Another Fake Lead Up To A War - But Unlike Iraq, Any Iran Invasion Wouldn't Be A "Cakewalk"

Here we go again! Another episode of huff and puff, this time to work up to an Iran invasion. But make no mistake, going into Iran for whatever reason would be the very definition of insanity. And it also would not turn into another 'regime change"  such as when Bush II invaded Iraq and reduced Saddam's army to rubble using 'shock and awe'.  Let's repeat this a hundred times: Iran is NOT Iraq.  As the website 'breakingdefense.com' has pointed out:

"Iran is spatially large and mountainous with an enormous, fiercely nationalist population. Make no mistake, U.S. military occupation of the Islamic Republic would make the Iraq War, for once, actually look like the “cakewalk” it was billed to be.

So where are the troops available to topple Tehran? They don’t exist. The U.S. military is already running at full throttle, and the American people won’t be flocking to recruiters to stave off an overhyped, distant Iranian threat. The polling data is clear: Americans don’t want another war."

These are not minor considerations. Hence, the Trumpie warhawks - especially John 'Nutso' Bolton- fanning the flames, need to tone it down.  Much has been made of alleged Iranian sabotage of oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, but as yet there is no iron clad evidence. Besides, even if true it is not a reason to start a war or launch an ill -conceived invasion in which tens of thousands of U.S. troops may lose their lives.

Never mind, the Trumpie propagandists have also called for evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad - asserting nebulous "threats" by Iranian "proxies" - whatever the hell that means. What it means for me and other critical thinkers is simply another ruse to bait Iran into a misguided conflict - that will be as bad or worse for us as it would for them. (And again bear in mind Iran is not Iraq!)

And if that fails, Trump, Bolton and their criminal cabal can pull the "nuke threat" out of their hats.  Oh wow, Iran now ready to go straight ahead to processing nuclear materials for warheads on missiles.  Well, whose fault was that anyway?  After all, it wasn't Iran that sundered the deal that the Obama administration and many allies had patiently forged! It was traitor Trump and his retinue of loons.  See e.g.

Brane Space: Iran Deal Is The Best The World Could Get: So Critics ...

brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/07/iran-deal-is-best-world-could-get-so.html

1. Cached

.

Fortunately, one military voice of sanity has spoken out on this concocted Iranian "threat" propaganda,  set up by U.S. Neocons.  That would be Major General Chris Ghika - a Brit senior officer in the coalition fighting ISIS. Maj. Ghika, speaking in a video two days ago from coalition headquarters in Baghdad, told reporters the coalition monitors any hostile activity, i.e. of Iranian -backed forces.  And to the point:

"We do not see any increased threat from any of them at this stage."

Who could contest such a clear synopsis?  Well U.S.  Central Command ("Centcom") did, claiming Ghika's sober assessment "runs counter to the identified credible threats from Iranian-backed forces in the Middle east."  Which is absolute balderdash. 

Besides, why in hell should I believe this claptrap retort from a source (Pentagon) that up to now has not been able to account for $6.5 TRILLION in military expenditures?  This as documented in the July 2016, Dept. of Defense (DOD) Inspector General study.   So now, get this, these weasels are gaming for another couple trillion of American taxpayer dollars to set fire to in another useless military excursion. 

Let's also not forget that in December, 2016 a Washington Post article published its own account of a "buried" DOD report which had found "$125 billion in administrative waste" in Pentagon business operations. What happened to all those taxpayer dollars? Where is the rest of the  $6.375 trillion, what did these wastrels do with that?  And now they want to over extend for another war, indicted by contradicting the assessment of Maj. Gen. Ghiza?

All smoke and mirrors? Maybe not. The NY Times already reported on the potential deployment of 120,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East - but which was dismissed as only a "rumor" by Pompeo.  Well, pardon me but one might consult history here.

