HEADLINES

4/11/10

COUP IN KYRGYSTAN: A CRISIS FOR THE U.S. MAY BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR RUSSIA. The future of Manas Air Base, described as "vital" to the U.S. operation in Afghanistan, is clouded by Russian insistence, as a condition of their support of the new government, that it shut down Manas, as it is argued that only Russia should have any bases in the country. Recognizing that its U.S. base is its sole "card" to be played in the world geo-political game, coup leaders are reluctant to redeem the "pledge" to close the base that they allegedly gave to Russia.

Websites:

Anti-war.com: 

http://antiwar.com/  

Information Clearing House:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Citizen Soldier, challenging U.S. militarism:

http://www.anti-bases.org/

Abolition 2000 (against nuclear weapons):

http://www.abolition2000.org/  

Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition:

http://www.anti-bases.org/  

National Missle Defense: The Arctic Dimension:

http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/SEEJ/NMD/index.htm  

Student Counter Recruitment:

http://www.traprockpeace.org/counter_recruitment/

On weapons in space:
http://www.spacewar.com/news/miltech-05c.html http://www.space.com/news/050617_space_warfare.html http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsControl/Space.asp

Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space:

http://www.space4peace.org/

World and U.S.  military spending:

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/spendersfy04.html http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

Militarized globalism and empire:

http://www.comw.org/qdr/empire.html

Institute for Policy Studies on Nuclear Security:

http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/nuclear/index.htm

Arms Control Association:

http://www.armscontrol.org/

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Nuclear proliferation issues:

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/npp/

Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy:

http://www.lcnp.org/

U.S. military expenditures, compared with other countries

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-US-world.php http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904504.html

World and U.S.  military spending:

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/spendersfy04.html http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

National Defense Strategy of USA (2005 document):

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/dod/nds-usa_mar2005.htm

Military recruitment and No Child Left Behind:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=No_Child_Left_Behind_Act http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2002/11/ma_153_01.html

Center for Defense Information:   http://www.cdi.org/

Small Arms and Light Weapons (CDI) http://www.cdi.org/program/index.cfm?programid=23

Analysis & views:

4/11/10

COUP IN KYRGYSTAN: A CRISIS FOR THE U.S. MAY BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR RUSSIA. The future of Manas Air Base, described as "vital" to the U.S. operation in Afghanistan, is clouded by Russian insistence, as a condition of their support of the new government, that it shut down Manas, as it is argued that only Russia should have any bases in the country. Recognizing that its U.S. base is its sole "card" to be played in the world geo-political game, coup leaders are reluctant to redeem the "pledge" to close the base that they allegedly gave to Russia.

4/7/10

NEW U.S. "NUCLEAR STRATEGY": MESSAGE IN A MUSHROOM CLOUD. A new "Nuclear Posture Review" is issued and it establishes a distinction between a lightening of the threat of nuclear deterrence for most countries of the world, pointedly exempting the countries of Iran and North Korea, These "outliers" to the world community of nations, said to be engaged in dangerous programs of nuclear weapons development, are given a blunt message that they may expect nuclear retaliation if they persist. Republican hard-liners complain that this message is not quite blunt and persuasive enough

3/31/10

"THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE ARMS CONTROL AGREEMENT IN NEARLY TWO DECADES." That is President Obama's characterization of the nuclear disarmament agreement he just reached (subject to U.S. Senate approval, which is doubtful) with Russia. That is the good news. The bad is that the agreement is only a "comprehensive flicker" which leaves untouched, for example, the issue of American missile defense emplacements in eastern Europe, a project once abandoned and now being revived.

3/22/10

SINCE THE EUROPEAN COLONIZERS LEFT, WHO'S IN CHARGE OF THE AFRICAN CONTINENT? THAT WOULD BE NATO AND AFRICOM. NATO is made up largely of former European colonizer nations plus the United States, and AFRICOM is a U.S. military command embracing 52 African countries, heavily influenced in its set up by the current U.S. National Security Advisor, General James Jones. The intervention du jour of these forces involves the airlifting of Ugandan troops to the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, where the "transitional govement" there, like that Hamid Karzai in Kabul, is trying desperately to gain control of "their" city from insurgents.

3/16/10

MILITARIZATION OF DIEGO GARCIA TAKES AN OMINOUS TURN. The British territorial island in the Indian Ocean, forcibly de-populated of its native people in the l960s and 1970s, has become a teeming garrison of military installations of the U.K. and the U.S.A. Now, according to international military watchdogs, the U.S. is bringing to the island "bunker-buster" types of bombs fitted to stealth bombers based on the island, aimed at threatening to attack if not actually attack Iran for its alleged effort to develop nuclear weapons.

3/5/10

CAN JAPAN SAY "NO" TO THE U.S. ON THE MATTER OF U.S. MILITARY BASES? For 65 years, the answer to that question would be "no" as the U.S. has kept bases on Japanese soil used in Viet Nam and Korea, among other military operations. This may be changing, as a new and less pro-American government has been installed in Japan, and this government is now showing strong resistance to the U.S. plan to re-locate and re-furbish the now-decrepit base at Futenma in Okinawa.

3/3/10

ACCOUNTABILITY 101. As school accountability in Rhode Island is enforced with a whole teaching staff being fired for the "shoddy" educational performance of its students, Kellogg, Brown and Root, under suspicion for "shoddy" electrical work in Iraq, gets new $2.8 billion contract for support of troops in Iraq, a one-year contract with options to extend as late as 2015, when U.S. troops should long since have left Iraq.

2/28/10

ROCKETS' RED GLARE: HOW U.S. CULTURE (AND LABOR MARKET STRUCTURE) FEEDS THE COUNTRY'S MILITARISM. New Mexico peace activist Lauri Kellio notes the prevalence of patriotic displays at sporting events and the glorification of military people for their "sacrifices" on behalf of the country's "freedom." On the structural side, Kellio cites a study showing that the U.S. labor market maintains an unusually high ratio of "protection" workers (corrections officials, police forces, etc.) as compared to "threat" workers, the rest of the work force whose behaviors are kept under control in the interest of public law and order, an occupation that translates easily to the discipline associated with military life.

2/27/10

ROBERT GATES: "LASTING PEACE" DEPENDS ON WESTERN NATIONS BEING CONTINUOUSLY PREPARED FOR MILITARY CONFLICT. In the face of impending European defections from support of the NATO operation in Afghanistan, the Secretary of Defense takes a leaf from the teleprompter of the Commander in Chief's Nobel Prize speech and says that the "de-militarization" of Europe threatens the peace of world, as it may lead them to follow Dutch example in withdrawing from Afghanistan.

2/25/10

COME FLY WITH US! FLORIDA SETS UP "MILITARY ADVOCACY COUNCIL" TO TRY TO BRING MORE MILITARY BASES TO FLORIDA. Former House Speaker Allen Bense in appointed chair of the Council, whose mission is to lobby for "military-related legislation" to encourage the federal government to locate more of its facilities in the state. As the council has just formed, Bense doubts it will have much influence on the legislative session that begins next week. (If the legislature is serious about promoting off-shore oil drilling, they might want to respond to the issue that such drilling could interfere with offshore operations of just such military facilities.)

2/20/10

U.S. is experiencing much dissatisfaction, locally and in Japan, for its plan to move a military base from one location on Okinawa to another.

2/19/10

Enough nations of the world, not including the U.S., have approved a convention banning cluster munitions.

2/17/10

U.S. ACCOUNTS FOR "ONLY" 68.4% OF WORLD ARMS SALES; PENTAGON WANTS U.S. TO BE MORE "COMPETITIVE." Frida Berrigan reviews what amounts to a monopoly market place in arms, as the U.S. exports weapons at 10 times the market share of its nearest "competitors," Italy and Russia. This contrasts with the market before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 when U.S. arms sales were $12.1 compared to the Soviets' $10.7 billion. Still with the U.S. already selling $37.8 billion per year in weapons to countries around the word, the Pentagon hopes to enhance those sales with development of shiny new age weapons that can be sold to the profit of arms dealers in the U.S. and around the world.

2/8/10

JAPAN GETTING A LITTLE MEAN ABOUT ITS "KINDNESS BUDGET" TO SUPPORT U.S. MILITARY FORCES ON OKINAWA. Kindness budget is the euphemism for the longstanding government policy to subsize these forces, to the tune of $2 billion per year. With the Democratic Party of Japan having assumed political control last year, a new era of less than good feeling between the Japanese and American governments has brought the kindness budget under severe criticism. (U.S. says give us $6 billion for "relocation" costs and we'll move our forces to Guam.)

2/6/10

Russian defense expert sees natural security threat to Russia in new U.S. plan to install a missile defense shield in Romania.

2/4/10

PAYING MORE AND GETTING LESS. U.S. HEALTH CARE? NO, THE BUDGET AND THE STRATEGIC PLANS OF THE PENTAGON. Five year plans for budget and strategy are released on the same day by the Pentagon. Calling this day, February 1, 2010, a day that will "live in infamy," defense analyst Franklin Spinney takes the Pentagon to the woodshed for a thorough thrashing, featuring one of a myriad of ways in which he believes the agency went "intellectually AWOL" with these documents. He focusses on a glaring failure: in the disconnect between the strategy articulated in the Quadrennial Defense Review and the budget allocations in the parallel document, especially the factor of the "aging" of weapons that makes their retention an increasingly expensive proposition over time for the U.S. government.

1/26/10

THE MOST PUBLIC "SECRET" WAR OF MODERN TIMES. Nick Turse so describes the current escalation of drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistani, as the Central "Intelligence" Agency conducts these military operations with unprecedented frequency. The Pentagon is fully engaged with the program and its upcoming Quadrennial Review, which projects the years-ahead military plans of the U.S. features the further development of drones as the weapon of choice of the times.

1/22/10

WHO WOULD JESUS SHOOT? Charles Pena takes on this question after well-publicized discovery of biblical references imprinted on gunsights of rifles used by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Michigan-based manufacturer, Trijicon, responds to the furor over "Jesus rifles" by saying that this is simply an innocuous business practice, while critics say it only engenders Muslim hostility in messages implying that the U.S. is fighting a war against "infidel" Muslims. Pena says the bigger question is "what will the military do?" about the Jesus rifles; will they use their consumer power to demand that Trijicon not practice its usual consumer practices? (At this rate, we might even get a Heisman trophy winner doing a 30-second commercial for Focus on the Family with a bible verse reference under his eyes for broadcast at the Superbowl; Oh wait a minute, that's already coming up.)

1/21/10

PENTAGON LOBBYISTS WINE AND DINE THOSE CONGRESSIONAL JUNKETEERS WHO GO TO THE SCENES OF MILITARY OPERATIONS. ProPublica, a website for investigative journalism, reports on the "expense accounts" being offered to members of Congress who visit Iraq and Afghanistan, typically around $7,000 per member, the funds distributed by the same lobbyists pushing for congressional approval of defense appropriations. Is a quid pro quo expected for these favors? Nah!

/1/20/10

A U.S. MILITARY COUP IN 2016? A VERY REAL POSSIBILITY WITH A "TO DO" LIST OF HOW TO AVOID IT. William Astore describes the numerous indications that, by the end of a hypothetical 8 years of the Obama administration, a senior retired military officer will ride into the presidency on a wave of militarism. He provides a tough but seemingly essential list of 10 things that will have to be done to avert this scenario.

1/8/10

LAST YEAR MORE U.S. SOLDIERS TOOK THEIR OWN LIVES THAN WERE KILLED IN COMBAT. With well over 300 suicides last year and maybe 5 times that many attempted ones, soldiers are showing severe stress of combat, with perhaps half suffering PTSD symptoms at some degree of severity. Further, the extended psychological effects of combat are shown in severe problems of adjustment in civilian life, with half the homeless people in Broward County FL being veterans.

1/6/10

China and Russia join U.S. as major arms suppliers for government of Yemen.

1/2/10

ARMS FOR ISRAEL AND OTHER COUNTRIES: MADE IN THE U.S.A. AND PAID FOR BY U.S. TREASURY IN THE FORM OF MILITARY AID. Generous aid contributions to countries like Israel, Egypt and Pakistan require the bulk of this money to be spent on purchases from U.S. defense industry. This little-known fact is brought to life in an article in an Australian newspaper

1/1/10

WELCOME TO 2010; AND ANOTHER YEAR OF THE CONTINUOUS WARFARE IN WHICH THE U.S. HAS BEEN INVOLVED FOR THE LAST TWO DECADES. Rick Rozoff reviews the history of military operations beginning with the Gulf War of 1991, through the "humanitarian intervention" in Yugoslavia in 1999, through 9/11 and its aftermath in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as many "side shows" such as U.S. involvement in violence in the likes of Colombia and Somalia; with a worldwide empire of military bases to promote further actions in pursuit of "U.S. interests." Yemen may be the next target or...

12/29/09

"PROBABLY, NO NATION IS RICH ENOUGH TO PAY FOR BOTH WAR AND CIVILIZATION. WE MUST MAKE OUR CHOICE, WE CANNOT HAVE BOTH." Emily Spence quotes Abraham Flexner in her grim look forward to a new year with the "certainty" of ever-expanding war as the world's powerful nations attempt to grab the resources of the weaker ones on any available self-justifying pretext. No amount of "war is peace" Orwellian Nobel Peace Prize rhetoric is going to change that reality.

12/20/09

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY LOVES YOU, MR. PRESIDENT---HERE IS THE $636 BILLION MILITARY SPENDING BILL YOU ASKED SANTA TO BRING YOU. (And there will be more to come since this won't cover your 30k troop escalation in Afghanistan). Senate joins House and votes the bill on an 88-10 count. One old Grinch named Russ Feingold is the only Democrat to spoil the act of party unanimity in signing the gift card.

12/17/09

HOUSE, WITH LITTLE DEBATE, PASSES $636 BILLION DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS BILL. By a "bi-partisan" vote of 395-34, House approves measure for funding of Iraqi and Afghan operations. The 34 opponents of the measure were also bi-partisan, with a few "anti-war Democrats" (like Kucinich and Grayson) opposing the war escalation, while some Republicans objected to the measure on "fiscal responsibility" grounds as well as the inclusion of unrelated appropriations which enjoy popularity with certain constituencies and could attract more votes to the bill. These included: "continued unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, a 65 percent health insurance subsidy for the unemployed, highway and transit funding, three provisions of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act and an act that shields doctors from a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments."

