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$14
By Reinhold Niebuhr
$22
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By Joe Conason — The controversy over what Rush Limbaugh meant when he uttered the phrase “phony soldiers” last week isn’t just another broadcast sideshow. As the political power of conservatism declines, the symbolic authority of figures such as Limbaugh is likewise shrinking.
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news.yahoo.com
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Burma’s military government has intensified its crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, abducting people from their homes in the middle of the night. U.S. Embassy personnel have found some Buddhist monasteries completely deserted while others have been closed off by soldiers.
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foreignpolicy.com
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The Washington Post has it on good authority that Pakistan is losing its war against Taliban and al-Qaida forces operating within its borders, due in no small part to Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s tenuous hold on power.
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Blackwater USA founder and chairman Erik Prince stubbornly defended his company Tuesday while members of the House Oversight Committee grilled him with questions such as “Why are we privatizing our military to an organization that has been aggressive and in some cases reckless in the handling of their duties?”
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By Amy Goodman — The barbarous military regime depends on revenue from the nation’s gas reserves and partners such as Chevron to buy bullets for the guns it points at monks, a detail conveniently ignored by the Bush administration.
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The freshly sworn-in chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, started his first day on the job with this revelation: “The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan will one day end.” That’s a relief, coming from the newest member of Team Bush, but don’t get too excited, there’s more: “We must be ready for who and what comes after.” Oh dear.
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According to a devastating new report from the House Oversight Committee, Blackwater USA employees engaged in at least 195 “escalation of force” incidents since 2005, with the private security firm firing 80 percent of the first shots (despite its purely defensive mandate). What’s worse, the State Department has provided little if any oversight, instead assisting the company as it carried out damage control.
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Tab, The Calgary Sun —
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facebook.com
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By Chris Hedges — If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist “madrassa,” or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.
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AP photo
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For decades Burma’s ruling military junta has governed through terror, determined to meet dissent with intimidation, detention and murder. It is because of the military’s particular cruelty that the story of the Buddhist monks of Burma is so compelling.
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Riber Hansson, Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden —
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Scott Ritter — If you think the Iraq war is a disaster, just wait until we start bombing Iran. The countdown to another war is both real and terrifying, Ritter argues, and, distasteful though it may seem, it won’t be stopped so long as Iraq holds on to the spotlight.
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While attempting to clarify his previous remarks on the immorality of homosexuality, outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace on Wednesday managed to put his foot even deeper into his mouth, saying that, while he’s willing to keep an open mind, our nation should not “condone activity [read: gay sex] that, in my upbringing, is counter to God’s law.”
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By Marie Cocco — The president’s strategy is to fake out the public so that it believes Democrats in Congress can’t perform basic governmental tasks. Is this any way to run a country?
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latimes.com / Google Earth
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The Navy plans to spend $600,000 to obscure a San Diego-area building complex that happens to be shaped like a swastika. The buildings have been around since the 1960s and for years no one seemed to mind, but that was before the advent of Google Earth.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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President Bush has weighed in on the massive protests in Burma (Myanmar), saying he will boost sanctions against the country’s abusive military government. Meanwhile, thousands of Buddhist monks have defied government warnings and continue to demonstrate.
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AP photo / LM Otero
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Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle knows a thing or two about the “staggering” amounts of money the U.S. funnels into the military-industrial complex, and why it is so difficult to stanch the profiteering.
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AP Photo
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An estimated 100,000 people marched through the streets of Yangon on Monday in an ongoing protest that has rapidly swelled from just dozens of people. Burma’s notoriously inhumane military government has traditionally been quick to stanch dissent but has yet to seriously confront the demonstrators, who were led by roughly 20,000 Buddhist monks.
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Add another $50 billion to the tab the Bush administration is looking to run up in military costs for the ‘08 fiscal year, bringing the potential total to around $200 billion if this latest request goes through.