On October 18, 1913, after Serbia's occupation of Albania - a Balkan state also under the dominance of Austria-Hungary- the latter dispatched an ultimatum for withdrawal by all Serbian forces within 8 days..  Rumors of war circulated and the German Kaiser, grasping the 'genie' might be  out of the bottle, penned a letter to Austria stating "every reason for war is removed"- after a Serbian reply agreed.  

The letter of conciliatory support was too late, however, and barely an hour after the Kaiser penned those words Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.  The match igniting the conflagration known as World War I had been tossed, and eight months later my great grandfather Anton was conscripted into the army of Austria-Hungary, e.g. 















My Great-grandfather, left, after conscription into the Austro-Hungarian Army some eight months after the onset  of World War I. An Austrian officer stands next to him in this 1915 photo.

The confusion with the Kaiser's  letter directly led to 11 million military dead and 7 million civilians in World War I.   But you can be sure a misguided and misdirected Iranian conflict could be vastly worse, even conceivably leading to a thermonuclear war.  This is because - while the media hasn't mentioned it - the Russians do have strategic interests in Iran, as they do in Syria.  Hence, any misstep could have catastrophic consequences.  All of which attests even more to the folly of Trump recklessly pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

Will Maj. Gen. Ghika's comments be too late to stave off a rash move by the U.S. into an Iran invasion?  Let's hope so, because recall the Brit 1983 movie 'Threads' depicted a rapid escalation starting with an initial strike on a Russian nuclear reactor at Isfahan,  leading to global war. This also was ignited by reckless moves into Iran by the U.S. and a "coalition" of allies.

Let me pause here to interject that although none of us except  the Japanese have experienced an atomic bomb attack, you can get a very good inkling of what happens to humans by watching it in this clip from the movie 'Threads', e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHoMSRZOS4

Watch it then watch again- especially the last 2 minutes of the clip-  to see what we may be in for if cooler heads do not prevail now and if congress again allows crazies to usurp its war making powers.

See also:

Iran

Neocons Won’t Stop Until They Get Their War With Iran

And:

Bolton in Wonderland

John Feffer

Article Tools E-mail | Print Comments (2)

FB comments (0)

John Bolton

by John Feffer | May 15, 2019 - 6:05am 

Excerpt:

"Of all the places where John Bolton would like to go to war, Iran is currently in the lead position.

The national security advisor was in office for less than two months before Trump announced that he was pulling the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran, a key Bolton objective. Since then, Bolton has been part of the team that has put the squeeze not only on Iran (with additional economic sanctions) but any country with the temerity to continue any kind of economic engagement with Tehran (with the threat of secondary sanctions). Last year, Bolton also asked the Pentagon to prepare a menu of military options for striking Iran, scaring even some seasoned administration officials.

But it was earlier this month that Bolton upped the ante considerably. On May 5, he assumed the prerogative of the commander-in-chief by issuing a direct threat to Iran.

In response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, the United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the U.S. Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force. The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.

Clarifying Ocasio -Cortez' $21 Trillion Pentagon Waste Gaffe

WaPo columnist Aaron Blake (Monday) continues the Post's  "Pinocchio" campaign against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)  now claiming she "has made a bigger splash than any freshman in the 116th Congress — in either the House or Senate."   Quickly adding that:

"And a big reason is an often-overzealous conservative effort to knock her down a few pegs. The congresswoman has put on a PR master class in using those efforts to build her profile and social media following. (Her retort to the overblown dancing-video kerfuffle last week has been viewed nearly 20 million times.)"

So what?  I have seen it and have no problems with it.  The conservos bellyaching needed a good slapping down and putting in their place anyway, and Alexandria delivered it.  Besides, it's not the conservos'  business to "knock her down a few pegs"  - or to dismiss her as a "commie" because she belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) like I do..  Blake then goes on:

"But she’s also shown a tendency to exaggerate or misstate basic facts. And her defense of this in a Sunday interview with “60 Minutes” was very bad. When Anderson Cooper confronted her with The Washington Post Fact Checker’s Four-Pinocchio verdict on her claim about $21 trillion in waste at the Pentagon, Ocasio-Cortez offered this (emphasis added):

COOPER: One of the criticisms of you is that-- that your math is fuzzy. The Washington Post recently awarded you four Pinocchios --

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Oh my goodness --

COOPER: -- for misstating some statistics about Pentagon spending?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they’re missing the forest for the trees. I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.