12/12/09

OBAMA AS PEACE-MAKER: THE WORDS AND THE ACTIONS. In his Nobel prize acceptance speech, Barack Obama affirmed his commitment to apply humane "standards" for military operations even with his insistence that war is sometimes a "necessary" resort among nations. Bill Moyers and Michael Winship comment on the "go figure" fact that the U.S. is one of the few nations of the world that has so far refused to sign on to a comprehensive ban on the use or even the stockpiling of land mines.

12/7/09

VETERANS' ADVOCATES SAY U.S. IS NOT PREPARED FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT FOR MEN AND WOMEN WOUNDED IN ESCALATED CONFLICT. While the Obama administration has proposed some expansions in health care treatment for veterans, advocates say these measures are not adequate to provide adequate treatment of more wounded soldiers with Afghan escalation, as the VA system is already over-stressed.

11/24/09

U.S. is attempting to make up for setbacks in influence in Latin America by building military bases with "unprecedented" freedom of action in Colombia and other countries.

11/20/09

Use of child soldiers in Somalia continues despite the country's ratification of a UN pact against the practice.

11/17/09

COULD "MILITARY KEYNESIANISM" PROPEL THE U.S. INTO EXPANDED MILITARY OPERATIONS? This is the suggestion of the Washington's Blog, writing for Global Research. Ever since the decline of the Cold War, influential writers and Presidents and members of Congress have advocated defense spending as an antidote to the nation's economic woes, as such spending is alleged to "create jobs" that improve the economy. The Blog's own analyses dispute the economic stimulus potential of defense spending but that doesn't stop a Virginia member of Congress from lobbying vigorously for a defense spending measure for what it could "do for Virginia" in terms of job creation and tax revenues.

10/21/09

Effects of Gulf War use of depleted uranium weapons in producing dead and deformed babies is show in graphic words and photo.

10/20/09

THE FOG OF MILITARY RECRUITMENT; THE PENTAGON LAYS IT DOWN THICKLY. Kelley Vlahos notes how the Pentagon covers its recruitment difficulties by first lowering its recruitment targets before it announces them having been exceeded in "historic" fashion. It also obscures some likely reasons for whatever recruitment success it has enjoyed: its ability to recruit from the economic desperation of the unemployed associated with the recession, and the panic as well of undocumented immigrants for securing green cards along with their military id cards. All this fog is, Vlahos believes, being put down in order to promote the Pentagon's effort to assure the President that they have the personnel essential to supporting the escalation of troop strength in Afghanistan that they are promoting.

10/15/09

RETURNING TO OMAHA BEACH 50 YEARS LATER....ER, MAKE THAT RETURNING TO NORMANDY BASE IN DILAYA PROVINCE IRAQ 2 YEARS LATER. In the famous naming practice of the U.S. military, it is running an Operation Proper Exit by means of which soldiers wounded in Iraq are returned to the scene of their wounding where they are reassured of the importance of their "sacrifice" as they see how well things are now going (lack of ongoing casualities) in the now (somewhat) pacified area. The Army's surgeon general and Iraqi commanders praise the program for bringing much needed "closure" to these wounded warriors.

10/9/09

WITH "VAGUE VETO THREATS" HANGING IN THE AIR, HOUSE APPROVES MASSIVE DEFENSE EXPENDITURES BILL. The House by 281-146 vote appropriates even more money than the President had requested, including an "alternative" weapons system to the F-35 fighter plane that Obama had threatened to veto. The bill also contains a provision that could affect the transfer of detainees from Guantanomo to the U.S. mainland and a "hate crimes" provision for dealing with crimes victimized because of their sexual orientation or gender. (Most but not all members of the Progressive Caucus voted for the measure.

THE VOTE:

10/9/09

AFRICOM, U.S. military command in Africa, has achieved a deep penetration of African military forces.

10/1/09

IS THE NEXT DELICACY IN AMERICAN CUISINE TO BE "FREEDOM POTATO SALAD?" This prospect is raised by a William Blum article in which he points to U.S. and NATO impatience with the scope of German support for the "enduring freedom" project in Afghanistan. As a British NATO officer complained to a German officer: "Every weekend we send home two metal coffins, while you Germans distribute crayons and woollen blankets." However, Blum notes, Germany is quickly being cured of its damnable "pacificism" as dramatized in the episode when a German NATO unit called in an air strike on a stalled fuel tanker in which 100 Afghan civilians were killed. Helluva job, Hans!

9/30/09

IRAN AS A NUCLEAR THREAT: A LITTLE REALITY CHECK PLEASE. As U.S. pushes for UN sanctions against Iran for its supposed development of nuclear weapons capability, Jack A. Smith offers this reality assessment. ln fact, the "talks" that are supposed to address the issue are being restricted to the question of whether Iran's perfectly legal nuclear development is intended for offensive use against other nations, with no evidence at all that this is the case. Iran says it is willing to discuss the issue in the perspective of an international arms control program, but the U.S. resists this because it would raise the matter of three of its allies, Israel, Pakistan, and India---all of whom possess such weapons---not to mention the matter of U.S. failure to curb its own nuclear weapons stockpiles.

9/4/09

ENOUGH OF AMERICAN MILITARISM ON STEROIDS; WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GARY COOPER? Retired USAF officer William Astore reflects on the glorification of patriotism and the military, reflected in every thing from flag waving to military "action figures" for kids to bombastic "air shows" that show off aerial hardware. Treating steroidal militarism as an addiction, Astore proposes an 8 step program for recovery in a move to return the country to an earlier era in which the country had quiet heroes like Gary Cooper and Audie Murphy who didn't need Rambo-like personality expressions.

8/25/09

INTRODUCING THE NEW CZARINA OF BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM. Tara O'Toole has a high profile career of promoting biological weapons development in their "dual use" as both defense against terorism and possible offensive use. She also had a role in promoting a Bush-administration era law exempting vaccines manufacturers from liability for failure of their products. As the new under-secretary for bio-terrorism in the Homeland Security Department, she is well positioned to orchestrate the looming vaccination response to the swine flu pandemic, which is now being touted as the gravest public health problem in the world.

8/24/09

LIFE IMITATES ART: HERE COMES THE TERMINATOR GENERATION OF U.S. MILITARY WEAPONS. Current planning in the Pentagon entails the drastic scaling down of weapons such as the F-22 Raptor fighter plane which Secretary Gates says was designed for 20th century warfare with a "near peer" enemy (meaning one with some air or anti-aircraft power of its own) in favor of fully automated weapons systems. Already the Air Force is training more personnel to be console operators for drone aircraft than as actual air pilots. Off we go, into the wild blue (oh, never mind).

8/10/09

ECHO PLATOON AT FT. BRAGG: FROM LOOMING INSANITY TO COMBAT RE-DEPLOYMENT. The 82nd Airborne headquarters has a holding company in which apprehended AWOL soldiers are held in draconian conditions for long periods of time without charges and are eventually offered a "way out" by admitting their "mistake" and being re-deployed to combat zones. A spokeswoman for the 82nd justifies this practice as a rare "opportunity" for soldiers to rehabilitate themselves.

8/9/09

FAST TIMES FOR DALLAS-FORT WORTH MILITARY RECRUITERS. Discouraged by a lack of jobs in a recessionary economy and enticed by post-service schooling opportunity assistance, suburban youth are flocking to the recruiting offices. As a Texas professor says, "a bad economy is always good for recruiting."

8/7/09

DID TRUMAN DO THE RIGHT THING IN DROPPING THE ATOMIC BOMB 64 YEARS AGO? Historians may debate whether 220,000 Japanese deaths were militarily "necessary," but American public opinion at large is decidedly in the affirmative on this question, with roughly 60% saying Truman made the right decision, 20% thinking he made a "mistake" and 20% undecided, including no doubt a number who said "duh, what are Hiroshima and Nagasaki?." Approval rates among blacks stand at only 34%, that of young adults at only 50%.

8/7/09

KAMIKAZE SEX: THE MORAL RELATIVITY OF THE SUICIDE BOMBER. Today's condemnation of jihadist suicide bombers who attack military or civilian targets is examined by John Feffer against the background of a long history of "sacrificial" acts for the promotion of a cause, which may be seen as despicable acts of terrorism when committed by an enemy, of heroic martryrdom if committed by those on one's own side of a conflict. This is shown, for example, in a World War II film which depicts a woman crossing from U.S. to Japanese lines of battle with a semi-naked pose that drew enemy soldiers to her side, only to have her blow up herself and the soldiers with a bomb.

8/4/09

BIGGER TOYS FOR BIG BOYS: PENTAGON SALIVATES OVER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOTHER OF THE MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS. The Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency seeks to reduce "threats" from Iran and North Korea by a planned upgrade in the firepower of its bunker-buster munitions, replacing the 21,000 pound bomb (the "mother") tested in Florida in 2003 with a mother of that mother, a 30,000 lb bomb with 10 times the power of the bunker buster currently being used. (You know, Iran may be concealing its nuclear facilities underground.) Of course Congress has to approve this Strangelove fascination with "the bomb," but that has never been an impediment to any weapons the Pentagon has requested.

8/3/09

THE NOBLE BRUTUS HATH TOLD YOU THAT CAESAR WAS AMBITIOUS. Gabriel Kolko, billed by Z-net as "the leading historian of modern warfare" pulls a Marc Anthony redux by arguing that the wars in which America has been involved have resulted from the foreign policy decisions of "ambitious" persons whose career advancement depended on the promotion of war enterprises. The current problem, as Kolko sees it, is that these ambitious men and women are restricted in opportunities for expression of these ambitions since, after the fall of communism, they have had to struggle to find actionable targets or "enemies" either from other world powers or from the suppression of upstart aspirations from Third World countries on which, in the current global economy, they are very dependent for economic support. Hence their restless search for "new enemies" like a nuclear-armed Iran or an aggressive North Korea.

7/31/09

"AN UNPRECEDENTED NETWORK OF MILITARY BASES THAT IS STILL EXPANDING. Catherine Lutz surveys the range of U.S. military bases in operation around the world, the existence and expansion of which betrays the rhetoric of the Obama administration that the U.S. will leave a smaller footprint of imperial dominance in the world.

7/23/09

Arms dealer Hillary Clinton peddles her wares in India:. To the relief of the Indian government, which had feared that the new U.S. administration would be less friendly in nuclear deal between the two countries negotiated three years ago, the Secretary of State sets up her arms bazaar in New Delhi. She begins implementation of process of U.S. furnishing nuclear components for Indian weapons, and arranges a possible sale of 100 fighter planes that will be a $20 billion boon to American defense industry and an Excedrin headache for the rest of the world

6/13/09

"Nancy's working with it "  For the first time ever, a supplemental war appropriations measure is in serious doubt of approval in the House as anti-war Democrats and fiscally conservative Republicans and blue dog Democrats oppose passage.  While the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are engaged in hardball pressure to "peel off" some of the opposition among progressive Democrats, those like Lynn Woolsey and Dennis Kucinich are standing fast in opposition and urging their colleagues to listen to the views of their constituents.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/140610/white_house_browbeats_dem_freshmen_on_war_money%3A_%27you%27ll_never_hear_from_us_again%27/

6/10/09

Congress making "just another ham sandwich" out of Secretary of Defense Gates:.  Although Gates made brave noises about how "pork" was going to eliminated by downsizing or eliminating questionable items in the defense budget like the F-22 fighter plane, he goes into hibernation as members of Congress get ready to heap this pork into the impending budget.

http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler06092009.html

6/10/09

What to do when you face a cyber disaster? Appoint a cyber "czar", of course!:!  Frida Berrigan shows how the U.S. government is promoting terror in the population about further use of the internet for crimes and for breaches of national security, using tools that President Obama calls "weapons of mass disruption." Not content with efforts to protect these facilities from cyber-attack, the Pentagon now sees the offensive potential  of cyber-war and prepares its own manual on how these facilities might be used in the never-ending project of American "dominance."  Geek-oriented businesses see another opportunity for fat contracts in supplying these defensive and offensive demands.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175081/frida_berrigan_downloading_disaster

5/26/09

Sergeant John Russell may have been yet another product of a demoralizing system of military "psychiatry."  Actions of the soldier who killed 5 of the people trying to "help" him at a mental health clinic recalls for Howard Lisnoff his own Catch 22-like efforts to use the military psychiatric system to avoid service in the Vietnam War, to which he had conscientiously objected.  Like Heller's Yossarian, Lisnoff (and perhaps Russell) found that the sole function of a military psychiatrist is to return stressed soldiers to combat duty.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21542

5/26/09

Grassroots grieving: Memorial Day report from Tuscaloosa.:.  Alabama couple who lost their Marine Corps son in Iraq three years ago organizes their own local group of aggrieved families and have engaged in various activities to honor their fallen children.  These include an annual award at an elementary school to a student who best exemplifies "respect for the flag, respect for the military, respect for authority and leadership qualities."  This year's recipient is a 5th-grader who hopes to grow up to be a Marine, whose future combat death yet other mothers and fathers may grieve.

