manassas-based Guardsmen are on a one-year assignment to clamp down on both "official and unofficial Army Web sites for operational security violations." The team, working "under the direction of the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" hunts for "documents, pictures and other items that may compromise security" -- and then orders the parties to take the offensive content offline. Not that the material is top secret or anything, an Army News Service article notes. The most common operational security violations found on official sites are For Official Use Only FOUO documents and limited distribution documents, as well as home addresses, birthdates and home phone numbers. Unofficial blogs often show pictures with sensitive information in the background, including classified documents, entrances to camps or weapons. One soldier showed his ammo belt, on which the tracer pattern was easily identifiable. Since the relatively wide-open days following the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Pentagon has been slowly tightening the screws on military bloggers. Officers started busting frontline diarists for their websites. In Iraq, new rules required bloggers to check with their commanders before posting. Then, in August, a message came highest levels of the military that "EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, NO INFORMATION MAY BE PLACED ON WEBSITES THAT ARE READILY ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC UNLESS IT HAS BEEN REVIEWED FOR SECURITY CONCERNS AND APPROVED IN ACCORDANCE WITH DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MEMORANDUM WEB SITE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES, DECEMBER 7, 1998." "So much for military blogging," said one officer, deployed in Iraq, when the ruling came down. Not that the officer -- an active blogger back in the States -- was doing much public writing while on the front lines. "The Army's guidance on OPSEC has been broad and ambiguous enough to chill my speech," he wrote to me. "Discretion is clearly the better part of valor where OPSEC rules are concerned, because the sensitivity of any particular detail is in the eye of the beholder." Other soldiers, even ones stationed back home, took similar measures. As of today, May 5th, 2006, I am officially shutting down my blog... There are certin [sic] commands out there that do NOT want me to blog... they have been trying very hard to find out who I am and shut me down... I really don't want to end my military career over a blog - it has gotten THAT bad! Others -- thousands of others -- have continued on, trying to stay within the rules. . . http://www.defensetech.org/ MILITARY PRESS CALLS FOR RUMSFELD TO RESIGN POLITICAL WIRE = A rare joint editorial in the Army Times, the Air Force Times, and the Navy Times calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads." http://tinyurl.com/y7q266 OCTOBER 2006 FBI ONLY HAS 33 ARABIC SPEAKING AGENTS UPI - Of 12,000 special agents, the FBI has only 33 who have limited proficiency in speaking Arabic, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. With much of the United States' security focused on terror threats from the Middle East and Asia since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI has stepped up its hiring of translators. In 2001, there were 70, while now, the agency employs 269. However, they are not agents who are actually out in the field. SEPTEMBER 2006 ARMY NOT READY FOR ANOTHER CONFLICT PROGRESS REPORT - In today's Washington Post, American Progress's Lawrence Korb and Peter Ogden note, "In July an official report revealed that two-thirds of the active U.S. Army was classified as 'not ready for combat.' When one combines this news with the fact that roughly one-third of the active Army is deployed (and thus presumably ready for combat), the math is simple but the answer alarming: The active Army has close to zero combat-ready brigades in reserve." Worse, "one-half of all Army units (deployed and non-deployed, active and reserves) received the lowest readiness rating any fully formed unit can receive." The readiness problem reflects the fact that every "available active-duty combat brigade has served at least one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many have served two or three." According to a report released yesterday by Reps. Dave Obey (D-WI) and John Murtha (D-PA), "The U.S. Army's preparedness for war has eroded to levels not witnessed by our country in decades." Obey and Murtha report, "Thousands of key Army weapons platforms -- such as tanks, Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles -- sitting in disuse at Army maintenance depots for lack of funding. "This is having a snowball effect on its readiness issues because the Army is "compensating" for its shortfall by "shipping to Iraq some of the equipment that it needs to train non-deployed and reserve units." The Army is also struggling to meet its recruiting goals. For example, "After failing to meet its recruitment target for 2005, the Army raised the maximum age for enlistment from 35 to 40 in January -- only to find it necessary to raise it to 42 in June." Also, the Army has been forced to lower its standards for basic training. "Through the first six months of 2006, only 7.6 percent of new recruits failed basic training, down from 18.1 percent in May 2005." THE REAL RISK OF TERRORISM A chart compiled by Ryan Singel at Wired, shows some of the relative risks in contemporary life over the past five years. You would have been, for example, far more likely to die in an auto accident, from a fall, or from drowning than in a terrorist incident. You were also more likely to die from the flu or from a hernia, not to mention being shot by a law enforcement officer. Other useful comparisons include those in a recent article in Foreign Affairs that estimates the probability of an American being killed in an terrorist incident is about 1 in 80,000. And as we have reported previously, you are also more likely to be murdered, commit suicide, be killed by the side effects of a prescription drug, or die of cancer or heart disease. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71743-0.html?tw=wn_index_4 MILITARY PLANNED TERRORIST IN U.S. CITIES TO BLAME ON CASTRO DAVID RUPPE, ABC NEWS - In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban emigres, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets, a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford . . . The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years. http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=92662 EXPERTS OVERWHELMINGLY THINK U.S. IS LOSING WAR ON TERROR HARI KRISHNAN, UPI - Despite claims by the administration, top foreign policy experts from both parties don't seem certain the United States is winning its war against terrorism. "America's foreign policy community has never been in so much agreement about the performance of an administration overseas - 84 percent of the respondents think that we're losing the war on terror," reports CBS News quoting Mike Boyer, editor of the Terrorism Index. The report says the index was published by Foreign Policy magazine. Boyer said the experts include former secretaries of state, national security advisers and CIA directors, who were in charge of national security in the past five decades. Other than in Afghanistan, the experts reportedly feel U.S. actions under U.S. President George Bush have had a negative affect on the war against terror. 9/11 STATS [From the Independent, UK] 2,973 Total number of people killed (excluding the 19 hijackers) in the September 11, 2001 attacks 2,932 Total number of US servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 2001 72,000 Estimated number of civilians killed worldwide since September 11, 2001 as a result of the war on terror 2 Number of years since US intelligence had any credible lead to Osama bin Laden's whereabouts 1,248 Number of published books relating to the September 11 attacks $40bn Airline industry losses since September 2001 91 per cent Terror cases from FBI and others that US Justice Dept declined to prosecute in first eight months of 2006 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1466758.ece
 THIS CHART, compiled by Ryan Singel at Wired, shows come of the the relative risks in contemporary life over the past five years. Other useful comparisons include those in a recent article in Foreign Affairs that estimates the probability of an American being killed in an terrorist incident is about 1 in 80,000. And as we have reported previously, you are also more likely to die of a workplace accident, be murdered, commit suicide, be killed by the side effects of a prescription drug, or die of cancer or heart disease.