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raytheon.com
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Reporting on cutting-edge new military gadgetry gives this UK journalist, the Daily Mail’s Michael Hanlon, an unpleasant dose of the reality of modern warfare—and leads him to wonder about the significance, and possible uses of, Raytheon’s new “Silent Guardian” mega-zapper.
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By Marie Cocco — There is no set piece more emblematic of the tragic farce that is the American involvement in Iraq than the grotesque episode of Blackwater USA and the killing of civilians in Baghdad—at least nine and as many as 28—on Sunday.
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By Joe Conason — Following two days of carefully staged theatrics on Capitol Hill and cable television, the essential facts about Iraq remain unchanged. Despite the big charts and the blustering fanfare highlighted by Fox News, neither Gen. David H. Petraeus nor Ambassador Ryan Crocker could convincingly claim that the American military escalation in Iraq is achieving its original goals.
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AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
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Aaron Glantz —
The sorry state of care of American veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is not accidental. It’s on purpose. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has fought every effort to improve care for wounded and disabled veterans.
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AP Photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — Of course Gen. David Petraeus predicts success in the Iraq war. What wonders couldn’t generals achieve with more troops and more time? The battle is always going well until it is lost, and then they blame defeat on the politicians and the public.
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The Defense Intelligence Agency has prepared a briefing chart using data drawn from Gen. Petraeus’ command that shows that violence in Iraq against security forces, including the U.S. military, has barely diminished. Petraeus, using the same information, is expected to argue that there has been a major drop in attacks.
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Remember that B-52 that accidentally took some nukes on a joyride? The whole episode doesn’t make much sense to Larry Johnson, a former employee of the CIA and the State Department’s counterterrorism office, who wonders if it’s more than a coincidence that the plane landed at Barksdale Air Force Base, which a former B-52 pilot friend tells him is “a jumping off point for Middle East operations.”
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Journalist and author Susan Faludi is back with another book, “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America,” an ambitious look into the formative mythology, driving forces and fears of the U.S.‘s national psyche.
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vcorps.army.mil
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In addition to the inherent hardships and risks that come with serving in the military, many female soldiers are dealing with the potential trauma of sexual assault and rape, according to a PBS investigation for its “NOW” TV series.
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DoD / Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway, USAF
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China has denied responsibility for a large raid on the Department of Defense’s computer network, attributing the accusation to a “Cold War mentality.” A senior U.S. official was quoted in the Financial Times as implicating the People’s Liberation Army in the attack, which forced the Pentagon to shut down its network for more than a week.
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latimes.com
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It looks as though Gen. Peter Pace, whose term as Joint Chiefs chairman and the president’s top military adviser is about to expire, may go out with a bang. While Gen. David Petraeus is expected to back the White House’s push for an extended surge, Gen. Pace is likely to call for a major reduction—by almost half—of U.S. forces in Iraq in order to address the long-term needs of an overextended military.
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Throughout the war, getting the troops the equipment they need to stay alive has been more of a goal than a reality. The latest example is the expected delivery shortfall of MRAPs—the specially designed armored vehicles that have proved particularly resistant to roadside bombs. The Pentagon had hoped to deliver 3,500 of the vehicles to Iraq, but it looks as if only 1,500 or so will make it there by year’s end.
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With the Bush administration set to offer a progress report on Iraq—assuredly an attempt to make the case for a prolonged surge—seven active-duty GIs have offered their own assessment in The New York Times. Their view, though bleak, is not cynical, but instead a practical approach to the many problems they’ve witnessed during their time in the quagmire.
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AP Photo / Dusan Vranic
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By Anonymous — A self-confessed “overpaid Department of Defense contractor” writes about his experiences living and working in Baghdad and the suffering of his Iraqi friends, who risk life and limb every day to get by in the “sinking ship” of Iraq.
