Category: War

Our symbolic transfer from combat during ‘Nam was when we were sent over no longer as labeled ‘combat’ but as ‘advisors’ once again.

That started just before I left CI/SERE in early 1970 and headed into country, we were given military beanies, i.e. berets, with the operations patch on them and called ‘advisors’, never did meet my supposed ‘counterpart’ the whole year I was there.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  

This world in arms is not spending money alone.  

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  

This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.  

Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

The United States Military Industrial Complex has might.  General and former President Eisenhower understood this.  He warned Americans.  Abundant might does not make right; it only advances the notion of righteousness.  Patriotism is promoted through militarism.  His words fell on deaf ears.  The sound was hollow in contrast to the drone of drumbeats.  At the time, Americans were as they are today; dedicated to the customs we think characterize democracy.

We see this in many a war and peace policy.  Questions are asked of the government and the people. Testimony is taken.  Think tanks assess Foreign Policy. Conclusions are drawn and decisions made.  Still, in 2010, a few within the electorate wonder as General Eisenhower had.. With Al-Qaida Fading, Why Expand the Afghan War?

Don’t You Ever Fucking Forget…

On August 3, 2010, 7 members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) wrote to President Obama to alert him “…to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month”, and that this attack would probably lead to a wider war.  

This letter was published in Consortium News  and in Global Research

Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research appeared on Russia Today (RT-TV) to discuss the situation.  Chossudovsky says:

“It is technically impossible, from a military standpoint, for Israel to actually launch a war on Iran without the green light from the US. This is not strictly an Israeli military project. The US from the mid-1990s in fact has indicated Iran as a possible target,” Chossudovsky evaluated.

The RT video…

More beneath the fold…  

I can think of no better way to emphasize the current theft of our nations treasury at the expense of its youth than to use the words of Major General Smedley Butler in November 1935.

Never Ending War

We are not suppose to win, we are not suppose to lose …. We have always been at war with East Asia. This post is going to largely stand on its own from the research I have turned up.

WASHINGTON, Nov 2, 2009 (Reuters) – The U.S. government does not know exactly how many contractors it employs in Afghanistan, a U.S. commission said on Monday, raising basic questions about oversight of wartime operations.

Contractors in Afghanistan outnumber U.S. troops there and scandals involving misconduct by employees of private firms on the U.S. payroll in Afghanistan and Iraq have prompted calls by Congress for greater accountability.

[..]A traditional manual count by the U.S. military’s Central Command turned up nearly 74,000 U.S. Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan as of June 30 — more than twice the number shown in another survey by the Pentagon.

A more recent count from July 2010

[..]The Department of Defense has more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than it has uniformed military personnel, another newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service reminds us.

“The Department of Defense increasingly relies upon contractors to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has resulted in a DOD workforce that has 19% more contractor personnel (207,600) than uniformed personnel (175,000),” said the CRS report

At 57% of total Defense Department workforce, the number of contractors represents “the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DOD in any conflict in the history of the United States,” the study concludes.

Its the same Old Story (no date)

Currently in Afghanistan, there are 121,000 U.S. contractors and 68,000 U.S. troops. As a result of the coming surge, another 30,000 troops and 56,000 contractors are expected. But U.S. lawmakers are afraid that the mistakes that plagued military contracting in Iraq will be repeated in Afghanistan. Will the shadow armies be required to protect the Afghan civilian population? What are the chances that military contractors could cause major damage to America’s mission in Afghanistan? Will the Obama administration be able to prevent the waste, fraud and abuse seen in Iraq?

[..]Recently the CIA announced that it had stopped using Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) to conduct raids and other special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but some press reports say Xe Services are still at the center of a secret program in Karachi, Pakistan, where they plan assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda members, among other operations.

Iraq, Rapidly becoming the Forgotten War!!

There have been 4,733 coalition deaths — 4,414 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 5 Georgians, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 South Korean, 3 Latvian, 22 Poles, 3 Romanians, 5 Salvadoran, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thai and 18 Ukrainians — in the war in Iraq as of August 4 2010, according to a CNN count. { Graphical breakdown of casualties }. At least 31,897 {31,860 last month} U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the war in Afghanistan

Remember this guy ?    

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent, …..  captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

Fresh off of letting the former Minerals Management Services oil bomb a third of our nation’s seafood supply from the Gulf of Mexico into oblivion through regulatory neglect, and letting the EPA perform the world’s largest biology experiment with Corexit spraying,

He’s come up with a great new manufacturing stimulus program to end our nation’s economic malaise of millions of unemployed.

And Dept of Defense Secretary Gates is enthusiastic, saying it will “build high walls around a smaller yard” by narrowing in on the nation’s “crown jewels.”

What could this be ?   Is it a bird, is it a plane, no, it’s more than that,  it’s

  Enlarging the United State’s market share of the international weapons exporting business !  He’s going to double it by 2015.  That would take us from 30% of the market to 60% of the world market.    

What could possibly go wrong ?