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20090524/NEWS/905239918/1062/SPORTS01?Title=Memorial-Day-hard-for-those-left-behind

5/21/09

Not like your grandfather's war with bayonets fixed and toe-to-toe confrontations with the enemy, today's wars are increasingly fought (by the nations that have them) with drones, robots and other video-game type weapons.  While this type of warfare may be militarily effective, it is being questioned both ethically, in the observation that countries with such lethal weapons are more likely to use them when they are not deterred by injury in close combat; and pragmatically, as their use may have unwanted "consequences" such as inflaming the anger of people of the Middle East who see themselves being bombarded in what they perceive as a "cowardly" way.

http://thewip.net/contributors/2009/05/remote_warfare_radically_chang.html

5/18/09

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: IS PAKISTAN INCREASING ARMS STOCKPILE BY DIVERTING U.S. MILITARY FUNDS TO COUNTER-TERRORISM?  This is the spectre that is haunting Congress as private briefings include information that Pakistan is stockpiling nuclear arms even as it is fighting a counter-insurgency that supporters of military aid are saying is necessary to prevent "militants" from getting hold of nuclear weaponns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/world/asia/18nuke.html?_r=1&hp

5/14/09

San Francisco school board votes to reinstate JROTC. The program, banned in 2006 on grounds that it militarized schools and that the military is not gay-friendly, is re-instated in 4-3 vote after emotional Board  meeting. A comment (5/13/09 3:11 PM) to this article suggests that SF may be a harbinger for the U.S., considering the JROTC-promoting activity in Chicago of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who enjoys the power for distribution to schools of much "stimulus funding;"

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/13-4

4/25/09

"Stop arming Israel" campaign has made some headway in Britain:.  After Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006 a campaign was undertaken against the government's policy of massive arms shipments to Israel.  Now, the British government is "reviewing" the policy and SAI campaigners are celebrating  victory

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10482.shtml

4/8/09

Defense Secretary Gates unveils much-anticipated "fundamental shift" military budget, and it involves an upward climb in overall defense spending, but a shift from "big war" items like the F-22 fighter to "counter-insurgency" ones like the F-35 as well as a doubling of number of those Predator drones that are currently terrorizing Pakistan.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46416

4/8/09

WHEN ANTHROPOLOGISTS EMBED WITH MILITARY UNITS, THERE MAY RESULT AN AFFAIR MADE IN HELL, BUT YOU WOULD HARDLY KNOW THAT FROM MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE SITUATION.  A "concerned anthropologist," David Price, comments on the military's Human Terrain System, which program is being touted for expansion by President Obama.  HTS supposedly adds "cultural understanding" of people in occupied countries to the consciousness of military people in their efforts to win "hearts and minds" of these people.  While the media tend to praise these efforts at "soft" power development, professional anthropologists like Price document the ethical abuses that occur when this "cultural" information is actually used by the military in killing or capturing the bodies of those who resist their occupations.

http://www.counterpunch.org/price04072009.html

3/21/09

Will the U.S. have to trigger another war to stave off its economic collapse?: This is the suggestion of a writer for the Russian newspaper Pravda, asserting that the U.S. economy was rife for such a collapse around 2000 and that only the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 averted for the time that imminent collapse.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22256.htm

3/1/09

"A sort of Tiananmen Square standoff in the water s of Kauai.":."  Nation writers Jerry Mander and Koohan Paik recount the saga of the plan to open a Superferry in Hawaiian Island waters, supposedly to carry tourists and papyas from island to island, but with a board of directors dominated by military financiers and former Pentagon officials that suggested the operation was an opening wedge to expansion of U.S. Navy operations in the Pacific.  The conservative Republican governor of Hawaii helped these forces in securing ferry exemptions from environmental impact regulations, and it was up to a group of surfers and swimmers, in a "Tiananmen Square" moment of swimming and surfing near the ferry's propellers to effectively ground the Kauai Island operation of the ferry.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090316/mander_paik?rel=hp_currently 

2/17/09

Expanded U.S. mission in Afghanistan? Look at the stress that puts on U.S. soldiers:.   Colonel Daniel Smith says President Obama should look very closely at recommendations of military leaders for such expansion of troop levels in the country.  He should look at such indicators of soldier welfare as the rising tide of suicide among soldiers already stationed there, and the requirement of huge packages of personal armament required to fight against a guerilla insurgency in a high alttitude situation.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/dsmith.php?articleid=14251

2/4/09

Popular resistance to U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan leads to government attempt to close it

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7868586.stm

2/3/09

Defense spending: Wake up and smell the rip-off:.  This is the message of Chalmers Johnson, urging public accountability of the Pentagon for its bloated budgets in which a trillion dollars a year (give or take a hundred billion or so) is spent largely on poorly designed and unnecessary weapons systems.  The self-sustaining military culture of budget promotion behind this "rip off" is epitomized in the suggestion of Admiral Mullen, JCS Chief, that the defense budget be automatically adjusted to the level of the country's gross national product; never mind any trivial assessments of need for funding.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/124881/america_is_completely_broke%2C_and_here_we_are_funding_fantasy_wars_at_the_pentagon/

1/29/09

Russia takes Europe out of sights of its missiles in hopes that U.S. will abandon its "missile shield" program in eastern Europe.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/russia-calls-off-plan-for-missiles-in-europe-1519088.html

1/28/09

Stimulate the economy by an expansion of the military budget?  Don't even go there, says military analyst Winston Wheeler.  Any hope of a jump-start of new jobs creation will be frustrated by the months-to-years process of preparation to produce new weapons systems such two fighter aircraft designs now being considered.

http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler01272009.html

1/15/09

Are America's financial meltdown and the militarization of the country related events?:   Peter Dale Scott analyzes this possibility, based on the following "coincidence" of developments.  In September 2008 members of Congress were warned that, if they did not pass the bailout bill, civil disturbance might result in the ensuiing chaos, making necessary the instituting of martial law.  At the same time the U.S. Army was pursuing its plan for re-deployment of a unit stateside with a constitutionally-questionable mission to be prepared to deal with ruptures in domestic tranquillity.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11681

12/28/08

HOW THE U.S.MILITARY FIGHTS A MERCENARY WAR: LAVISH RECRUITMENT EXPENSES ON THE FRONT END, SCRIMPING ON VETERANS SERVICES AS THE "KIDS" RETURN HOME. North Carolina activist William Collins comments on the way the military uses alluring promises of bonuses and college educations to recruit a "volunteer" army; and how its meagre veterans services preserves the "bottom line."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/27-1

12/13/08

AFRICOM: command in search of a mission: A New York Times reporter files his report "live" from a "remote" corner of  West Africa, Mali, where American Green Berets in this country and 9 surrounding ones are engaged  in a multi-country exercise to help Mali and other countries to stave off a supposedly growing Islamic militancy in these countries, on the rationale that the U.S. avoids fighting Al Qaeda in America by opposing it in Africa. The State Department's A.I.D. program kicks in by setting up radio towers for the transmission of anti-terrorist "information" and another program to encourage Muslim teachers to avoid promoting jihad as well as job training for young Muslim men and small business opportunites for Muslim women.  A Green Beret colonel admits about the program that  “This is crawl, walk, run, and right now, we’re still in the crawl phase.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/world/africa/13mali.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

12/11/08

Mr. Kissinger, you're no Bertrand Russell:.  Why have a group of "former Cold Warrior elites" like Henry Kissinger, George P. Schultz and Sam Nunn coalesced around a "nuclear weapons-zero" call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons?  Manuel Garcia Jr. ponders this question as he contrasts the "new" opposition to nuclear weapons on a pragmatic basis of their harm to world capitalism and imperialism to the "old" Bertrand Russell style opposition on "humanitarian" grounds of their harm to mankind and their promotion of imperialism.  He also offers a "psychological" explanation of the need of these old war-horses of political power to burnish their fading careers by finding updated "causes" that will get them again to the front of public attention.  He mentions Jimmy Carter and Al Gore as other examples.

http://www.counterpunch.org/mango12102008.html  

12/5/08

New UN treaty bans cluster munitions used against civilians in occupied territories; will that help the people of southern Lebanon?: Apparently the treaty would not ban such usage in a region of de facto "occupation" like areas in Lebanon adjacent to Israel where, since the war between the two countries in 2006, Israel has been launching numerous cluster munitions attacks into that part of Lebanon.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44992

12/1/08

"We want to make sure the parameters are right for Iraq and Afghanistan" ...says a Pentagon spokesman of the Fort Stewart deployment of 4,700 members of the Army's 1st Combat Brigade, available for duty since October 1 for "domestic emergencies." The spokesman suggests that these troops"will have some very aggressive training, but will also be home for much of that."  This may provide a model for the 20,000 such troops planned for this mission by 2011, the military having its cake while its soldiers eat it, alternating their deployment between overseas combat hot spots and a period of "rest" and "very aggressive training" while they are stateside.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002217_pf.html

11/29/08

Active benefit claims of veterans found in a VA shredder?  This is only the tip of a very large iceberg, says Jason Leopold, of a pervasive "culture of dishonesty" in the Veterans Administration that has resulted in lengthy delays in the ability of veterans to complete disability claims upon their return from combat.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/11/culture-of-dishonesty-at-department-of-veterans-affairs/  

11/22/08

ON 45th ANNIVERSARY OF JFK ASSASSINATION: COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN?  Of course "it" could, says SSA editor, longtime assassination research, noting that "it" has happened innumerable times, before and after the events of 11/22/63, in acts of atrocity designed by their perpetrators to provoke retaliatory military action against people or countries identified as being "behind" these provocative actions.  Therein may lie the danger to any popular leader, an assault on whom is guaranteed to produce strong emotional reaction against the supposed perpetrators.

http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/index.php?p=91

11/10/08

"That's an absolute slap in our face. It's a federal holiday. We're taking it personally.": American Legion commander in Palm Beach County FL reacts to school board's decision not to close schools on Veterans' Day, a national holiday.  School board defends its action, saying holding school on V Day (as well as election day) allows schools to complete their first semester before Christmas. Besides, says the board, the schools "honor" veterans with many in-school observances.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/schools/sfl-flpschoolvets1109pnnov10,0,7196658.story

11/3/08

Why do the British continue to visit the "killing fields" of World WarI?  Rather than consigning the war to the dustbin of history's record of anachronistic conflicts like the Crimean War, Britons have shown a resurgent interest in visiting, on the European continent, the battlefields in which so many of their countrymen died.  What is it that still resonates for Britons in a war that ended 90 years ago?  Perhaps the still-relevant struggle in western peoples' conscience between an idealistic war that was to "end all wars" (but only started a series of similar ones); and the technological development of instruments of mass destruction which grind under any humanly hopeful outcomes to the conflicts of then and now.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-killing-fields-of-the-first-world-war-979730.html

10/25/08

Want a larger and better equipped U.S. military? Vote for McCain (or Obama):   Defense analyst finds the military defense views of the two candidates "remarkably similar" though they differ slightly in their plans to "use" such forces

http://www.kansascity.com/449/story/854292.html

10/19/08

Junior ROTC in San Francisco public schools is a subject of intense public interest.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1016/p01s01-usgn.html  

10/14/08

If the U.S. is going to be the world's policeman, it's going to need a bigger military force:.  This is the gist of the recommendations by the Secretary of Defense and other military experts, operating on the assumption that the wars of the future for the American military will be "counter-insurgency" conflicts like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, which can pop almost anywhere in the world that there are "failing" states in need of "stabilization."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1014/p03s05-usmi.html

10/9/08

Naomi Wolf raises the specter of a military coup in the United States:.  She notes a Congressman's statement during debate on the bailout bill that some of his colleagues had been threatened with "martial law" if they voted against the bill.  The decision to deploy a brigade of the 3rd Infantry Divsion for "crowd control" in domestic emergencies is seen by her as an unconstitutional use of military power by the President, and advocates impeachment and possibly civil disobedience if U.S. soldiers were required to do something as drastic as to arrest members of Congress for their votes on legislation.

http://www.countercurrents.org/wolf081008.htm

10/1/08

Africa doesn't want AFRICOM, and Congress isn't too thrilled about it either:.  The Pentagon plans to begin today its project of consolidating humanitarian, development and military operations in Africa under a single "command."  With no African country willing to host the headquarters of the command, deeply suspected as being an instrument of American dominance on the continent, its headquarters is located in Stuttgart Germany and Congress severely slashes President Bush's request for its funding.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/117/story/53234.html 

9/29/08

"If we cannot cut back our longstanding, ever increasing military spending in a majir way, then the bankruptcy of the United States is inevtiable.": Chalmers Johnson reflects on the futility of the band-aid bailout efforts of the U.S. political establishment, noting that our excessive and counter-productive expenditure on unnecessary and counter-productive military weapons and adventures is creating a resource depletion from which no bailout will be possible.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174982/chalmers_johnson_the_pentagon_bailout_fraud

9/8/08

Under U.S. pressure, India gets a "waiver" from international nuclear control agency that critics say will bring India into the mainstream of world nuclear proliferation.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43818  

9/4/08

"Majority of the world's nations" expected to sign agreement to ban cluster bobms:   However, that "majority" does not include the world's greatest military powers, the United States, China and Russia nor, it seems, would it include Georgia which admitted the use of such weapons in their current conflict with Russia, which has denied but apparently used cluster munitions.

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=327414

8/31/08

Minot, one of our classified launch components is missing.  "Security" at the missile base in North Dakota continues to be a problem as Air Force officials fire or re-assign personnel on charges ranging from sexual abuse of a woman officer, to custodians of missile components sleeping on the job to admissions of officers that they took home, after claiming they had destroyed them, band-aid sized launch components, one of which is still missing.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/28/national/main4392286.shtml

8/22/08

FDR said as he took the U.S. into World War II: "I hate war."   To the contrary, says Paul Farrell: based on their behavior if not their words, Americans love war, as reflected in everything from their obsession with war video games to their "bomb, bomb, bomb" encouragements to their presidential candidates.  All this feeds the voracious appetite for conflict of the country's "outrageous war economy."

