Pentagon

One of the deepest (and most chilling) tenth anniversary Iraq War analyses is written by Gary Leupp, entitled: The Victory of the Noble Lie: The Neocons Won. Read below the fold...

In his 2000 work “Escaping the Matrix: Are You Ready for the Red Pill?” Richard Moore begins: Read below the fold...

The "War on Terror"?

Does anyone across the globe, even Americans, not know in their heart of hearts (granted as molecular as that place seems to be for most Americans) what a MURDEROUS (GENOCIDAL) SCAM FOR PROFITEERING the US-declared ‘War on Terror’ was and continues to be?

The US administration and those bipartisan marriage-made-in-hell partners of neoliberals and neocons (h/t to Obama for that bipartisanship he can believe in) are now lamely declaring victory about Iraq.

The ever-obliging, bottom-feeding media, glue to the American government’s amoral status-quo bullshitting and fascistic matrix, is sentimentalizing it. A faux-Hallmark moment defying the ever-blaring American sirens of cognitive dissonance. Read below the fold...

(519 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)

There is a shocking article this week in The New Yorker entitled “The Invisible Army” by Sarah Stillman.

Ms. Stillman begins by writing of two women in Fiji, Vinnie Tuiaga and Lydia Qeraniu, who are looking for work in 2007. They get recruited by a local firm called Meridian Services Agency which promises them both jobs in Dubai. You know Dubai. You have seen pictures of that opulent, exciting city I am sure. Read below the fold...

Sherwood Ross in an article entitled “US Endless-War Budget Rolls On” cites the Chalmers Johnson observation that the Pentagon is “close to being beyond civilian control.” I think it is time to remove the word “close” from that chilling conclusion. Ross certainly makes the case, as he parallels the insanely burgeoning and politically uncontested military budget to the horrifying economic quicksand into which the majority of citizens are sinking: Read below the fold...

According to the Pentagon's lawyer, Martin Luther King Jr., if alive today, would view the US war on Afghanistan as both the act of a Good Samaritan and as necessary self-defense.

Jeh C. Johnson, the "Defense" Department's general counsel, said, on the one hand:

"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack."

On the other hand, he also said this: Read below the fold...

Wired:

The Office of Management and Budget ” has approved a nearly $60 billion increase in the Pentagon’s base budget between fiscal years 2011 and 2015,” InsideDefense.com reports.

That includes an extra $15 billion for the next fiscal year — “a 2.7 percent increase after inflation. This boost “would bring non-war related military spending in FY-11 to $556.4 billion.”

Read below the fold...

Link A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.

Wouldn't just participating in such research constitute a war crime? Read below the fold...

Offered without comment. Other than, damn, I miss democracy. Read below the fold...

Joy.

The Pentagon plans to build a military commissions compound at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, costing up to $125 million, a major undertaking meant to accommodate up to 1,200 people for the first U.S. war crimes trials since World War II, The Miami Herald learned Thursday.

If funded by Congress, the compound would be the largest single construction expenditure at Guantánamo since the Bush administration set up the offshore detention center in January 2002.

Read below the fold...