COOPER: But being factually correct is important--

In the case of the $21 trillion, Ocasio-Cortez was suggesting that this was all Pentagon waste and that cleaning it up could pay for two-thirds of the estimated $32 trillion price tag for single-payer health care, which she and others are referring to as Medicare-for-all.

 

$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained,’" Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a tweet that still appears on her timeline and has been shared more than 26,000 times. "$21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.”

Okay, I think it's time here to take a deep collective breath and inquire what Blake and the Post's "Pinocchio" designators are so worked up about.. In fact, it turns out Ms. Ocasio-Cortez main gaffe was simply conflating the magnitude of the Pentagon's accounting scams with actual money being available, i.e. for "Medicare for all'. This is based on the recent extensive investigative piece ('Exposing The Pentagon's  Massive Accounting Fraud',)  by David Lindorff, appearing in The Nation (Jan. 7, 2019, pp. 12- 16).  As Mr. Lindorff write (p. 13):

"As a result of the Pentagon's accounting shenanigans some $21 trillion - yes, trillion- worth of financial transactions cannot be accounted for. That number caught the eye of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez who tweeted )on Dec. 2) to her 1.47 million followers that this missing $21 trillion cold have been used to fund a Medicare for All program.

However....there is no $21 trillion pot of money hidden inside the Pentagon. what there has been instead is a systematic, long standing, unconstitutional effort by the Department of Defense to feed  phony numbers to Congress and thereby inflate the DOD's budget by billions of dollars each year.   NO one knows for sure, though informed estimates put it as high as $100 billion - not enough to fund Medicare for All but a good down payment on a Green New Deal..."

So there you have it: Ocasio-Cortez basically was over optimistic regarding the money available from the Pentagon's funny money accounting gimmicks. For example, one method entails laundering "one year money" pools into "five year money" pools.   The reason? The unspent money in the latter (longer ) pool doesn't have to be returned during the 5-year period.  The phony numbers arising are then referred to as "plugs"  (as in plugging a hole) by the Pentagon's money wonks and paper pushers.

As Lindorff puts it (p. 14):

"Such nippering can be repeated multiple times - according to one Pentagon budgeting veteran- 'until the funds become virtually untraceable'"

Of course, this deplorable fudging of budgets and accounts didn't just pop up recently. Former defense analyst Chuck Spinney  - as long ago as 2000 (on Bill Moyers' PBS NOW program)-  reported on the Pentagons' accounting gimmicks and 'plug' rackets to the extent of being unable to account for $1.1 trillion - at that time.

Enter now Thomas Hedges who reported for The Guardian  in March 2017 - after Trump proposed a $52 billion increase in military spending -  "the Pentagon has exempted itself without consequence for 20 years now, telling the Government Accountability Office that collecting and organizing the required information for a full audit is too costly and time-consuming."   

Exempted itself!?  Are you kidding me?  As Chuck Spinney pointed out on Bill Moyers' NOW program, if a gov't  agency declines fiscal accountability we are no longer a democracy because the agency or department is no longer accountable to the citizens - the taxpayers. It is then a law unto itself, and we are short steps from fascism.  Lindorff himself also references Spinney's previous efforts at examining the mess, i.e. :

"For Spinney, the Pentagon accounting fraud is deja vu all over again.  Back in the 1980s he and a handful of reform-minded colleagues exposed how the Defense Department used a similar accounting trick to inflate its spending and to accumulate money for 'off the books' programs. Spinney recalls: 'The DOD routinely overestimated inflation rates for weapons systems. When actual inflation turned out to be lower than the estimates, they did not return the excess funds to the Treasury as required by law. They slipped them into something called a merged surplus account. In that way the Pentagon was able to build up a slush fund of almost $50 billion, or about $120 billion in today's money."