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/why-we-love-americas-outrageous/story.aspx?guid=0D31C880-32CD-4BA1-8133-329EA57CB069  

8/17/08

Russi'a invasion of Georgia is good business for U.S. arms makers.  According to article in Wall Street Journal, Russia's ground and air assaults in Ossetia have bolstered the faltering case of defense industry lobbyists pushing for "conventional" weapons like "flashy" jet fighters and large Navy destroyers in face of new consensus that "lighter" weapons are needed to fight insurgencies.  In general, the growing tension with Russia as well as China is creating a more congenial environment for U.S. expenditure on the flashy and the large.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121884933721146317.html?mod=googlenews_wsj  

8/17/08

Ukraine joins Poland as a former Soviet state signing on to U.S. and European defense systems.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/08/200881616378983539.html

8/8/08

Tear down these nuclear weapons, Mr. (next) President:.  Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's message to be delivered to the White House on inauguration day next January.  NAPF features such luminaries as Walter Cronkite and the Dalai Lama.   Its director, David Krieger, is critical of the nuclear disarmament views of both Obama and McCain, but considers their views as both more enlightened than those of Bush and expresses some "hope" in those of Obama.  As comments to the Common Dreams reprint of the article indicate, Krieger gives no attention at all to the much more forthright views on the subject of a "minor" candidate, Cynthia McKinney.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/07/10870/  

8/7/08

As China attempts to burnish its international image ahead of the Beijing Olympics, it is accused by an arms watchdog group of being a "supplier of last resort" to a number of repressive governments around the world.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43471  

8/3/08

"The scene is still in the assessment phase " says a U.S. Airforce officer in connection with another missile-related accident on Thursday in a rural area outside Minot ND as a truck carrying a rocket booster for a Minuteman III missile overturns, leaving the booster in a ditch where it remains 2 days later with no immediate indication of when the "assessment phase" will end.  Locals seem unconcerned about this latest indication of the kind of indifferent security for nuclear weapons that has marked Minot and the Air Force generally.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080802/ap_on_re_us/overturned_missile

7/31/08

Scottish members of UK Parliament object to government's plan to privatise services to the Trident nuclear base on the Clyde.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2413606.0.Plan_to_privatise_Coulport_nuclear_submarine_base_jobs.php  

7/26/08

Still another in a series of nuclear safety mishaps occurs at Minot Air Base in North Dakota when three Air Force officers, charged with protection of nation's nuclear launch codes, "fall asleep" and allow a component containing such codes to be moved and stored in unsafe place.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/24/missile.error/index.html

7/18/08

U.S. Air Force has a new strategy for pursuing the war on terrorism:.  Counter-terrorism funds have been used for luxury outfitting of "comfort capsules" on airplanes that ferry top military and civilian leaders around the world.  One Air Force document says that these should be:  "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," and a typical one is furnished with "beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror." Enjoy your flight, General, do you want a shave before we arrive?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071703161.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

7/7/08

This soldier has an "adjustment disorder," and isn't a post-traumatic stress disorder victim.  A Texas psychologist's direction to her staff to use the AD diagnosis because it's considered less severe than PTSD and because so many Iraqi and Afghan veterans are applying for compensation highlights a pervasive cover-up of soldier casualties by the military and the VA system.  This neglect of a mental health problem for veterans may be contributing to the fact, asserted by some critics, that more American veterans are dying by suicide than are being killed directly in combat.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/hidden-casualties/

7/5/08

"This is the first time the Poland has said "no" to the U.S.".  A Warsaw think tanker comments on Poland's refusal to accept U.S. missile shield emplacements without an increase in the level of U.S. support for upgrading Poland's military defense system.  This comes as Russia, which regards the missile shield program as an anti-Russian provocation, threatens to train its own missiles on Poland as well as the Czech Republic, which has also agreed "in principle" to accept the shield but whose parliament has yet to approve the project.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080704/wl_nm/shield_poland_usa_dc  

6/15/08

Ocala native won't enjoy Father's Day breakfast of runny eggs and half-cooked pancakes prepared by his on, age 5, as he's on Iraq deployment and the child and two younger siblings are home in Ocala.

http://www.ocala.com/article/20080615/NEWS/549777116/1025/NEWS&title=Ocala_native_sees_children_grow_up_from_war_zone  

6/4/08

110 world nations agree on a treaty to ban use of cluster munitions. Where is the U.S.A. on this?:   It's on the sidelines, refusing to participate in the Dublin conference and twisting the arms of its allies to weaken the treaty's terms.  A State Department official in charge of "Military Affairs" holds a press conference to "explain" the U.S. position.  Though his comments are somewhat incoherent, they seem to boil down to the idea that the U.S., as the self-appointed policeman of the world, must have such weapons available as an option in case of need in carrying out its constabulary duties, for example, if we were called on to "defend" Lebanon from an invasion from Syria, in which case we might want to add a layer of U.S. cluster munitions remnants to those left by Israel in Lebanon 2 years ago.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5270  

5/29/08

Dublin conference concludes with call for international treaty banning cluster munitions:   The six countries that are the world's leading producers and users of such munitions---Russia, China, the United States, Israel, India and Pakistan--boycotted the conference and the U.S. in particular "lobbied" against its allies joining the conference, which Britain for one ignored. Treaty promoters plan to go ahead without the support of these countries, hoping to "stigmatize" in world opinion the use of these weapons.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42554 

5/28/08

How will it be when George Bush leaves office next January?  Frida Berrigan says that his  "legacy" of an embedded Pentagon footprint on the world will live on as the realization of a neo-con dream that came to fruition after 9/11.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174936/frida_berrigan_the_pentagon_takes_over

5/23/08

Amy Goodman: The world arms race turns inexorably as the U.S. presidential race spins irrelevantly:. Based on her interview with Hans Blix, Goodman asserts that the proliferation of nuclear weapons and cluster munitions is proceeding as the presidential race ignores the issue.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/21/9128/

5/19/08

Hunger strike in Czech Republic opposes European Star Wars:.  Two leaders of Czech Humanist Movement spearhead a grassroots movement to force the government to accede to popular opposition to deployment of missile shield system.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/321593/no_european_star_wars

5/3/08

$150 Billion missile defense system: Oversight? What oversight?:  Pentagon officials appear before congressional defense spending "oversight" committees and are questioned about proof of the effectiveness of the system.  These officials tell the committees, in effect, that such tests are so deeply classified that the public will essentially have to "trust the Pentagon on this one."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/317407

5/3/08

When diaster capitalism becomes disaster militarism:.  U.S. General says military will have in place by this fall a "rapid response unit," brigade-sized, to move into action when there is a terrorism attack or other emergency.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61719&archive=true 

4/25/08

Over budget and behind schedule: More rule than exception for Pentagon construction projects: .  Delay in the actual completion of a Navy ship that was champagne-launched in 2006 highlights a pattern noted by GAO of very frequent such failures in military procurement processes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/us/25ship.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1209114556-XIWngCF4teNBOtNaLchUow&oref=slogin  

4/25/08

U.S. wants Syria to "come clean" about its nuclear weapons development as pictures of a facility raided by Israel last year are purported to show North Korean support for Syria's nuclear program.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7364269.stm  

4/22/08

"We're digging deeper into the barrel than we were before "  says a Pentagon official on news of a significant increase in military's offer of "conduct waivers" to allow recruitment of men and women with criminal backgrounds.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/21/AR2008042103295.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

4/14/08

U.S. soldiers account for 20% of all the suicides in the country:.  This is indicated in a report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using suicide rates for 2005 (as usual, the CDC is grievously tardy with its reports).  Lack of medical treatment for returned veterans, especially those requiring mental health treatment, is cited as a factor.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aqlUKTADVlAM&refer=home  

4/12/08

Hot pink balls at Guantanamo:.  Not a description of a new form of detainee torture, but of the golf balls used at the U.S. military golf course there, to distinguish the ball from the "barren" terrain.  The Guantanomo course is one that the Pentagon "forgets" when it cooks the books to minimize a pattern of hundreds of military golf courses worldwide, first exposed by William Proxmire in 1975.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/82009/  

4/12/08

Launching air strikes in Iraq from a console in Nebada: Recipe for escalating counter-force:    U.S. military practice, during ground combat operations, of "calling in" air strikes which are targeted from remote locations is a practice guaranteed to supply the country with an endless supply of newly recruited "enemies."  "Precision" strikes based on cyberspace surveillance are very likely to entail "mistakes" in the targeting of innocent civilians, anyone of whose surviving relatives are excellent recruiting material for jihad.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174917/oops_our_bad  

4/11/08

Bush cuts combat deployments to 12 months, but multiple deployments are likely to continue in the manpower stressed military.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0411/p01s07-usmi.html

4/9/08

Somebody close the door: There's a back door draft in here...:.  Forget about "stop loss" for a minute, Joshua Frank describes another way in which the U.S. "voluntary" military has become violative of the conditions of soldiers' enlistments.  To serve its crying needs for ground troops in Iraq, the Pentagon has diverted thousands of U.S. men and women who enlisted in the Navy and Air Force into combat situations which they never anticipated and for which they have been inadequately trained.  The comments on this post morph into a back-and-forth discussion of soldier war resistance generally and the actions specifically of Lt. Watada.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/that-other-military-draft/

4/4/08

Over Russian protests, NATO backs U.S. plan for missile shield defense implacements in Czech Republic and Poland.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7328915.stm  

3/22/08

"Collision of mourning and money " hits some relatives of U.S. war dead.  Having coped for a long time with a sense of neglect of themselves, many are having adjust to half million dollar cash settlements for their losses. For many, these sudden arrivals of "wealth" generate a kind of lottery winner syndrome: for those "lucky" enough to win. the "anomie" of abrupt changes in life style, demands and disappointments of friends and relatives who hoped for their generosity, the agony of decisions of how to spend funds that seem so bottomless, but for which the bottom can be discovered all too soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/nyregion/22benefits.html?th&emc=thd  

3/16/08

Lengthy deployments are beginning a previously little-known way of life for Florida National Guardsmen.

http://www.gainesvillesun.com/article/20080316/NEWS/803160322/1002/NEWS  

3/15/08

City of Berkely, CA stands up against military recrutiers and against a firestorm of right-wing condemnation of themselves as "counter-military": The City Council and the University of California have asked military recruitment stations to leave their premises. Ann Wright, who resigned from the State Department of 2003 in protest of the Iraqi war, says there is nothing unpatriotic about the Berkeley action nor of the counter-recruitment movement across the United States.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/14/7678/  

3/8/08

"The Pentagon keeps two sets of books" on wounded war veterans... says a critic of VA treatment of veterans' medical needs.  By separating those wounded "in combat" from the equal number of those wounded in "non-combat" situations (like accidental plane crashes), the severe under-funding of VA medical facilities can be justified. Because of this under-funding there is now a backlog of 400,000 veterans seeking treatment that they have so far not been able to obtain.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003721852

3/7/08

NYC military recruiters say their efforts will remain undeterred after an explosion rocks their recruiting station in Times Square.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0307/p02s02-usmi.html

3/4/08

Over U.S. objection China announces 18% increase in military budget.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7276277.stm  

3/3/08

A Tampa-based company leases hundreds of acres of forest and wet lands in Lake County Florida to be used by the U.S. military for combat training.  With such environmentally destructive projects as construction of landing pads for helicopters and a mock village for combat in cities training, Sierra Club and other conservationists are expressing concern.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-commando0308mar03,0,5348873.story 

3/2/08

The folks at Oak Ride are planning to build more nuclear bombs...But they're calling the plan "complex transformation."  A public hearing is held at Oak Ridge to begin a series of public meetings to present alternate plans, all of which would entail expanded production and most would call for a massive new plant, Y-12, at Oak Ridge or elsewhere.  Locals turn out in support of an expanded program and lobby for Y-12 location in Oak Ridge, citing the importance of jobs to the area.  In his article, Ron Jacobs describes the appearance of peace activists in opposition, some citing the hyprocisy of U.S. nuclear weapons expansion while hurling threats against Iran for even considering nuclear weapons production. Alert to activists: there will be further such hearings around the country before the April 13 announcement of the selected "plan."

http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs03012008.html

3/2/08

They didn't make it up for the movie "Atonement".  The landmines that killed the two lead characters on Dunkirk beach and in the London underground were but a tiny episode of a long history of inhumane consequences to human populations.  Robert Fisk  describes these practices across many times and peoples, citing Egyptians' reference to their "gardens of the devil" in which, as in parts of Lebanon, those evacuating an area have planted their bombs on tops of those planted by earlier evacuees, creating perennial gardens which "bloom" with lethal effects for many years to come.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-the-gardens-of-the-devil-still-sowing-death-790011.html  

2/23/08

What will the next president (McCain, Huckabee, Obama or Clinton) do about the bloated U.S. military budget?  Based on anything they've said in their respective campaigns, absolutely nothing, says William Hartung, noting that each of these candidates would maintain or even increase defense spending; and the needed "debate" on this subject is totally lacking in the campaign.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5009  

2/18/08

Daytona 500: "It's a very strong spot to connect with America":  Top recruiter so describes the recruitment opportunities opened to the army by its "Army Strong Zone" recruitment set-up on vendor's row outside turn 4 of the race. He cites the fact that 200,000 people from all over America come to the race, a favorable demographic for military recruitment

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD02021808.htm

2/18/08

U.S. military soldiers who give birth to children are likely to receive only brief maternity leaves and re-deployments while their babies are still very young.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/17/AR2008021702324.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

2/17/08

Did Saudi Arabia make terrorist threats to UK to stop investigation of bribery for arms sales?   This is the allegation in a UK court, as it is claimed that a Saudi Crown Prince threatened Britain with "another 7/7" by withholding intelligence information if the charges, since dropped, were pursued.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/15/bae.armstrade  

2/17/08

Russia accuses the U.S. of using its plan to shoot down a disabled spy satellite as a "cover" to test a missile capable of shooting down satellites of another country.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248995.stm

2/12/08

U.S. ARMY OFFICIAL "VERY DISTURBED" TO HEAR THAT AL-QAEDA IS USING VIDEOS AND OTHER RECRUITING MEANS TO SIGN UP TEEN-AGERS AS INSURGENTS.

(Copy and paste the following URL into your web browser)

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/innocent-flesh%e2%80%94recruiting-kids-to-kill-2/

Wait a minute, says Ron Jacobs, isn't that what the U.S. military does, recalling his days as a little league coach in Burlington VT  when he witnessed first hand the recruiters who used to hang around the games, part of an extensive recruitment project that enrolls kids in Young Marines and other programs of military indoctrination and gets lists of graduating high school seniors to pester for recruitment? 