JUNE 2006  APRIL 2006 BUSH SEEKING TO PUT CANADIAN MILITARY UNDER U.S. CONTROL TORONTO STAR - They seem harmless enough at first: two mid-level Canadian Forces officers and a mild-mannered bespectacled American consultant explaining the work of their 48-member Bi-National Planning Group to audiences across Canada. Their professed goal is to improve co-operation between the Canadian and U.S. militaries, the better to defend both countries. Yet a close reading of their final report released last month, reveals that their actual intent - or at least the intent of the politicians who set their mandate - is far from benign. They seek nothing less than the complete integration of Canada's military, security and foreign policy into the decision-making and operating systems of the U.S. In 2002, it was revealed that Ottawa and Washington were contemplating a "combined defense plan" that would have placed our forces under the umbrella of the U.S.'s new Northern Command. Opposition to the plan quickly led to its being shunted out of view and into the newly created Bi-National Planning Group. Based at the headquarters of NORTHCOM and the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, the planning group was intended to devise counterpoints to critics' concerns, while postponing formal decision-making until a more politically opportune moment. Today, two Canadian elections later, the authors of the BPG report can hardly believe their luck. Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have only a minority government, but there is little doubt he desires closer ties with Washington.. . . The BPG is, in actuality, advocating cooperation at the level of a single, US-dominated command for all of Canada's territory and our surrounding seas. Under this plan, the entire Canadian Forces, unless deployed overseas in operations not led by the U.S., could find themselves under American "operational control" with Americans making all key day-to-day decisions. SENIOR BRITISH OFFICER THINKS U.S. GENERALS TRY TO ACT LIKE JOHN WAYNE AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - A senior British military officer, who worked in Baghdad in 2004, believes US generals try to act like gung-ho movie stars such as John Wayne, a newspaper reported. Brigadier Alan Sharp made the comments in an academic report on Britain's influence on US foreign relations, The Daily Telegraph said. The 46-year-old, who worked alongside the US military in Baghdad, said there was a "strong streak of Hollywood" among American officers. He said an important part to being a success in the US army was the ability to combine the "real and acted heroics" of Audie Murphy, a World War II hero, and the "newsreel antics" of General Douglas MacArthur, famed by the post-war occupation of Japan, and the "movie performances" of Hollywood actors. This may make good television back home, but Sharp said "loud voices, full body armor, wrap-around sunglasses, air strikes and daily broadcasts from shoulder-holster wearing brigadier generals proudly announcing how many Iraqis have been killed by US forces today" was no "hearts-and-minds winning tool".
 Rescue workers try to free the pilot from a new F-22. It took them 5 hours. According to Robert Bryce in Counterpunch, "total damage to the airplane, according to sources inside the Pentagon: $1.28 million. Not only did the firefighters ruin the canopy, which cost $286,000, they also scuffed the coating on the airplane's skin which will cost about $1 million to replace. The Pentagon currently plans to buy 181 copies of the F-22 from Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons vendor. The total price tag: $65.4 billion."  $815 MILLION HERE, $815 MILLION THERE AND PRETTY SOON YOU'RE TALKING REAL MONEY ARMY TIMES - A powerful floating radar that will be part of the national missile defense system had to be shipped back to Hawaii for repairs to its platform, delaying arrival at its home port of Alaska. The $815 million X-Band radar had set sail March 31 from Pearl Harbor but returned four days later. The Missile Defense Agency said the platform, which remained in the harbor Wednesday, suffered damage when water leaked through its ballast piping, affecting its ability to partially submerge and re-emerge from the water. PHOTO VIA DEFENSE TECH CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATOR CHARGES COVER-UP IN ANTI-MISSILE TESTING WILLIAM J. BROAD, NY TIMES - A senior Congressional investigator has accused his agency of covering up a scientific fraud among builders of a $26 billion system meant to shield the nation from nuclear attack. The disputed weapon is the centerpiece of the Bush administration's antimissile plan, which is expected to cost more than $250 billion over the next two decades. The investigator, Subrata Ghoshroy of the Government Accountability Office, led technical analyses of a prototype warhead for the antimissile weapon in an 18-month study, winning awards for his "great care" and "tremendous skill and patience." Mr. Ghoshroy now says his agency ignored evidence that the two main contractors had doctored data, skewed test results and made false statements in a 2002 report that credited the contractors with revealing the warhead's failings to the government. The agency strongly denied his accusations, insisting that its antimissile report was impartial and that it was right to exonerate the contractors of a coverup. The dispute is unusual. Rarely in the 85-year history of the G.A.O., an investigative arm of Congress with a reputation for nonpartisan accuracy, has a dissenter emerged publicly from its ranks. And Mr. Ghoshroy's assertions raise new questions about the Boeing Company's military arm, the main contractor for the troubled $26 billion system of interceptor rockets now being installed in Alaska and California. The system's "kill vehicles" are to zoom into space and destroy enemy warheads by force of impact. But years of test failures have thrown the program into disarray, and the military has recently begun to look for a kill vehicle of greater reliability. MARCH 2006  ANNALS OF IMPROBABLE RESEARCH - After anxious months of waiting, Gregg F. Martin's superiors have again validated his strategic leadership principles. Martin wrote the classic military guide "Jesus the Strategic Leader." On February 17, G.W. Bush's nomination of Gregg F. Martin was confirmed by the Senate. After writing his famous study, then-Lieutenant Colonel Martin was promoted to command the 130th Engineer Brigade of the Army's 5th Corps. The 51-page-long "Jesus the Strategic Leader" [in the Army War College Journal] includes a drawing of Martin's "pyramid model" of Jesus the strategic leader. According to this model, Jesus is a pyramid, resting atop and partially intersecting God. God is a pyramid, too, but with a broader base. A third, inverted pyramid is supported atop Jesus' pyramid. This third pyramid begins with what Martin calls the "Top Three" disciples (Peter, James and John) and broadens to include the other apostles, then the disciples and, topping everything, the masses. Admirers are eager to see how high up the military pyramid the new general will rise. FEBRUARY 2006 GEORGE ORWELL ON THE LONG WAR GEORGE ORWELL, 1984 - In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. . . Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always colored and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practiced today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible. But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. . . War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/17/ PENTAGON PLANS FOR PERPETUAL WAR AGAINST SOMEONE ANN SCOTT TYSON WASHINGTON POST - The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats. Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons. China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities JANUARY 2006
