Don't join the Army (or the Air Force, the Marines or the Navy) expecting to find honor

from mr. fish at truthdig...



full disclosure - i'm a vietnam veteran...

i was invited to a veterans day assembly at my grandson's school on thursday... i went for him only, not out of any particular pride i have in being a veteran...

while it's a fact that my gi bill enabled me to earn both my undergraduate and graduate degrees (for which i'm grateful and without which i would not have been able to repeatedly land on my feet over the years), that i learned a great deal from my experience, that i never had to fire my rifle the entire time, that i came back in one piece, and that my health care provider for the past ten years has been the va (since i can't afford private insurance), being a vietnam vet isn't something i advertise... while i'm not ashamed of it, i am acutely aware of just how much my country is steeped in militarism and that is something i just can't support...

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Oh Brother

U.S. Vessels Collide in Strait of Hormuz, Navy Says

MANAMA, Bahrain -- Two U.S. Navy vessels, a nuclear-powered submarine and an amphibious ship, collided before dawn Friday in the mouth of the Persian Gulf, one of the world's most important sea passages for oil supplies.

[...]

The New Orleans suffered a ruptured fuel tank, resulting in an oil spill of approximately 25,000 gallons (95,000 liters) of diesel fuel, Lt. Christensen said.

[...]

"The spill is closely monitored," Lt. Christensen said. "The lightweight diesel, although obviously a fairly substantial amount of gasoline, likely dissipated in the ocean."

[...]

Both ships were heading to port and were going in the same direction when the incident occurred in the narrow Hormuz, said Lt. Christensen. He said the submarine was submerged at the time but that he could give no further details as the collision is still under investigation.

I love the way they always try to explain away incidents in the Strait of Hormuz as 'how narrow it is'. Here's some facts: The Strait, at it's narrowest point is 29 miles. The shipping lane is 6 miles wide- two miles in each direction, with a two mile buffer in the center. Was there a Captain on duty on either of these vessels?

I also like the intelligence level of the Naval spokesman, calling the spill both diesel fuel and gasoline in the same sentence. It is apparent that poor education isn't proprietary to the inner cities.

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Like I said the other day, if we can't attack Iran, let's get cranking on Venezuela

i've been following the re-activation of the u.s. fourth fleet in the caribbean... i've also noted that, at the end of april, joint naval exercises were recently conducted with argentina and brazil*... it looks suspiciously like the u.s. is laying the groundwork for more violent conflict...

On Saturday, a U.S. navy plane strayed into Venezuelan airspace. Venezuelan Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel said that the aircraft "practically flew over" the island of La Orchila - where Venezuela has a military base and President Hugo Chávez has a residence - and another island before turning back. U.S. officials claimed the plane had “navigational problems.”

"This is just the latest step in a series of provocations," Rangel said.

Indeed, tensions have been mounting in recent days. The Navy is now reactivating its fourth fleet in the Caribbean. The fleet, which will include a nuclear aircraft carrier, will be based in Mayport, Florida.

The fleet hasn’t seen any action in Caribbean waters since World War II. In February 1942, the Germans sank a number of oil tankers full of Venezuelan crude. The attack caused a nationalist outcry in Venezuela and Caracas began to side more openly with the allies. In response to the attacks the U.S. patrolled the area, hunting down Nazi submarines which were wreaking havoc on allied shipping. After the war, with no more German U-boats prowling Caribbean waters, the Fourth Fleet was dissolved.

So, why resuscitate the fleet now?

The navy claims the move is necessary to protect maritime security. The real reason however may have more to do with Washington’s desire to wage a kind of psychological war against the Chávez government and to foment a climate of political tension.

it's more than "psychological warfare" to re-activate an entire naval fleet and to deliberately fly a military aircraft over a sovereign nation's airspace without permission, it's really an act of veiled aggression... "navigational problems," my ass...

* The aircraft carrier USS George Washington made a port visit in Rio de Janeiro at the end of April, and took part in exercises with the Brazilian and Argentine navies.

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Judge bitch-slaps Bush on Navy's sonar waiver: ""The Navy's current 'emergency' is simply a creature of its own making"

watch out... the poor little dog by the side of the road with the owner's tag that reads "rule of law," a hit-and-run victim of bush's crazed, 7-year plus dui spree, still has some bite left...

The Bush administration overreached when it sought to limit the Navy's obligations under national environmental laws related to sonar training exercises off California, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

In a sharply worded decision that will keep the Navy from continuing a series of 14 planned exercises, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote that the Navy and the administration had improperly declared that an emergency would be created if they had to accept court-mandated steps to minimize risk to whales and other sea mammals. Because no real emergency exists, she said, the White House cannot override her decisions and those of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

[...]

Joel Reynolds, an official at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which obtained an earlier injunction against the Navy blocking the exercises, said in a statement that the court "has affirmed that we do not live under an imperial presidency."

my god... has my view of our country sunk so low that i am forced to CELEBRATE a SINGLE COURT DECISION that stops our CRIMINAL PRESIDENT from executing ONLY ONE ILLEGAL ACT...? she-e-e-e-e-eit... totalmente patético...

p.s. "we do not live under an imperial presidency" is a statement i WISH was true, but, sadly, is far from the case...

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"We were part of the shining light on the hill who didn’t do those things. Sadly, no more."

a navy attorney resigns over torture... may we continue to see individuals such as andrew williams doing the right thing, choosing to speak out, and taking action that aligns with our founding principles and the rule of law...