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According to the U.S. military, 99 active-duty soldiers committed suicide in 2006, a number that may rise after ongoing investigations into other cases conclude, making last year’s suicide rate the highest in 26 years.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Turkey’s Abdullah Gul says he will once again run for the presidency, which could lead to a crisis in the politically and religiously complex nation. Turkey’s avowedly secular military has already announced its willingness to intervene should Gul win the post, because of his Islamist background.
Posted on Aug 14, 2007
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msnbc.com
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In an effort to combat ever dwindling enthusiasm among America’s youths for a career in the military, the Army is enlarging its recruitment staff, loosening age and criminal record restrictions and offering more cash bonuses, such as $45,000 tax-free to buy a house. Last year the Army spent $1 billion on bonuses and advertisements.
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The Government Accountability Office has found that the Defense Department sold roughly 1,400 parts that could be used to repair Iran’s aging air force, despite a crackdown on such sales.
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Michael D. Intriligator —
In this 10-point essay, originally delivered as a speech at the 2007 conference of the Allied Social Science Association, economics expert Dr. Intriligator tallies up the astronomical costs of the Iraq war (one estimation put the price tag for the war at $2.267 trillion) and rips apart the Bush administration’s list of purported “benefits.”
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AP Photo / Toni Nicoletti
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Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian —
Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges teamed up with Laila Al-Arian for The Nation’s shocking report “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” in which American vets describe, in graphic detail that will challenge even the least fainthearted readers, “the disparity between the reality of the war and how it is portrayed by the US government and American media.”
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By Tom Engelhardt — Civilian deaths as a result of ground operations (see Haditha) often evoke cries of barbarism from the media, but the killing of innocents in airstrikes is routinely characterized as “collateral damage” and a cold fact of modern warfare. Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch proposes that we start to speak honestly about the devastation American military operations have rained down on Afghanistan and Iraq and see “collateral damage” for what it really is: carnage.
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AP Photo/Hatem Moussa
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By Chris Hedges — The former New York Times Mideast bureau chief warns that America’s foreign policy, particularly under the Bush administration, has been subverted by an aggressive and dangerous Israeli agenda that could launch a nightmarish regional war.
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detnews.com
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Although desertions from the Army have gone up, the military has apparently taken little interest. There is no active program for finding those who simply walk away, and when deserters are caught (usually they turn themselves in), most face merely a less than honorable discharge. According to the AP, just 5 percent of Army deserters were court-martialed in 2006.
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U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ben Brody
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At the core of the “surge” strategy is the notion that once U.S. troops clear a particularly hostile patch of Iraq, the Iraqi army and police will move in to maintain order. But senior American officers are now raising serious doubts about Iraqi forces’ ability to take over.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace says he did not resign voluntarily, but “I’ve been told I’m done.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates openly admitted that he would not seek another term for Pace in order to avoid a difficult confirmation. Pace has been closely tied to the Iraq war and its fortunes from the start, and only made matters worse recently with a public declaration of homophobia.
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Whatever happened to that Republican spirit of individual liberty? During the recent GOP debate, none of the candidates came out against the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuals. According to John McCain, “the policy is working,” despite frequent reports that the “Don’t ask” requirement is often ignored.
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By Amy Goodman — First, do no harm. This tenet of medicine applies equally to psychologists, yet they are increasingly implicated in abusive interrogations, dare we say torture, at U.S. military detention facilities like Guantanamo.
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The Pentagon, possibly suffering from a superpower complex, has accused China of spending substantially more on its military buildup than publicly stated. In a report to Congress, the U.S. military also warns of advanced nuclear capability and a possible conflict over Taiwan. Still, even if China spends two or three times the $46 billion on defense it claims, it couldn’t hope to keep pace with the hundreds of billions the U.S. throws at the military every year.
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Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi revealed Monday that his government is planning for a rapid pullout of American forces: “The army plans on the basis of a worst-case scenario so as not to allow any security vacuum. ... There are meetings with political leaders on how we can deal with a sudden pullout.”
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