OK, so Ocasio-Cortez basically erred by mixing up Pentagon slush fund money accrued from sleazy accounting with a total amount ($21 trillion) missing from the ledgers on account of such a ruse'.  But she's young and still learning, so should be forgiven. I warrant she didn't lie (with implies intention) but simply "shot from the hip" in not really investigating the fiscal mechanics behind the shady accounting using 'plugs'.  In other words, she's not guilty of "Pinnochios" but rather laziness.  After all, it's not that there doesn't exist ANY money from the Pentagon's accounting tricks for social uses, only it just isn't enough to support a Medicare for All program.   What we do know is right now there is a desperate need to provide a much wider social safety net, and we need to find any and all means - including higher taxes- to pay for it! 

See also:

Paul Buchheit

Article Tools E-mail | Print Comments (1)

Economic Policy

By the Best Definition, the Poverty Rate Should Be Tripled

by Paul Buchheit | January 8, 2019 - 6:26am | permalink

And:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | Media

How the Media’s Hidden Biases Feed the Right-wing Agenda

by Cody Fenwick | January 7, 2019 - 7:21am | permalink

The Pentagon Merits NO Further Budget Increases Until It Accounts For What's Already Spent!

Okay, let's try to get some perspective here on military- "defense" spending, especially after we've learned the Jacobins in congress (including Dems) had just approved more than $640 b for the new Pentagon budget for FY 2018.  This was actually $30 b more than the Pentagon asked for, and included (as Bill Maher reported Friday night) 34 additional F-35 aircraft the Pentagon didn't want.

What's wrong with this picture? Pretty well everything! First,  this over the top defense waste is sucking up more and more federal discretionary spending. (See graphic).  Then added to this, we know the U.S. spends more than the next 11 nations combined, e.g.

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-spending-dwarfs-rest-of-world-2016-5


But a vastly more disgusting aspect is that the Pentagon cannot account for the money it's already spent!  Former defense analyst Chuck Spinney pointed this out first in a 2000 interview on Bill Moyers'  NOW PBS program, noting $1.2 trillion unaccounted for. This was in light of 1996 legislation passed by congress requiring all government agencies to undergo annual audits.

But as Spinney pointed out (interview may still be available online) the Pentagon has not complied at all, and up to the time of his PBS appearance had not squared the books on its military spending. That is, where did all the money go, by category and amount?

To make matters worse, a July 2016 report by the Department of Defense's Inspector General found that the Army alone has accumulated $6.5 trillion in expenditures that can't be accounted for over the past two decades.   As David Lindorff reported for This Can't Be Happening! the DoD "has not been tracking or recording or auditing all of the taxpayer money allocated by Congress — what it was spent on, how well it was spent, or where the money actually ended up." Note the Army wasn't alone, as Lindorff added: . "Things aren't any better at the Navy, Air Force and Marines,"

Well, really no surprise as Chuck Spinney reported this across the service branches as early as 2000. It's only now that the unaccounted for money has hit multiple trillions people are starting to pay att4ention.

Btw, we already have an idea what's going on. For those not living on Mars or under a rock we've known for over 20 years that defense spending actually amounts to a high end jobs welfare program for specific congressional districts - mainly GOP. While congress critters are quite happy to grab money from defense contractors to enable more jobs for their districts, they absolutely refuse to sit on corporations to force them to lay out more $$$ for new jobs - as opposed to spending the cash on stock buybacks.

But let's be clear both Ds and Rs are playing this noisome game, selectively going after social spending but avoiding making the DoD accountable As Lindorff notes politicians of both major political parties are "always demanding accountability for every penny spent on welfare. ... Ditto for people receiving unemployment compensation,"

Funny then - or maybe not - how they chase "pennies" but ignore the big bucks falling into limbo at the Pentagon.  But....that is how much the Pentagon has them by the cojones.