It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy.

There was a time when I served with pride, knowing that by serving with the finest men and women in the country, we were part of an organization whose core values required us to “do the right thing,” and that we were far different from the Soviet Union and its gulags, the Vietcong with their torture camps and a society of surveillance and informers like Nazi Germany.

We were part of the shining light on the hill who didn’t do those things. Sadly, no more.

The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.

His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials.

Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.

very sad, indeed...

(thanks to think progress...)

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Why a Navy guy? Cuz Rummy thought the Army was irrelevant.

or, could it have something to do with the massive naval flotilla hanging out in the persian gulf awaiting orders to attack iran...?

"There's no obvious reason a Navy guy would be put in charge of Centcom, or why we would have two sea service people replacing two other sea service people at the top of the Joint Chiefs," said Loren B. Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based military think tank. "But the reality is that they seem to be able to work with big ideas and big political leaders better than the other services."

ah-HA...! so, working with "big political leaders" is a major requirement... hmmmm... i wonder who they have in mind...?

Asked what accounted for the lack of Army officers in high-profile interservice, or "joint," commands, retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said simply: "Rumsfeld bias."

Rumsfeld and his civilian aides "set in motion for five years a series of decisions that discredited Army leadership," McCaffrey said. "It strikes me as extremely unusual that the principal load-bearing institution of national defense is the U.S. Army; Rumsfeld thought it was irrelevant at best."

lovely... interservice rivalry has always been an issue, so leave it to rumsfeld to make it worse...

Asked what accounted for the lack of Army officers in high-profile interservice, or "joint," commands, retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said simply: "Rumsfeld bias."

Rumsfeld and his civilian aides "set in motion for five years a series of decisions that discredited Army leadership," McCaffrey said. "It strikes me as extremely unusual that the principal load-bearing institution of national defense is the U.S. Army; Rumsfeld thought it was irrelevant at best."

and, naturally, the navy asserts a strong claim to occupying a loftier perch than those stupid ground-pounders...

Navy officers say their worldview is uniquely fitted for the current environment, in which threats are global and understanding foreign cultures is critical. Because Navy officers must constantly patrol the world's seas and regularly interact with international governments in ports abroad, they say, the Navy has developed a culture that is more open to a broader view of American power.

does anyone else find that phrase - "more open to a broader view of American power" - slightly disturbing...?

here's the breakdown...

Of the U.S. military's top seven high-profile interservice, or "joint," commands, five are held by Navy or Marine Corps brass.

Joint Chiefs

Current:
• Chairman: Gen. Peter Pace (Marine Corps)
• Vice Chairman: Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani (Navy)
Next in line
• Chairman: Adm. Michael G.Mullen (Navy)
• Vice Chairman: Gen. James E. Cartwright (Marine Corps)

Regional Commands

• Northern: Gen. Victor E.Renuart (Air Force)
• Southern: Adm. James G.Stavridis (Navy)
• European: Gen. John Craddock (Army)
• Central: Adm. William J.Fallon (Navy)
• Pacific: Adm. Timothy J.Keating (Navy)

no mention of any relationship between the choice of mullen to this news item from may 24...

The U.S. navy began war games on Iran's doorstep on Thursday, navy officials said, a day after a large flotilla of U.S. ships entered the Gulf in a dramatic daytime show of military muscle.

The group includes two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, whose presence adds to the pressure on the Islamic Republic to abandon its own nuclear ambitions, which the West says are an attempt to develop atomic weapons.

and, when you have an official source making a comment like this to a simple yes or no question, you can safely assume the answer, in this case certainly, is yes...

Asked if any of the American ships carried atomic weapons, a U.S. navy spokesman said the United States routinely did not comment on whether its warships were equipped with nuclear arms.

so, here we are, waiting for the navy guy to come aboard... oh, yay...

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"It is absolutely devastating to me to see what we're doing and what we have become."

u.s. troops, serving on german military bases, want out...

On military bases across Germany, many are now seeking a way out through desertion or early discharge.

When he goes underground, he won't tell his mom. "John," a rangy young soldier with arresting eyebrows, has planned each step carefully. He will spend his leave from an Army base in Germany at home in the northeastern United States, snowboarding, visiting friends, and hanging out with his teenage siblings.

Then he'll disappear. When the military police call his mother and stepfather, the hard-line Bush supporters will be able to say honestly that they don't know where their son is.

[...]

"I knew when I came back that I couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't be the tool to enforce policy that I thought was fundamentally wrong, if not a little evil," says Sgt. Bob Evers, a 14-year Army and Navy veteran now living in the Bavarian hamlet of Schnackenwerth. "It is absolutely devastating to me to see what we're doing and what we have become."

i spent most of my army time in vietnam on a wide-eyed learning curve that hasn't stopped to this day... i was fortunate in many ways, particularly in that i never had to fire a weapon, and came back in one piece... i served the rest of my time stateside before taking an early out to return to college... i had a good friend who served for a time as a medic in hawaii... seeing the human destruction arriving daily from s.e. asia, he took the conscientious objector route, and, after much bureaucracy, it was upheld... i sometimes wonder how my life would have been different had i escaped across the border into canada, to work at a job on vancouver island that my uncle had all lined up for me... very different would be my guess...

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