1. Af/Pak:
“Waziristan is no more vital to us than any other spot where al-Qaeda or other terror groups may be plotting against us, and in the iPhone age, that could be anywhere from the Marianas Trench to the Sea of Tranquility. If we’re reliant on the Pakistani government to protect our vital interests, we’re ewed-scray.
The ancient Chinese warfare philosopher Sun Tzu admonished that no nation ever benefited from a long war. Yet a Long War is exactly what our military wants to lead us into. Our never-ending quagmires in Asian rabbit holes are about little more than giving the U.S. military, specifically the Army, an excuse for hogging the federal budget. They want to escalate Afghanistan so they have a place to play war for a generation or so. “
http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/10/30/bob-gates-bad-bet/
2. Drones:
“The killing of Afghan civilians, usually caused by inadvertent American and NATO airstrikes, has become the most sensitive issue between the Afghans and their Western guests.” So reports The New York Times Magazine in the latest installment of its ongoing “There’s a new general in charge and he’s cool and maybe he can win the war” series. This decade’s war: Afghanistan. This week’s star: General Stanley McChrystal. Alas, poor Petraeus, we hardly knew ye.
As a World War II buff, I mourn the fact that the Magazine wasn’t around in 1943. Imagine the over-the-top insensitivity: “The killing of Jews, usually caused by inadvertent German and Axis deportations, has become the most sensitive issue between the French and their Teutonic guests.”
“Inadvertent” airstikes?
“Guests”?”
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20091022
3. “Congressman Watt Guts Bill to Audit the Fed
The bill, with 308 co-sponsors, has been stripped of provisions that would remove Fed exemptions from audits of transactions with foreign central banks, monetary policy deliberations, transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee and communications between the Board, the reserve banks and staff, Paul said today.
“There’s nothing left, it’s been gutted,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is not a partisan issue. People all over the country want to know what the Fed is up to, and this legislation was supposed to help them do that.”..
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/10/congressman-watt-guts-audit-fed-bill.html
4. “The Few, the Proud, the Desperate
It’s hard not to wonder what would happen if, instead of dutifully reading from the Pentagon’s script on October 13, the media had done their job and informed the public about the real nature of the ‘service’ that potential enlistees were signing up for. Maybe if they had, those recruitment officers would not have been quite so busy recruiting – and stealing the lives of – unsuspecting young people in desperate need of employment.
Maybe those eager masses of young men and women wouldn’t have been so hot to sign up if, for instance, they understood that anyone enlisting in the military right now – whatever branch – is required to sign a document that states: “Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document.” (DD Form4/1, 1998, Sec.9.5b).
In their book Army of None, published in 2007, Aimee Allison and David Solnit advise those who expect the military to pay for their college to “read the fine print.” The authors point out that only a fraction of recruits who signed up for the Montgomery GI Bill received a dime, and that 65 percent “received no money at all for college.” If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later decide not to go to college, “the military will keep your deposit and give you nothing.”
And when it comes to those signing bonuses, maybe if potential recruits understood that they will be forced to repay the money if he or she leaves the military before the agreed term of service (that’s eight years for first time enlistees), perhaps they would reconsider signing away life and limb to get it. If those same applicants understood the army data from 2007 revealing that the top bonus of $20,000 was given to only 6 percent of enlistees who signed up for active duty, they might have figured out another way to survive the recession. They might be further divested of their illusions if they knew that military statistics show that 48 percent of enlistees report having “financial difficulty” and that some 33 percent of homeless men in the US are veterans, with nearly 200,000 veterans homeless on any given night.
And another thing: The military does not have to place recruits in their chosen career field or give them the specific training requested. Even if enlistees do receive training, it is often to develop skills that will not transfer to the civilian job market – like firing an M 240 machine gun.
By the way: Military recruiters are notorious liars.
Back in 2004, the New York Times reported that nearly one in five US Army recruiters was investigated for offenses ranging from “threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq.” It’s doubtful that has changed just because the focus is now on Afghanistan. One veteran recruiter told a reporter for the Albany Times Union that, after recruiting for years, he couldn’t think of one recruiter who wasn’t dishonest about it, admitting that, “I did it myself.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15880