As Lindorff has also noted:  Politicians have engaged in pervasive efforts "to make teachers accountable for student 'performance,'"Yet, he observed, "the military doesn't have to account for any of its trillions of dollars of spending ... even though Congress fully a generation ago passed a law requiring such accountability."

Well, what do we have here? None other than "hollow laws" to use the words of author William Greider, in 'Who Will Tell The People - The Betrayal Of American Democracy, e.g.

A book, by the way, I heartily recommend to all serious readers of this blog.  As Greider points out hollow laws are confected by congress critters to provide political cover - in case their constituents might not be too happy about some aspect of the nation - but they are never intended to be enforced. They are then, window dressing.

Enter now the latest perfidy, given  Thomas Hedges reported for The Guardian  in March 2017 - after Trump proposed a $52 billion increase in military spending -  "the Pentagon has exempted itself without consequence for 20 years now, telling the Government Accountability Office that collecting and organizing the required information for a full audit is too costly and time-consuming."  

Exempted itself!?  Are you kidding me?  As Chuck Spinney pointed out on Bill Moyers program, then an agency declines fiscal accountability we are no longer a democracy because the agency or department is no longer accountable to the citizens - the taxpayers. It is then a law unto itself, and we are short steps from fascism.

Let us note that the most recent DoD audit deadline was September 2017, yet neither the Pentagon, Congress nor the media seem to have paid any attention. Why should they given they plausibly have already ackno9eldged we are living in a state -nation that no longer has any use for its citizens. Other than voting, and often in a blind and dumb manner.

Pentagon Getting Away With Fiscal Murder Using Spending Gimmick

It fairly boggled my mind when wifey read the piece on salon.com to me yesterday a.m. while having coffee. It had to do with a little known slush fund program that the author (David Dayen) compared to "crack cocaine for the Pentagon".  This slush fund goes under the eye- glazing title "Overseas Contingency Operations" fund or OCO, but it is really an underhanded device to bleed monies from government's tax commons without any accountability. It was one of the things former defense analyst Chuck Spinney warned the warhawks would try if they were never forced to account for "misplacing" $1.1 trillion of funding back in 2002.

That our leaders could actually aid and abet them in this, discloses they are - if not outright traitors - at least lacking any respect for the general welfare clause of the Constitution.  Indeed, this slush fund program (which borders on a black budget)  has enabled other non-military, domestic programs to face severe cuts - including under the draconian sequester baloney while the Pentagon got away Scot free. The reason is that our noisome rat politicos had set the program up so it could suddenly  - at any time-  morph into an "emergency funding" hole . Thus,  taxpayer money could be instantly funneled to the military and no one would be the wiser. Hence, while on paper the Pentagon and military appeared to be sharing in the budget cutting pain, in reality they were sitting pretty and laughing all the way to the bank.

DO the poor little bastards - admirals, five stars and others - need this extra hidden money? In two words, fuck no! In the words of one academic critic, the Pentagon is “a bureaucratic juggernaut accounting for 57% of the federal discretionary budget and nearly 40% of all military spending on this planet.”  But instead of bringing our tax dollars home with our troops as they come home from Afghanistan, the Pentagon and allies in Congress want to protect the profits of Pentagon contractors by adding billions to their off-budget slush fund. Oh wait! Did I say troops come home from Afghanistan? Even that's now put on hold and the money to keep them there will come from - you guessed it - OCO!

Meanwhile, 15 million hungry kids had to suffer at the end of 2013 when the federal SNAP (food stamps) program was cut by an additional $9 billion.   Many kids forced to raid dumpsters to try to get adequate food stuffs to eat. But did our bloated military-industrial complex care? Hell no! Why stop the gravy train when our own paid off political whores were behind it?  It is enough to make any proper citizen puke as I nearly did as the account was read to me.

