By Glenn Greenwald | Writing in a New York Times blog yesterday, Clinton pollster Mark Penn hails the selection of Joe Biden as “a smart and successful choice” and says this:
From Al Gore on, the role of the vice president seems to have fundamentally changed. It used to be where the winner parked the loser or [...]
The Pentagon: Some-Things-Never-Change Department
Tomgram | What a difference four and a half years makes. When I first penned “The Wild Weapons of DARPA,” in March 2004, I was a new TomDispatch writer; the war in Iraq was not yet a year old; the war in Afghanistan had been bubbling for less than two and a half [...]
By Stephen Lendman - RINF | For the West, everything changed but stayed the same, hard-wired and in place. Things just lay dormant in the shadows during the Yeltsin years, certain to reemerge once a more resolute Russian leader took over. If not Vladimir Putin, someone else little different.
Russia is back, proud and reassertive, and [...]
By Nick Juliano | New documents from within the Bush administration and US intelligence community during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq reveal that the White House began assembling a case for war before it had compiled the intel that ostensibly formed the basis of that case.
A new report on the documents from George [...]
(IPS) | If John McCain is elected the next U.S. president, wounded veterans could be in for a world of hurt.
On the campaign trail, the Republican’s presumptive nominee has talked of a new mission for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and argued that veterans with non-combat medical problems should be given vouchers to receive [...]
The Pentagon’s intelligence arm is adding more polygraph studios and relying on outside contractors for the first time to conduct lie detection tests in an attempt to screen its 5,700 prospective and current employees every year.
The stepped-up effort by the Defense Intelligence Agency is part of a growing emphasis on counterintelligence, detecting and thwarting would-be [...]
Yes, America’s economy is a war economy. Not a “manufacturing” economy. Not an “agricultural” economy. Nor a “service” economy. Not even a “consumer” economy.
By Paul B. Farrell | Seriously, I looked into your eyes, America, saw deep into your soul. So let’s get honest and officially call it “America’s Outrageous War Economy.” Admit it: we [...]
Corporate-government fraud has gotten a major boost ever since Iraq became the latest colony of the failing American Empire.
“Iraq is fast becoming one of the United States’ top customers for military sales,” reports USA Today in an article called “Iraqis buy billions in U.S. arms.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/
2008-08-18-iraqtanks_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
“Since January 2007, Iraq has spent $3.1 billion on U.S. weapons. [...]
(IPS) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation Monday brings to an end an extraordinarily close relationship between Musharraf and the George W. Bush administration, in which Musharraf was lavished with political and economic benefits from the United States despite policies that were in sharp conflict with U.S. security interests.
It is well known that Bush repeatedly [...]
The Guardian | It’s a novel way to take your own life. Just as Russia demonstrates what happens to former minions that annoy it, Poland agrees to host a US missile defence base. The Russians, as Poland expected, respond to this proposal by offering to turn the country into a parking lot. This proves that the [...]
Werther | The first crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program arose in late 1994. It was obvious there was not much the United States could do to step in unilaterally and disarm the North Korean regime. Sanctions, the normally inevitable option short of war, had no meaning – the United States had no trade with [...]
The Public Record | Four months before the United States invaded Iraq, the Department of Defense was secretly working with Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton Corp., on a secret deal that would give the world’s second largest oil services company total control over Iraq’s oil fields, according to interviews with Halliburton’s most senior executives.
Previously [...]
By James Bone | Six Blackwater Worldwide security guards have been notified that they could face prosecution in America for shooting dead 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in an infamous incident that provoked fury in Iraq.
The Blackwater employees have reportedly been sent “target letters” by US prosecutors telling them that they could face charges [...]
You have to ask what were they smoking over at the Pentagon and the CIA when they thought they could control Russia’s close neighbor.
Among the interesting references to 9/11 that were released before 9/11 is a passport for ‘Neo’ in blockbuster film The Matrix (released in 1999) which expires ‘11 SEP 01.’
By Bob Egelko | After more than six years as a prisoner of the United States, former TV cameraman Sami al-Hajj is back at work with Al-Jazeera, the largest broadcaster in the Arab world, a thorn in the side of most Arab governments - and, by most indications, a target of deep hostility from the Bush [...]
Some 190,000 private personnel were working in the Iraq theater as of early this year, a new report says.
By Peter Grier | Washington - The American military has depended on private contractors since sutlers sold paper, bacon, sugar, and other small luxuries to Continental Army troops during the Revolutionary War.
But the scale of the use [...]
By Tim Swanson | The US military recently accused Iran of training “death squads” whose primary goal is carrying out assassinations. The information is being made public to supposedly “pressure” Iranian leadership into halting these operations.
So if Iranian assassins are called “death squads” what are similarly trained operatives from the CIA or Army called?
Perhaps the [...]
guardian.co.uk | The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has signed a ceasefire pact to end hostilities in Georgia.
The deal calls for Russian troops to pull back from Georgia but also grants them limited patrols inside the country.
The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, reluctantly signed the plan yesterday while accusing the Russians of being “evil” and “21st century [...]
By Carol Rosenberg | GUANTANAMO BAY NAY BASE, Cuba — One general testified about another general at the war court Wednesday, describing a Pentagon official fast-tracking trials here as “abusive, bullying, unprofessional.”
Moreover, in testimony, Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti, deputy prison camps commander, described the approach employed earlier this year by his [...]
TomDispatch | To the problem of an overstretched, over-toured military, there is but one answer in Washington. Both presidential candidates (along with just about every other politician in our nation’s capital) are on record wanting to significantly expand the Army and the Marines. In part two of his series at TomDispatch, [...]
The Pentagonization of the United States shows no sign of slowing down.
Raw Story | A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.
The transcript was posted [...]
1000 U.S. troops began a military training exercise in Georgia on July 15 against a backdrop of growing friction between Georgia and neighboring Russia.
AKI | Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Hamdan, convicted by a US military jury on Wednesday of supporting terrorism, did not receive a fair trial, said rights group Amnesty International.
“The conviction of Salim Hamdan under procedures that do not meet international fair trial standards compounds the injustice of his more than five [...]
Some detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will likely never be released because of the danger they pose, and those tried and acquitted will still be subject to continued detention as enemy combatants, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.
Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, made the remarks as Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, awaited a verdict in the [...]
MSNBC | GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A military jury on Wednesday found a former driver for Osama bin Laden guilty on some counts but cleared him of others in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.
A panel of six American military officers delivered the decision in the case against Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni.
The jury [...]
Pentagon official doesn’t show up at a hearing on sexual assault in the military despite a subpoena; Congressmembers accuse DoD of a cover-up.
The Pentagon said it was closing a controversial intelligence office that had raised concerns about domestic spying by the military after the September 11 attacks.
The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United States could possess hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations [...]
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