 PENTAGON'S PSYOPS FOR ITS OWN EMPLOYEES MARCH 2002 "DRASTIC" CHANGES SEEN IN DOMESTIC MILITARY OPERATIONS SECRECY NEWS - In the absence of clear guidelines and effective oversight, the U.S. military is becoming increasingly involved in domestic operations, including surveillance activities that blur the traditional distinction between foreign intelligence and domestic security. "Since September 11, 2001, the role of the military in domestic operations has changed drastically," according to the 2004 Operational Law Handbook of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps. "Prior to September 11, military involvement in domestic operations was almost exclusively in the area of civil support operations. Post-September 11, the military's role has expanded to cover 'homeland defense' and/or 'homeland security' missions, somewhat undefined terms," the JAG Handbook stated. ROBERT BLOCK AND GARY FIELDS, WALL STREET JOURNAL- In a little noticed side effect of the war on terrorism, the military is edging toward a sensitive area that has been off-limits to it historically: domestic intelligence gathering and law enforcement. Several recent incidents involving the military have raised concern among student and civil-rights groups. One was a visit last month by an Army intelligence agent to an official at the University of Texas law school in Austin. The agent demanded a videotape of a recent academic conference at the school so that he could identify what he described as "three Middle Eastern men" who had made "suspicious" remarks to Army lawyers at the seminar, according to the official, Susana Aleman, the dean of student affairs. The Army, while not disputing that the visit took place, declined to comment, saying the incident is under investigation. Last year, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the nation's primary source of global maritime intelligence, demanded access to the U.S. Customs Service's database on maritime trade, saying it needed information to thwart potential terrorist activity. Customs officials initially resisted the Navy's demands but eventually agreed to give naval intelligence much of what it wanted..... In another sign of military interest in domestic information-gathering, the Defense Intelligence Agency's new antiterrorism task force is looking to share information with law-enforcement officials in California and New York City, according to an August 2003 General Accounting Office report. ||| STEVE BARNES, REUTERS
- U.S. Marines will hunt mock combatants in a real city in a
first-of-its-kind urban warfare exercise aimed at improving tactics
in the U.S. war on terrorism and other dangerous overseas missions
. . . "We're training to keep Marines alive while causing
fewer civilian casualties," said Jenny Holbert, a Marine
Corps public affairs officer based at Quantico, Virginia . .
. "It's the first time we've done such training in real
neighborhoods, with the tempo of a city - people walking dogs,
going about their lives," Holbert said . . . Local police
will accompany the troops as they move about, and city workers
and officials will join in the role playing, including Mayor
Pat Hays. "He wants to play a warlord," Holbert said.
MORE
JAN 2002 STEVE BRAWNER, CNS NEWS - About 300 U.S. Marine Corps troops have invaded the city of North Little Rock, Ark., as part of an experiment to test tactics and concepts in a real-world urban environment . . . Marines will test the "three-block" concept, developed several years ago, which envisions a situation where Marines perform a humanitarian mission on one block, quell tensions on the next and engage in combat on the next . . . Troops are also observing the reaction of civilians to determine which combination of uniform and time of day attracts the least amount of interest. One of the experiments, according to Maj. Chandler Hirsch, the senior Marine on the ground in North Little Rock, resulted in "a bunch of school kids waving at the Marines as they drove by in a school bus, indicating as we expected that Marines in uniform attract attention." Gen. Wesley Clarke, who headed the war in Kosovo and now lives in Arkansas, agreed the exercise is a positive thing. "I think it's important. I think it's great for the American people to see our armed forces at work," he said. JUL 2001 MISSION CREEP [This
report confirms what the Review has been reporting for the past
five years: that the military is slowly but steadily moving into
areas of domestic activity from which it had been previously
barred for good constitutional reasons. This military mission
creep has been almost universally ignored by the corporate media,
despite its impact on American democracy.] [NOTE: there is no provision in the Constitution for martial law. The exercise of it by a president or the military would amount to a coup.] FOX CHANNEL FIVE, WASHINGTON: Prince George's County [MD] parents get their chance to sound off about plans for a high school with a military theme tonight. Superintendent Iris Metts has until Saturday to sign a contract with the U.S. Army that would convert Forestville High School into an academy offering a service-based curriculum. Metts says she wants to hear from parents in the Forestville area before making a decision. The school has been plagued by poor academic performance in recent years. School officials are hoping uniforms, military drills and other specialized programs will boost student performance and encourage more graduates to attend college JUNE 2001 WILLIAM M. ARKIN IN THE WASHINGTON POST: The American people are supposed to believe that Peruvian operations to stem the cocaine flow into the United States are innocuous, but we cannot know who the players are or what they are up to until disaster strikes. When the destroyer USS Cole met disaster in Yemen last October, or the Navy EP-3 was attacked off of Hainan island, we were similarly educated about underground activities of the U.S. military. In his election campaign, President Bush vowed to reduce the American military presence around the world. It's a particularly tough task when much of the "presence" isn't acknowledged or official. Taken individually, each country like Peru or a Yemen may have a justification for secrecy. But when one adds up all the all the Peru's and Yemen's, it becomes apparent that the U.S. military is increasingly everywhere and nowhere. At the same time Peru was in the headlines, there were press reports that the United States and Israel had conducted an unusual joint military exercise in the Negev desert. Jane's Defense Weekly called it Israel's "first" exercise with the U.S. Air Force. The Jerusalem Post called it a "marked boost in military cooperation." Neither assertion is true, but that is the problem of an underground military policy. It is hard to know exactly what is going on. In fact, the United States and Israel have a regular series of military exercises, going under the code names Juniper Stallion, Juniper Cobra, Noble Shirley, and other Juniper variations. ELIZABETH BECKER, NY TIMES: The first comprehensive exercise about how the nation would contain foot-and-mouth disease showed that an outbreak could be stopped only with the combined strength of all federal disaster agencies, including the military, Agriculture Department officials have said. After decades of relying largely on state and local governments to help contain animal diseases, the Department of Agriculture asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan to combat this one as forcefully as if it threatened human lives, said Clifford Oliver, director of the Agriculture Department's office of crisis planning . . . The exercise confirmed fears that without the entire government working to contain it, the disease would spread like wildfire if it ever reached this country . . . The situation was played out like a military war game, with agency representatives acting out how they would react if foot-and-mouth broke out in Iowa. Participants said that the computer-generated model could not be controlled and that the disease spread to three states within 60 days, requiring 50,000 people to contain it . . . "You would see the National Guard called out to kill thousands of animals in the first days and deployed to control traffic and keep thousands of people out of the area," [a] participant said. US MERCENARIES