Now, as we read Obama & Co. plan to extend the U.S. presence in Afghanistan we can be sure OCO monies will fund it as opposed to forcing congress to approve the taxes to pay for it. OR...to raise taxes to pay for fighting ISIS. No rational taxpayer would have complaints about fighting the ISIS rats but don't fucking do it under the table!  Put it out there in the legislative domain for citizens and taxpayers to see who will vote to raise taxes out in the open to pay for foreign military expeditions and engagements and who won't,

But let us admit here that this behind the doors sort of operation is inimical to democracy and the democratic process because there is no genuine oversight. There is no fiscal accountability because hidden funds can be piled in anytime it's convenient. This is what tyrants do, for god's sake - usually in military dictatorships.

The development of OCO represents a new mechanism for funding American wars since 9/11, another gift handed out by the George W. Bush Administration. “There’s no prior instance of such a thing in American military practice,” said Gordon Adams a professor at American University who worked on defense budgets at the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration.

What it also does - by skirting traditional legislative channels and processes -  is pave the way for perpetual war. As long as money is no object because this slush fund exists, any war can be launched at any time by any nut who might assume the presidency - including Ted Cruz. It is time we held our representatives accountable, including that their setting up slush funds for the military outside of constitutional oversight  is the epitome of being un-American!

 See more at:

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/crack-cocaine-pentagon-exposing-defense-hawks-secret-slush-fund


and

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-slush-fund-pays-for-isis-airstrikes-irking-some-in-congress/

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.

WHY The Need for so many Military Attacks? It's the Defense Contracts, Stupid!

On the ABC Sunday Morning discussion program with George Stephanopoulos, Mideast  correspondent Martha Radditz noted Obama must proceed cautiously on the Syrian front because he will need another war authorization "in a few months" for an attack on Iran. SAY WHAT?! An attack on Iran? What is this bullshit? How many attacks are we going to be making in the volatile Middle East? Has this country totally lost its fucking marbles?

Actually no, okay let me qualify that! There is method to the madness. The method is that the more conflicts, attacks that can be expedited the more ordinance, bombs, cruise missiles, etc. are destroyed in the process of attacking and hence the more additional ordnance, bombs, cruise missiles etc. have to be manufactured to replace them! Can't have any inventory building up on the defense contractors' shelves, now can we? Oh no! That would mean loss of profits and also, god forbid, that the products already manufactured are sitting there being wasted and unused.  The idea - as with all consumption  - is use, use, USE ....so more have to be manufactured and more paid for!

This is the dirty little secret of our "war" economy highlighted by the key graphic shown above, disclosing how much of the budget the military industrial complex sucks up annually.  Here's another dirty little secret about the "sequester": there are no real cuts to military spending in any absolute terms, but only an estimated "trim down" of roughly 23% in the projected INCREASES in Pentagon spending over the next ten years!

The point here? Contrary to the bloviators' bollocks of "jeopardizing national security", just the opposite is true: the Pentagon base budget will still be larger than it is today by 2021! This necessarily means, given the zero sum resources we have, everyone else will be much poorer. That means an even more shattered and useless infrastructure with crumbling roads, cracking sewer and water mains and collapsing bridges....and a much more likely intolerable domestic environment over all.

Meanwhile, you can just imagine the weapons makers having wet dreams now over this Syria thing. At last a believable excuse has been found in some Youtube images of gassed Syrian civilians to justify firing a thousand Tomahawks at those Syrian bad guys - and letting God sort them out.  He will have to, because there likely will be as much collateral damage - with maybe twice the number as killed in the gas attack, as Syrian forces annihilated.......errrrr.....punished. 