2/11/08

Ecstasy may be just around the corner for traumatized U.S. war veterans.  After several years of government-approved field trials using the illegal "party scene" drug as a psychotropic, and with reportedly very favorable results, MDMA could be taking a journey from an outlawed substance to the next "FDA-approved wonder drug" which could help stem the "epidemic" level of ex-soldier suicides and help reduce the anxiety of the terminally ill and victims of violent crimes

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/76576/  

2/10/08

Bush's "slapdash" budget "forgets" to fund a veterans' benefit program he proposed in his State of the Union: In the speech Bush proposed legislation that would allow education benefits to transfer to relatives if vets are unable personally to use them. The budget has no provision for the $1-2 billion that this would cost; and some in Congress look for a way to "remember" the forgotten item in what was apparently an off-hand remark designed to show "support" for veterans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020804136_pf.html

2/9/08

U.S. Army defies the statements of it scommander-in-chief that the U.S. will not use its military to engage in "nation-building":  It's couched in bureau-speak, of course, but a new Army manual speaks of the necessity for field commanders in combat situations to be more concerned about the "stabilization" of the countries in which they are operating. From his first campaign through all the years of his administration, George W. Bush has denied that the country will be involved in nation-building.  The Army seems to be returning to the model of General McArthur after World War II, who spent years in "re-building" Japan, during which time he was in effect a U.S. viceroy.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/08/america/military.php?page=1

2/9/08

U.S. Army is using enhanced and expensive benefits to enlistees to help shore up its flagging enlistments.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/02/09/army_to_boost_perks_for_recruits/  

2/5/08

"Life experience" of years of combat for U.S. soldiers is not likely to be translated into academic credits in American colleges and universities.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/05/vets_often_denied_academic_credits/  

1/25/08

Pakistan fires test missile, tries to allay concerns that nuclear war  material might get into the hands of enemies.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2008-01-25T100956Z_01_ISL55956_RTRUKOC_0_US-PAKISTAN-NUCLEAR.xml  

1/23/08

If he/she is breathing, sign him/her up: U.S. Army, to meet its recruitment goals, has had to alter signficantly its standards of qualification for military service, with a sharp decline in percentage of recruits with high school diplomas, among other indications of "lowered" standards.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012203326.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

1/21/08

British defense/intelligence firm has a "kinetic" relationship as it snuggles up with the Pentagon:.  QinetiQ (pronounced "kinetic") lands a multi-million dollar contract to provide U.S. military security services 2 months after it hires Richard Cambone,  former Deputy of State of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld.  Cambone was responsible in 2003 for setting up the Pentagon office that has awarded the contract.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40844  

1/6/08

Former FBI agent tells UK Sunday Times about rampant leaks in sensitive U.S. nuclear weapons information:.  Sibel Edmonds was a Turkish translator who claims to have listened in on hundreds of conversations involving agents of FBI and State Department in collusion with brokers who sold this information to representatives of many countries, including Pakistan.   http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

1/6/08

Danish military may use strips of tape on soldiers which will furnish identification to those who fire British weapons in Afghanistan, hoping to prevent repetition of recent "friendly fire" deaths.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/105000.html  

1/2/08

Is the U.S. feeding China's military?  The U.S. Department of Commerce has "stringent" rules against U.S. companies exporting high tech products to China if these might be used for modernizing the Chinese military.  However, some U.S. companies like Boeing are beneficiaries of a Commerce policy of exemption from this rule when Chinese companies are considered "trustworthy" in that they will not share these products and technologies with China's military nor with any of the "enemies" of the U.S.  Now a Wisconsin nuclear control watchdog group questions the "trustworthy" character of some companies so chosen. Maybe the U.S. needs to remember the admonition of Ronald Reagan from his days of dealing with nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union: "trust but verify."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/technology/02techtransfer.html?th&emc=th  

12/24/07

U.S. has spent millions in military aid to Pakistan and has mostly gotten military action against Pakistan's enemy (India) rather than its own (Al Qaeda/Taliban): Several government officials from U.S. and other nations make this assessment in interviews for the New York Times.  But wait, after 6 years of pouring aid money into an unsupervised rat-hole, the Bush administration finally has a PLAN for bolstering Pakistan's actions against U.S. enemies, and it is located for implementation in the hands of the U.S.Ambassador in Islamabad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/world/asia/24military.html?th&emc=th

12/18/07

Japan successfully intercepts a dummy missile, the first such accomplishment by a U.S. ally and a response to perceived threat from North Korea.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-12-18T112501Z_01_N17653674_RTRUKOC_0_US-MISSILE-JAPAN-USA.xml  

12/13/07

Congress gives Bush the blank check he demands for military expenditures: House passes, 370-49, a $696 billion military defense bill that will help continue the Iraqi and Afghan wars as well as those ever-costly "weapons systems."  Pentagon uses its rhetorical big guns in raising the spectre of Christmas-season layoffs of its civilian employees.  Democrats, who muster only 45 votes in opposition, tout the "reform" aspect of the legislation with new "oversight" requirements on Pentagon spending.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/12/12/ap4433640.html

THE VOTE:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1151.xml  

12/13/07

Charities to support wounded war veterans are over their heads in overhead expenses: Charity watchdog reports that groups spend as little as 1 dollar on direct serves to veterans of every 100 dollars contributed, with the majority of groups surveyed not meeting the watchdog group's standard of no less than 65% of receipts going for direct service to clients.  One charity pays a founder and his wife over half a million dollars to head the group.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/12/AR2007121202657.html?wpisrc=newsletter

11/28/07

The Pentagon wages a war against U.S. soldiers.  Wounded war veterans find themselves likely to receive notices from the government of debts owed because, for example, their injuries disabled them from completing missions for which they were given combat pay.  These actions are backed with wage garnishments and the close attentionon Pentagon-hired debt collectors.

http://www.counterpunch.org/smith11272007.html   

11/27/07

A student dismissed from class spends a school period firing the weapons of a simulated Abrams tank in one of the Army's 18-wheeler "Adventure Vans" that go around the country to help in the recruitment of children impressed with gee-whiz military technology.  The Army counters parents' protests by saying that No Child Left Behind guarantees them this recruitment "access" to the schools; critics say what they are doing goes way beyond NCLB.  Not to be outdone, the Navy and Air Force operate similar recruiting programs.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/26/5440/

11/26/07

An average of 17 U.S. war vets commit suicide every day:   According to a widow of one of those suicides, the U.S. government consistently refuses to "come clean" about these deaths, either their numbers or their causes.  Suicides while soldiers are in combat are put down as "accidents," those of civilian returnees as the result of "personal problems" rather than post-traumatic reactions to their combat experiences.  The President and other leaders cluck over the "despair" that drives Iraq's "suicide bombers," but can't admit that the country's own soldier suicides, in much larger numbers, are driven by the same results of military combat.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/68713/?page=1  

11/18/07

IAEA gives Iran a B- report card on its compliance with UN demands on nuclear enrichment.  The UN's watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says that Iran is "reactive rather than proactive" about its compliance and U.S. seizes on that assessment to push for new round of UN sanctions on Iran for nuclear non-compliance (while Israel and Pakistan sail along on their D grades in the subject)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40092

11/18/07

New York Times admits it kept a secret on Iran's nuclear arsenal secuirty.  In a Times article, it is revealed that newspaper staff have known for three years of grave concern of Bush administration about the security of that arsenal and mutual suspicion between the U.S. and Pakistan about Pakistan being offered or accepting a U.S. program to enhance that security.  At the administration's request, the Times withheld publication of that information and reveals it now with administration approval in the present crisis of the Musharaff regime in Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/washington/18nuke.html?th&emc=th

11/14/07

"As long as we are wanted and welcome."  American General in charge of U.S. presence in South Korea speaks at the groundbreaking for an expansion of a "sleepy" air base which is expected to become the "face" of U.S. continued military forces in the area.  A Korean "dignitary" thanks Korean civilians who have (reluctantly) given up their homes to make way for the construction project. (Just such bases may become the "face" of future protests against U.S. operations around the world.)

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50263  

11/7/07

Defense spending: Ho much is too much?  In 1993 an economic think tank report said it would be possible to pare the U.S. defense budget to $67 billion per year if the country gave up its internationally aggressive policy and shelves its expensive and useless weapons systems.  In 2008, the military budget will be about $647 billion.  Studies ranging from starvation to Africa to America's crumbling infrastructure make the argument that useless and harmful military spending could be re-allocated to pressing human needs around the world.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/06/5059/

10/26/06

Recession? What recession?  U.S. defense companies are doing very nicely, thank you, as profitable contracts for military hardware are fattening their bottom lines.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EARNS_DEFENSE?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=customwire.htm  

10/20/07

U.S. weapons industry places its bets on the 2008 presidential election:.  The industry usually lends its campaign support to a candidate who it expects to win the presidency, as it is so dependent on government contracts.  For 08, the choice is a no-brainer:  Hillary Clinton, who is one of the most hawkish of candidates of either party, and is widely perceived as the likely Democratic Party nominee and ultimate winner of the White House.  Accordingly, she has received far more "bundles" of campaign cash from people in the industry than has any other candidate of either party.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3075691.ece

10/20/07

Air Force finally "explains" an August incident in which an airplane laden with nuclear bombs flew from North Dakota to Louisiana:  It was an "unacceptable mistake" that would probably never happen again.  Safety procedures were ignored and the relevant people who made the mistakes have been removed from duty. Case closed.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/nuclear_mistake;_ylt=AvB5LTpt6v6FuhEXn18xbtBI2ocA  

10/20/07

Pentagon officials are concerned that, beyond Iraq, the mine resistant vehicles being deployed there (MRAPs) will become "white elephants" in future missions in which IEDs are not a major concern.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1019/p03s03-usmi.html  

10/18/07

Although almost unnoticed in the media, both Russia and the U.S. are now engaged in war games by their respective countries, as the aggressiveness of each seems to stimulate that of the other. These "games" sometimes bring U.S. and Russian forces in dangerous proximity, as when U.S. planes in Alaska are sent to Russian "game" areas off the Alaskan coast to insure the games don't intrude onto U.S. territory.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7098  

10/16/07

Chicago; "The most militarized school system in America..."  Marine Corps to open a new public school, joining Army, Navy and Air Force in sponsoring schools and Junior ROTC programs. Critics say these schools and programs are motivated by the services' recruitment needs, targeted to enlistment of children in poor and black areas.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/chicago1.htm   

10/6/07

Minnesota National Guard unit comes home after longest deployment of any Guard unit in Iraq to find that that they will be denied education benefits because their deployment orders were written for 729 days and it requires 730 days of deployment for a guardsman to qualify for these benefits.  Some soldiers think the 729-day orders were a deliberate ploy to deny them education benefits

http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=71741

10/5/07

The grizzled veteran academic discipline which was "enlisted" in past U.S. conflicts (WW II, Vietnam, etc.) is again being employed in Afghanistan with plans to expand to Iraq in the Pentagon's Human Terrain Program.  Military commanders praise their familiarity with tribal customs as helping "bring governance to the people" as they are able mediate tribal disputes.  As in the past, some professional anthropologists decry this activity as enlisting academic science into the service a brutal occupation, and urge boycott of such involvement

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?th&emc=th  

10/3/07

North Korea  agrees to disable its nuclear reactor by end of the year

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7025930.stm  

10/1/07

ALTHOUGH CZECH REPUBLIC SUPPORTED U.S. INVASION OF IRAQ, MANY CZECHS ARE ADAMANTLY OPPOSED TO MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD IN THEIR COUNTRY.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/world/europe/01czech.html?_r=1&oref=slogin  

9/24/07

Farming or fishing? In dealing with insurgents, US soldiers are accused of doing both:Trial of soldiers accused of murder for having planted terrorist paraphernalia on civilians whom they had shot uncovers a secret Pentagon program that may have encouraged such actions.  Special unit soldiers were taught to "bait" insurgents by placing such materials on the ground and then shooting those who picked them up, on the assumption of their "intent" to use the material against U.S. soldiers.  Two whistle-blowing soldiers, angered by what they view as unfair disciplinary action for other offenses, describe the program and also the incentives for soldiers to produce high "kill" numbers of insurgents to satisy their superiors.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301431.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

9/19/07

Child soldiers are becoming common again in Congo's civil war.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0919/p01s05-woaf.html  

9/10/07

Former Gainesville FL resident, Bruce Gagnon, moves on to become and international pain in the butt: Gagnon, leader of a Keep Space For Peace organization, goes on international tour promoting this cause and is arrested in Faslane Scotland for attempting to blockade entrance to the Trident nuclear submarine there.

http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2007/09/arrested-in-scotland.html

9/7/07

War games which rattle the sabre against China in the Bay of Bengal overshadow the economic talks of APEC in Sydney.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39177

9/1/07

Progressive think-tanker says that President Bush must be "called out" for his strategy of holding hostage the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq as he insists that to urge troop withdrawal is to condemn to death the soldiers who are now there.  Disputing Bush's claim that "it's no time for politics" where the war is concerned, the writer asserts that this is exactly the time for responsible politics to try to restrain U.S. war policy.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/31/3537/

8/27/07

"My sense is that right now, they're willing to take anybidt who is willing to walk in the door and ship by Sept. 30":  says a security analyst of new U.S. Army policy of offering $20,000 "quick ship" bonuses for recruits willing to enlist and enter basic training ahead of the normal time interval between enlistment and "shipping out" for training.  The bonuses, like the relaxation of certain "standards" of recruit qualification, reflect the recent failure of the Army to reach its enlistment quotas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/26/AR2007082601266_pf.html

8/21/07

Taiwanese legislators go on a shopping trip for new weapons sales from the U.S.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IH21Ad01.html  

8/20/07

Bangor, Maine, a frequent stop for U.S. troops headed overseas, has reached a milestone in which the 500,000th troop since 2003 has been given recognition gifts by a private group called Troop Greeters.

http://www.bangordailynews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=153310&zoneid=164  

8/19/07

South Carolina woman pleads guilty to charges that she and her sister (who has committed suicide) profited illegally from their business of shipping military supplies for the Pentagon, including charging nearly a million dollars to send 39 cents worth of screws. (Obviously, U.S. taxpayers got screwed in this deal.) But this is truly small-potatoes corruption beside that of Vice President Cheney who parlayed his government connections into vast profits for his corporate connections. And this is not to mention the systemic corruption of news media and local politicians supporting local defense industries that are deemed as good for the local economy.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=13570

8/16/07

U.S. plans new generation of assault missiles that can strike targets in a fraction of the time required by current missiles.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0816/p03s03-usmi.html

8/14/07

Are war and peace decisions too important to be left in the hands of private corporations?  Jeremy Scahill, in a wide-ranging article on the prevalence of out-sourcing security and intelligence activities into the hands of private companies, indicates that precisely this question must be raised. Not just in Iraq, but throughout the world, mercenary operatives not accountable to any public agencies for their operation are threatening to subvert Max Weber's definition of the state as that agency that maintains a  "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."

http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill08132007.html  

8/14/07

China eyes with suspicion of personal threat next month's "good will" naval exercises in Bay of Bengal of the "axis of Democracy" in Asia:  Australia, Japan, Singapore and India, joined by the United States.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IH14Df01.html

8/14/07

New Mexico's National Guard, under-equipped to operate at home, is warned that it will be deployed to Iraq in 2010.