ACTIVE HERE, TOO JANUARY 2000 YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ARMY TIMES 10/27/98: "Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection," says Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. The nation's defense chief told the Army Times he once considered the chilling specter of armored vehicles surrounding civilian hotels or government buildings to block out terrorists as strictly an overseas phenomenon. But no longer. "It could happen here," Cohen said he concluded after 8 months of studying threats under the Pentagon microscope. DECEMBER 1999 MIAMI HERALD http://www.herald.com/content/today/news/florida/digdocs/054271.htm THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION HAS CREATED the first military command specifically designed for military operations in this country. Thinking we ought to find out more about this extraordinary intrusion of the military on civilian life, we checked out the US Joint Forces Command's public information web site. Here is what we found: *** Warning! USE OF THIS SYSTEM CONSTITUTES A CONSENT TO MONITORING AT ALL TIMES. USE OF THIS OR ANY OTHER DEPT. OF DEFENSE INTEREST COMPUTER SYSTEM (DODICS) CONSTITUTES AN EXPRESS CONSENT TO MONITORING AT ALL TIMES. This DODICS and all related equipment are to be used for the communication, transmission, processing, and storage of official U.S. Government or other authorized information only. All DODICS are subject to monitoring at all times. If monitoring of any DODICS reveals possible violation of criminal statutes, all relevant information may be provided to law enforcement officials. The USJFCOM World Wide Web (WWW) Server is provided as a service to the Department of Defense for distribution of publicly available information .... After reading and understanding the foregoing statement, you may continue with the USJFCOM WWW Server or exit from this server (or document)*** We read but did not understand this document and so thought it was better to be on the safe side and exit the server before we got monitored. We did notice, however, that the command's motto is a rather ominous "The future is our area of responsibility." JUST LIE BACK AND ENJOY IT USA TODAY: Defense Secretary William Cohen established a new military command here Thursday that will direct troops and equipment in response to terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. The military must "deal with the threats we are most likely to face," Cohen said, brushing aside concerns about federal troops operating at home. "The American people should not be concerned about it. They should welcome it." THE WAR AGAINST US CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: To prepare for potential wars in cities, the Marines stage a mock battle in downtown Columbia, S.C., attracting onlookers and protesters. A swarm of massive transport helicopters descended from clear blue skies, disgorging a group of rifle-toting marines, some by fast rope . . . The leathernecks are training for urban warfare, a phrase used by America's military to cover the gamut of potentially nasty operations in cities and countries around the world. For the past 15 years, marines on both coasts have "invaded" cities for a couple weeks to practice the art of urban operations. WHEN THE TIME COMES CNN: Changes in the Pentagon's command structure designed to give the military a supporting role in responding to domestic terrorist attacks or natural disasters is raising alarm among some civil libertarians. In Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday, top military leaders, and their civilian superiors, unveiled a retooled U.S. Joint Forces Command, formerly the U.S. Atlantic Command. The new command will coordinate its efforts with federal law enforcement agencies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. However, Secretary of Defense William Cohen said "it is very clear (the command) is subordinate to civilian control." Pentagon officials say the idea behind the change is to give a president options short of martial law to deal with domestic crises. "The reason that you want the Defense Department working now with the FBI, with the Justice Department, with FEMA is so we know how we will work when the time comes and we don't have to resort to extreme measures nobody wants in this country," said Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: To prepare for potential wars in cities, the Marines stage a mock battle in downtown Columbia, S.C., attracting onlookers and protesters. A swarm of massive transport helicopters descended from clear blue skies, disgorging a group of rifle-toting marines, some by fast rope . . . The leathernecks are training for urban warfare, a phrase used by America's military to cover the gamut of potentially nasty operations in cities and countries around the world. For the past 15 years, marines on both coasts have "invaded" cities for a couple weeks to practice the art of urban operations. JULY 1999 LINDA DIEBEL TORONTO STAR: A United States military report advocates a joint command for American, Mexican and Canadian forces, in the same way the three countries are united under free trade. The report, by Lt.-Col. Joseph Nunez for the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., also suggested a North American peacekeeping force, headquartered in the U.S., with deputy commander positions rotating between Canada and Mexico .... The war college study is the first to publicly advocate the sensitive issue of integrated military command - a matter of sovereignty in Canada and Mexico, as well as countries throughout the hemisphere .... "A lot of the geographic considerations are a bit out-of- date and do not reflect current realities," Nunez, 43, a former West Point instructor, told The Star yesterday .... Asked whether he foresaw the joint command leading to an integrated armed force, with everyone marching under one flag, Nunez said: " ee it growing, with all of the change and integration of new ideas . . . what it achieves depends on the types of missions it is assigned." JUNE 1999 CHESTER ATTACKED PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: CHESTER -- Acting under the cloak of darkness, 100 Army Special Operations troops descended on two vacant public-housing complexes in three training exercises that terrified nearby residents and surprised even the housing director. "It was just a special-operations training in an urban environment, practicing how they would look at a target building and how they would attack it," Army Special Operations spokesman Walter Sokalski said. He said the troops, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., used special-training ammunition that disintegrates on contact and small explosives designed to blow in doors. He said Chester residents "were at no time at risk" during the operations, The more than 20 other urban counter-terrorism exercises by the Army across the country since 1994 have provoked similar reactions. In March 1997, the city of Charlotte, N.C., evicted the Army after the first night of a would-be three-night stand after public outcry. Likewise, the Army cut short its stays in Houston and Pittsburgh when its activities, which typically involve fatigue-clad soldiers bearing arms and setting off minor charges, prompted fears. STUDY FINDS LITTLE CHECK ON MARTIAL LAW Virginia attorneys William Olson and Alan Woll, doing research for Gun Owners of America, have uncovered a number of laws in which Congress has given vast powers to the President to impose martial law. These laws, while clearly lacking a constitutional basis, could easily be used by anti-democratic administrations such as the current regime. Here are some examples as reported by Sarah Foster for WorldNet Daily: TITLE 10, U.S. CODE, SECTION 331: Whenever there is an insurrection in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or its governor ... use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection. TITLE 10, U.S. CODE, SECTION 332: Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory ... he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion. TITLE 10, U.S. CODE, SECTION 333: The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy, if it hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State ... or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws ... 