India, which currently is seeking 126 fighter-jets worth over $10 billion, 10 large transport aircraft worth $6 billion, and other multi-billion dollar defense sales, could be among the possible beneficiaries. Allies seeking advanced U.S. weaponry and equipment, who now often buy elsewhere due to the cumbersome U.S. approval process, would draw immediate benefit from the reforms, U.S. officials said.

Isn’t this the world’s largest multicultural Asian democracy which currently is embroiled with a little misunderstanding with its Muslim neighbor, Pakistan, which we just happen to be giving money to with one hand, and droning with the other ?  

Although a “Democrat” in the House,  Berman,  is writing a version of the bill, others are also expressing enthusiasm for their kind of stimulating one stop shopping Mall of the Americas experience.   And there will be seasonal sales, and back to school specials, as the boring old technology is rotated to the clearance racks and the new, stylish and advanced technology is put on the front of the aisles.

Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., represents a district with aerospace and other manufacturers, and said reform is needed for the survival of U.S. manufacturing.

“We can begin to manufacture our way out of this recession by reforming our export controls,” Manzullo said in a speech at the American Enterprises Institute, a conservative think tank.

Okay, they’re a little bit worried about who might get the clearance rack weapontry items, but not too much.

Ah, streamlining ! Transparency !  Hope and Change !

Your kid didn’t need that publik skoolun fer kollage anyway. Call your local recruitment office now and reserve him or her a space for 2015.  They’ll leave the lights on for ya.  

This past weekend July 25, saw 3 major on line news publications, the      New York Times  ,  The Guardian UK, and Germany’s    der Speigel publish the Afghanistan War Logs, 90,000+ documents from wikileaks, which show that the United States and NATO forces have been killing many more civilians in the Afghanistan occupation than has been previously acknowledged.  The war of the air vs the ground explosives has also ramped up in neighboring Pakistan, where, since January 2009, according to the BBC, nearly 2,500 people have been killed by either American drone attacks or by Islamic or Pakistani ISI forces- and “extremists” have killed more than 1,700 in Pakistan.  There have been more than 2000 Afghan casualties from roadside bombs.  Adding up all the numbers and then some, there’s at least 7,000 dead from the war in this border region.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl…

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Using a theory I read about elsewhere, if each one of these deceased casualties has at least 6 surviving relatives, parents, siblings, and/or offspring, the United States has just created, with the aid of whatever factions they’re paying in Pakistan, at least 36,000 more angry people whose religious warrior culture teaches them that it’s okay to extract revenge upon the invading enemy.    

By now most have heard about the Afghanistan Docs, some 92,000, that were released by Wikileaks and with coordinated release at roughly the same time by three News Media outlets:

The Guardian: Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

New York Times: An archive of classified military documents offers an unvarnished view of the war in Afghanistan

Der Spiegel: The Afghanistan Protocol; Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It

Whoever hasn’t will as it’s become the main News Story today hitting every level and the links above give you the main outlets of the reports on the documents released and more.

The Guardian UK, a British publication, says that they asked to see the 90,000+  wikileaks documents of whistleblower Julian Assange on the Afghanistan War, and has created its own stories on them, and has not paid for this. They say they’ve “crawled through it so you can make sense of it,”  which means that they must have had it for a while.  

As the U.S. Senate strips out $20 billion of domestic funding resources that would have paid for schools, teachers, and college students,  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wouldn’t comment on whether the House will simply approve the Senate measure and send it on to Obama for his signature.

But the pressure to do so is intense, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned lawmakers this week that unless the measure is enacted into law before Congress leaves for its August recess, the Pentagon could have to furlough thousands of employees.

….     out of yet another war “supplemental” bill above the regular military funding, and is poised to influx another massive amount of deficit cash into yet another surge into a country we’ve now occupied for 9 years, the timing could not be better.

Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said: “These files bring to light what’s been a consistent trend by US and Nato forces: the concealment of civilian casualties. Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I’ve investigated in recent months where this is still not happening.  

Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way the US and Nato do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians.” The reports, many of which the Guardian is publishing in full online, present an unvarnished and often compelling account of the reality of modern war.

Most of the material, though classified “secret” at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

The Guardian’s war logs homepage of links is here:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

“Weapons of Mass Destruction {WMD}” has become the new mainstream term of this new century in condemning others, as well as and connected to criminal terrorist acts, to give reason for invasions and occupations, not to mention to make sure it scares the bejeebish out of the masses {same as the Cold War Nuclear threat}. As those using the term to justify an invasion, reigning terror on mostly innocent people, War of Choice, while using the many different WMD’s of War that have always existed and been perfected as well as adding new developed WMD’s to the stockpiles of destructive weapons and trauma’s of War. At the same time worrying about criminal terror element, foreign or domestic, stealing the makings of the same WMDs the advanced nations are developing.

And you thought that meant the U.S. courts I’ll bet {we don’t do accountability of top officials representing us}, nope it’s the British high courts and a Brit Government Inquiry into torture is also setting to begin. But they both will bring out the U.S. participation in that which we condemn those we occupy and are fighting of doing.