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THE WAR DEPARTMENT
SEPTEMBER 2008
MILITARY SUICIDES SOAR
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
THE COLLAPSE OF NATO
Simon Jenkins, Guardian
UK - NATO is useless. It has failed to bring stability to Afghanistan,
as it failed to bring it to Serbia. It just breaks crockery.
NATO has proved a rotten fighting force, which in Kabul is on
the brink of being sidelined by exasperated Americans. Nor is
it any better at diplomacy: witness its ham fisted handling of
east Europe. As the custodian of the west's postwar resistance
to the Soviet Union's nuclear threat it served a purpose. Now
it has become a diplomats' Olympics, irrelevant but with bursts
of extravagant self-importance. . .
With Russia, NATO is playing
with fire. In Afghanistan/Pakistan - which should always be yoked
together - it is playing with dynamite. . . The fall of Pervez
Musharraf might be good news for Pakistan's democrats. It is
dreadful news for NATO's proconsuls in their fortified enclaves
in Kabul. The likelihood of political turbulence in Pakistan
can only increase the hold that pro-Taliban tribes have over
the long frontier with Afghanistan and, with it, the certainty
of an escalating war.
NATO's performance here
has been dreadful. A half-hearted peacekeeper, it had displayed
divided counsels, divided leadership and divided rules of engagement.
It has reflected the view of the US general in Kosovo, Wesley
Clark, that US units should never again be placed under international
command. International command means no command at all. . .
We shall now have the
world's sixth largest country, and with an active nuclear arsenal,
in internal turmoil because of a doomed NATO adventure on its
border. Taliban units are operating freely throughout the south
and east of Afghanistan and within miles of the capital, Kabul,
flatly contradicting the mendacious spin of NATO spokesmen over
the past two years.
Western governments seem
never to learn. Counter-insurgency wars of this sort never work
if they become drawn out. At best they leave broken, corrupted,
failed states such as Lebanon and Kosovo - and, soon, Iraq. At
worst they mean defeat. If ever America were walking into another
Vietnam, it is now in Afghanistan, fast replacing Iraq as the
mecca for every anti-western fanatic on earth.
Peace in Afghanistan might
not matter over much. But its absence will grossly destabilize
Pakistan, and that matters greatly. Is this to be another feather
in NATO's cap?
INTERNAL BRITISH SPY AGENCY REPORT
CHALLENGES TERROR MYTHS
Guardian, UK - MI5 has
concluded that there is no easy way to identify those who become
involved in terrorism in Britain, according to a classified internal
research document on radicalization seen by the Guardian.
The sophisticated analysis,
based on hundreds of case studies by the security service, says
there is no single pathway to violent extremism.
It concludes that it is
not possible to draw up a typical profile of the "British
terrorist" as most are "demographically unremarkable"
and simply reflect the communities in which they live.
The "restricted"
MI5 report takes apart many of the common stereotypes about those
involved in British terrorism.
They are mostly British
nationals, not illegal immigrants and, far from being Islamist
fundamentalists, most are religious novices. Nor, the analysis
says, are they "mad and bad".
Those over 30 are just
as likely to have a wife and children as to be loners with no
ties, the research shows.
The security service also
plays down the importance of radical extremist clerics, saying
their influence in radicalizing British terrorists has moved
into the background in recent years.
The main findings include:
- The majority are British
nationals and the remainder, with a few exceptions, are here
legally. Around half were born in the UK, with others migrating
here later in life. Some of these fled traumatic experiences
and oppressive regimes and claimed UK asylum, but more came to
Britain to study or for family or economic reasons and became
radicalised many years after arriving.
- Far from being religious
zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not
practice their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy
and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Very few
have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there
is a higher than average proportion of converts. Some are involved
in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes. MI5
says there is evidence that a well-established religious identity
actually protects against violent radicalization.
- The "mad and bad"
theory to explain why people turn to terrorism does not stand
up, with no more evidence of mental illness or pathological personality
traits found among British terrorists than is found in the general
population.
- British-based terrorists
are as ethnically diverse as the UK Muslim population, with individuals
from Pakistani, Middle Eastern and Caucasian backgrounds. MI5
says assumptions cannot be made about suspects based on skin
colour, ethnic heritage or nationality.
-Most UK terrorists are
male, but women also play an important role. Sometimes they are
aware of their husbands', brothers' or sons' activities, but
do not object or try to stop them.