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/aug/13/nm-guard-gets-iraq-duty-warning/  

8/14/07

Special problems are noted for single parents deployed to Iraq: over 12,000 of them counted on a single day surveyed, the last day of 2006.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/14/struggle_starts_at_home_front/  

8/11/07

Is a restored U.S. military draft in the offing?  Bush's new "war czar," General Douglas Lutes, in an NPR interview, says this possibility should be considered in light of the high level of "stress" now experienced by the country's all-volunteer military.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/10/america/NA-GEN-US-Bush-War-Adviser.php

For transcript and video of this interview, see:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12688693  

8/2/07

Donald Rumsfeld is grilled by Dennis Kucinich and other members of Congress on his alleged "cover-up" of Pat Tillman death as well as other events in Iraq.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080107R.shtml  

8/1/07

Admiral Mullen, nominee as new Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, wants U.S. to "stay engaged" militarily throughout the world, but to do this in "partnership" with military efforts of other nations.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0801/p02s01-usmi.html  

8/1/07

New movie by Dreamworks, Transformers, looks like a work of propaganda for U.S. militarism: Although good and evil robots are the antagonists and they come from alien places, the film evokes the earthly "axis of evil" of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and of the U.S.military as the "protectors" of people around the world using gee-whiz high tech weaponry.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=105&ItemID=13421  

7/26/07

American soliders: Best and brightest, or down and outers?  Military apologists like to berate Rosie O'Donnell for her statement that Americans tend to join the services to "get an education," citing some older and questionable data by Heritage Foundation that soldiers are likely to be above average in education and socio-economic level.  A recent study tends to exonerate O'Donnell: increasingly, the military services are drawing their recruits from the under-educated and especially among felons and racists.  As a symptom of these recruiting practices, blacks are now considerably over-represented among the recruits.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/25/2748/  

7/10/07

Canadian PM Harper plans for a new fleet of ships that will patrol Arctic waters to protect "Canadian sovereignty."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070709.wharper0709/BNStory/National/home  

7/7/07

Japanese defense minister says the country must complete a missile shield to counter nuclear threats from North Korea and China.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6275994.stm

7/6/07

RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs) didn't work any better for Israel in Lebanon than it works for the U.S in Iraq and Afghanistan: The idea of RMA---now called Transformation---is that precision weapons aimed at defined targets will replace traditional ways of conducting wars which involve close contact between combatant forces.  The trouble is that the "enemy" does not cooperate with RMA, but operates with a mobility and flexibility that makes RMA muscle bound and useless.  But never mind, from the Pentagon and IDF perspectives, it works to justify hugely expensive precision weapons systems that sustain the defense industries of these countries.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lind07042007.html

7/4/07

"Port call" of USS Nimitz at Chennai India raises a storm of protest of those claiming the visit belies India's asserted stance of international non-intervention and may even have introduced nuclear weapons into one of the country's harbors.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IG04Df01.html  

6/29/07

Democratic congressional campaign committee is preparing "attack ads" against Don Young of Alaska and others which will attack their military records as insufficiently supportive of U.S. military operations.

http://www.adn.com/news/politics/story/9090478p-9006515c.html  

6/14/07

As Congress shows increased propensity to challenge military officers in appointment hearings, Secretary of State Gates declines to offer nomination  of General Peter Pace for another 2-year appointment as Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/2707  

6/14/07

Russian deal for return of frozen funds of North Korea may un-freeze the effort to have the country shut down its nuclear weapons plans. U.S. willingness to waive sanctions is the key to the deal.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/070614/world/international_korea_north_dc  

6/13/07

New Mexico National Guardsmen get belated apology from U.S. Army after 60 of them were strip-searched in Iraq in a vain effort to locate "hispanic gangland tatoos" that a soldier said he had seen on the body of one man.

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/jun/12/nm-national-guard-accepts-late-army-apology/  

6/12/07

Dilip Hiro notes that, as their international rivals threaten them with "regime change" or "being wiped off the map," countries large, medium and small move to use nuclear arsenals the way they were used by the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, to create a MAD (mutually assured destruction) situation in which the nuclear capabilities of each deters the application of that of the others.  The U.S. may wink and nod at Israel's or India's nuclear programs while it pontificates against those of Iran or North Korea, but all nations have learned that nuclear power is the way to national survival.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=13044

6/12/07

Swedish report says world's nuclear powers, by developing lower-yield weapons, are making nuclear war more likely, as these weapons are seen as "useable" in warfare rather than being simply a "deterrent."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070611/ap_on_re_eu/arms_report;_ylt=AiVyTgAv_YqSNVCBwyGCPFtw24cA  

6/11/07

Can enemy soldiers be brought to make love (to each other), not war?  Pentagon explored in the past, and says it has abandoned for the present, the idea of producing, as a "non-lethal" weapon, a "gay bomb" that would disperse an aphrodisiac chemical that would make soldiers more interested in having sex than in fighting.

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html  

6/9/07

With the Iraqi "surge" obviously not working, the media is reporting a "change" in U.S. policy in Iraq to duplicate the after-history of the Korean conflict: a reduced military force settled into low-visibility presence in bases that have lasted for many decades.  Actually, says Tom Engelhardt, this was U.S. policy from the very beginning of the 2003 invasion. Media outlets reported U.S. plans to create permanent bases in Iraq and then forgot their own coverage for four years, leaving the U.S. public oblivious to what was really going on the country: the construction and provisioning of at least 4 massive bases away from major population centers.  Korea? Iraq?  The positioning of such "permanent" bases is but one part of a grand U.S. imperial strategy that has been consistently and effectively pursued by Democratic and Republican administrations in the placements of military installations throughout the world.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/08/1737/  

6/9/07

Italian PM, over the protests of Italy's "radical left" which he accuses of "anti-American" sentiment, agrees to U.S. plan for large expansion of a military base in northern Italy.

http://www.italianpressdigest.com/index.php/article/articleview/273/1/460/

6/7/07

A Washington consensus of both political parties supports a military/intelligence bidget of $1 trillion per year and headed upwards.  Democrats vie with Republicans in their willingness to support vast increases in spending for Pentagon and Homeland Security despite the fact that the "defense" of the country does not entail defense against any national entity actually threatening the United States, but only threatening perhaps the country's imperial dominance.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=202057

6/7/07

BBC probe shows that a UK arms dealer made payments to a Saudi prince for over a decade to facilitate a Saudi/UK arms deal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6728773.stm

6/5/07

Anti-missile installation? Not in our backyard, please.  As President Bush begins visit to Czech Republic, referendums in local communities reject the idea of placement of these facilities in their towns, vote against in one village was 728-10, with residents recognizing that their vote probably won't determine their government's action.  http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/04/1657/  

6/5/07

Canadian government is considering the establishing of several military cemeteries across the country to accommodate the needs of families who lose relatives in combat.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=05d341d5-1c14-481f-b149-2850336bbc46  

6/2/07

"I recognize this is unhealthy" says  Greek weapons expert who heads a UN team which is still spending millions of dollars a year looking for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that, it is generally agreed, no longer exist and preparing for inspections in Iraq that will probably never occur.  This extended exercise in futility is based on a dispute between Russia, which wants Iraq declared WMD-free, and the U.S., which is still looking for a fig leaf of legitimacy to cover its invasion of Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102358.html?referrer=email  

5/28/07

Process worship cripples operating forces says an internal document of U.S. Marine Corps in which it is reported that only 10% of requests of military forces for defense materiel had been fulfilled.

http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2007/05/26/news/news04052607.txt  

5/28/07

Blackwater liability case goes behind cloes doors.  In a move described as "ominous" for the future of anyone trying to prosecute claims against military contractors for wrongful injury, judge rules the suit filed by survivors of 4 employees of Blackwater Security who died in the Fallujah massacre out of court and into a special proceeding with no transparency.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2546140220070525?src=052507_1215_TOPSTORY_cleric_surfaces

5/27/07

A new "missile defense" missile "fails to recognize the threat" of a dummy attacking missile as the dummy falls far short of the intended attack target and the interceptor is never launched.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/washington/26missile.html

5/23/07

Physiologists have shown that teenage children have "immature" brain structures that don't allow them to make some decisions in a rational manner.  U.S. military recruiters take full advantage of this vulnerability in their appeals to teenagers, making grandiose promises about military life style and offerings of the same kind of goodies that drug representatives promise doctors (some of whom must themselves be pre-frontal cortex challenged) in return for yielding to their pitches.

http://www.alternet.org/story/51889/

5/23/07

India continues to depend on Russia as its main arms supplier despite India's "warming relation" with the U.S., but they will pay more for these weapons as Russia demands re-negotiation of a fighter aircraft deal.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IE24Df01.html  

5/23/07

BBC News learns that UN "peace-keepers" from Pakistan traded "gold for guns" during Congo's civil war in 2005, as they sold arms to the militias they were supposedly disarming; and that the UN was aware of this and "buried the report" for fear of political fallout.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6681457.stm  

5/22/07

U.S. leads the world in arms dealing; and we need a new way of talking about it:.  Frida Berrigan suggests we stop thinking about armaments in the language of trade but rather in that of drugs and the drug dealer.  The dynamics of the drug industry involve the creating of a perceived "need" of the product and then proceeding to furnish it. Thus a foreign government is persuaded that it "needs" an upgrade in its armaments to meet the competition of its local rivals (also stimulated by the "dealer") and the rest is the history of the thriving international armaments industry in which the U.S. predominates.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=196017  

5/17/07

Gulf War fallout.  A rare Pentagon-sponsored study of the effects on U.S. soldiers of the destruction of munitions in Iraq in 1991 provides some of the first official acknowlegement that sarin nerve gas damage may have resulted for Gulf War veterans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/17sarin.html?hp  

5/14/07

Japan will soon have a referendum to allow Japan to have a military force, a measure that would amend the constitution imposed on Japan by the U.S. occupation in 1947.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6652809.stm

5/12/07

Casualties of the Cold War fight for compensation.  Thousands of U.S. workers who helped dismantle nuclear facilities and contracted cancer are still struggling to have their medical claims honored by a Labor Department that wants to pinch pennies on them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102277.html?referrer=email  

4/22/07

Dissatisfaction is rising in U.S. Congress  over the Bush administration plan for a "new generation" of nuclear warheads.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/21/AR2007042101000.html?referrer=email  

4/11/07

When life imitates Playstation:   U.S. military planners are anticipating a "new generation" of military hardware which features exoskelton armour and other high-tech accountrements to what a well-dressed warrior will wear.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=447631

4/3/07

At schools and aboriginal festivals, military recruiters use their Bold Eagle project to entice youngsters to enlist in a program of military training for those below the age of enlistment in the regular military.  Their success is based on improverishment of native American communities, their promises of money and heroic Indian values; a critic calls it an exercise in "mulit-cultural killing."

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=12483  

4/1/07

GAO report criticizes Pentagon for its escalating "high risk" expenditures.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/033107F.shtml  

3/31/07

Have you heard of the "Cluster Munitions Civilan Protection Act"of 2007?  If not, don't feel too badly, few others have heard of this legislation, introduced in the Senate in February. The lack of traction so far on this legislation seems to symbolize the overall record of the United States as the last place (or one of the two, along with Israel)  in the world to recognize the humanitarian dangers of a weapon that exceeds its "military utility" (the requirement in international law for any weapon's use).

http://counterpunch.org/stedjan03302007.html   

3/28/07

U.S. general tries to assure Russia that the "missile defense shield" proposed for European locations is not intended as threat to Russia but to help protect that country as well against "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran.  Looking at the map and noting the location of these "shields," Russians remain a bit skeptical.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-03-28T111316Z_01_L28545659_RTRUKOC_0_US-SHIELD-RUSSIA-USA.xml  

3/26/07

Pravda asserts that other countries, especially in the European Union, are "shamelessly pirating" Russian military hardware.

http://english.pravda.ru/russia/kremlin/22-03-2007/88540-russian_arms-0

3/19/07

Leader of German Social Democrats says that Germany must stand with the rest of Europe in opposing U.S. plans to locate missile defense facilities in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070319/ap_on_re_eu/europe_us_missile_defense;_ylt=AlfggXSYUE2rdMdc0235dKJw24cA  

3/18/07

U.S./Israeli war games are scaled back in consideration of the tension of a looming confrontation with Iran.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-03-18T105538Z_01_ARM839312_RTRUKOC_0_US-ISRAEL-USA-IRAN.xml  

3/14/07

Tony Blair faces parliamentary opposition to his proposal to renew UK's Trident nuclear defense system.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6448173.stm  

3/2/07

As usual, the buck stops here.  General in charge of Walter Reed Medical Facility is fired after a Washington Post expose of conditions for the treatment of wounded U.S. soldiers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/washington/02general.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin  

2/25/07

Anti-cluster bomb treaty may be agreed to.  At a conference in Oslo, Britain, a frequent user of cluster munitions, does a policy "u-turn" and agrees to support a treaty declaring a moratorium on the use of these weapons.  There is no expectation, however, that other users (U.S., China, Russia and Israel) will ratify the treaty.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2300444.ece  

2/25/07

U.S. Navy plans to deploy dolphins and sea lions in Puget Sound to detect terrorists in wet suits making land intrusions near defense facilities in Washington.  Animal activists counter what they call this "silly absurdity" by knitting seaters for dolphins to appear at a public hearing on the matter.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/24/AR2007022401040.html?referrer=email  

2/23/07

Tony Blair is said by reports to be holding secret talks in which he is "lobbying" President Bush to place a U.S. "Son of Star Wars" anti-missile defense system in the UK, similar to those being plananed for Poland and Czechoslovakia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6388713.stm  

2/22/07

Pentagon's reports on deployment of U.S. active duty personnel document the existence of a world-wide American empire with forces garrisoned throughout the world.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance103.html  

2/22/07

Making Marines out of less-than-men: Former U.S. Marine describes how training takes people lacking self-respect from the "pathology of our class-ridden world" and transforms them into a "lean mean killing machine" that dehumanizes the "enemy" and motivates self-validation on the basis of cruel and sometimes criminal actions.

http://counterpunch.org/smith02202007.html  

2/19/07

"Fall out for 5AM morning formation!" Washington Post continues its expose of soldiers at Walter Reed Medical Facility warehoused at hospital "facilities" awaiting treatment and disposition and subjected to military routines.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/18/AR2007021801335.html?referrer=email

2/18/07

"We owe them all we can give them" said President Bush on a Christmas visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  A special report by two journalists writing for the Washington Post details just what "all we can give them" amounts to at WR: an overcrowded and crumbling holding facility for wounded war veterans for the whom the word neglect comes easily to mind.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html?referrer=email

2/17/07

Pentagon accelerates deployment of 1000 members of 3rd Infantry Division from Ft. Stewart to Iraq, three months ahead of scheduled June deployment.

http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?id=3092

2/14/07

Defense Department report shows that the number of recruits for whom both felony and disdemeanor convictions have been waivered has more than doubled over the last 4 years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_recruits_waivers  

2/8/07

Pentagon is accused of failing to include in its public information about Iraqi war casualties numbers of those wounded in non-combat situations; numbers which, if included, would double the number of casualties of the war.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/07/AR2007020700179_pf.html  

2/7/07

US "full spectrum doiminance" in space is suddenlt not so dominant. Last month's somewhat inexplicable action of China of shooting down one of its own old weather satellites was apparently a pre-emptive demonstration to the U.S. that its aim for "hegemony in the heavens" is falling short of realization and that China is fully capable of countering that hegemony were it to be attacked.

http://counterpunch.org/blum02062007.html

2/3/07

Is a "non-lethal" weapon just a "not usually lethal" one? U.S. military ignores the distinction, moving smartly ahead with plans for a "new generation" of non-lethals, although the "old generation" represented by Taser guns have produced about 200 deaths. Their non-lethal label may serve to relax the rules of engagement for their use so they can be employed against relatively "innocent" persons.

http://www.alternet.org/story/47092/

1/30/07

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden introduces bill that would prohibit the sale of spare parts for F-14 fighter planes that have reportedly found up in the hands of Chinese and Iranians.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070129/ap_on_go_co/military_surplus_stings  

1/27/07

The militarization of US police agencies, one set of fatigues at a time. Budget-stressed enforcement agencies around the country are benefitting from generosity from the Pentagon's glut of "surplus" materials, ranging from rifles to helicopters to double wide trailers. It's a bargain for local agencies, but who pays for it?  Of course it comes out of those gigantic "defense appropriations" bills that Congress willingly passes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070126/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_giveaways

1/25/07

U.S. military unveils plans for a heat ray gun to be used to quell crowds and force enemies to disarm; is compared to a "blast from the oven."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6297149.stm

1/25/07

India now working both sides of the U.S./Russian nuclear rivalry as it concludes a deal with Putin to have Russia assist India in building nuclear reactors.

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=80278

1/23/07

U.S military waives morality in its recruitment policies: Robin Morgan, co-founder of Women's Media Center, comments on former soldiers like Timothy McVeigh and Steven Green, who are accused or convicted of heinous crimes during and after their military service in light of the fact that the Pentagon is increasingly using "moral waivers" to allow men and women with criminal records or mental health problems to serve in a military that is deperately trying to staff a "surge" in troop strength.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/46922/  

1/22/07

U.S. assures Russia that missile emplacements on Polish and Czech soil are not intended as a threat against that country.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-22T110944Z_01_L22698767_RTRUKOC_0_US-POLAND-USA-MISSILES.xml  

1/19/07

U.S. criticizes Russia for providing military equipment for Iran, saying the action sends the "wrong signal."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070116/ts_nm/russia_iran_missiles_usa_dc_1

1/17/07

Porous control systems for U.S. transfer of military equipment to foreign recipients have resulted in many armaments passing from U.S. to Iranian control.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011607B.shtml

1/13/07

Playboy goes military as the military goes ballistic: An Air Force sergeant is suspended for posing for the magazine; AF says: "This staff sergeant's alleged action does not meet the high standards we expect of our airmen (sic)." How much you want to make a bet that these "high standards" officers keep a copy of the "airman's" alleged action hidden away in their desks?

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770112011

1/12/07

To help provide troop needs for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon rescinds its long-time policy of maintaining a limit on the length of time that reserve forces can be mobilized.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/election/ci_4994211  

1/12/07

"Return to duty": Steven Green, U.S. soldier accused of participating in the rape of an Iraqi girl and the murder her and her family, was diagnosed three months earlier by a Stress Combat Team of medics to be suffering from "homicidal ideations" resulting from anger against Iraqi insurgents, given a mood-enhancing drug and told to get some sleep and was returned to duty in a unit in desperate confrontation with such insurgents. Expect more such horror stories as the military grants "moral waivers" to recruits in its efforts to meet enlistment quotas.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Iraq_Soldier_Diagnosis.html 

1/8/07

Action of Filipino government of imprisoning a U.S. Marine convicted of raping a Filipino girl results in severe sanctions of U.S. goverment against the Philippines.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16096.htm  

1/7/07

Bush administration expected to propose a round of production and testing of a "new generation" of nuclear warheads to replace the ones in the current arsenal, at a cost of maybe $100 billion. Some experts warn they may be risky as well as costly and might require abandoning of moratorium on nuclear testing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/washington/07nuke.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

1/7/07

Who's guarding Minnesota?  200 National Guard troops, some of whom have already completed a year and half deployment to Afghanistan, will be sent to New Mexico to help with border patrol operations against illegal immigrants.

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/917802.html  

1/5/07

Good for business: Iraqi government places $1.5 billion order with U.S. for purchase of military hardware, mostly helicopters and armoured vehicles.

http://washtimes.com/upi/20070103-014627-9630r.htm  

1/5/07

A so-called DREAM act proposed in Congress would facilitate the military's apparent hope to help solve its recruitment problems by citizen incentives for undocumented immigrants

http://counterpunch.org/mariscal01052007.html  

1/4/07

Arms industry flourishes in Israel, which is now among the world's five largest exporters of weapons.  Its largest market is in India, following by the United States.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3347720,00.html  

12/27/06

Pentagon considering expedited citizenship for undocumented immigrants who enlist in military services.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/12/26/military_considers_recruiting_foreigners/

12/26/06

Officials at Ft. Carson Colorado medical facility defend themselves from well-publicized charges that soldiers returning from combat with post-traumatic stress syndrome are routinely kicked out of the facility for "misconduct."

http://test.denverpost.com/news/ci_4900521  

12/23/06

This is only a test:  Selective Service system has been "sitting on the shelf" for many years; now administrators plan to test it out; with no intention to use, mind you, but an official says  that "society would benefit" if the draft were brought back.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1222-01.htm 

12/23/06

Krygyrzstan threatens to evict U.S. from Manas Air Base after a series of "incidents" including the shooting of a Krygyz truckdriver by a U.S. security contractor.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2441183.php   

12/22/06

U.S. pushes CBW: Illinois professor who helped draft legislation concerning chemical and biological  warfare weapons. claims in recent book that U.S. is aggressively but secretly violating prohibitions against the offensive use of CBW, spending billions a year sometimes disguised as such "civil defense" measures as the stockpiling of anti-anthrax vaccine.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec06/Ross21.htm  

12/20/06

President Bush urges increase in overall size of U.S. military to prosecute the war on terror and neo-conservative "militarian historian" Frederick Kagan proclaims it a great idea, long overdue, and well-timed to send new Secretary of Defense on his way in the right direction. (From the other side his mouth Bush says he will "wait for Gates" before making any specific proposals on increasing troop strength when he finally announces his "new strategy" for Iraq sometime next year.)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/20/BUSH.TMP  

12/19/06

Bush signs law to share nuclear technology with India amid criticisms that there are inadequate safeguards against India's using this technology for military purposes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121800233.html

12/18/06

Defense Department advisory panel indicates that there is no consensus among U.S. military planners on exactly how many nuclear weapons are requiired in the nation's arsenal and how these might be used.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121501807.html

12/16/06

Effectively blackmailed:  UK prosecutors drop corruption case against British arms dealer accused of bribery to obtain an arms sale to Saudi Arabia; critics say that that Saudis  "effectively blackmailed" UK government by threatening to take a new proposed arms deal to France or elsewhere.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6182125.stm  

12/6/06

For greenish waves of Abrams tanks: Army supply depots are swamped with military hardware of all kinds that is in disrepair with understaffing and underfunding of repair facilities;  combat "readiness" is  thus at a low point for many military units.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401347.html?referrer=email  

12/3/06

Tony Blair could make a "legacy" by urging Britain to disdain the race for nuclear armaments; instead, he seems intent on leaving a legacy of commitment to a still more costly and senseless round of nuclear weapons development.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1203-27.htm  

12/3/06

Epidemiologist obtains federal funds to pursue his "theory" that Gulf War Syndrome resulted from battlefield toxic exposure even though, says the Washington Post, scientific experts have dismissed this theory of the etiology of the disease.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/02/AR2006120201291.html?referrer=email

11/26/06

Republican (Duncan) heavily supported by defense industry is scheduled to be replaced by Democrat (Skelton) heavily supported by defense industry as chairman of House Armed Services Committee.

http://harpers.org/sb-exit-b-1-duncan-1164201056.html

11/22/06

To deal with its desperate recruiting needs, the U.S. Army has now raised the age limit for enlistment and is granting "moral waivers" for delinquencies like drug convictions that would previously have disqualfied would-be enlistees.

http://cbs4denver.com/topstories/local_story_325001958.html  

11/20/06

Space face-off?  With indications that China is considering the development of weapons in space, a U.S./China relations committee recommends that Administration undertake talks with China on the subject.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1120/p02s01-usmi.html  

11/18/06

They won't be back (for good) til it's over over there:  3rd Infantry Division, based in Ft. Benning GA, will be deployed to Iraq early next year for the third time.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-11-17-3rdinfantry_x.htm  

11/13/06

General Dynamics will build a replica village in Amman, Jordon as a facility for U.S. Army in training soldiers from friendly Arab countries in urban combat.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/12/AR2006111200778.html

11/9/06

Election fall-out: Bush fires Rumsfeld and names Robert Gates to replace him.  Robert Parry's "lost history" on Gates details his shadowy career in U.S. intelligence and his connections with the Iran/Contra scandal; since Rumsfeld is to stay on until January, will the 109th or 110th Congress "advise and consent" to the nomination? Does it matter?

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost2.html  

11/4/06

International Atomic Energy Agency announces that six Arab states---Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, UAE and Saudi Arabia---are making plans to develop nuclear technology.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2436948,00.html

10/29/06

Haven't we seen the (WW II) movie on this?  Washington Post's feature article details the tribulations of the Ohio Marine Reserve unit that suffered the most casualties in Iraq, returned to huge hero's welcome in Columbus in October 2005, and since have found "re-entry" problems in their civilian lives to be overwhelming in many cases.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900785.html?referrer=email

10/28/06

United Nations, the world's largest supplier of international trade in small arms, is the only country to vote against a UN  Arms Trade Treaty.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1027-25.htm

10/26/06

Bruce Gagnon analyzes President Bush's recently-announced U.S. National Space Policy.

http://counterpunch.org/gagnon10252006.html  

10/26/06

200 active duty U.S. troops join a protest demanding withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-10-25T230154Z_01_N25371819_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-CAMPAIGN.xml&src=rss&rpc=22  

10/26/06

Canadian government is drug-testing its troops deployed to Afghanistan. A "source" tells CTV that 300 out of 1000 tested have failed them.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061025/afghanistan_drug_test_061025/20061025

10/11/06

Nearly one in five veterans of Iraqi and Afghanistan wars are expected to apply for war-related disability, with enormous cost to U.S. taxpayers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/washington/11veterans.html?th&emc=th   

10/9/06

Former UN official calls for vigorous international action for control of conventional arms trade in the way that land mines are controlled.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1008-25.htm  

10/2/06

Arms Without Borders report says arms dealers are able to avoid embargoed arms to countries like Sudan and Uganda.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1002-10.htm  

9/1/06

Pressure for an international ban on cluster bombs has intensified as Israel stands accused of littering southern Lebanon with thousands of unexploded bombs in the final hours of its war against Hezbollah.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0831-05.htm  

8/31/06

Target practice:  U.S. is set to test its anti-missile defense system as a "dummy" rocket will be launched from Alaska and interceptors will attempt to shoot it down in the Pacific. So far, only 5 of the 10 such tests have resulted in successful "hits."  As perhaps a back-up for another failure, officials say the mission is also to "collect data."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083002885.html  

8/6/06

Air Force Times article says 40,000 U.S. troops, half of them Army, have deserted since 2000. Army spokesman says most deserters do so for family, personal or financial, not "conscientious" reasons. Attorney for one refusnik, Lt. Watada, says the Pentagon is "lying" about degree of soldier opposition to war, as it did during Viet Nam.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1930387.php  

8/6/06

Members of 172nd Combat Brigade open a web-site to mobilize support for their opposition to being re-ployed in Iraq after a year of combat duty there.

http://www.bringhome172nd.org/stryker/

7/31/06

U.S. Marines in Iraq now being given "Culture Smart Cards" to help in dealing with Iraqi civilians. They contain thumbnail descriptions of ethnic religious differences and Arabic translations of "key phrases" they most likely will use, for example: do not move; lower your hands; drop your weapons; lie on your stomach.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000551.html?referrer=email  

7/30/06

Secret Bioweapons Labs R Us: massive stealth laboratory  under Homeland Security control being operated outside Washington D.C. and critics fear it violates international biological weapons restrictions and actually threatens our security from such weapons.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/29/AR2006072900592.html?referrer=email

7/30/06

Both houses of Congress are now demanding a definitive study on the effects of depleted uranium on human populations exposed during Gulf Wars

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD01073006.htm

7/29/06

Now Open for Business!  Uncle Sam's Gun Shop for arming "moderate" Arab states to the teeth.  Slightly-used and obsolete Abrams tanks and other old munitions that can easily be modernized.  Huge inventory of $4.6 billion, must liquidate!  Come see us today, don't miss the Middle East fun and games!