1863 SUPREME RULING: The president can unilaterally decide whether an insurrection is in effect and determine how much force is necessary to suppress it. He can "brand as belligerents the inhabitants of any area in general insurrection." Here are some examples of how these laws have already been used: * In South Carolina in 1871, without declaring martial law, President Grant sent troops into nine counties of South Carolina to enforce a proclamation commanding the residents to give up their arms and ammunition. * In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson deployed federal troops in Colorado to suppress a labor dispute. Wilson ordered the U.S. Army to disarm American citizens -- including state and local officials, sheriffs, the police and the National Guard; to arrest American citizens; to monitor the state judicial process and re-arrest (and hold in military custody) persons released by the state courts; and to deny writs of habeas corpus issued by state courts. * Between 1807 and 1925, federal troops were used more than 100 times to quell domestic disturbances -- sometimes the presence of the troops alone was enough to discourage the participants. Reports Olson, "We were surprised at how weak the Posse Comitatus Act is. There have been no prosecutions ever, and it doesn't apply to any branch of the armed forces except the Army and the Air Force. It doesn't have any implementing regulations, yet it has a huge exception -- that deployment of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus is a crime, 'except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.' That 'Constitution or Act of Congress' exception is so broad you can drive a truck through. The final thing that surprised us was that that the military doesn't need an order from the president to have control over civilians. I had always thought only the president could declare martial law, but apparently not. Apparently any commander can do it, can suspend all civil rights." Explains GOA executive director Larry Pratt, "People can't expect President Clinton to sit there in front of a camera and say, 'Tonight I have declared martial law. You'll just find out about it when you try and get on the main highway and there's a humvee with a soldier who says, 'Turn back.' And when you ask why, he puts his gun into ready position and says, 'I'm only following orders. Please turn back.' You can challenge that. You can say they -- the commander or the soldier -- have no constitutional authority for this, and you may be correct. But you will be arguing on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence. They can simply do it. It will not be debated." WORLDNET DAILY http://WorldNetDaily.com THE WACO MASSACRE APRIL 1999 "Normally, we go into a country that's in some fatal stage. We work with those who are with us, and shoot those who are not. The part that's missing here is that you can't shoot the Coastal Commission," -- Marine Col. Gary W. Anderson, describing the difficulties of staging a mock invasion of Oakland CA. From the Anniston AL Star THE GREEN Berets swooped in out of the darkness Friday night. Silent and deadly they drifted down from the heavens on their silk parachutes, hitting the ground and scurrying to set up the defensive perimeter around that most strategic of positions: Anniston Municipal Airport. They fought bravely through the night, withstanding the jarring fake explosions and confusion of the darkness. They performed admirably and in the end captured the airport from a mythical enemy. Do we all feel safer after the Army's weekend war game in our area? Not only do we not feel safer, we feel just a little bit mad about the whole affair. A good many people in Oxford heard explosions around 8 p.m. Friday and looked out their windows to see paratroopers gliding to earth. And most of them were enduring it all in the dark. Alabama Power, you see, cut the power for about two hours that night. The power company was cooperating with the Army, which had requested the power outage around the airport so that no paratroopers would be hurt by the live electrical lines. ~~ The Army and Alabama Power have some apologizing and some explaining to do to this community. The Anniston Municipal Airport belongs to this community, it is not part of some vast federal government holding that the powers that be can do with as they please. If you're going to play soldiers in our yard, you ought to invite us to play. Or, take your guns and parachutes and go home. Caption of a Marine poster "The desert is a
harsh environment, testing warriors and their armor, yet when
the U.S. Marines fire and maneuver, they often find an armored
friend -- the threatened desert tortoise -- already holding the
high ground. The Marines, with the help of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service are working to protect endangered species while
maintaining military preparedness. One result: at Twenty Nine
Palms, both armored threat and threatened armor are ready for
the future. That's what happens when some of your best friends
are Marines." [Sierra Club] MARCH 1999 COMING TO YOUR COMMUNITY SOON. . . From a Marine news release about an exercise in Hebron Md: "What: A platoon of Marines from the Infantry Officers Course will be conducting Military Operations in Urban Terrain in the training town of Hebron, Md. Sept. 3 and 4. The training evolution will include security patrols, searching for weapons, and trying to identify terrorists in the town. "Why: The Marine Corps began focusing on future urban warfare with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab's Urban Warrior Experiment. It is projected that the wars of the future will be fought in populated cities that include terrorists mixed with non-combatants. The training Marines receive on base, though beneficiary, lacks realism. This training will provide the officers an opportunity to train as they fight, with a town they are unfamiliar with and an unknown enemy mixed in with the general public. . . "Details: The Marines will land on a farm outside of the town on the Sept 3. They will patrol into town and set up a command post at the town hall. The Marines will then perform security patrols throughout the town and try to obtain information on terrorists known to be in the town. Several local residents will be a part of the training. . . . CONTINENTAL COMMANDER The Pentagon is asking President Clinton to name a military commander for the continental United States. The unprecedented move is part of the terrorism panic being fostered at various levels of government and another troublesome step in the increasing militarization of American life. This trend is eviscerating a century-old ban on military interference with domestic affairs embodied in the posse comitatus act. The 1/28 New York Times reported that "the plan calls for the military leader to be ready, if necessary, to do such things as order thousands of doctors, stretchers and emergency personnel quickly sent to stricken areas, much as American commanders abroad are now prepared to do." The Times said that White House officials had reacted favorably. Says Gregory Nejeim, of the national ACLU: "The danger is in the inevitable expansion of that authority so the military gets involved in things like arresting people and investigating crimes." He added that soldiers are trained to kill, not to respect the nuances of law enforcement. "It's hard to believe that a soldier with a suspect in the sights of his M-1 tank is well positioned to protect that person's civil liberties." Among