- While the majority are
in their early to mid-20s when they become radicalized, a small
but not insignificant minority first become involved in violent
extremism at over the age of 30.
- Far from being lone
individuals with no ties, the majority of those over 30 have
steady relationships, and most have children. MI5 says this challenges
the idea that terrorists are young men driven by sexual frustration
and lured to "martyrdom" by the promise of beautiful
virgins waiting for them in paradise. It is wrong to assume that
someone with a wife and children is less likely to commit acts
of terrorism.
- Those involved in British
terrorism are not unintelligent or gullible, and nor are they
more likely to be well-educated; their educational achievement
ranges from total lack of qualifications to degree-level education.
However, they are almost all employed in low-grade jobs. . .
The MI5 authors stress
that the most pressing current threat is from Islamist extremist
groups who justify the use of violence "in defence of Islam",
but that there are also violent extremists involved in non-Islamist
movements. They say that they are concerned with those who use
violence or actively support the use of violence and not those
who simply hold politically extreme views.
HUGE BLACKWATER GETS
$110 MILLION IN SMALL BUSINESS CONTRACTS
Joseph Neff, Raleigh News
& Observer - Blackwater obtained dozens of small business
contracts worth more than $110 million . . . The Inspector General
of the Small Business Administration said Blackwater, based in
Moyock, N.C., obtained 39 contracts set aside for small businesses
from 2005 through 2007. Of these, 32 contracts worth $2.1 million
were set aside for companies with annual revenues of $6.5 million
or less. Blackwater's revenues have exceeded $200 million each
of those years, according to federal contracting data.
The Inspector General
also found fault with the handling of aviation contracts worth
$107 million that the Defense Department awarded Blackwater.
The contract was set aside either for a company with less than
$25.5 million in annual revenue, or a company with less than
1,500 employees. The report said the company may have improperly
classified Blackwater guards in Iraq and Afghanistan as independent
contractors rather than employees. The report also criticized
the Small Business Administration for not examining Blackwater's
contention that its security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are
not employees, but independent contractors.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/45750.html
FORTY PERCENT OF MILITARY WOMEN
AT HOSPITAL REPORT BEING SEXUALLY ASSAULTED
CNN - A congresswoman
said that her "jaw dropped" when military doctors told
her that four in 10 women at a veterans hospital reported being
sexually assaulted while in the military. A government report
indicates that the numbers could be even higher.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-California,
spoke before a House panel investigating the way the military
handles reports of sexual assault.
She said she recently
visited a Veterans Affairs hospital in the Los Angeles area,
where women told her horror stories of being raped in the military.
"My jaw dropped when
the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen
there say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in
the military," said Harman, who has long sought better protection
of women in the military. "Twenty-nine percent say they
were raped during their military service. They spoke of their
continued terror, feelings of helplessness and downward spirals
many of their lives have taken since.
"We have an epidemic
here," she said. "Women serving in the U.S. military
today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed
by enemy fire in Iraq.". . .
In 2007, Harman said,
only 181 out of 2,212 reports of military sexual assaults, or
8 percent, were referred to courts martial. By comparison, she
said, 40 percent of those arrested in the civilian world on such
charges are prosecuted.
The Government Accountability
Office released preliminary results from an investigation into
sexual assaults in the military and the Coast Guard. The GAO
found that the "occurrences of sexual assault may be exceeding
the rates being reported."
"At the 14 installations
where GAO administered its survey, 103 service members indicated
that they had been sexually assaulted within the preceding 12
months. Of these, 52 service members indicated that they did
not report the sexual assault," the GAO said.
JULY 2008
IRAQ-AFGHAN WAR MORE EXPENSIVE
THAN VIETNAM
Here is what America's wars have cost in
2008 dollars along with the percent of GDP, as provided by the
Congressional Research Service
-American Revolution: $1.8 billion; GDP
figure not available
-War of 1812: $1.2 billion; 2.2 percent
-Civil War, Union: $45.2 billion; 11.3
percent
Civil War, Confederacy: $15.2 billion;
GDP figure not available
World War I: $253 billion; 13.6 percent
World War II: $4.1 trillion; 35.8 percent
Korean War: $320 billion; 4.2 percent
Vietnam War: $686 billion; 2.3 percent
-Gulf War: $96 billion; 0.3 percent
Iraq war: $648 billion; 1 percent
Afghanstian/Global war on terror: $171
billion; 0.3 percent
Post 9/11 domestic security: $33 billion;
0.1 percent
Post 9/11 operations: $859 billion; 1.2
percent
HOW
TO TELL THE RANK OF SOMEONE
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.
