Tag: Military

An Obsolescent Military: Bombing Everything, Gaining Nothing

Guest Post by

 

What, precisely, is the US military for, and what, precisely, can it do? In practical terms, how powerful is it? On paper, it is formidable, huge, with carrier battle groups, advanced technology, remarkable submarines, satellites, and so on. What does this translate to?

Military power does not exist independently, but only in relation to specific circumstances. Comparing technical specifications of the T-14 to those of the M1A2, or Su-34 to F-15, or numbers of this to numbers of that, is an interesting intellectual exercise. It means little without reference to specific circumstances.

For example, America is vastly superior militarily to North Korea in every category of arms–but the North has nuclear bombs. It can’t deliver them to the US, but probably can to Seoul. Even without nuclear weapons, it has a large army and large numbers of artillery tubes within range of Seoul. It has an unpredictable government. As Gordon Liddy said, if your responses to provocation are wildly out of proportion to those  provocations, and unpredictable, nobody will provoke  you.

Continue reading “An Obsolescent Military: Bombing Everything, Gaining Nothing”

Eisenhower had no idea . . .

Guest Post by Donald Sensing

… of just what his-day military-industrial complex would eventually evolve into.

He had no idea: A Force Unto Itself: A Military Leviathan Has Emerged as America’s 51st and Most Powerful State

It used to be said of Prussia that it was a military with a state attached to it. America’s post-democratic military, combined with the proliferation of intelligence outfits and the growth of the country’s second defense department, the Department of Homeland Security, could increasingly be considered something like an emerging proto-state. Call it America’s 51st state, except that instead of having two senators and a few representatives based on its size, it has all the senators and all the representatives based on its power, budget and grip on American culture.

It is, in other words, a post-democratic leviathan to be reckoned with. And not a single Democratic or Republican candidate for commander-in-chief has spent a day in uniform. Prediction for November: another overwhelming victory at the polls for America’s 51st state.

Continue reading “Eisenhower had no idea . . .”

Beltway Conservative Budget Plans Are Big Spending and Anti-Liberty

Guest Post by Ron Paul
undefined

According to a recent poll, 73 percent of all Americans oppose increases in federal spending. Since this anti-government spending sentiment is a major reason Republicans control the House and Senate, one would expect the Republican Congress to hold the line on, or even cut, government spending. Yet, despite the Republican leadership’s rhetoric about “fiscal responsibility,” this year’s House Republican budget spends $104 billion more than the GOP’s 2013 budget.

Some conservatives, most notably the Heritage Foundation, have criticized the GOP budget. Heritage and the conservative House Republican Study Committee (RSC) have both prepared conservative alternatives to the official Republican budgets. Unfortunately, neither Heritage nor the RSC budgets meaningfully reduce federal spending.

Conservative efforts to reduce the size of government are handicapped by their love affair with the military-industrial complex. Since the Pentagon’s budget makes up the largest category of “discretionary” spending, it seems logical that a serious balanced budget plan would reduce spending on militarism.

Continue reading “Beltway Conservative Budget Plans Are Big Spending and Anti-Liberty”

Do We Need To ‘Rebuild The Military’?

Guest Post by Ron Paul

undefined

The Republican presidential debates have become so heated and filled with insults, it almost seems we are watching a pro wrestling match. There is no civility, and I wonder whether the candidates are about to come to blows. But despite what appears to be total disagreement among them, there is one area where they all agree. They all promise that if elected they will “rebuild the military.”

What does “rebuild the military” mean? Has the budget been gutted? Have the useless weapons programs like the F-35 finally been shut down? No, the United States still spends more on its military than the next 14 countries combined. And the official military budget is only part of the story. The total spending on the US empire is well over one trillion dollars per year. Under the Obama Administration the military budget is still 41 percent more than it was in 2001, and seven percent higher than at the peak of the Cold War.

Russia, which the neocons claim is the greatest threat to the United States, spends about one-tenth what we do on its military. China, the other “greatest threat,” has a military budget less than 25 percent of ours.

Continue reading “Do We Need To ‘Rebuild The Military’?”

If This Is “Transparency” – We’d Hate To Know What Secrecy Looks Like

Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,

In the spirit of the transparency — of which the Obama administration claims to be a champion — there will be no details regarding the allocation of non-military intelligence spending in the president’s final budget request to Congress.

According to a press release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), fiscal year 2017’s budget totals $53.5 billion, but don’t ask which agencies or programs will receive the funds — “because such disclosures could harm national security.”

Indubitably.

Of course, the ODNI congratulated the self-titled most transparent administration in history for its laudatory lucidity, anyway.

 

“Reflecting the Administration’s commitment to transparency and open government, this Budget continues the practice begun in 2012 of disclosing the President’s aggregate funding requests for the [National Intelligence Program],” stated an ODNI fact sheet.

Considering such disclosures became a requirement under the law in 2010, that pat on the back seems superfluous, if not smug.

“That’s a business as usual claim,” said Representative Peter Welch, according to US News & World Report. “There is no transparency there — they’re complying with the thinnest of laws about the [aggregate budget] number. Members of Congress and the American public really are learning nothing.”

US News also reported Welch first learned of the 16 individual intelligence agencies’ budget allocations, along with the rest of the U.S. populace, thanks to Edward Snowden’s disclosures revealed by the Washington Post in 2013.

Welch also explained that although members of Congress aren’t restricted from viewing the specifics of intelligence program appropriations, they are prohibited from discussing the contents — “It’s like going in there with a blindfold and coming out being mute,” he mused. In fact, objecting to the classified budget allotments would mean being “escorted off the House floor in handcuffs” — though it wasn’t entirely apparent whether Welch intended sarcasm in saying so.

Despite the revelations in Snowden’s massive document releases, and his ambitious aspirations to bring transparency to governmental operations, the Obama administration continues to thwart attempts to force the matter — and not only will it continue to do so, but administrations that follow will almost certainly continue the pattern.

In the meantime, it should come as no shock that we will never be completely privy to the intelligence programs we fund through our taxes.


QUOTES OF THE DAY

Overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.  

George Washington

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.  

Cicero

There never was a good war or a bad peace.  

Benjamin Franklin


SORRY FOR MY SERVICE

“Oklahoma National Guardsman apologizing for the behavior of anti-Muslim protestors at today’s Veteran’s Day parade (via Tulsa World).” Second image in gallery.

http://m.tulsaworld.com/photovideo/slideshows/photo-gallery-images-from-the-tulsa-veterans-day-parade/collection_c6985d53-25c5-5aee-85a5-0cee8520b34f.html

Via Goodbye America (in a photo)


The Republican War — Over War Policy

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

The Republican War — Over War Policy

Rand Paul had his best debate moment Tuesday when he challenged Marco Rubio on his plans to increase defense spending by $1 trillion.

“You cannot be a conservative if you’re going to keep promoting new programs you’re not going to pay for,” said Paul.

Marco’s retort triggered the loudest cheers of the night:

“There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. The Chinese are taking over the South China Sea. … the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world.”

Having called for the U.S. Navy to confront Beijing in the South China Sea, and for establishing a no-fly zone over Syria that Russian pilots would enter at their peril, Rubio seems prepared for a confrontation with either or both of our great rival nuclear powers.

Dismissing Vladimir Putin as a “gangster,” Marco emerged as the toast of the neocons. Yet the leading GOP candidate seems closer to Rand.

Donald Trump would talk to Putin, welcomes Russian planes bombing ISIS in Syria, thinks our European allies should lead on Ukraine, and wants South Korea to do more to defend itself.

Continue reading “The Republican War — Over War Policy”

WHITE MEN MAKE UP 65% OF ACTIVE MILITARY PERSONNEL, BUT ONLY 14% OF GOOGLE’S VETERANS DAY GRAPHIC

Reminder for the Google globogarchs: White men alone are 65% of active duty personnel (and even more of the total veteran population). White men alone also suffer a disproportionate number of wartime casualties.

Via Goodbye America (in a photo)


A Petticoat Military: Comedy in Uniform

Guest Post by

The military, once again, puts women into jobs the cannot do–this time, the Army’s Rangers–to advance the careers of political generals–among others, Maj Gen. Scott Miller, who oversees Ranger School. Or what used to be Ranger School.

Writes Susan Keating in People magazine: “A woman will graduate Ranger School,” a general told shocked subordinates this year while preparing for the first females to attend a “gender integrated assessment” of the grueling combat leadership course starting April 20, sources tell People. “At least one will get through.”

And two did, by being given special treatment. Again, a general’s career takes precedence over the good of his troops. An old story.

The Army cheated, says Keating: lowered standards to be politically correct and keep feminists happy. This, as the Army knows, and everyone who has been in combat knows, as well as most people who have been in the field military, is a terrible idea. But the Army exists to keep feminists happy. The services are in the hands of what Dave Hackworth, whom I knew before his death, called the Perfumed Princes. These are peace-time officers more interested in their own advancement than in their troops. Being politicians, not soldiers, they are afraid of women.  They allow the feminists to make fools of their men:

People-Belly

The Army  forces soldiers to wear pregnancy-simulators to teach them empathy–or so say feminists, but clearly the dykes enjoy humiliating the poor suckers. What must the Taliban think?

Continue reading “A Petticoat Military: Comedy in Uniform”

US Military Admits It “Misplaced” Black Plague Samples

Tyler Durden's picture

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/10/2015 22:55 -0400

Back in May, the US military was forced to admit that it had done something really stupid and what’s great about the story is that it requires very little in the way of explanation and/or added color to explain why what happened can be fairly classified as an example of sheer governmental incompetence. Put differently: this story speaks for itself. Here’s a recap:

According to CNN, “four lab workers in the United States and up to 22 overseas have been put in post-exposure treatment, a defense official said, following the revelation the U.S. military inadvertently shipped live anthrax samples in the past several days.” The army apparently thought they were shipping samples rendered inactive by gamma radiation last year, but that clearly was not the case because when a Maryland lab received their sample last Friday they were able to grow live Bacillus anthracis. The lab reported their concerns to the CDC. By Saturday afternoon, labs in Maryland, Texas, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia were notified that the US military had accidentally mailed them the deadly bacteria. A sample sent to a US base in South Korea was destroyed on Wednesday.

That came just a few months after the CDC admitted to mishandling an Ebola sample, potentially exposing a dozen people to the deadliest virus known to mankind.

Needless to say, the story grabbed headlines across the country as Americans struggled to understand how it’s possible that the US army could possible have managed to unknowingly jeopardize dozens of lives by FedEx-ing live anthrax to nine states and one foreign country.

Well don’t look now, but the DoD is out warning that the army might have also mishandled samples of the black plague which isn’t known to be dangerous unless you count the time it wiped out 60% of Europe’s entire population. Here’s more from CNN:

Continue reading “US Military Admits It “Misplaced” Black Plague Samples”

Wall Street and the Military are Draining Americans High and Dry

Guest Post by William Edstrom

The United States (US) government often cites $18 trillion as the amount of money that they owe, but their actual debts are higher. Much higher.

The government in the USA owes $13.2 trillion in US Treasury Bonds, $5 trillion in money borrowed by the US Federal government from Federal government trust funds like the Social Security trust fund, $0.7 trillion for state bonds issued by the 50 states, $3.7 trillion for the municipal bond market (US towns, cities and counties), $1.97 trillion still owing by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, mostly for bad mortgages in years gone by, $6.23 trillion owed by US government authorities other than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $1.04 trillion in loans taken out by the US Federal government (e.g. government credit card balances, short term loans) and $0.63 trillion in loans owed by government authorities (e.g. their government credit card balances, short term loans). As of April 1, 2015, according to the Federal Reserve Bank’s Financial Accounts of the US report, the government in the USA has $32.77 trillion in debt excluding unfunded government pension debts and unfunded government healthcare costs

Debt is money that has to be paid. The government in the USA also has to pay $6.62 trillion for unfunded pension liabilities, as of April 1, 2015. There are thousands of government pension plans in the USA (e.g. County, State, Teacher’s, Police). The Federal Employees Pension Plan is now short $1.9 trillion according to the Fed’s March 2015 statement plus $4.7 trillion in unfunded state and municipal pension liabilities according to State Budget Solutions which calculates on actual pension returns (approx. 2.5% per year from 2009 to 2014, instead of the fantasy ‘assumption’ of an 8% return used by the Fed to guesstimate pension fund money). The largest governmental pension fund in Puerto Rico ran out money (became insolvent) in 2012 and the government now has to pay $20.5 billion for that. Pension contributions into government pension plans have been less than what these pension plans pay out to retirees which is why the government was short by $6.62 trillion for government pensions as of April 1, 2015.

Continue reading “Wall Street and the Military are Draining Americans High and Dry”