those pushing the plan is a former Reagan administration official, Fred C. Ikle, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a well-known bunker for militarists and intelligence operatives not presently in the government. The move comes at a time of increasing concern over preparations for martial law in the Y2K crisis by some National Guard units. For example, at a recent meeting designed to calm the fears of DC residents over Y2K, a number of black residents asked whether the government would be sending National Guard troops into their neighborhoods. A Senate staffer tried to reassure them that there were no plans for martial law, but a number in the audience hissed and booed. The Constitution does not directly address the question of what should happen in the midst of a major national catastrophe. But neither does it give the slightest support to giving non-elected civilian or military officials plenary powers. The best guide is to be found in the Tenth Amendment which says that the powers of the federal government are those delegated to it by the states and the people. The states and the people have not delegated the power of martial law. Thus in a true crisis (such as a nuclear attack) the answer seems quite plain: the country should be run as a loose confederation of fifty states until a legitimate federal government could be re-established. In the interim, the highest officials in the land would be the governors. While
this seems to the conventional Washington mind a form of anarchy,
centralization of power and assets is actually the enemy of a
good defense. Ask any guerilla leader. We are in a Y2K and terrorism
scare in no small part because generations of officials and establishment
commentators who thought that centralizing everything from electric
to politic power was a form of progress. MISSION
CREEP ABOUT THAT TERRORISM . . . Before we destroy our democracy and live out the rest of our lives wearing anti-CBW protective clothing, couldn't we just try treating the Arabs decently for a change? MARINES TO INVADE SF As part of the military's growing show of domestic force, the Marines are planning a three day invasion of San Francisco, landing at the Presidio's Baker Beach complete with gunfire, hovercraft and various new war toys. "It's an exercise - don't call it war games," Lt. Col. Gary Schenkel, spokesman for the Marine Corps Fighting Laboratory at Quantico, Va., told the San Francisco Examiner. The "exercise" is called Operation Urban Warrior. Schenkel said an environmental assessment of the exercise would begin soon. "Compared to a rock concert or a Fourth of July fireworks display, we'll be relatively unobtrusive." "It's premature to say it's a go," said Greg Shine, chief of the Special Park Uses Group at the Presidio told the Examiner. Neighborhood groups have started to protest. In recent years, the military has become increasingly bold in its domestic activities, many of which seemed designed to acclimate Americans to the militarization of their country. THE MILITARIZATION
OF AMERICA MIND WARS: "X-FILES"
GETS IT RIGHT; In "X-Files" one of the characters explains that "FEMA allows the White House to suspend constitutional government upon declaration of a national emergency. It allows creation of a non-elected government. Think about that, Agent Mulder." The Washington Post's federal column made fun of the claim, and quoted FEMA public affairs guidance about the movie that essentially paints those concerned with the agency's potential role as kooks. Says the FEMA spinhead: "it is not realistic to think that we can convince them otherwise and it is advisable not to enter into debate on the subject." FEMA suggests that officials can "emphatically state that FEMA does not have, never has had, nor will ever seek, the authority to suspend the Constitution." This is just plain untrue. Not only have there been past plans for FEMA and the military to assume an extra-constitutional role, but a recent presidential directive suggest that it is still a possibility not far from the Clinton administration's thoughts. Presidential Decision Directive #63 on "critical infrastructure protection" specifically assigns FEMA the task of "continuity of government" services, the precise term used in previous plans for a anti-constitutional takeover in a time of crisis. Further, as with previous plans, the Clinton order is stunningly silent on any role in such an emergency for the legislative and judicial branches or for state and local government. A recent article in the Army War College's journal Parameters, expresses what appears to be the dominant administration attitude on the matter: "Strategic leaders can take solace in the lessons learned from military participation in domestic disaster relief, for the record indicates that legal niceties or strict construction of prohibited conduct will be a minor concern. The exigencies of the situation seem to overcome legal proscriptions arguably applicable to our soldiers' conduct. Pragmatism appears to prevail when American soldiers help their fellow citizens." ||||||||||||||||| The Navy and the Coast Guard are continuing to cover up the dumping of radioactive material from decommissioned nuclear subs into the Puget Sound. A group called SEARCH has discover traces of radioactive material in shellfish and other marine life at levels 50 times that permitted by government safety standards. About a year and a half ago, the Navy and the Coast Guard even arrested the scientist involved in the study for trespassing on "military property." The Coast Guard had seized the vessel carrying the scientist and towed it into restricted waters. A federal judge pointed out to the Coast Guard that Puget Sound was not "military property." Then last June the CG issued an emergency rule aimed solely at preventing further sampling of the bay and threatening to arrest the whistleblower again. The Government Accountability Project is representing the scientist. Only two campuses have the guts to bar Pentagon recruiters and ROTC programs, a move that costs them significant federal funds. The two are the Washington College of Law at American University and William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, MN. In the past around a dozen schools have barred the military. The Rome Laboratory spent forty years developing technologies for the military in the Cold War. Now the center in Rome NY is deep into coming up with high tech ways to fight the government's domestic wars. Its specialty is concealed weapons detection, covert tracking/tagging and advanced database design. Their own web site argues "Law enforcement and defense missions share similar concerns and strategies." When did citizens become an enemy? Scripps Howard reports that the Marines are looking for some cities that will let themselves be practice targets of an invasion. One Marine official said that there are certain urban elements -- such as sewers and skyscrapers -- that could prove pivotal in battle and simply can't be replicated on a military installation. The Marine Commandant, General Charles Krulak, told reporter Lisa Hoffman that the exercises should come as close to reality as possible. Wrote Hoffman: "Plastic bullets which pack a powerful sting when they hit skin, might be used and civilians might be invited to participate." April 1997 The Washington Post finally caught up with our story about mock military urban attacks. According to the Post, these attacks have taken place in at least 21 cities. Information obtained by TPR suggests that related activities may be planned for this year in eight cities, apparently to prepare for the possibility of nuclear or chemical terrorism. The nation's capital is now under congressional colonial rule but its school system is in even worse trouble. It is being run by retired General Julius Becton, a right-wing buddy of Clarence Thomas and a man of no apparent competence in the field of education -- to name just one of his deficiencies. Becton has provided high-paying jobs for some of his old Army comrades, perhaps most notably one Herbert R. Tillery, who before he got his $90,000 a year job as the number two person in the school system's operations office, was in fact in charge of 124 counselors, vocational trainers, teachers and analysts. The only problem is all these people worked for Tillery while he was director of the Department of Defense's only maximum security prison. More recently Tillery was deputy director of the US Army Criminal Investigation Command. Almost his entire career has been spent in military police activities of one sort or another. A stunning study reported in the academic journal Social Problems found that 89% of the over 500 police departments it surveyed had fully functioning special operations units trained and modeled on military principles. For all practical purposes, these units represent a military force whose target is American communities and citizens. Not only has the number of paramilitary police units soared but the level of their activity has exploded as well. Between 1980 and 1995, the number of incidents involving paramilitary units has quadrupled.  