TERRORISM: WRONG PICTURES
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 PETRAEUS MYTH
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
SOLDIER'S FATHER EXPOSES CONDITIONS
AT FT BRAGG
VA CONCEALED VET SUICIDE DATA
PENTAGON HEAVILY MANIPULATED TELEVISION
MILITARY COVERAGE
THE BACKDOOR DRAFT
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. .
.
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/06/25/wilson
LIMITED HUGS CROP UP IN ARMY
BLACKWATER LEAVES MERCENARY TRADE
ASSOCIATION BECAUSE ETHICS STANDARDS ARE TOO TOUGH
DECEMBER 2007
U.S SPENDS MORE ON MILITARY THAN
REST OF THE WORLD PUT TOGETHER
BEING GAY IN THE MILITARY IS FINE. .
. WHEN THERE'S A WAR ON
CBS - Discharges of gay soldiers have dropped
dramatically since the Afghan and Iraq wars began, from 1,200
a year in 2001 to barely 600 now. With the military struggling
to recruit and retain soldiers, gay soldiers claim that commanders
are reluctant to discharge critical personnel in the middle of
a war.
[Leslie]Stahl spoke with several gay former
military members who say they were out openly in their units,
known to be gay by as many as a hundred other service members.
"They don't care. . . these are our peers. . . the 'Will
and Grace' generation," says Brian Fricke. . .
U.S. Army Maj. Daniel Davis, speaking to
Stahl out of uniform to emphasize that he does not speak for
the U.S. military, says don't ask, don't tell is necessary to
achieve cohesion among soldiers, especially those in combat.
Most service members are conservative, he says, and won't readily
accept gays. "If you have a moral or religious issue, you
cannot order me to [bond] with that [gay] person," says
Davis, a specialist in battlefield tactics. "Our purpose
in the military is not social engineering. . . It's about fighting
and winning the nation's wars."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/13/60minutes/main3615278.shtml?123
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
BOSTON GLOBE - African-Americans, whose longstanding relationship
with the US military helped them prove their abilities and offered
a way to get ahead, have turned away from the armed forces in
record numbers since 2000, a period covering the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks and the start of the Iraq war. Defense Department
statistics show the number of young black enlistees has fallen
by more than 58 percent since fiscal year 2000. The Army in particular
has been hit hard: In fiscal year 2000, according to the Pentagon
statistics, more than 42,000 black men and women applied to enlist;
in fiscal year 2005, the most recent for which a racial breakdown
is available, just over 17,000 signed up.
The unpopular Iraq war is the biggest reason, according to military
analysts, Pentagon surveys, and interviews with young African-Americans.
But they say mistrust of the Bush administration is adding to
the problem - along with the notion that black soldiers are being
steered to combat jobs, a lingering perception from the Vietnam
War.
THINK TANK: WAR ON TERROR HAS BEEN A
DISASTER
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - The US-led "war on terror" has
been a "disaster" and Washington and its allies must
change their policy in Iraq and Afghanistan to defeat Al-Qaeda,
an independent global security think tank said. The Oxford Research
Group said in a report that Western strategy since the September
11, 2001 attacks on the United States had failed to extinguish
the threat from Islamist extremism and even fuelled it. "Every
aspect of the war on terror has been counterproductive in Iraq
and Afghanistan, from the loss of civilian life through mass
detentions without trial. In short, it has been a disaster,"
report author Paul Rogers said.
"Western countries simply have to face up to the dangerous
mistakes of the past six years and recognize the need for new
policies." Rogers, professor of peace studies at the University
of Bradford, northern England, also warned that any military
action against Iran over the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear
program would further aggravate the situation. "Going to
war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into
the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence
across the region," he added.
"Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided
at all costs -- the mistakes already made will be completely
overshadowed by the consequences of a war with Iran."
http://breitbart.com/article.php?id=071008003156.4a37l4c6&show_article=1&catnum=0
FEDERAL CONTRACTOR MISCONDUCT LIST
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.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gW0k9nzBC6HnafIwxJfGcmXxhGaQ
LEARN HOW TO KILL PEOPLE BETTER AT THE BLACKWATER
TRAINING CENTER
JUN 2007
LOST IN IRAQ SINCE WORLD WAR II
PENTAGON STUDIED PLAN FOR BOMB TO MAKE
ENEMY SOLDIERS GAY
BBC - The US military investigated building
a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually
irresistible" to each other, government papers say. Other
weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers
obvious by their bad breath. . . The 1994 plans were for a six-year
project costing $7.5m, but they were never pursued. . . The plans
were obtained under the US Freedom of Information by the Sunshine
Project, a group which monitors research into chemical and biological
weapons.
