Proposal to Cut Military Is Rational - But Will Repuke Congress Cooperate?

The proposal to cut the bloated military by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is both rational and honorable. In the current parlous economic climate we simply cannot afford to maintain 4,700 bases worldwide nor use the military as a default "jobs program".  The last is especially egregious as it deflects national resources and effort from creating actual jobs with benefits in the private sector.

Hagel's proposal is said to "reflect the nation's  transition from 13 years of war" (Denver Post, today, p. 18A) but it actually reflects a needed transition from 13 years of unnecessary occupations - which have arguably only inflamed the Middle East further. Iraq was certainly unnecessary, there never was any al Qaeda, and Afghanistan long since turned into a nation building endeavor which the Afghans themselves don't even want as Karzai's recent responses to continued U.S. occupation (through 2024) disclose. (I.e. refusing to sign an agreement for extension and freeing dozens of Taliban from Afghan prisons.)

Our national resources can be much better spent, therefore, with a  trimmed down fighting force - as opposed to a bloated, surplus one -  which poor leaders will otherwise be tempted to interject in unwise military adventures.  Hagel's proposals include:

- Shrinking the active duty Army from 520,000 to between 440,000 and 450,000. This compares with the post World War II low of 480,000 but bear in mind that in that era there wasn't the access to high technology that might compensate for manpower.

- The Army National Guard would drop to 335,000 from 355,000 by 2017.  The Army Reserves would also drop by 10,000 to 195,000

- The Marine Corps would shrink from 190,000 to 182,000

- Changes in military compensation, including: smaller pay raises, a slow down in the growth of tax free housing allowances, and a requirement that retirees and some families of active duty service members pay a little more in health insurance deductibles.

As Hagel said:

"This is the time for reality and the time for explosive growth in military budgets is over."

Indeed, that growth has negatively impacted all aspects of our society - from forcing even more cuts in food stamps on those who already go to bed hungry each night, to cutting unemployment benefits to increase the suffering of families nationwide.

Yet pro-military whores like Doug Lamborn want the burden to continue to fall on the already sacrificed and indigent. In response to Hagel's proposals, Lamborn retorted (ibid.):

"Our national security should not be a budgetary punching bag! Instead the rest of the federal government needs to take some cuts!"

Is this imbecile serious? The national security a "punching bag"? In fact, the national security state has gorged itself at the expense of nearly every other domestic sector. Included in the latter we've already beheld successive cuts in food stamps to the poorest citizens, ending with the latest round amounting to an added $9b in cuts via the Farm Bill just passed. That means 15.9 million kids going to bed hungry each night by one estimate in Mother Jones magazine.. Then add to that the December elimination of long term unemployment benefits and you have even  more suffering.

And this inveterate fool wants the "rest of the federal government" to take MORE cuts! So wait, let's triple the food stamps cuts so that even toddlers will be starving at night, along with parents and older siblings.

But why be surprised? Lamborn is an unrepentant, unapologetic whore, after all. According to  The Denver Post  article('Defense Cuts Put Lamborn in Tough Fight', Nov. 11, 2013, p. 5A):

"Lamborn receives his heftiest campaign contributions from military contractors. Just in this election cycle, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman- both with offices in Colorado Springs - gave him a combined $10,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has also received contributions from Honeywell International and Boeing."

Can you spell W-H-O-R-E? No, it doesn't have to be anyone who jumps into bed for pay! It also includes congress critters who jump into bed with their military interests for campaign dough!

In the same article, Lamborn made no bones about  wanting to "go full tilt come January"  when further defense cuts are on the block,  and according to the Post, "intends to find other places to chop, including entitlements like food stamps and Medicare, to shield the military."


In other words, cut from the least vulnerable citizens as opposed to Dougie's beloved warhawks for whom he's clearly ready to do almost anything imaginable.  (Lamborn's also been fighting for a "combat air brigade" for Colorado Springs, equipped with 122 Apache Longbow choppers - amounting to yet another military-industrial pork barrel waste, even as many citizens in this burg remain underfed, homeless and unemployed.)

The time to act is NOW, and Chuck Hagel's solution provides a blueprint. It is time to pare the overly fat Military down to a size that comports with the austerity situation all other citizens must endure.  Not to do so is to invite economic and domestic catastrophe.

But don't look for the military porkers and grafters in the Repuke House to cooperate! They're quite prepared to let the bogus military "jobs' program continue in return for the kickbacks received from their paymasters.

Defense Spending Cuts? Don't Believe All the Hype!

To hear and see the squallering Repukes you'd think the Obama administration had unilaterally disarmed the country leaving it to the nefarious aims of the Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians ....or whoever the evil empire of the moment might be. But not so fast! Those $487 b in proposed defense cuts over a decade are actually a drop in the bucket. They don't so much cut defense spending in real terms as the growth in defense spending.

As Bill Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy put it in a recent salon.com interview:

"that’s against what the Pentagon would like to spend, not against what they’re spending now; and they had quite ambitious plans for increases. As President Obama pointed out, this new plan would basically slow the rate of increase."

He went on to say that given we're at the highest rate of military spending since World War II (and with no extra taxes to pay for it, like we had during World War Two) there shouldn't be such an outcry from the Congress - mainly Republicans like the clowns on display as "candidates" for the GOP Presidential nomination.

Take Mitt Romney for instance, arguably the most realistic candidate for the Reep nomination given how most of the others have imploded, with Rick Santorum due up next (after women learn that he vigorously defends prevention of abortion even in the cases of rape or incest). Anyway, as Hartung has observed, Romney has insisted on Pentagon spending equal to 4 percent of gross domestic product as a constant level.

In Hartung's words:

" that would be almost like an entitlement program, where the Pentagon would get a set amount regardless of what’s going on in the world. Four percent of GDP would be about $30 billion a year more than what we’re spending this year, and perhaps an extra $1 trillion or more over the next 10 years"

And of course with no proposed taxes to pay for it, that's exactly what it would amount to, apart from requiring massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare if Romney had his way (which he likely would with an all-Repuke congress). So what's this all about given we've already been at the level of spending 58 cents of every dollar on defense?

Basically, it's about imposing financially dictated austerity on the mass of people! This is the "end around" way the Goopers are using to kill all "entitlements" - in their parlance. Recall once again, the template in play ever since the whacko Right and Minutemen, John Birchers first trotted out their economic "Manifestos" in the early 1960s (and also why most Americans never gave them the time of day or elected office).

For example, James Hepburn's 'Farewell America' noted the primary extremist right wing groups in Texas ca. 1963 included: The American Political Forum, The Ku Klux Klan, The John Birch Society, The Dallas Committee for Full Citizenship, The Texas White Citizens’ Council, The National States Rights Party and The Dallas White Citizens’ Council.

Among the economic planks-precepts all of these had in common at the time of JFK’s assassination:

- Abolition or severe reduction of income taxes, to starve government and ultimately undermine all public spending in favor of ‘privatization’.

- Increased military-defense spending at the same time to effect a "double whammy"

- Fierce opposition to the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty- particularly its clause limiting anti-missile systems.

- Elimination of both Social Security and Medicare, regarded as “socialist intrusions” into a capitalist nation (“All services to the public should be abolished in favor of personal enterprise”- H.L. Hunt, ,p. 248)

As Hepburn noted in his 1968 book, the extreme Rightists all knew that the last depended mainly on the first two. Somehow, if they could ever get into office and convince people to vote consistently against higher taxes (or more specifically FOR candidates that opposed higher taxes) and also higher miltary spending they'd be "in like Flynn". The people themselves, the voters, would then lay the groundwork for their own demise via the evisceration of all their social insurance and services.

Well, this is exactly what' s happened, especially since the Bushies got in by stealing the election of 2000 via the ruse of putting 3 out of 10 black voters in Florida on Choicepoint 'Felon's lists' (making them ineligible to vote). For more on this see Chapter 1 of Greg Palast's book: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. (The book is available free as a pdf download.)

Once in office, compliments of their electoral coup d 'etat and the cooperation of a Supreme Court willing to trump voters in Florida, they accelerated those first two early 60's radical Right initiatives. They legislated massive tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 (which by the way are still extant) and to the tune of more than $2.8 trillion when interest is factored in. These tax cuts actually, because they're unpaid for and remain so, will amount to future taxes on future generations of workers - either by having their Social Security cut drastically, or Medicare or both.

Then another plum fell into their laps with the 9-11 debacle which they realized in the aftermath could be exploited to ramp up military and security spending to unheard of levels. In effect, from 2001, Pentagon spending effectively doubled until by 2006, reaching a level that exceeded the next 25 nations combined - including the Russians, Chinese and India. This according to the sobering look at the expanse of the American Empire (up to 2007) as provided in the book: The State of the American Empire, particularly the highlighted maps showing its expanse (pp. 70-71), as well as the total of over 55 U.S. military interventions from 1945-89 (pp. 76-77). Meanwhile, the comparable military spending per person (page 67) boggles the mind into insensibility, and this was published before the Afghan "supplementals" budget was effectively nearly doubled after 2007. (With the percentage of GDP consumed increased from 2.2% to nearly 4.7% by 2004, according to former defense analyst Chuck Spinney).

So, along with the Afghanistan incursion in 2001, then launching into a totally fabricated war of choice against Iraq in 2003, the Bushies and radical Right repukes had their "two fer". They had the back door mechanism to drain the Treasury and force back door cuts to "entitlements" and social services spending (including for Medicaid, as well as unemployment benefits) if they just held strain and refused to raise taxes. The last was critical because if taxes were ever allowed to go up, say even by expiring the Bush tax cuts, it meant revenue would pour in and the deficits arguments would be scuttled along with the chance to rip away "entitlements".

Thus, it isn't mystifying at all that the Repuke nutso crowd would yelp and scream as much against cutting even the growth of the bloated Pentagon budget as they would finally sunsetting the Bush tax cuts. Why shouldn't they yelp? Given it's understood from their ideology that this combo is the best way to starve government coffers enough to later play the "deficits" card and demand an axe to entitlements. Fuck, some things never change - even in nearly 50 years!

What has changed, which is most distressing, is the American voters' willingness now to give these freaks a serious hearing and even votes- when back in the time - these clowns and their candidates were all relegated to the electoral margins. Hell, even Barry Goldwater himself was clobbered in the 1964 elections, and this was the guy who famously pronounced: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice".

Why has the American voter changed? Why is he or she so much more inclined to allow the terrible combo of higher military spending and tax cuts when basic math would indicate the pairing is a disaster waiting to happen? Maybe because all these voters are fundamentally innumerate. Or maybe because the PR tanks of the Radical Right, including FAUX news, are so adept at spreading and seeding false consciousness that a new voter zombot is created every minute.

Let us hope that enough thinking voters, as opposed to zombots, emerge in the elections in November, or we will all be for the high jump!

More Ridiculous Lies from Robert Samuelson

WaPo nattering nabob Robert Samuelson is nothing if not an economics, fiscal policy gadfly. The problem is that he consistently gets so very much of it wrong, or deliberately distorts it, that he can't be trusted to impart anything objective. This, alas, applies to his latest bunch of recycled codswallop in The Real Budget Deal in which he claims "liberals weren't the real losers at all, it was rather the Pentagon"!

In this blog, I will reveal how and why this character is a liar and bloviating moron.

Samuelson, evidently with a straight face, claims that in this debt deal:

It's mostly a triumph of the welfare state over the Pentagon..defense spending would shrink to 15% of the budget by 2016. This would be the lowest share since before World War II.

Now, let's look at some facts, as revealed about this debt deal on the blog DailyKos today. The actual law states:

(B) The term ‘security category’ includes discretionary appropriations associated with agency budgets for the Department of Defense, the Depart- ment of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the intelligence community management account (95–0401–0–1–054), and all budget accounts in budget function 150 (international affairs)

In other words, this chump Samuelson isn't telling his readers that a sizeable chunk will NOT come from "retrenchment of aging weapons" (as he claims in his next paragraph). Rather the scoundrels who drafted this farce managed to insert remote secondary "defense" categories to putatively take hits well before actual weapons systems. Including the VA and foreign aid!

Further, DailyKos reports that the wording was adjusted to appease Boeing. Even before the deal, McClatchy News service's Nancy A. Youssef explained that even as the rest of the government was being put on the butcher's block, the Pentagon was being protected:

The last-minute deal that Congress is considering to raise the federal debt limit probably will mean trillions of dollars in government spending reductions for most agencies. But one department stands to gain: the Pentagon.

Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade.

Note that $350 billion through 2023, given an $800b yearly defense budget (and even assuming it doesn't change) means the alleged huge $350 billion is only about 3% of the total defense budget. But, factoring the ever present defense contractors cost overruns and inflation, the total defense budget by then (with minuscule erosion) will be nearly 25% of the federal budget, and 19% by 2016! Hence, Samuelson's claim that "defense spending would shrink to 15% of the budget by 2016" is total unadulterated BOLLOCKS! One wonders how this quisling for the Pentagon can even collect a paycheck. I mean, Woodward and Bernstein must be upchucking every day and night to see what passes muster under the Washington Post's banner today!

Moreover, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, experts reporting to DaolyKos said, the overall change in defense spending practices could be minimal: Instead of cuts, the Pentagon merely could face slower growth. Some cuts! Some blow to "conventional wisdom" in Samuelson's parlance!

McClatchy's Michael Doyle also had an update published on Daily Kos, quoting Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information :

"They wanted some lambs in the cage with (the Pentagon) when it comes to cutting. They probably will be much more kind to defense than to foreign aid."

Bluntly put, the legislation throws warplane contracts into the same budget-cutting arena as aid to Armenia and Israel, agricultural border inspections and research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. While it's unlikely, even the nation's 152 VA hospitals could be dinged to protect a favored defense program.

And, House Armed Services Committee spokesman Claude Chafin said Wednesday:

"The chairman came around to support the deal after seeing the expanded defense and security category, and the possibility that we can retain our defense equities."

In other words, we can continue screwing the living hell out of American taxpayers and making them think there are genuine defense cuts, by leveraging non-defense related items into the planned cuts. Oh, and also let them believe that REAL defense cuts are being paired against real Medicare cuts. Ever played three card monte?

Samuelson claims:

Medicare rembursement rates might be cut 2% as part of a second round of reductions, but that's small potatoes

Really, jackass? And why didn't you inform the folks that in January they are also planning to repeal the usual "doc fixes" for Medicare, so all first line providers will see a 29.4% pay cut even if the second round automatic cuts aren't implemented? THAT IS A BIG DEAL! Anyone who disputes it may wish to check out this web page, about what Alaska's Medicare beneficiaries have already gone through because doctors there regarded the government's existing reimbursment rates as too low:

http://www.adn.com/2008/10/21/v-printer/562445/alaska-medicare-patients-rejected.html


Even if the 2% pay cuts alone were enacted, we'd likely see numerous providers dropping out of Medicare. As noted on the above site, they are already compensated at too impecunious a level vis-a-vis what they get from private insurers, and the extra paperwork demanded by Medicare makes it even more of a disincentive. Does Samuelson process any of that? Nope, not one bit.

Then he goes on to this next bit of arrant whining:

We are penalizing the general government to protect all retirees, no matter how healthy or wealthy.

Which elicits the question: Is he an idiot or what? Just because a retiree may be healthy today does he believe that health will be kept indefinitely? Just because he's "wealthy" today, and that's a huge stretch as I showed earlier, does that mean he always will be? Not when aging is an ever more salient factor in respect of his well being each successive year! It's not like we're talking about a 25-year old wealthy guy here!

Recall in my earlier blog on Samuelson's foolishness, he began by referencing the government's defined "poverty line" of $12,968 for 2009 for an over-65 couple. I immediately lacerated that, since its been unchanged since ca. 1969 when the value of the dollar was at least 4 times greater. Hence the more plausible poverty line for a couple today would be around $48,000/year. However, I even agreed to go with the lower level of $38,000/yr. advanced by the Economic Policy Institute.

The point is, Samuelson's entire specious arguments rest upon an ab initio lowballed number, from which he can lowball all his thresholds of what defines an "affluent senior".

These he defined (again, in line with the government's lowballed stats), as having a "median net worth of $385,000".

But again this misses the point! All it really shows is that the average American of whatever age group is a terrible saver, and this is most likely based on wage scales that have declined absolutely since 1973, coupled with increased dollar value debasement.

To get a more realistic picture, recall net worth factors in the home as well, and we do know most over 65's own their homes. (Which is a move also heartily recommended by financial planners). Let's say the home is nominally worth $100,000 then subtract that to get the actual monetary net worth, which turns out to be $137,000 for the average over-65 household and $285,000 for married couples. But this is nothing!Given current over-65s are already advised to have on hand $225,000 to cover expenses and co-pays Medicare won't! (Not even counting possible nursing home expenses of $96,000/yr).

That already eats up the total net worth in real money terms of the average over-65'er and most of the net worth (79%) of the married couples! So WTF does Samuelson want? For our "affluent" or "higher income" seniors to live off cat food, along with no vacations ever, and no amenities, period? A life little better than a peon's with no frills, not even minor luxuries? What, is he fucking nuts?

Again, turning to the expert columnists in niche financial magazines, including Smart Money, Money as well as Forbes, the general advice is that for a senior couple to be able to live comfortably (and sustain a possible nursing home episode) they will need a net worth of at least $1 million, minus the home value! Along with Social Security, according to this lot, they should be able to arrive at an income of at least $75,000 a year! Once more, we see that Samuelson is being dishonest in how he portrays the conditions, but we can't be amazed because they are based on dishonest government definitions, first of the poverty line for couples, and then for the "high income" definition based on this spurious poverty line.

Contrary to Samuelson's deceitful spin, government isn't "protecting well off seniors" only ensuring the benefits they planned for when they worked out their retirement budgets will not be suddenly retrenched.

It is more important to cut the cancerous Pentagon budget, talking REAL defense cuts, than to renege on promises to seniors, who - if a calamity strikes (like Alzheimers) will have no place to go but down or, as one famous film actor did ten years ago - put a bullet through his head. Is this what Robert wants?

Anyway, to jog his memory, let's not forget that we still haven't turned up $1.1 TRILLION that the Pentagon "misplaced" around 1999-2000. This, of course, was well documented by former defense analyst Chuck Spinney in a memorable PBS interview with Bill Moyers in August, 2002.

Spinney also pointed out that if money is given via legislation but never accounted for (as to the GAO), then the Pentagon itself becomes an unaccountable and unelected agent that undermines democracy. Spinney is also known for a September 2000, Defense Weekly commentary, in which he called the move to increase the military budget from 2.9% to 4% of the GDP as "tantamount to a declaration of total war on Social Security and Medicare in the following decade." Well, he wasn't off on that one!

This debt deal, contrary to Samuelson's disgusting and perverse PR spin, actually formalizes that putative declaration of total war on Social Security and Medicare.

We had better wake up soon to these facts, or we may all regret it. Meanwhile, Samuelson would do well to understand there are bloggers who are tracking his lies, disinformation and spin.

Is Leon Panetta a Stooge of the Military-Industrial Complex?

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies- in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953 address.


"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. "- George Orwell


"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.


As per Ike's quote above, it is time Americans be taken down off their "cross of iron"! As per George Orwell's quote, it is high time the products of American labor cease being squandered on "wars" of choice and unending occupations and be put to use in our own land, re-building its infrastructure and converting human capital to the goal of constructive contributions.

As per Rev. Martin Luther King's quote, it is more than past time this nation uphold programs of social uplift, as opposed to continuing toward spiritual death - which we've now beheld is even closer with the new revelations on the excesses of tortures inflicted at Guantanamo.

But what do our vaunted leaders want? Evidently more of the same! More pseudo-wars, more occupations, more waste of human capital, lives and treasure! Only recently now, it's come to light that newly appointed Pantagon chief Leon Panetta is bellyaching over possible cuts to his Pentagon budget. (Recall this is being forced to square off vs. Medicare cuts for the next round of draconian spending cuts in November, to be dealt with by a "super committee". If they can't come to a consensus, then large automatic cuts will equally apply to defense and Medicare -or so we are led to believe. (But with Beltway whores and politicians you don't know what to believe!)

According to Glenn Greenwald, writing at salon.com:


Panetta has put on his Dr. Strangelove hat and decried these prospective cuts as a "doomsday mechanism" -- doomsday! -- warning that these would be "very dangerous cuts" that "would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military's ability to protect the nation

This was echoed in The Washington Post, this morning:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade.

“We’re already taking our share of the discretionary cuts as part of this debt-ceiling agreement, and those are going to be tough enough,”

Panetta told reporters in his first news conference as defense secretary, adding:

“I think anything beyond that would damage our national defense.”

Of course, he's full of shit. For one thing, the so-called defense cuts are back-loaded, meaning they won't come in for years, while the Medicare cuts will be immediate. Meanwhile, these Pentagon cuts are a sham because the repukes managed to get bogus "defense" cuts inserted which they don't give a rat's ass about.

For example, while this deficit-cutting law appears to reduce defense spending by $350 billion up front (a pittance) and perhaps by as much as $850 billion over 10 years, in fact that's highly unlikely to happen. That's because defense hawks ensured that these initial cuts would be more than one-third applied to: "security" spending, which encompasses programs such as homeland security, border enforcement, foreign aid and even veterans' benefits as potential targets. (As opposed to the machines like the F-35 (see graphic) that generate military pork for congressional porksters!)

In other words it's a sham!

As Greenwald notes:

Just think about that for a minute. We have a Democratic administration installed in power after millions of liberals donated large amounts of their time and money to help elect them. Yet here we have a top official in the President's cabinet demanding cuts to Medicare and Social Security in order to protect the military budget from further reductions. That's the position of the Democratic administration

Because in the next breath Panetta also said he basically had the White House's benediction on this. Really! So it really is true then that Panetta is simply carrying water for his boss, who didn't have the balls to come out and say all this himself. A boss who really is as bad or worse than Hoover in the 1930s?

Don't take my word! Look, the defense budget is already the most monstrous cancer eating away at the foundations of our domestic security that there is. It chews up 58 cents of every budget dollar, consuming 17.1% of the national budget! As it is also, an estimated $34 BILLION of tax payer money has been wasted in Afghanistan alone - money that ended up in Taliban pockets as well as for crooked warlords.(Due to corrupt banking practices)

As an example of Pentagon pork and waste, consider the F-35 fighter shown in the image, which - according to The Economist (July 16, p. 67) the Pentagon seeks defense contracts to build 2,443 of them - at a total cost of two-fifths of a trillion - but with cost overruns, will likely hit a trillion. These thousands of jets are only of use if we as a nation plan to invade another five or six countries, and meanwhile let our infrastructure crumble.

So what's on offer from the likes of Panetta is just more Goebbels-like propaganda- endlessly screeched- to convince us (the expendable cogs) to continue to support a Pax Americana via the perma-war state. One that is ruining this nation on multiple fronts - from snuffing out thousands of young lives with promise, to the money wasted on drones and bombs not going toward infrastructure repair(of crumbling roads, bridges etc), to money not going to paying down our immense debt as opposed to increasing it by $20 billion a month.

And meanwhile, using a justification to continue to carve out Social Security and Medicare so elderly people once more are tossed under the bus.

But no, with an annual budget of more than $890 billion, the Pentagon needs to have it cut in HALF right now! Not any piddling little $350 billion in ten years, but EVERY year! Deal with it, Leon!

This fat lunching off the rest of us must come to an end, as must the path to spiritual death. Why are our Presidents and their lackeys even defending this BS any more? As I noted in a blog last year, if one looks back at the document track, one can pretty well discern that the incentive to meddle in other nations’ affairs – as part of U.S. foreign policy – probably commenced with The National Security Council (NSC) Directive ‘NSC 10/2’ on June 18, 1948. That document opened the way to the perma-war state that has bled this country of its wealth and resources the past sixty years. JFK did try to do an end run around it, and we saw how that turned out. So now, every president that enters office has somewhere in his mind (or maybe dspatched to him before he assumes office) that scene at Dealey Plaza as a reminder he needs to toe the line and not task the Shadow government. Those vermin want their puppets meek and pliable, not JFK-like, bold Presidents!

Gore Vidal pinpoints the emergence of the American Empire when he notes[1]:

“Since 1950 the United States has fought perhaps a hundred overt and covert wars. None was declared by the nominal representatives of the American people in Congress…they had meekly turned over to the executive their principal great power to wage war. That was the end of that Constitution”.

The key point to note here is not only did the U.S. invoke a specious doctrine[2] to entitle it to engage in warfare wherever it deemed the “need” (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.) but also to take out democratically elected leaders where and when they threatened U.S. corporate interests, such as Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran (1953)- threatened U.S. Oil interests, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954)- threatened United Fruit Corp. by giving land to farmers, and Salvador Allende in Chile (1972)- strategic interests threatened.

Even when specious doctrines weren't invoked, lies and deceptions often were in order to involve the U.S. in massive troop deployments and years of ruinous (to lives and treasure) military intrusions. For example, LBJ employed the ruse of the North Vietnamese firing on the Maddox and Turner Joy in international waters in August, 1964 as the basis to ramp up the Vietnam War. Similarly, Bush and Cheney employed the ruse that Saddam had "WMD" to justify Operation "Iraqi Freedom" (a bogus name if ever there was one) and invade Iraq - which had not one damned thing to do with 9/11. (Though the numskulls who watched FAUX News would argue with that!)


NO, Mr. Panetta, it is time this perfidy end. We, the American People demand it, and we won't accept sham stories to try to entice us to further enabling the war state you inherited. Rather than feeding it, you ought to be presiding over its reduction - to get the more critical program of national restoration and reconstruction back on tract, which must include social safety net protections - lest we lose that "domestic tranquility" we're so enamored of.

[1] Gore Vidal: 2002, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, Thunders Mouth, p. 124.

[2]Morris Berman: 2006, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118.