Oh yeah, let's bear in mind it's a "limited strike" maybe a few days at most, maybe 300 or so Tomahawks in all. But what no one is admitting is they will have to go in again if another gas attack takes place, no matter who did it - including al Qaeda operatives trying to snag us into another expensive, long drawn out war. Sounds almost like Oceania in George Orwell's '1984' - endless war, but the purpose of which is not to win...not anything but (in the immortal words of "Goldstein"):

"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. "

But bear in mind, unstated by Goldstein, is that any kind of war - or even a limited attack as Obama claims he has planned for Syria - has the ancillary purpose of requiring additional stores of munitions, missiles, bombs, etc. to take the place of those destroyed in the attacks - hence means more defense contracts and more profits for the Pentagon-linked parasites who are sucking us all dry. And if more chemical attacks are committed by whatever bad guys? Well, that means we have to go in again and use up more cruise missiles so that when they are blown up, more will need to be made to replace them! And on and on it goes! Since, hell, once in for a penny, we're in for a pound. As long as any sort of "violations of international norms" occur, we will have to come back and bomb the suckers again!

And then, oh yes, a major assault on Iran lies in our future! Think of how those defense contractors must be having orgasmic spasms right now contemplating the new contract bounty from THAT! Hell, maybe 10,000 bombs and cruise missiles will have to be replaced!  And HEY! Since Iranian underground nuclear facilities are fortified with "ultra-high performance concrete" (UHPC) that means the most expensive bombs (at about $5m each) will have to be used!

These, of course, are the Massive Ordinance Penetrators ("MOPS' ), which can break through 60 m of ordinary concrete, but will not necessarily be a walk in the park. That means that an enormous supply will likely have to be available, and also if all those are used up, maybe 1,000 more will have to be made. Oy! Think of the profits!

Well, it is fairly clear who wins in each of these attack scenarios, and hint, hint, it ain't the American people. It will be the MIC and the defense profiteers.

Meanwhile, the American nation is sped into further decline especially if the debt ceiling isn't properly increased next month, but we face yet another showdown.

 Btw, contrary to what some uninformed dummies assert, the 'Commander in chief' is really only a puppet who ultimately must fulfill the will of the militarists who run the Military Industrial Complex.  Their main agenda is consuming the gross domestic product for military use and they will have it done one way or the other.  Read the book, In The Shadow of War, by Michael S. Sherry. JFK's courageous mistake was to buck the militarists by issuing National Security Action Memorandum 263 (to pull all personnel out of Vietnam by 1965), and he paid the ultimate price.

A Malignancy That Mitt Romney Admits He Wants to Grow...to Destroy this Country

“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." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953


Incredibly, even as Willard Mitt Romney "won" last night, by emulating a jacked-up rat on coke, and spewing out lie after lie, he actually LOST as he left open an amazing admission by way of omission. At least twice, President Obama directly noted Romney's intent to increase the Pentagon budget by $2 trillion - money which the Pentagon doesn't even want and which has nothing to do with making a capable fighting force. Each time, Willard Mitt declined to deny it, even though he rabidly denied any intent to cut taxes by $5 trillion.

Mitt's decline of denial means he fully intends to pursue it, which brings up the question: WHERE is he going to get the money? Even if Mitt magically manages to find enough cuts to balance the budget hole formed by $5 trillion in tax cuts, that leaves a question to be begged. But will Mitt deal with it? I doubt it. While his clueless imebecile followers, who lack the intellect to solve even 2 + x = 4, yap like dogs that it's an issue of 'masculinity' ("All sissies not in favor can leave for Castro's Cuba!") and projecting power, it's really a simple question of math.

We are currently in a $16 trillion cumulative deficit. $6.4 of those trillions evolved over Bush Jr's watch by launching two unpaid for "wars" - actually prolonged occupations, and a massive pair of tax cuts in 2001, -03. How does Mitt plan to fund an additional $2 trillion for defense if he adamantly refuses to raise taxes? This is the $64 question his imbecile followers need to ask themselves, if they are even capable of self-reflection, but I doubt it.

Ok, let us assume for the sake of argument that Mitt can cover his ass and the $5 trillion tax cut defict hole by finding enough spending cuts - say closing loopholes in the tax code. (Are his brilliant followers who may have kids aware one of those has to be the child tax credit?)  Most financial mavens such as Gillian Tett and Chrystia Freeland of The Financial Times dispute any such remote possiblity - but let's assume by some magic we're not aware of or privy to he can do it.