The plan for a so-called "love bomb"
envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread
homosexual behavior among troops, causing what the military called
a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.
Scientists also reportedly considered a
"sting me/attack me" chemical weapon to attract swarms
of enraged wasps or angry rats towards enemy troops.
A substance to make the skin unbearably
sensitive to sunlight was also pondered.
Another idea was to develop a chemical
causing "severe and lasting halitosis", so that enemy
forces would be obvious even when they tried to blend in with
civilians.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4174519.stm
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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp - dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102261.html
MICHAEL DE YOUANNA, COLORADO SPRINGS INDEPENDENT,
2006 - Brian X. Scott, armed with reams of paper to battle federal
policy, says private security contractors have become rampant
in Iraq, with little public debate. . . "The use of these
contractors is bad for the country," he says. "It's
bad for the Army. We're disconnecting the citizen part from the
solider part. These security contractors are really mercenaries
for hire.". . .
Last spring, when Scott saw listings for
two contracts that required private security, he posed as a contractor
and submitted bids. . . One contract solicited private guards
for cargo transports. The other called for guards at gates and
gun towers at Camp Victory, a U.S. base in Baghdad. "Just
the fact that the private security guards are placed where there
could be an attack - that is a combat role and not allowed,"
Scott says. "They're replacing troops with mercenaries.".
. .
The contractors, who earn hundreds of dollars
more a day than troops, have become essential in Iraq, he says.
"You can't take a crap without them," Pelton says.
. .
In March, the News & Observer in Raleigh,
N.C., provided a rare overview of incidents involving security
contractors. Reviewing 400 voluntary incident reports spanning
nine months of 2004 - 2005, the newspaper found that contractors
shot at 61 vehicles. Yet in just seven instances were Iraqis
clearly attacking. In most cases, contractors drove away. None
were prosecuted.
http://csindy.com/csindy/2006 - 09 - 07/news4.html
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."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/01/intel_contractors/?source=whitelist
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
MILITARY BLOCK TROOPS' USE OF MY SPACE,
YOU TUBE
ROBERT WELLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS - The Defense
Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to
You Tube, My Space and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers
and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell.
. . The policy is being implemented to protect information and
reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.
"This recreational traffic impacts our official DOD network
and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational
security challenge," the memo said.
The armed services have long barred members
of the military from sharing information that could jeopardize
their missions or safety, whether electronically or by other
means.The new policy is different because it creates a blanket
ban on several sites used by military personnel to exchange messages,
pictures, video and audio with family and friends.
Members of the military can still access
the sites on their own computers and networks, but Defense Department
computers and networks are the only ones available to many soldiers
and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4801313.html
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.". . .
The article, "General Failure," is to be published
today in Armed Forces Journal. Its appearance signals the public
emergence of a split inside the military between younger, mid-career
officers and the top brass.
Many majors and lieutenant colonels have
privately expressed anger and frustration with the performance
of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Lt. Gen.
Raymond T. Odierno and other top commanders in the war, calling
them slow to grasp the realities of the war and overly optimistic
in their assessments.
Some younger officers have stated privately
that more generals should have been taken to task for their handling
of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, news of which broke in 2004.
The young officers also note that the Army's elaborate "lessons
learned" process does not criticize generals and that no
generals in Iraq have been replaced for poor battlefield performance,
a contrast to other U.S. wars.
Top Army officials are also worried by
the number of captains and majors choosing to leave the service.
. . Until now, charges of incompetent leadership have not been
made as publicly by an Army officer as Yingling does in his article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042602230.html
APRIL 2007
THE RISE OF BLACKWATER
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
Detailed Video Report
WHISTLEBLOWER REVEALS PROBLEMS
AT MOST WALTER REED BUILDINGS
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.
