This Memorial Day, let us reflect on the sober reality of the U.S. post-9/11

bill moyers and michael winship...

Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and did so in defiance of domestic and international law. Most of us haven’t come to terms with what that meant, or means today, but we must reckon with torture, the torture done in our name, allegedly for our safety.

 
In this photo of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed 
by the U.S. Department of Defense, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reads a 
document during his military hearing at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval 
Base in Cuba, Saturday, May 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Janet Hamlin)

It’s no secret such cruelty occurred; it’s just the truth we’d rather not think about. But Memorial Day is a good time to make the effort. Because if we really want to honor the Americans in uniform who gave their lives fighting for their country, we’ll redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice; we’ll renew our commitment to the rule of law, for the rule of law is essential to any civilization worth dying for.

[...]

So here we are, into our eleventh year after 9/11, still at war in Afghanistan, still at war with terrorists, still at war with our collective conscience as we grapple with how to protect our country from attack without violating the basic values of civilization — the rule of law, striving to achieve our aims without corrupting them, and restraint in the use of power over others, especially when exercised in secret.

In future days and years, how will we come to cope with the reality of what we have done in the name of security?

it is also good on this upcoming memorial day weekend to remember other parts of our history, or, i should say more accurately, MY history... i have made it a personal tradition each memorial day to post my vietnam experiences, partly to honor those who served and died there but also to honor a short but intense period in my own history, but i'll wait until monday to put that up...

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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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Three-Month Rollout for Gays in Military Policy

some headlines just stop me in my tracks and this is one of them...

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I'm always open to a little good news

Senate Repeals ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

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About freakin' time...!

let's hope this is the end of it...

Judge Orders Injunction on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

A federal judge issued a worldwide injunction Tuesday stopping enforcement of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, ending the U.S. military's 17-year-old ban on openly gay troops.

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips' landmark ruling was widely cheered by gay rights organizations that credited her with getting accomplished what President Obama and Washington politics could not.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys have 60 days to appeal. Legal experts say they are under no legal obligation to do so and could let Phillips' ruling stand.

oh, i'm sure the religious fundamentalists will be weeing in their pants over this one... let 'em...

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More details on how much torture was used and how people were kept alive so they could be tortured some more

as i sit here in kabul, the day after the mess at the un guesthouse across town and the horror just over the border in peshawar, and several days after the terrible carnage in baghdad, it's sickening to read about the atrocities perpetrated by my own people, the very people who were all over the news yesterday, decrying the bloody actions of terrorists...

According to human rights lawyer John Sifton, the CIA tortured some of its detainees in the War on Terror so severely that it had to take measures to keep them alive so they could continue being tortured.

Sifton, who the executive director of One World Research, told an interviewer for Russia Today that there was both a CIA detention program and a military detention program and that "The CIA program was by far the most secretive. ... That's the one that only had a few dozen detainees at any given time -- but it's the one that saw the biggest abuses, the most serious forms of torture."

"In the military, there was actually a larger number of deaths than with the CIA," Sifton continued. "The CIA engaged in some horrendous abuses, but they appear to have taken precautions to have actually prevented people from dying -- which might sound humanitarian, but in fact was kind of sickening."

"The military wasn't so careful," Sifton added. "The military subjected a lot of people to the same techniques, but without the precautions, and as a result a large number of detainees in military custody died. ... While they didn't use the worst forms of torture, like waterboarding, they often used sleep deprivation, forced standing, stress positions. ... When you combine these techniques ... they cause excruciating pain ... and the military used them on thousands and thousands of detainees."

Sifton commented that what he found most shocking was "the cold, clinical fashion in which they went about designing the program. They didn't want to commit outright physical torture ... so they went to psychologists and lawyers and they tried to design a program which was, in their minds, legal. ... They tried to make it legal and safe, but they just made it even more grotesque."

don't think for one second the afghans i work with aren't tuned in to what's happening in the world... they are just as horrified as you and i about the havoc their very own people are wreaking in their country but they're also very well aware of what we, the american people, are allowing to go on in our names...

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The impact of all stops removed violence on returning military

from the colorado springs gazette via atrios...

stories from the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, the "Lethal Warriors"...

[T]he time bomb exploded when [Teresa Hernandez'] son [Anthony Marquez] used a stun gun to repeatedly shock a small-time drug dealer in Widefield [Colorado] over an ounce of marijuana, then shot him through the heart.

Marquez was the first infantry soldier in his brigade to murder someone after returning from Iraq. But he wasn’t the last.

[...]

In December 2007, Bressler and fellow soldiers Bruce Bastien Jr., 21, and Kenneth Eastridge, 24, left the bullet-riddled body of a soldier from their unit on a west-side street.

kenneth eastridge speaks...

“The Army trains you to be this way. In bayonet training, the sergeant would yell, ‘What makes the grass grow?’ and we would yell, ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’ as we stabbed the dummy. The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody. And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off. ... If they don’t figure out how to take care of the soldiers they trained to kill, this is just going to keep happening.”

and then there's this fine litany...

In August 2007, Louis Bressler, 24, robbed and shot a soldier he picked up on a street in Colorado Springs.

[...]

In May and June 2008, police say Rudolfo Torres-Gandarilla, 20, and Jomar Falu-Vives, 23, drove around with an assault rifle, randomly shooting people.

In September 2008, police say John Needham, 25, beat a former girlfriend to death.

it's an extremely sobering read but one that shouldn't be all that surprising... these are the natural consequences of a society based on violence and the denial of its impact by our all-too-removed-from-the-stark-reality-of-violence-and-death leaders who like to pretend it simply doesn't exist...

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Meanwhile, what is now Obama's Afghanistan war continues to produce endless tragedy

i am sitting at my desk here in kabul, surrounded by my afghan colleagues, and i can't help but ponder how horrible they and i would feel if something like this happened to members of their family, committed at the hands of people working for my own country...

from al jazeera...

The US military has admitted that its troops killed four civilians in Afghanistan, including a child, not fighters as was earlier reported.

The US has also offered an apology for the deaths on Wednesday night and indicated that the family will receive support.

Brigadier-General Michael Ryan said in a statement late on Thursday: "We deeply regret the tragic loss of life in this precious family."

A 13-year-old boy who survived the night-time raid on his home told Al Jazeera that his mother, brother, uncle and another female family member were killed.

A woman who was nine months' pregnant was wounded and lost her baby.

at least the u.s. military has 'fessed up, altho' no words of sympathy or regret could possibly make a tragedy like this any easier to bear...

"Words alone cannot begin to express our regret and sympathy and we will ensure the surviving family members are properly cared for," Ryan said.

yeah... well... whatever...

check the al jazeera video... it'll break your heart...

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Aid to Afghanistan... I'm sure Hillary is talking about attacking the symptoms rather than the disease...

i read this as i sit here in kabul, working for a "civilian" aid program...

The billions of dollars spent in U.S. aid to Afghanistan over the past seven years have been largely wasted, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.

"For those of you who have been on the ground in Afghanistan, you have seen with your own eyes that a lot of these aid programs don't work," she said. "There are so many problems with them. There are problems of design, there are problems of staffing, there are problems of implementation, there are problems of accountability. You just go down the line."

[...]

Since 2006, the U.S. Agency for International Development has spent more than $5 billion in Afghanistan, according to figures on the agency's Web site. Clinton oversees USAID, which has boasted a number of success stories, including building hundreds of schools, distributing 60 million textbooks and vaccinating 90 percent of children against polio. But a report by Oxfam last week charged that much of the U.S. aid in Afghanistan is wasted on consulting costs, subcontractor fees and duplication.

Clinton's blunt comments on past aid programs -- which appeared to also indict the broader international effort -- will probably raise the bar for the administration's aid programs. "We are scrubbing every single civilian program," she said. "This is part of my mission as secretary of state. We are looking at every single dollar as to how it's spent and where it's going and trying to track the outcomes. We want to see real results."

i would be the very last person to argue that aid programs in afghanistan have been a resounding success... far, far from it... however, i would also be the last one to voice one iota of confidence that those in washington have any ability whatsoever to discriminate between the aid programs that have added value and those that haven't... so, what hillary says means to me is that they're going to jump in and "scrub" programs wholesale in the time-honored tradition of attacking the symptoms rather than the disease...

also, it's definitely worth noting that she doesn't mention the much more staggering sums "wasted" on military expenditures...

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Afghanistan - "a free-for-all of corruption"... A follow-on to the previous "Talking to the Taliban" post

another perspective that supports what i witness first-hand every day here in kabul, this time from a woman with in-depth experience in afghanistan who runs a co-op in kandahar...

from the la times...

What ensued has been a free-for-all of corruption and abuse of power, with ordinary citizens paying the price. Our cooperative, for example, recently imported some solar energy equipment, which we needed because of the ongoing lack of electricity in Kandahar. We had to pay about $1,200 in bribes at seven different checkpoints on the road from the Pakistani border and at the Kandahar customs house. Judicial decisions are bought and sold, as is public office. Driver's licenses, death certificates and electricity meters come with a heavy surcharge. Lucrative contracts are monopolized by power brokers. The corruption infuriates ordinary Afghans, who do not see such abuses as part of their culture.

The result has been that a country that in 2002 enthusiastically welcomed the young government of Karzai and the international presence is now turning back to the Taliban. This is not out of affinity or ideological bent but because -- as was the case in 1994, when the Taliban first arrived on the scene -- it represents a practical alternative to the reigning chaos.

with the impending release of the obama administration's afghanistan policy (see below), a policy i fear will be sadly deficient and seriously misaligned, it's good to see some of what i consider to be reasonably accurate and informed perspectives creeping into the mainstream media...

Shifting U.S. objectives in Afghanistan away from the Bush administration's promise to build a Western-style democracy, President Barack Obama will announce on Friday that he's deploying thousands of additional American troops and civilians to achieve more modest goals, such as enhancing security and promoting economic development, U.S. officials said.

for the la times writer, quoted above, if indeed this shift comes to pass, it does not bode well... she does, however, have some constructive ideas to propose...

The answer is not to lower the bar but to raise it. What is needed is some of that patented Obama "Yes, we can!" energy.

We can, for example, work to ensure not just the security of the upcoming Afghan elections but a modicum of integrity, by observing, reporting and sanctioning instances of abuse and by distancing ourselves from those Afghan officials illegally exploiting their offices to ensure a Karzai reelection. We can insist on accountability on the part of Afghan officials, especially regarding the expenditure of international funds. We can help Afghans give teeth to what is perhaps the most important feature of American democracy -- one that was signally ignored by the Bush administration's Afghan design: checks-and-balances mechanisms.

Additional troops are desperately needed, and they should be deployed to protect the population rather than focused on hunting high-value targets or trying to seal off Afghanistan's borders. Development assistance, well targeted and monitored, is also crucial. But only with a concurrent full-court press on governance can the most limited U.S. goals in the region be accomplished.

i am very cool on the idea of additional troops, not because they shouldn't be utilized in the way the writer suggests, but because the u.s. is far from re-making its military might into a force of protection and peacekeeping rather than an instrument of death and destruction... if obama is to pull off THAT transition, he's going to need to do some major housecleaning at the pentagon in order to disembowel the "kick ass and take names" mindset that's been the history of the u.s. military, a history that was seriously reinforced through the bush/rumsfeld/gates era and continues to this day...

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What I would do in Afghanistan if I had a magic wand

a friend asked me to comment on yesterday's news that obama is raising troop strength in afghanistan by 17,000...

OK - you're there and can see what's going on. What's your opinion? Obviously Bush and company really, really screwed things up over there. Do you think this will help if they start getting the contractors in line and take the graft out of the US companies doing business there?

i guess i had too much time on my hands because i offered up this rather lengthy response...

just because i'm here doesn't mean i'm any smarter than the average bear... however, here's what i think needs to happen...

- stop the civilian deaths and, if, despite all precautions, they happen anyway, eat humble pie, apologize all over the place, and make reparations, even IF you think they might have been hostile elements...

- lower the boom on the afghan government and force them to stop funneling money to their cronies... the afghan people ain't stupid... they can see what's happening and are sick and tired of it...

- stop awarding massive amounts of money to u.s. contractors who either pocket most of it or waste it on showcase projects that do nothing except make somebody in d.c. feel good...

- refocus development efforts (such as i'm involved in) to actually build the capacity of the afghans to do for themselves instead of allowing the ex-pats to huff and puff and pretend we know it all and that the afghans are nothing but a bunch of dirtballs...

- if the u.s. is going to support someone for afghan president in the upcoming election, pick someone who is squeaky clean and can command the respect of the afghan people as well as hold his own in the world community... the average afghan desperately needs someone they think is looking after THEIR interests AND the good of the country as a whole...

- the troops, existing and incremental, need to be focused almost 100% on helping the folks in the countryside get re-established in being able to make a living... the farmers, goat and sheep herders have been devastated over 30 years of chaos, so that DOESN'T mean popping in out of the blue in choppers killing their poppy fields with herbicide and wiping out their only means of support... it means getting down in the dirt with them, helping them make a living out of raising and selling legitimate crops that will help feed the nation and reducing its dependence on imported foodstuffs from pakistan which is where most of the afghan food currently comes from...

- control the borders... besides insurgents coming in from pakistan, there are so many goods coming in uninspected and duty-free, it ain't funny... afghanistan could damn near become self-supporting just from customs duty enforcement alone, but because there are so many palms being greased up to and including those at the ministerial level in charge of customs duty enforcement, everyone just turns a blind eye...

- get cracking on developing cross-border trade and, yes, you idiots, this means with iran on the western side of the country... there are only two remotely accessible ports, karachi in pakistan and bandar abbas in iran... everything's now coming through karachi... also, build a railway spur from herat up to turkmenistan to open up access to the larger railway and road network through central asia east to china and west to the urals, eastern europe and beyond... build a decent relationship with uzbekistan so that the bridge across the river from mazar e sharif can be more than just decoration...

- go full-tilt boogie on infrastructure... kabul is a ruined city, almost more so than when the u.s. took over in late 2001/early 2002, and the rest of the country (with a few exceptions such as cities like jalalabad, herat and mazar e sharif) have never had infrastructure to begin with... i'm talking water, sanitation, electricity, roads, health care, schools, etc...

- get prices under control... the americans (in kabul, at least) have grossly distorted rents, wages, and prices of everything... when the project i work for is paying $15K a month, 3 months in advance, for ONE up-armored toyota suv, and $35K a month for one house that's used as the project office, you know things are out of control... i know an afghan woman who runs her own consulting company who had to hire someone from india to manage her office because she can't afford to hire an afghan... what's wrong with this picture...?

- the obama administration should plan to conduct monthly visits to afghanistan by administration higher-ups... that means the secdef, the sec'y of state, the special envoy, the vp and the prez hisself... message: we're paying attention, we care, we want to see what's happening on the ground, we're not afraid to come there...

you asked...

now, hell, i don't know if any of that makes sense or is even remotely possible but, hey, if i had a magic wand, that's what i'd do... whether it would make any difference or not is a whole 'nother question...

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$16.2M for the Air Force to create "world class" accommodations exceeding the standards of a regular business-class flight

flying as a passenger in a large military cargo aircraft is no joy ride... neither is flying economy on a commercial airline or a military passenger aircraft... but my response to that is, "tough shit"... i'm a regular long-haul flyer and i have to make do with what i can afford - economy - or what my employer will pay for - economy... if i have work to do, i figure out how to get it done... if i want to sleep, i try to make myself as comfortable as possible and nod off... i don't get the pleasure of the lie-flat beds in first class... i don't even get the pleasure of the fully-reclining seats in business class... the last thing we need is our military leaders even more separated from their troops than they are by enjoying first-class amenities on their travels, particularly amenities paid for by anti-terrorism funds...

from page one of today's wapo...

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

[...]

Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.


The Air Force's new capsules, which will
fit in large aircraft, are meant to ensure
that senior military officers and civilian
leaders can travel in comfort.
(Special To The Washington Post)


An Air Force document specified that the
capsule's seats are to swivel such that
"the longitudinal axis of the seat is
parallel to the longitudinal axis of the
aircraft" regardless of where the capsules
are facing.
(Special To The Washington Post)

The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.

In all, for the past three years the service has asked to divert $16.2 million to the effort from what the military calls the GWOT, or global war on terrorism. Congress has twice told the service that it cannot, including an August 2007 letter from Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to the Pentagon ordering that the money be spent on a "higher priority" need.

Officials say the Air Force nonetheless decided last year to take $331,000 from counterterrorism funds to cover a cost overrun, partly stemming from the design changes, although a senior officer said yesterday in response to inquiries that it will reverse that decision.

i repeat... tough shit... fly like the rest of us... more importantly, fly like the troops have to fly...

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Olbermann: "The only thing they're even half-way good at is half-assed lying and they're not very good at that"

mission accomplished, celebrating the deadliest month for u.s. troops in iraq since september of last year...



and, lest we lose sight of the true depth of the iraq tragedy, i'm going to do something i'm loathe to do, and that's to re-post one of the saddest photos i've seen in a long, long time, not for voyeuristic purposes, but simply to keep the horror visible...


Ridh Hadi places his two-year old nephew,
Ali Hussein, into a coffin in the Shiite
stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq
on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. The child
died on Tuesday after U.S. forces struck
back at militia fighters with 200-pound
(90-kilogram) guided rockets that
devastated at least three buildings in the
densely packed district that serves as the
Baghdad base for the powerful Mahdi
Army militia.
(AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

so very, very sad...

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"A mishap last year in which a B-52 bomber unknowingly carried six nuclear warheads across the country"

can you BELIEVE the crap we're expected to swallow...?

Air Force's nuclear focus has dimmed, studies find

The U.S. military has lost focus on its nuclear-weapons mission and has suffered a sharp decline in nuclear expertise, factors that may have contributed to a mishap last year in which a B-52 bomber unknowingly carried six nuclear warheads across the country, according to two new independent reviews.

mishap...?

lost focus...?

unknowingly...?

nuclear warheads...?

across the country...?

and we're supposed to sit here, read the story on the "official" report, solemnly nod, cluck our tongues, and mutter under our breath, "well, shit happens...?"

are they FUCKING KIDDING ME...??

do they think we're COMPLETE IDIOTS...??

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Olbermann

AND the horse you rode in on...

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"EVERYTHING depends on our standing up."

opol's back and he's cranked...

My generation thought Vietnam was an aberration, but it wasn’t, it was the game plan. Lie your way into a nasty little war and let other people’s children do the killing and dying while the fat cats at the top of the capitalist pile rake in the dough. It’s all for the benefit of those so bloated with greed that they just don’t care that their profits come soaked in the blood of innocents and patriots.

[...]

Nearly 4,000 American service men and women have died for no good reason in Iraq since our wrongheaded and distinctly criminal invasion in 2003 (not to mention a million Iraqis). How hard must it be to face the fact that your loved one didn’t die to protect the world from anything, that they died for no noble purpose, not to preserve freedom or democracy, not for any righteous cause – but for nothing - nothing worth dying for at any rate? How hard must that be?

They died for the sole purpose of making already wealthy men even wealthier. It is evil. It is pure evil.

[...]

Would having a Democrat in office make it better? Not necessarily. I find it painful to point out that the Democrats have surrendered the moral high ground without a fight. Theories as to why abound, but it is clear that they have done just that. We should not be fooled. Our government is against us, and it is no longer fair to make distinctions between Republicans and Democrats except in rare individual cases. The vast majority of all our politicians of both parties are corrupt or otherwise compromised and are now in thrall to the corporatist military-industrial-congressional-media complex. They are no longer on our side - if they ever were.

What we are headed for is a brutal fascistic rule of the super rich enforced on the impoverished masses by heavily armed thugs operating under color of law - though there are those here who will tell you that it can’t happen here. If we believe that, it will be our epitaph.

[...]

The Democrats are not going to be our salvation. I wish that weren’t true - but it is. It is strictly up to us. Put your faith in the American people – they, we, are our last and only hope. We must stand up to the monsters who have done this to our country, and we must take it back from them. We are the only true owners of this nation. It’s time to act up America.

Soldiers are taught that when caught in a deadly ambush with nowhere to run or hide, you must charge the ambush. It is a case of the best defense being a good offense. We need to rise up, not stand down. We need to resist the fascism. We need to charge the ambush.

Our choices have come down to two: we can knuckle under, or we can stand up. And EVERYTHING depends on our standing up.

like i said the other day, there is only one answer to our desperate national crisis, and it will only be found by looking in the mirror...

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The NYT offers up op-ed space to another advocate of on-going U.S. militarization

shit... no sooner had i finished my modo rant (see previous post) and gone back to my nyt headline email, than i saw this, the very next op-ed on the list...

We Still Need the Big Guns
By CHARLES J. DUNLAP Jr.

Looking ahead, America needs a military centered not on occupying another country but on denying potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests.

this one got me curious enough to click on to the full piece, only to find that it was as sabre-rattling as the teaser suggests...

Many analysts understandably attribute the success [in Iraq] to our troops’ following the dictums of the Army’s lauded new counterinsurgency manual. While the manual is a vast improvement over its predecessors, it would be a huge mistake to take it as proof — as some in the press, academia and independent policy organizations have — that victory over insurgents is achievable by anything other than traditional military force.

Unfortunately, starry-eyed enthusiasts have misread the manual to say that defeating an insurgency is all about winning hearts and minds with teams of anthropologists, propagandists and civil-affairs officers armed with democracy-in-a-box kits and volleyball nets. They dismiss as passé killing or capturing insurgents.

let's just take a few choice items and look at them for a moment...

• "our interests" - i always love that one... i hear it all the time, and each time it never fails to strike me as code for "whatever the u.s. corporate, government, and military elites want, wherever in the world it may be, they will get, irrespective of anybody else's 'interests'..."

• iraq "success" - this neocon, bush administration, david petraeus-spawned talking point not only glosses over the reality of what's happening in iraq, but also serves to distract us from the fact that even administration HINTS that there MIGHT BE in some INDETERMINATE FUTURE the REMOTE POSSIBILITY of TROOP REDUCTION or even, god forbid, TROOP WITHDRAWAL are now OFFICIALLY DEAD...

• "proof ... that victory over insurgents is achievable by anything other than traditional military force" - zero acknowledgement here that the insurgents just may be fighting to get their country back, and that we are there, fighting to keep that from happening...

• "starry-eyed enthusiasts ... say that defeating an insurgency is all about winning hearts and minds [and] dismiss as passé killing or capturing insurgents" - need i comment here...? i can only assume that it will be a dark day indeed for the united states when "killing or capturing" is no longer the order of the day...

but, wait...! there's more...

Looking ahead, America needs a military centered not on occupying another country but on denying potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests. This is not a task for counterinsurgents, but rather for an unapologetically high-tech military that substitutes machines for the bodies of young Americans.

revolted yet...? and just so's ya know the source of the revulsion...

Charles J. Dunlap Jr. is an Air Force major general and the author of “Shortchanging the Joint Fight?,” an assessment of the Army’s counterinsurgency manual.

could it be his own "interests" he's advocating for here...? nah... silly me... of COURSE not...

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From Utah, up close and personal law enforcement technology

from brasscheck tv...

It's hard to imagine a robot like this being actually useful in a military combat setting where 99.99% of all fighting is done at the distance of 100 meters or more.

No, these robots are made for handling people, personal and upclose.

And where does this typically happen?

In so called "civil disturbances." You know, situations where people take to the streets to demonstrate their opinion about something.

Paid for by the military and then adopted by "civilian law enforcement."

i just love that it's being marketed as "protection" for soldiers...

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Room to train our warriors

Piñon Canyon, east of Trinidad, Colorado

a friend in southern colorado had tipped me off to the controversy that was brewing over this but couldn't tell me what the land was wanted for... i did a search of the local newspaper but couldn't come up with anything... now, i see what the fuss is all about...

The U.S. Army wants 418,000 acres of private ranch land to triple the size of its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, a training area considered suitable -- some would say essential -- for preparing American warriors to do battle in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The 1,000-square-mile facility would be 15 times the size of the District.

Several dozen ranchers and members of 15 county commissions that voted to oppose the project find themselves pitted against the Pentagon and Colorado business interests in a struggle over property rights, personal heritage and the contested priorities of national security.

[...]

In Piñon Canyon, where prehistoric dinosaur tracks lie near a surviving section of the 1800s-era Santa Fe Trail, the Army sees an opportunity when other training grounds are overtaxed by the demands of war. The move is also part of a long-term reorganization of the armed forces.

To Colorado business leaders, the expansion would help consolidate and enhance the state's growing role as a military hub: It is home to Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Northern Command.

[...]

The land under discussion is an arid plateau that occupies a sparsely populated slice of Colorado near the New Mexico border. It lies alongside 235,000 acres acquired by the Army in the early 1980s. The open spaces provide rambling room for 67-ton tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to practice maneuvers within a few hours of Fort Carson, home to a dozen Army units.

i grew up in colorado springs, one of the most military-obsessed (NORAD, Peterson AFB, the Air Force Academy, Ft. Carson, military retirees), right-wing (rabid libertarian, neocon, movement conservative, 24 per-centers), christian fundamentalist (Focus on the Family and at least a hundred similar organizations) towns you will ever run across, so it's no surprise to hear a colorado springs chamber of commerce shill spouting something like this...

Brian A. Binn, president of the military affairs committee of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, said the benefits to the state economy and national defense are clear. If the ranchers triumph and the training site is not created, he added, other states would be all too willing to accept the troops and the business.

"We have to look sometimes at what's better for the national defense, the greater good," Binn said. "It is a national security issue. The men and women of our armed services deserve nothing less."

the issue isn't jobs, altho' that's one way to frame it... it isn't about needing more space to train our military, altho' that's certainly another way to frame it... it isn't about private property, altho' that's ANOTHER way to frame it... and it isn't even about preserving and protecting the environment, altho' that's yet ANOTHER way to frame it... it's about the fact that the united states is a militaristic, war-mongering country with an insatiable appetite for controlling as much of the world's resources as possible, and an unending need for warm bodies to toss in the path of death and destruction... don't believe me...? take a look at the very well-chosen word carefully and unobtrusively placed in the first paragraph of the above wapo excerpt... did you catch it...?

WE DON'T HAVE SOLDIERS
IN THE U.S. ANY MORE,
WE HAVE WARRIORS!

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Blackwater: bringing it back home

what goes around, comes around...

Seven people were arrested Saturday at Blackwater Worldwide’s front entrance after protesters re-enacted the Sept. 16 shooting incident in Baghdad involving Blackwater in which 17 Iraqis died.

It was the first protest at the 10-year-old private military company’s headquarters, a reflection of its heightened profile since the Baghdad shootings stirred Iraqi anger and created a diplomatic crisis for Blackwater’s client, the U.S. State Department.

The protesters drove a small gray station wagon, covered with simulated bullet holes and smeared with red paint, onto Blackwater’s property. One lay back in the driver’s seat and five others got out and lay on the ground, as if they had been shot.

The scene was intended to mimic that in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where an Iraqi doctor and her son died in a fusillade of gunfire as their car approached a Blackwater diplomatic convoy.

The protesters also smeared red handprints on two Blackwater signs.

let's not kid ourselves here... the united states has a long history of training its young people to kill, and then placing them in situations where that particular skill is required and often must be used... the employees of blackwater are no different from the soldiers the u.s. has deployed around the globe for generations... many, if not most, of blackwater's employees are, in fact, former military... they represent a vast number of americans - either current or former members of the armed forces, as well as an equally large number who are not, never have been, nor ever will be in the military - who support war as a common tool of foreign policy, rather than as an extraordinary measure to be used only when all else fails...

as a vietnam army veteran, i, too, am a product of our warrior society... along with my fellow citizens, i have been schooled in countless ways that our wars are necessary and just, and that those we are sent to fight are cruel and barbaric... is it any wonder that we have incidents like nisour square in baghdad, haditha, abu ghraib and my lai...? is it any wonder that those higher up the food chain aren't held accountable...? after all, they're only carrying on with our rich heritage of death and destruction...

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