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World.xml

7/28/06

Counter-recruitment protests may be having a hampering effect on the military's enlistments.   http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3470/continued/288#continued

7/28/06

U.S. House passes 359-68 a bill to approve transfer of nuclear fuel and technology to India. Rep. Tom Lantos (Calif.) said the proposal, which reverses decades of U.S. anti-proliferation policy, is "a tidal shift in relations between India and the United States."  You said a mouthful Tom, but watch out for those "tidal shifts," you might get a tsunami you didn't want.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072601713.html 

The vote: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll411.xml

7/28/06

Florida goes to war: "it's going to be a busy time" next February in Miami as, following the Super Bowl, the Navy will be commissioning its first ship from a Florida port, a guided missile destroyer.  Maybe the war protesters know what to do.  http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15140990.htm  

7/24/06

Pakistan said to be expanding nuclear weapons development program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300737.html?referrer=email

7/15/06

Blue Angels are back and so is Pensacola: "pre-Ivan" level crowds are wowed on the Beach.  Sorehead editor's question: how much gas was guzzled by the planes and the car trips to the beach to "wow" us again?

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060715/NEWS01/607150322/1006 

7/7/06

Southern Poverty Law Center report says that U.S. military, in its desperation to fill recruiting quotas, is enlisted many neo-Nazis and white supremacists, possibly "thousands" of them, and they are using their military training to prepare for the "race war."  

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/washington/07recruit.html?ex=1309924800&en=1be0e7d4e2aac8d3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

7/5/06

200,000 homeless veterans in America; here are some of their stories. 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070506L.shtml      

7/3/06

Patriotism on steroids?  Cobblestone, a magazine for pre-teens, publishes an issue "dedicated" to the Army and praising its "awesome" power.  The magazine responds to criticism that it is a recruiting tool for the Army, saying that such was not its "intent" and that there was no military influence on their decision to do the special issue.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/03/some_see_army_pitch_in_preteen_magazine/

6/30/06

Pentagon proceeds with its plans for massive new nuclear testing at Nevada Test Site, oblivious to the protests of local inhabitants while they use bureaucrat-speak to obscure the purpose of the tests and the degree of risk of negative consequences. 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0630-22.htm

6/30/06

U.S. an equal opportunity supplier of military needs to countries on both sides of a conflict: Congressional panels approve deal for nuclear co-operation with India; Bush to ask Congress to supply F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5131566.stm    

6/15/06

Profile in courage for sure: Lieutenant Watada's "war against the war."

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-06/14brecher-smith.cfm

6/11/06

Contrary to official U.S. statements that unnecessary killing in combat is not the "American way," the prevailing military culture encourages same by its relentless dehumanizing of "the enemy."

http://www.counterpunch.org/allen06102006.html

6/7/06

Acquittal of British soldiers accused of forcing a teenage looter into drowning in an Iraqi canal is latest of string of such acquittals and calls into question Britain's system of "military justice." 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2214686,00.html

6/7/06

Atrocities involving Marines in Iraq undermine the public image of the Corps as exceptionally notable for its morale and discipline. 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0606-20.htm

5/29/06

Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's uses oreo cookies and a vast grassroots organization to counter the bloated Pentagon budget.

http://www.alternet.org/story/36437/

5/29/06

Pentagon trying to arm Trident subs with non-nuclear missile tips to enhance ability to deliver pre-emptive strikes; critics fear it will escalate chances of nuclear accident.   http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/29/washington/29strike.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

5/25/06

U.S. proposal for an anti-missile defense shield in central Europe against alleged threat of Iranian nuclear attacks raises hackles in Moscow. 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052406L.shtml      

5/3/06

Iowa grandmother, career Navy reservist, taken from her job as special education teacher for a combat deployment to Iraq:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12581184/#storyContinued

5/1/06

World's countries, "led" by Russia and the U.S.A., are a very long way from implementing 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention requiring them to destroy their chemical weapons stockpiles: 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0501-20.htm  

4/30/06

Pentagon's V-22 (Osprey) helicopter is a (literally) crashing failure, yet continues to suck down billions of defense appropriation dollars: 

http://counterpunch.org/bryce04292006.html

4/26/06

Come to the Bazaar:  black market sales of military files from U.S. base in  Bagram, Afghanistan continues:  http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fuj/latimes27.htm

4/24/06

New documents show that Army's Stryker armed personnel carrier was introduced in Iraq in 2003 over the objection of critics, one of whom called it a "dune buggy wrapped in tin foil," has been involved in many casualities but has been immensely profitable for General Dynamics and General Motors: 

http://counterpunch.org/stclair04222006.html

4/23/06

Mushroom cloud over Nevada: June 2 test of a "tactical" nuclear weapon is designed to create fear and trembling among our adversaries: 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0422-29.htm

4/22/06

University and battle-field: "human cognition" research at University of West Florida in Pensacola aims at developing "soldiers of the future" with viper-like tongues as super-sensors:

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/14402303.htm  

4/15/06

U.S. developing new arsenal of nuclear warheads that could be "disabled" should they fall into the hands of terrorist. How does that work exactly? 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401705.html?referrer=email

4/14/06

Military recruiters kicked off campus of University of California Santa Cruz after counter-recruitment demonstrations by students: http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/04/1814636.php

4/14/06

Former generals that led troops in Iraq join call ofr Def. Sec. Rumsfeld to resign:

http://smh.com.au/news/world/returned-/1144521504012.html

4/13/06

U.S. military leaders seem to be engaged in a campaign to depose Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary: http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8848

4/9/06

Pensacola man among thousands of Navy "augmentees" being given quick re-training and deployed as Army combat troops on Iraq's front lines:

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060405/NEWS01/604050333/1006

4/9/06

One Mississippi teen-ager's story highlights the pressures for military enlistment in the country's under-class: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040801269.html?referrer=email

4/7/06

Iraq is a testing lab for new weapons technologies:

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/040706iraq-tech.shtml  

4/6/06

Try this for circular reasoning: Secretary Rice says U.S. nuclear deal with India is OK because "those past nonproliferation policies did not achieve their goal" (i.e, didn't stop India from developing nuclear weapons). Say what?  http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1152790.php/Rice_defends_nuclear_deal_with_India_before_Congress

4/6/06

Army's Fort Sill rehabilitation and physical therapy center is a warehousing operation for war-wounded soldiers who can be re-cycled back into battle or disposed of by discharge: http://counterpunch.org/jw04052006.html

4/3/06

Nuclear deal with India negotiated by Condoleezza Rice expected to encounter opposition in Congress:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/02/AR2006040201315.html?referrer=email

4/2/06

Pentagon's "insect Army" (cyborgs) are back in the news and it isn't April Fool's:  http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0401-08.htm  

4/2/06

Thirty five years after U.S. military sprayed Vietnamese forests with toxic defoliants, victims still fighting for compensation:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0401-07.htm

4/1/06

U.S. private security company, Blackwell, offers its services for "low intensity" counter-insurgency missions around the world:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2453824.0319444444.html?ic

3/31/06

Privatizing Apocalypse: Bechtel Corporation is hired to manage the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0330-23.htm

3/31/06

U.S. military plans large nuclear explosions in Nevada: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/30/060330162648.wxde5ocl.html

3/31/06

Pentagon plans to spend $257 billion on a new fighter aircraft system that may not work:  http://counterpunch.org/wheeler03302006.html    

3/17/06

Nuclear energy development in India, Pakistan Israel, with U.S. tacit or open support, spells end to Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty:

http://www.counterpunch.org/falk03172006.html

3/14/06

Tillie the Tick Goes to War: Defense Department wants to develop insect cyborgs electronically implanted and sent on missions too dangerous for soldiers:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0314-03.htm

3/14/06

In speech at Oak Ridge, spokesman of National Nuclear Security Administration signs abandonment of U.S.

decades-long commitment to nuclear disarmament:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0314-23.htm

3/14/06

Star Wars 2: Defense budget indicates escalated program of developing weapons in space: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0314-01.htm

3/12/06

Army National Guard beginning to re-fill its ranks by paying $2000 bonuses to Guardsmen for persuading others to sign up: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/11/AR2006031101342.html

3/9/06

Pentagon equipped and trained sharks may be the latest weapon in the program of "full spectrum dominance": http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0308-25.htm

3/9/06

Flyovers and other symbolic displays of military might portray a macho militarism that is reflected in agressive U.S. foreign policy: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0309-28.htm

3/6/06

Supreme Court upholds military recruitment in colleges and universities: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030600562.html  

3/2/06

This week's Zogby poll (72% of U.S. troops think we should get out of Iraq) may give new meaning to "support the troops."  If you agree with them, "bring them home."  

http://counterpunch.org/lindorff03022006.html

3/1/06

Research shows 1/3 of returning soldiers and Marines from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering mental health problems:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/28/AR2006022801712.html?referrer=email  

2/27/06

Bush's trip to India may signal a boost to India's capabilities to produce nuclear weapons:  http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0227-31.htm

2/27/06

U.S. is only country resisting the banning of wepons in space: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0226-22.htm

2/24/06

ACLU defending Virginia student arrested for protesting military recruitment practices:  http://www.zmag.org/content/newstandard.cfm?itemid=2846

2/23/06

State Department experts on nonproliferation of weapons, some critical of Administration policy, are pushed aside in departmental "reoroganization" http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022106S.shtml

2/17/06

Contrary to Pentagon claims, "bunker busting" nuclear weapons are not "safe for civilians." http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060217&articleId=1988     http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NEL20060212&articleId=1963  

2/17/06

U.S. military addicted to secret war plans; like we once planned to invade Canada!   http://counterpunch.org/rudmin02172006.html

2/16/06

With its emphasis on strategic nuclear weapons, the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review is more appropriate to a 1986 cold war struggle with another super-power than with national security realities today:  http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11119  

2/13/06

Upcoming UN Report: Close Guantanamo, prosecute torturers: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/13/ml&sSheet=/news/2006/02/13/ixp.htm

2/8/06

"Sleeper" in the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review: China being targeted for possible military action: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/02/is_china_the_ne.html#more

2/8/06

Special forces, big ticket weapons systems to be expanded in Bush budget: 

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8514  

2/8/06

Stephen Cambone's growing power as "Rumsfeld's enforcer":

http://counterpunch.org/

2/8/06

Military deployment puts strain on marriages?  Army's advice to soldiers: make better choices of marriage partners, "no jerks." 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR2006020701760.html?referrer=email  

2/7/06

Homophobic picketers at soldiers' funerals test limits of tolerance for protest:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1586000

2/5/06

Pentagon has created huge data-base of American youth to facilitate military recruitment and stifle dissent: http://counterpunch.org/ferner02042006.html

2/4/06

Pentagon lays out 20 year "long war" strategy, emphasizing counter-terrorism, clandestine operations, controlling nuclear proliferation, containing power of India, China and Russia:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020301853.html?referrer=email

2/4/06

Pentagon can now fund foreign militaries without State Department approval:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/28/AR2006012800833.html

2/3/06

Bush Defense Budget Request $439.3 Billion; Major Increases for Weapons Systems:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13777664.htm

2/1/06

Increasing promotion rate in U.S. Army spurs concern about lowering of quality of officer corps:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013106Q.shtml

2/1/06

ACLU settles suit in New Mexico to prevent public schools release of student data to military recruiters:  http://www.aclu.org/privacy/youth/23962prs20060127.html

1/30/06

U.S. Army stop-loss program forces 50,000 soldiers into extended duty: http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-01-29T144559Z_01_N196487_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ-USA-STOPLOSS.xml

1/24/06

Smoke and mirrors in the defense budget: http://counterpunch.org/wheeler01242006.html  

1/23/06    

 Wounded Iraqi veterans are "PR-risk" for Pentagon (American Conservative article):  http://amconmag.com/2005_01_31/article1.html  

1/21/06     

A survivor from Iraq kills himself in Alabama: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0121-29.htm

1/21/06    

Three combat veterans speak of their experiences in Iraq:

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/31053/

1/18/06    

The forgotten wounded of Iraq by Ron Kovic:

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/forgotten_wounded_20060117/

1/16/06    

Iraqi war veterans: stateside return problems:

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/nyt226.html

1/16/06     

Military recruitment flounders as war casualties mount:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine//military_recruitment_turns_tough_as_war_casualties_mount/

1/14/06     

U.S. soldiers in Iraq beefing up armor on their Humvees:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060113/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_super_humvees

1/14/06      

New Pentagon weapon: laughter: 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-12-pentagon-laughter_x.htm  

1/12/06 

Military recruitments target students with inducements: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/29/military_recruiters_pursue_target_schools_carefully/

1/12/06      

Space weapons and risk of accidental nuclear war:

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_12/Dec-spaceweapons.asp

1/12/06      

U.S. space weaponization and China:

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_12/Dec-cvr.asp

1/6/06      

Huge military budgets don't produce adequate equipment:

http://counterpunch.org/wheeler01062006.html

1/3/06       

Military expenditures, social costs:

http://www.stateofnature.org/milex.html

Books:

Steven Miles, medical ethicist, has published new book on "unprofessional" cooperation of military doctors with torture tactics in war on terrorism. Miles is interviewed in a 10 minute segment.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13842.htm  

Goff, Full Spectrum Disorder: the Military in the New American Century: http://www.swans.com/library/art10/johns04.htm

Bacevich, New American Militarism: http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=5625  

Ensign, Amerca's Military Today: The Challenge of Militarism: http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_catalog&task=author&author_id=P34291

Wheeler, The Wastrels of Defense on hidden elements in U.S. military defense budgets: http://www.militaryink.com/books/2004/october/159114938X.htm

Video, Films:

Film released, WHY WE FIGHT,  in theatres across the country, view trailer: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/

The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends (Iraqi combat veterans): http://www.thegroundtruth.org/  

The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children,  German documentary on radioactive warfare in Iraq: http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_iraq.html

Camila Mejia: An American We Can All be Proud of:  Detroit war-resisting soldier: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9154.htm

The human cost of war: treatment of soldiers during and after combat service:  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7693.htm

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