That still leaves the problem of finding the $2 trillion he wants to give the Pentagon fat cats, defense contractors without blowing a hole in the deficit he purports to care so much about.  But before we get to that let's lay out some back story and current facts for the Blowhard bloggers who worship Mitt's every word and purported deed. (Funny, because barely a year ago they were dismissing him as they embraced Hermann Cain. Funny how times change!)

Start with the fact it is now more than ten years and counting since the Pentagon "misplaced" more than one trillion dollars of defense funding-tax dollars, as was then elaborated by former defense analyst, Chuck Spinney. See also:

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_spinney.html

That trillion isn't small change by any means and could fund the salaries of 100,000 teachers for 15 years, a much better investment than constructing 2,588 F-35s that may never be used. And for which current asymmetric war methods would likely render redundant. 

Then there's the argument that the country is "getting weak" and we are no match for the Russkies or Chinese. This doesn't wash but it's the sort of "argument" that passes muster amongst the Repuke clones. That truth is that the US is the biggest war-monger the world has ever known, and spends more on defense than the next 25 nations including Russia, and China! This fact matters if a presidential candidate is talking about adding $2 TRILLION more to that defense budget. Because then one must - if rational- regard the proposal as one for malignant WASTE!

Let’s start with its budget. The US, in fiscal year 2012, budgeted a total of $673 billion for the military, plus another $166 billion for military activities of other government departments, such as the nuclear weapons program, much of which is handled by the Department of Energy, or the Veterans Program, which pays for the care and benefits of former military personnel. There’s also another roughly $440 billion in interest paid on the debt from prior wars and military expenditures (most of it going to the Chinese). All together, that comes to $1.3 trillion, which represents close to 50% of the general budget of the United States -- the highest percentage of a government budget devoted to the military of any modern nation in the world -- and perhaps of any government of any nation in the world.

That spending represents also the world’s biggest percentage of national gross domestic product devoted to the military (GDP is a measure of all economic activity in a nation). Looking at the other countries with big militaries -- China, Russia, Britain and France -- not only does not one come even close in terms of the percent of GDP spent on its military, but taken together, all of their expenditures on their military combined total less than half what the US spends by itself.


Most dastardly of all is the existing cheating and subterfuge! Since the 1980s the U.S. government has engaged in a dedicated sleight of hand whereby it's hidden the scale of its military spending from the American people. It has done this by adding to the federal budget (for defense) the amount of money spent on Social Security, the nation's retirement program, and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

Why not a correct accounting? Because THOSE programs are separately funded by payroll taxes paid in by employees and employers. Hence, we are looking at a 'bait and switch' deal of astounding magnitude!

One reason the US military budget is so huge is that the US operates some 900 bases abroad, in what amounts to a program of global empire. It is estimated that the cost of keeping those bases operating is about $250 billion.  If  Romney plans to add $2 trillion to the deficit for defense and not pay for it then it means he must either want to expand those existing bases, or construct many more new weapons - with the money pocketed by defense contractors of course.

Again, WHERE does Mitt get the money to finance this Pentagon, Military -Industrial complex budget blowout?  We don't know because he won't say, but we know at least half of that money would arrive or could arrive if Mitt made every current Medicare beneficiary pay 80% for any operations (including knee and hip replacement surgeries) as well as cancer treatments. This is as opposed to the 20% co-pay for most current operations. Of course, Mitt the Rat will deny this to his dying day. He will deny it as he did the $5 trillion tax cut he had planned for 18 months. Why not?

Maybe then, or perhaps....one of his blustering, blowhard followers could explain to us where that money will come from. But wait, how can they, if they can't even solve a simple equation like 2 + x = 4?

Oh, another question for the muscle-headed paper patriots: Are you PROUD that under Romney's increased defense spending we will be tripling the interest paid to the Chinese? From $440b current to over $1.2 trillion? So they will be able to make ever more weapons to use against us, if that need ever arose? THINK about that before you answer!