"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it
on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
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
Pentagon's troubled wonder craft cleared
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
AMERICA FEELS THE DRAFT AGAIN WITH TALK
AND TESTS
AP - The Selective Service System
is planning a comprehensive test of the military draft machinery,
which hasn't been run since 1998. The agency is not gearing up
for a draft, an agency official said. The test itself would not
likely occur until 2009. Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans
Affairs said that "society would benefit" if the United
States were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn't have
any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. VA Secretary
Jim Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support
reinstituting a draft.
The Selective Service "readiness
exercise" would test the system that randomly chooses draftees
by birth date and the network of appeals boards that decide how
to deal with conscientious objectors and others who want to delay
reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective Service director
for operations and chief information officer. . .
The administration has for years
forcefully opposed bringing back the draft, and the White House
said Thursday that its position had not changed. . .
In remarks to reporters in New
York, Nicholson recalled his own experience as a company commander
in an infantry unit that brought together soldiers of different
backgrounds and education levels. He said the draft "does
bring people from all quarters of our society together in the
common purpose of serving."
Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York
Democrat who has said minorities and the poor share an unfair
burden of the war, plans to introduce a bill next year to reinstate
the draft.
House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi
has said that reinstating the draft would not be high on the
Democratic-led Congress' priority list, and the White House said
Thursday that no draft proposal is being considered.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2006/12/22/2931388-ap.html
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]
COULD YOU HELP THEM FIND 189 MISSING
BADGES IN YOUR GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA?
AP - More than 3,700 identification
badges and uniform items have been reported lost or stolen from
Transportation Security Administration employees since 2003,
according to documents obtained by a San Antonio television station.
WOAI-TV received the documents under the Freedom of Information
Act. Los Angeles International Airport reported the most items
with 636 missing uniforms. O'Hare International Airport in Chicago
reported 189 missing badges. Bush International Airport in Houston
led Texas with 77 missing items. Dallas-Fort Worth International
Airport had about 40 items gone.
http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4420374.html
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
HOMELAND SECURITY'S REVOLVING DOOR ALREADY
PAYING OFF BIG TIME
AP - Lured by high salaries and
generous perks, many members of the Bush administration's homeland
security team are quitting their government posts for private
sector jobs in the security business. The New York Times reported
Sunday that dozens of members of President Bush's security team
assembled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are
now working for companies that sell security products and services
to the government agencies they once helped manage. "People
have a right to make a living," Clark Kent Ervin, the former
inspector general of the Homeland Security Department told the
newspaper. "But working virtually immediately for a company
that is bidding for work in an area where you were just setting
the policy -that is too close. It is almost incestuous."
The Times found that at least 90 former officials in the department
and the White House Office of Homeland Security now work for
companies that do billions of dollars worth of business in the
homeland security industry.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5894645,00.html
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
MILITARY SAYS THOUSANDS OF TROOPS CAN'T
FIGHT BECAUSE THEY'RE IN HEAVY DEBT
AP
- Thousands of U.S. troops are being barred from overseas duty
because they are so deep in debt they are considered security
risks, according to an Associated Press review of military records.
The number of troops held back has climbed dramatically in the
past few years. And while they appear to represent a very small
percentage of all U.S. military personnel, the increase is occurring
at a time when the armed forces are stretched thin by the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are seeing an alarming trend
in degrading financial health," said Navy Capt. Mark D.
Patton, commanding officer at San Diego's Naval Base Point Loma.
The Pentagon contends financial problems can distract personnel
from their duties or make them vulnerable to bribery and treason.
As a result, those who fall heavily into debt can be stripped
of the security clearances they need to go overseas.
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.
http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/view_upi.php?StoryID=20061011-082940-2916r
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."
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053
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
TERRORISM HASN'T INCREASED, JUST THE
TERRORISM INDUSTRY
JOHN TIENEY, NY TIMES - For five years, we've been telling
Americans that Sept. 11 changed everything. . . We reported intelligence
estimates of thousands of Al Qaeda terrorists and supporters
in "sleeper cells" in America. In May 2004, Attorney
General John Ashcroft said that Al Qaeda's preparations for an
attack were 90 percent complete. We braced for acts of terrorism
forecast to occur during the political conventions, the presidential
campaign, on Election Day, after Election Day. Through yellow
and orange alerts, we kept in mind the Department of Homeland
Security's warning: "Today's terrorists can strike at any
place, at any time and with virtually any weapon."
So what's keeping them? That's
the question raised by Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio
State University, in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.
"Why," he asks, "have
they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing
tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines,
derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic
jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabiliti |