WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will buy more than 5,200 new armored vehicles designed to protect troops from roadside bombs in the rugged and steep terrain in Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.
The move comes as statistics show roadside bomb attacks have surged to record levels in Afghanistan, and commanders there have an urgent need for maneuverable trucks that are safer than armored Humvees when struck by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The need for an all-terrain Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle is acute as more U.S. troops are sent to Afghanistan to help quell the growing insurgency.

Daniel Nasaw | Washington | July 1

The Guardian - A US army panel has recommended an Arabic linguist and Iraq veteran be discharged from the military for declaring on television that he is gay.

The army accused Lieutenant Dan Choi, 28, of violating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars homosexuals from serving openly in the military. Choi, a graduate of the elite West Point military academy, served a tour in Iraq as an infantry officer, translator and Arabic language instructor. He announced in March on a popular liberal television chat show that he is gay, setting up a confrontation.

The panel today recommended that the US army withdraw Choi's federal recognition as an officer, a move that would end his military career, said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Fanning, a spokesman for the New York army national guard, Choi's command.

"It is firing based on identity, purely discriminatory based on my identity," Choi said. "If I had said 'no, I'm sorry, I'm actually straight but those statements were a lie and I'm sorry,' then I had a good chance of being retained."

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave, my ass

David Edwards | June 29

Raw Story - U.S. Army Lieutenant Dan Choi, a graduate of the West Point military academy and an Arabic translator, will face a military panel on Tuesday which may discharge him for admitting he is gay.

His case was mentioned in a letter to President Barack Obama, signed by 77 Democratic members of Congress. They called the 10-year veteran an “exceptional” soldier. Some have even referred to him as “the de facto face of the movement to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“I face a discharge tomorrow morning, simply for being honorable and telling who I am, in truth” he told CNN host John Roberts on Monday morning.

Should he be discharged, it would “strip away a lot of the veterans benefits, and that can include education, home loan, and even veterans hospital and medical benefits,” he added. “These benefits that I’ve earned being a combat veteran of the Iraq war.”

Tim Cocks & Muhanad Mohammed | Baghdad | June 29

Reuters - U.S. troops pulled out of Baghdad on Monday, triggering jubilation among Iraqis hopeful that foreign military occupation is ending six years after the invasion to depose Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi soldiers paraded through the streets in their American-made vehicles draped with Iraqi flags and flowers, chanting, dancing and calling the pullout a "victory".

One drove a motorcycle with party streamers on it; another, a Humvee with a garland of plastic roses on the grill.

U.S. combat troops must pull out of Iraq's urban centres by midnight on Tuesday under a bilateral security pact that also requires all troops to leave the country by 2012.

All had left the capital by Monday afternoon, Major-General in Staff, Abboud Qanbar, head of Iraqi security forces in Baghdad, told Reuters.

"Look What You Made Me Do"

Caesar, Hitler, Nixon - War, Racism, Hatred - Alcohol, Mysogyny, Conformity

Seamless trinities...
One needn't ever drink a drop of alcohol to serve in it's churches...
Just as one needn't ever hit women to perpetuate ever worse to them...
Or as one needn't necessarily exit conventional reality to reject the convention.

Seamless subjects. Addiction: money, ego, power, sex, drugs, food, adrenalin, violence, drugs, fear, hatred, guns, vanity, games, the very creative imperative itself -addiction alone makes an endless daisy chain of seamlessly related subjects. They continue on through Blame and Guilt, and Control. Subjects of enthrallment, helpless captivity. It's a necessary convenience to limit the moment's topic. In such isolation, the seamlessness of the chain is not a foregone understanding though, not at all, quite the opposite. It is not a given understanding that to talk of one is to talk of 'them' all... As it should be; that isn't necessarily true, or false.

June 24

Stars and Stripes - Asserting that Stars and Stripes “refused to highlight” good news in Iraq that the U.S. military wanted to emphasize, Army officials have barred a Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.

Officials said Stripes reporter Heath Druzin, who covered operations of the division’s 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team in February and March, would not be permitted to rejoin the unit for another reporting tour because, among other things, he wrote in a March 8 story that many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave and hand over security tasks to Iraqi forces.

“Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news,” Major Ramona Bellard, a public affairs officer, wrote in denying Druzin’s embed request.

Ewen MacAskill | Washington | June 19

The Guardian -

Kang Nam vessel suspected of transporting weapons, a violation of UN sanctions imposed last week

Tension was growing in the Pacific today as the US navy prepared to intercept a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying weapons in defiance of a United Nations ban.

The US navy has been tracking the Kang Nam since its left a North Korean port on Wednesday.

It would be the first ship to be intercepted since the UN last week imposed sanctions on North Korea as punishment for conducting an underground nuclear test last month. The sanctions ban the import and export of nuclear material, missiles and all other weapons other than small arms.

A USS destroyer, the John McCain (named after the father of the Republican senator, who was an admiral), was awaiting orders to intercept the ship off the Chinese coast.

The UN sanctions only allow the US to hail a North Korean ship and demand to be allowed to conduct a search, but not forcibly board it. North Korea has said a forcible search would be regarded as an act of war.

This has the ability to tremendously backfire

Saeed Shah | Islamabad | June 18

McClatchy - As Pakistan pursues delicate negotiations before launching a major military operation in South Waziristan, the United States launched a drone strike Thursday that could offend a warlord the government here is trying to win over, analysts said.

The bombing exposed the divergent priorities of Washington and Islamabad. The United States strongly backs the Pakistani offensive announced Sunday against warlord Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Washington also wants to destroy the leadership of the Afghan Taliban and its Pakistani allies, however, some of whom are potential allies for the Pakistani government.

One such potential ally, who just came under attack, is warlord Maulvi Nazir, whom Pakistan is courting in hopes he'll stay out of the fight, according to a senior Pakistani security official who declined to be identified as he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue.

Mehsud is also seeking a pact with Nazir, however, in what officials and militants described as a fierce competition with the government.

June 19

BBC - The US is "in a good position" to protect its territory from a potential North Korean missile strike, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

His comments came in response to a report that North Korea was considering launching a missile towards Hawaii.

"We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the West, in the direction of Hawaii," Mr Gates said.

The US has approved the deployment of missiles and radar to "provide support" in the event of an attack, he added.

Jim Wolf | Washington | June 17

Reuters - U.S. ground-based interceptor missiles stand a better-than-90-percent chance of thwarting a "rogue nation" ballistic missile attack on the United States in the next five years, the second highest-ranking military officer told Congress on Tuesday.

Giving the most bullish military assessment to date on the Boeing Co-managed system's capabilities, Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replied "ninety percent plus" when asked the odds of defeating a long-range missile that could be fired by North Korea.

Lisbeth Gronlund, an expert on missile defense at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dismissed his estimate as "irresponsible and based on wishful thinking," not facts.

June 15

ACLU - On June 15, 2009, the CIA released still-highly redacted documents in which Guantánamo Bay prisoners describe abuse and torture they suffered in CIA custody. (Learn more >>) In previously released versions of the documents, the CIA had removed virtually all references to the abuse of prisoners in their custody; the new versions are still heavily blacked out but include some new information:

* Majid Khan
* Khalid Sheikh Muhammad
* Al Nashiri
* Abu Zubaydah

Also see: Heavily redacted CIA docs render more torture evidence

Washington Post, By Bradley Graham, June 14

Face time with the president is political gold in Washington, so Donald Rumsfeld moved quickly after taking charge at the Pentagon to secure weekly private meetings with President George W. Bush. Now, nearly six years and many meetings later, the defense secretary arrived in the Oval Office prepared to raise a delicate, and personal, matter.

His opportunity came as the talk that day, in September 2006, turned to Iraq. The conflict there was going badly. Violence had metastasized into a civil war. Plans to begin a major drawdown of U.S. troops had stalled. Iraqi forces still appeared unready to assume charge of security, and the Iraqi government, riven by sectarian strife, was doing little to unite the nation. In Washington, much of the responsibility for the mess in Iraq had fallen on Rumsfeld. He had failed to plan adequately for the occupation, was slow to develop a counterinsurgency campaign and had alienated too many people with his combative, domineering personality.

Gareth Porter | Washington | June 12

IPS - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that managers of the drone attacks programmes have been using the total secrecy surrounding the programme to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.

Intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either the list of military targets of the drone strikes or the actual results in terms of al Qaeda or civilians killed, according to a Washington source familiar with internal discussion of the drone strike programme. The source insisted on not being identified because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue.

"They can’t find out anything about the programme," the source told IPS. That has made it impossible for other government agencies to judge its real consequences, according to the source.

Since early 2009, Barack Obama administration officials have been claiming that the predator attacks in Pakistan have killed nine of 20 top al Qaeda officials, but they have refused to disclose how many civilians have been killed in the strikes.

In April, The News, a newspaper in Lahore, Pakistan, published figures provided by Pakistani officials indicating that 687 civilians have been killed along with 14 al Qaeda leaders in some 60 drone strikes since January 2008 – just over 50 civilians killed for every al Qaeda leader.

A paper published this week by the influential pro-military Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) criticising the Obama administration’s use of drone attacks in Pakistan says U.S. officials "vehemently dispute" the Pakistani figures but offers no further data on the programme.

CNAS' third annual conference, "Striking a Balance: A New American Security," will be streamed live starting at 8:30 AM EST.

8:30-8:45 AM - INTRODUCTION AND OPENING REMARKS

The Honorable Dr. Richard Danzig
Chairman of the Board, Center for a New American Security

Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns
Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Board of Directors, CNAS

8:45-9:45 AM - KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Dr. John A. Nagl (INTRODUCTION)
President, Center for a New American Security

General David H. Petraeus, USA
Commander, U.S. Central Command

Tokyo | June 4

AFP - The defence panel of Japan's ruling party on Wednesday said that despite its pacifist constitution, it should be able to launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea to stop any imminent attack.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s defence policy committee also argued Japan should develop new spy satellites to provide advance warning of a missile launch without having to rely on US or other allies' intelligence.

The defence debate - sensitive in Japan and East Asia because of Japan's past wartime aggression - follows communist North Korea's latest nuclear and missile tests, which have sharply heightened tensions in the region.

Japan faces elections by October, and Prime Minister Taro Aso's conservative LDP has indicated it plans to make security a key campaign issue.

"North Korea may obtain nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles," former defence chief Gen Nakatani said after the meeting.

"Naturally, we need to be able to strike enemy bases within the realm of the self-defence of our country."

Choe Sang-Hun | May 28

UPDATE 5/29:

BBC - Chinese fishing boats are reported to be leaving the tense inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea after North Korea's threat of military action.

On Friday it warned of "self-defence" measures if the UN Security Council imposed sanctions for the nuclear test.

"If the UN Security Council provokes us, our additional self-defence measures will be inevitable," the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by official media.

_{** North Korea slams Security Council as hypocrites
** Gates: No Need to Increase Troop Numbers in S. Korea After North's Threats
** US grapples with idea of permanent nuclear N.Korea:}

"I do believe that diplomacy still has a chance of success, but only if is robust and only if the robustness includes some meaningful coercion components," Perry said at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank on Thursday. ~ William Perry, a former U.S. defense secretary

Daily Telegraph | Nile Gardiner

Politico has an extraordinary report on Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, launching a furious broadside against the British press. Here are Gibbs' sneering and condescending remarks:

"I want to speak generally about some reports I've witnessed over the past few years in the British media," Gibbs said. "In some ways, I'm surprised it filtered down."

"Let's just say if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a write-up of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I'd might open up a British newspaper," he continued. "If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be the first pack of clips I'd pick up."

Gibbs' juvenile comments followed an article in The Daily Telegraph relating to the President's decision not to release new photos reportedly showing appalling prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib by a tiny minority of military personnel. The straightforward news piece, hotly disputed by the White House, is based upon an interview with Major General Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the inquiry into the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

For the record I firmly believe the President was right to refuse to release the photos in the face of pressure from the ACLU, which would only further inflame anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world. However I cannot recall an instance like this where the President's official spokesman has blasted the press of a key ally - in this case America's closest friend, Great Britain. MORE

Saeed Shah & Warren P. Strobel | Islamabad | May 27

McClatchy Newspapers - The U.S. is embarking on a $1 billion crash program to expand its diplomatic presence in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, another sign that the Obama administration is making a costly, long-term commitment to war-torn South Asia, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The White House has asked Congress for — and seems likely to receive — $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital.

The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

Senior State Department officials said the expanded diplomatic presence is needed to replace overcrowded, dilapidated and unsafe facilities and to support a "surge" of civilian officials into Afghanistan and Pakistan ordered by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Other major projects are planned for Kabul, Afghanistan; and for the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Peshawar. In Peshawar, the U.S. government is negotiating the purchase of a five-star hotel that would house a new U.S. consulate.

Dear editor:

I thought you might want to post this op-ed at The Seminal or link to it on the web: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=23387&news_iv_ctrl=1021

Best,

David Holcberg
Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

------------------------

What We Owe Our Soldiers

By Alex Epstein, Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Every Memorial Day, we pay tribute to the American men and women who have died in combat. With speeches and solemn ceremonies, we recognize their courage and valor. But one fact goes unacknowledged in our Memorial Day tributes: all too many of our soldiers have died unnecessarily--because they were sent to fight for a purpose other than America’s freedom.

Cooperative Security Locations, Not Permanent Just Enduring
Charles Lemos | May 11 | MYDD

The Department of Defense has released a FY 2010 Budget Request Summary Justification (pdf.) presentation outlining its proposed expenditures. Some are curious, a few are disconcerting.

The FY 2010 Base budget includes $46 million for a cooperative security location at Palanquero Air Base in Colombia.

This is news to Colombians. Though Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos broached the subject of stationing a base in Colombia back in February, that trial balloon did not float. Colombians remain opposed to any US military presence in the country.

Significant investment at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, a forward operating site for which responsibility has been moved from CENTCOM to AFRICOM.

It looks like AFRICOM, which remains homeless or perhaps better put awaiting a home in temporary quarters in Stuggart, Germany, is going to get rammed down hapless Djibou

Tom A. Peter | Round Up Article | May 3

CSM - Australia cites China, India, as reasons for a major military buildup
Prime Minister Rudd proposes $72 billion in new spending. US military can't protect it, say analysts.

Almost two decades after the end of the cold war, a new arms race may be under way in the Pacific. Responding to the expansion of China's military, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sparked a storm of controversy on Saturday when he released a report calling for a $72 billion expansion of the military over the next 20 years.

Among other upgrades, Australia would purchase 100 F-35 fighter jets, 12 hunter-killer submarines, 46 Tiger helicopters, and 100 armored vehicles, while also investing in cyber and electronic warfare technologies, according to the 140-page report titled "Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030."

The report cited the threats of North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs, cyber attacks, and piracy, but it points to the rise of China and India as the most imminent concern in the coming years. It also adds that US military dominance is now uncertain and therefore its assistance to Australia is no longer guaranteed.

Josh White | May 1

WaPo - When the photos of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in 2004, U.S. officials portrayed Army Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr. as the ringleader of a few low-ranking "bad apples" who illegally put naked Iraqi detainees in painful positions, shackled them to cell doors with women's underwear on their heads and menaced them with military dogs.

Now, the recent release of Justice Department memos authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques has given Graner and other soldiers new reason to argue that they were made scapegoats for policies approved at high levels. They also contend that the government's refusal to acknowledge those polices when Graner and others were tried undermined their legal defenses.

Graner remains locked up at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., about halfway through a 10-year prison sentence for detainee abuse, assault and dereliction of duty. His lawyer said this week that he is drafting appeals arguments centered largely on the revelations in the memos and a newly released congressional investigation into the interrogation practices.

I have been asked to "put up or shut up" about Afghanistan. In other words, I have been asked to make clear my views on an appropriate US policy for Afghanistan. I thought I had done that, but, no matter.

I think that we Americans need to stop exagerating the level of threat to the United States that originates or will originate in Afghanistan. The temptation to see the activities and scheming of takfiri jihadis as parts of a world war between the Islamic "House of War" and the rest of us has caused us to begin to re-design our society(ies) for total war against an all powerful and virtually eternal enemy. This is nonsense. Islam, Islamdom, and Islamicate Civilization are much given, as are other such cultural constructs, to revivalism in a pattern that recurs over centuries as memory of the costs of each revival fades from the living collective mind. The present phenomenon of Islamic zealotry is not something new. It is something old come again. This wave of revivalism has peaked and will decline under the pressure of local government and religious establishments, foreign military intervention and the competition presented by other forms of Islam, each with its claim to universal authenticity and its own circle of adherents.
..
In Pakistan the problem is very different. There, a developed post-colonial state is threatened by a reversion to ancient forms of conflict. Once again, the Pushtuns of the mountain and hill country seek to impose their will on the people of the plain of the Indus watershed. The nuclear arsenal of Pakistan makes a victory of the hillmen unacceptable to the US. As I wrote at the National Journal blog this week, a return to Pakistan Army control of the government and imposition of government control over the border country seems the only acceptable solution and the United States should stop impeding that outcome. pl
more

Mary Beth Sheridan, Spencer S. Hsu and Steve Fainaru | Apr 25

WaPo - The Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border under a $350 million initiative that would expand the U.S. military's role in the drug war, according to Obama administration officials.

The circumstances under which the troops could be deployed have not been determined, the officials said. They said the proposal was designed to give President Obama additional flexibility to respond to drug-related violence that has threatened to spill into the United States from Mexico and to curb southbound smuggling of cash and weapons.

The initiative, which was tucked into the supplemental budget request sent to Congress this month, has raised concerns over what some U.S. officials perceive as an effort by the Pentagon to increase its counternarcotics profile through a large pot of money that comes with few visible requirements.

The broadly worded proposal does not mention troop deployments, stipulating only that the military is to receive up to $350 million "for counter-narcotics and other activities . . . on the United States' border with Mexico."

If the contingency plans go unused, the money would be retained for military operations and maintenance after September 2010, an administration official said.

The proposal is being closely monitored by the State Department, which administers the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative, a three-year aid package to fight drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America. The new funding would be nearly as much as the 2009 budget for Merida, and some observers said they fear that the military could use the money to set up a parallel counternarcotics program with little oversight.

"The real question is what happens if this morphs into something else," said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Moscow | Apr 21

AFP - A top Russian official on Tuesday accused the new US administration of intensifying missile defence plans and warned that Moscow sees no basis for big cuts to its nuclear arsenal.

In an interview with Interfax news agency, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov revived threats to site Iskander strategic missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave near Poland if Washington's missile shield plans in Europe went ahead.

"The Americans have not reviewed their plans and I don't think this can happen. On the contrary, we see an intensification of work in the area of missile defence, including within the format of NATO," he said.

Regarding Moscow's possible deployment of missiles to Kaliningrad, a territory surrounded by European Union and NATO states, he said: "No one has changed this position.... If there is no missile shield, there won't be any Iskanders."

The Russian comments heighten tensions just as the two sides are due to sit down for talks in Rome on Friday on creating a successor treaty to a Soviet-era arms-control accord, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).