The study, conducted by Peter B. Kraska and Victor E. Kappeler of Eastern Kentucky University, was carefully designed to elicit the cooperation of police departments. Some police officers spoke with brutal frankness: "We're into saturation patrols in hot spots. We do a lot of our work with the SWAT unit because we have bigger guns. We send out two, two-to-four men cars, we look for minor violations and do jump-outs either on people on the street or automobiles. After we jump-out the second car provides periphery cover with an ostentatious display of weaponry. We're sending a clear message: if the shootings don't stop, we'll shoot someone." But are these units really going after the truly dangerous? Out of all 1995 incidents, civil disturbances and terrorist events amounted to one percent each, hostage situations 4% and barricaded persons, 13%. Conducting what the police call "high risk warrant work" (overwhelmingly drug raids) accounted for 76% of the paramilitary operations. Here are some of the other facts the researchers uncovered:
February 1997 We will protect your purchasing power -- Budget director Franklin Raines to a meeting of high-level Pentagon officials. When it comes to the information aspects related to national security and the modern military battlefield, the media and other sources of open information are major players. . . They are used by the combatants for perception management, propaganda, message-sending, and other signal purposes. The information environment the media creates, imposes, or disposes can make or break a war effort. Substantial sophisticated account must be taken for the role the media will play in the battlefield information spectrum. -- Vice Admiral William Studeman, former Director of the NSA in a speech to the National Defense University, May 1995 Former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger has written a book in which he sees possible war with Mexico as drug cartels cause exploding immigration to the US. He says we should be prepared to invade and install our own regime there. How powerful is the Pentagon? Well, Defense Weekly reports that the Clinton administration plans to hold "careful negotiations" with the Pentagon each year to reach desired budget goals. And the Weekly Standard contains an article by two leading think-tankers who call for "negotiating a new civil-military compact that preserves traditional military culture while updating it." Apparently, being Commander-in-Chief isn't what it used to be. Mission creep: the Pentagon targets America (cont'd)In peacetime, the National Guard is supposed to be under the control of the governors, but ever since the Reagan administration the Pentagon has been steadily undermining the state militias through a variety of stratagems. Most recently these include:
There are other disturbing signs that the line between the military and civilian life is being increasingly blurred. For example, the FBI's deputy chief for domestic terrorism is an active duty colonel, John Jeff Ellis, despite the century-old posse comitatus act's prohibition on regular military taking part in domestic terrorism. And in the DC school system, now under the plenary control of right-wing General Julius Becton, some students are being required to enroll in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. The Washington Post has failed to report this astonishing fact despite stories in a local weekly, The City Paper, and on a local public radio station. Reporter Julianne Welby discovered that JROTC was mandatory at two DC schools and at five other schools around the nation in what may be a Pentagon test project. Instructors were even "invited" into elementary schools, with at least two having established drilling practices for young children. At two junior highs, JROTC counts towards "community service" requirements. Activist John Judge, who has followed the rise of JROTC in the nation's schools, says that it "is viewed by an unsuspecting public as a solution for 'at risk' youth to provide 'discipline.'" Yet at one high school, some 20% of incoming freshmen were dumped immediately from the program for drug use or criminal records. Says Judge: "Thus the most troubled youth were excluded at the beginning. . .Whatever motivation or discipline these drills provide, they don't keep the students enrolled, and the vast majority drop out after the first year, leaving only 10% by the senior year still in the program." Further, the career-path provided by JROTC is a dead end for the 55% of all enrollees who join the military after graduation. Almost all are enlisted recruits, the O in JROTC notwithstanding. Recent discharged black males are twice as unemployed and four times as homeless as those who don't enlist [More info: Washington Peace Center at 202-234-2000 or John Judge at CHOICES, 202-466-1631] The General Accounting Office has found that the alleged results of so-called "smart bombs" used during the Gulf War were "overstated, misleading, inconsistent with the best available data or unverifiable." 9/96 From a speech by Al Gore to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last August: "Let's remember a very important fact. This is the president, who said firmly and clearly no to those who called for a decline in military spending at the turn of the century. ~ It is the Republican defense budget, not President Clinton's, that drops in the next century. President Clinton's budget, which is also there for you to see, does not. It increases." MILITARY INVADES PITTSBURGH: Two hundred troops and nine helicopters invaded Pittsburgh the night of June 3 in what was later described as a routine training exercise but sure fooled a lot of the city's residents. They flooded 911, talk shows and local media with worried calls. A similar exercise for the next night was canceled while the Army tried to figure out to pretend it was invading an American city "without causing disruption." The exercise, which got banner treatment in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, included helicopters flying as low as five hundred feet, the use of unarmed explosives and barricaded streets. People who called 911 were given the official explanation. If they weren't satisfied they were referred to a Pentagon office where a representative claimed, "Nobody anticipated there to be that type of reaction from the community." One firefighter awoke thinking he was in the middle of an air raid. Another resident thought his house was falling down. Complained one elderly woman of a helicopter, "If I had been up on my third floor, I could have touched it with a broom handle." Said a local councilman, "I'd like to know who the enemy is." The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that one talk show host said he came away from the incident with a new awareness of just how frightened the public is about the possibility of a military takeover or revolution. "That's the word that kept coming up repeatedly -- revolution. I was making light of it, but I got serious later on as I recognized the depth of the concern. Fifty percent of the callers were genuinely convinced that some kind of military attack was under way." The exercise appears to be part of an attempt to acclimatize citizens to an increasing military presence in civilian life. LOW INTENSITY WARFARE: The Pentagon's low intensity warfare and psychological operations certainly keep the special operations forces busy. According to a recent report in the Tampa Tribune, the Special Operations Forces -- comprised of 46,000 personnel from all three services -- averaged 280 missions a week last year in 137 countries. No one the Pentagon budget is so large. We've never had 137 enemies before. The Pentagon's manual on "domestic support operations" gives a chilling view of how the military sees its role in a post-Cold War America. Says the manual: "Today, along with a shift from a forward deployed to a force projection strategy, is a new awareness of the benefits of military assistance to improve the nation's physical and social infrastructure." The role the military sees for itself is extraordinarily broad including disaster assistance, environmental missions, law enforcement, and community assistance. In a section that may have been lifted from a guide to the Vietname village pacification program, the Army notes that "domestic support operations provide excellent opportunities for soldiers to interface with the civilian community and demonstrate traditional Army values such as teamwork, success-oriented attitude, and patriotism. These demonstrations provide positive examples of values that can benefit the community and also promote a favorable view of the army to the civilian population." One of the problems the Army admits may come up as it tries to introduce teamwork, success orientation and patriotism into civilian American culture is the matter of legitimacy. The manual addresses this question straight on: Legitimacy derives from the perception that using military force is a legal, effective and appropriate means of exercising authority for reasonable purposes. However the issue of legitimacy demands caution and critical judgment. The Army must be aware of the legitimate interest prerogatives and authority of the various levels of civil government and act accordingly. General Barry McCaffrey, the former head of SOUTHCOM who is now drug czar, testified before Congress last year that "we have been structuring SOUTHCOM so we can remain engaged with the Americas throughout the next century." Speaking before the Senate Arms Services Committee in February 1995, McCaffrey, however, gave this dour view of the drug war: A multi-year effort involving substantial resources, and enormous energy and creativity by supporting US government agencies and regional governments has not had the effect we desired. Coca growing and the subsequent production and trafficking of coca derivatives for the US and world markets have not diminished. . . . Street price and availability of cocaine in the United States have not been demonstrably affected by the US interagency involvement (to include DOD's) in the counter drug effort. As long as there is a domestic demand, some entrepreneur will find a way to meet it. The US demand for cocaine is steady and profits to be made are stupendous. The price of a kilo of cocaine on the streets in the United States is about two hundred times greater than the price of the coca leaves required to make a kilo of cocaine. . . .Much more has to be done before campesinos, traffickers, and the others involved in this business can be forced by reward and punishment into other economic activity. The military's involvement in the war at home is no more efficient. For example, NORMAL reports that in 1994 the Georgia National Guard flew 24,000 flight crew hours in missions over the whole state, resulting in a total haul of 6000 stalks of marijuana. The taxpayer cost of this pot hunting was $12 million. Nationally the Guard has been blowing about $250 million annually on marijuana eradication with less than ten percent of the country's pot crop being destroyed in the process. The National Guard isn't just looking for pot fields, either. According to Jan 14 story in the Ogdensburg NY Journal, Guard helicopters are using heat sensors to spy on people's houses. "When a helicopter flies over a house and points sensors at a particular residents, investigators can tell how many people are in the residence and if there is an unusual heat source or light that shouldn't be there." The paper doesn't explain what heat sources and lights are violations of federal law or justify a warrantless search. In addition, reports Oklahoma's McCurtain Daily Gazette, local residents of another Guard-occupied community complained of helicopters flying too low over poultry houses and terrorizing chickens during their most vulnerable period for smothering, other choppers hovering over bathing-suit clad women in swimming pools, guardsmen starting fights with patrons of local nightspots, picking up local teenage girls in their humvees and harassing local residents driving on logging roads. Some women also claimed that the guardsmen offered them pot in return for sex. Complained one resident, "They parade around and try to entice the little girls into getting into [their] vehicles with them. I've seen them like that at Wal-Mart and Sonic and different places. I think it's pitiful." One guardsman-driven humvee ran a stop sign, killing two and injuring five. Among the injured were two teenage girls. The Air Force now has 56 lieutenant colonels for every flying command job traditionally manned by a lieutenant colonel. One Pentagon memo pleaded for the brass to "place colonels in meaningful jobs, created by you," adding that "we have a lot of dedicated hard working colonels that need jobs." While the Style section of the Washington Post -- in response to a critique in TPR -- heaped praise on the idea of generals taking charge in domestic America, the Post's news section doesn't seem quite as confident. One week after the Style piece and two weeks after TPR was quoted extensively in a Post column, a front page story on the military in the drug war even recognized the existence of the posse comitatus act, which bars military involvement in law enforcement. Referring to the military's role in the drug war, one of Reagan's assistant defense secretaries, Lawrence Korb, was quoted as saying, "It should [have been] a stopgap, but it's been institutionalized." The story reported, incidentally, that the military's counter-drug operation -- Joint Task Force 6 -- has an annual budget of $24 million. Last spring its Green Beret unit conducted 37 missions in civilian America. Meanwhile, the Air Force Times reports that the Air National Guard is expanding its anti-drug activities, including the use of C-26 reconnaissance planes. The planes cost $3 million each and nearly a million bucks a year to operate. They are being used to take photos of suspected drug hideouts, marijuana fields, and for transporting witnesses and evidence. They can also be used to provide "airborne command and control for drug raids or stakeouts." November 1996
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In 2010 a cross-ideological group got together
for a day to discuss an antiwar coalition. Out of that session
has come this book edited by Paul Buhle, Bill Kauffman, George
O’Neill Jr. and Kevin Zeese. Among the contributors: Jesse
Walker, Doug Bandow, Bill Kauffman, Cindy Sheehan, Ralph Nader
and Sam Smith. As the book describes itself, "Throughout
American history there have been times when movements developed
that were outside the limited political dialogue of the two major
parties, such as the abolitionists, the Anti-Imperialist League,
the Non-Partisan League, and aspects of the Old Right and the
New Left. Sometimes those movements have broken through and created
paradigm shifting moments." 