BIG HUGE RED FLAG……..

Citing an “urgent operational need,” the Pentagon is seeking funds to modify B-2 stealth bombers to deliver an experimental 30,000 pound (13.6 tonne), satellite-guided bunker busting bomb, officials said Wednesday.
The likely purpose of the new weapon is to strike Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, experts said.

“It raises a red flag,” said Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia who called for hearings on the request. “My immediate assumption is that it is a target in Iran, rather than Iraq or Afghanistan.”

The air force has asked Congress for nearly 88 million dollars to complete development of the so-called Massive Ordnance Penetrator and modify B-2 bombers so that they can deliver it, an air force spokeswoman said.

Full article at Spacewar.com

The Pentagon often has dragged its feet or refused to spend on safer equipment for US troops in Iraq, forcing the Congress to step in, a study published on Tuesday found.

The report published in USA Today came as a crucial report on the military situation is due within days in Washington.

Among many examples, the newspaper cited hesitance by US army officials to buy Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles despite eager requests from commanders in Iraq.

The acquisitions have become higher priorities since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defense chief in December more than two years after the first request from Marines in Iraq.

More at Yahoo News

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials.

The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.

Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.

One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence…trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday.

More the Financial Times

Pay attention boys and girls……….

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians- military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They-re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

More at the TimesOnline

On the heels of a scathing report issued by the Defense Department’s inspector general that took high-level Pentagon officials to task for allowing an evangelical Christian organization unfettered access to the Department of Defense (DOD) to promote its fundamentalist agenda, comes word the Pentagon’s top chaplain opened its doors yet again to another evangelical group whose leader recently spent two days at the facility proselytizing, passing out Christian literature, and “saving souls.”

The Constitution bars the federal government from establishing religion.

According to documents obtained by the watchdog group the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and made available to Truthout, David Kistler, President of Hickory, North Carolina-based H.O.P.E. Ministries International, embarked on a “DC Crusade” along with dozens of members of the evangelical organization for two weeks that included two days inside the Pentagon proselytizing and preaching the “gospel” to government employees and “saving souls.”

More at the Baltimore Chronicle

Gareth Porter does a fine job of taking apart the U.S. made up claims about Iran contributing to attacks in Iraq.

When a top U.S. commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shiite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73 percent of all July attacks that had killed or wounded U.S. forces in Baghdad, he claimed it was because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to “intelligence reports” of a “surge” in Iranian assistance.

But the obvious reason for the rise in Shiite-related U.S. casualties, - ignored in U.S. media coverage of Lt. General Raymond Odierno’s charge - is that the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr was defending itself against a rising tempo of attacks by U.S. forces at the same time attacks by al-Qaeda forces had fallen.

In his press briefing on Aug. 5, Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, blamed the rise in the proportion of U.S. casualties attributable to Shiite militias on Iran “surging their support to these groups based on the September report” - a reference to the much-anticipated report by General David Petraeus on the U.S.’s own surge strategy.

Odierno claimed intelligence reports supported his contention of an Iranian effort to influence public perceptions of the surge strategy. “They-re sending more money in, they-re training more individuals and they-re sending more weapons in.”

He repeated the charge in an interview with Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times published on its front page Aug. 8 under the headline, “U.S. Says Iran-Supplied Bomb Is Killing More Troops in Iraq.” In that interview, he declared of Iran, “I think they want to influence the decision potentially coming up in September.”

More at Zmag

From UPI:

Members of the U.S. Congress have received a request from the Pentagon for nearly $750 million in funds for an emergency airlift to Iraq.

USA Today reported Wednesday the Pentagon has made the emergency funding request to send armored vehicles to the war-torn region immediately to aid U.S. troops in handling roadside bombs.

Pentagon officials want to airlift the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to Iraq rather than delay their arrival by sending them by ship.

The emergency funds would fall under the Pentagon’s $5.3 billion request to Congress for support of the MRAP program for the next fiscal year.

USA Today said military analyst Michael O-Hanlon criticized the Pentagon’s emergency request this week, accusing Pentagon officials of mishandling the troop’supporting endeavor.

“It’s ridiculous that it took this long to send MRAPs,” he said. “It’s an example of wishfulness and politics getting in the way of protection for troops. It’s a bad mistake verging on the unconscionable.”

By Mike Whitney

The quality of Pentagon-propaganda is really deteriorating.

The War Dept.’s latest fraud appeared in this week’s newspapers under the ominous’sounding headline:

“US Kills Mastermind of Iraq Shrine”

The article is similar to hundreds of other stories we-ve seen in the passed few years boasting of the murder of an “alleged” terrorist kingpin whose evil deeds have prevented democracy from flourishing in Iraq.

Oh, please.

CNN: “Coalition troops killed the al Qaeda terrorist who masterminded the February 2006 attack on Samarra’s al-Askariya mosque and set off continuing violence and reprisal killings between Sunnis and Shiites, the U.S. military said Sunday.” Snip “Haitham Sabah al-Baderi, the al Qaeda emir of greater Samarra, was killed Thursday east of Samarra, said Rear Adm. Mark Fox during a news conference”. snip “Eliminating al-Baderi is another step in breaking the cycle of violence instigated by the attack on the holy shrine in Samarra,” Fox said. “We will continue to hunt down the brutal terrorists who are intent on creating a Taliban-like state in Iraq.” (CNN)

In truth, CNN has no idea who al-Baderi really was or whether he belonged to Al Qaida or not. They just jot down whatever the Pentagon spokesman tells them and then pass it off later as news. It’s the same with the rest of the media. They don-t care. They build their stories on statements from government officials and don-t bother looking for evidence. All they know is that al-Baderi is another unlucky victim in Bush’s war on terror who has been subsumed into the Pentagon’s propaganda war against the American people. That’s it.

More at Information Clearing House

From Raw Story:

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it will rotate 20,000 into Iraq at the end of this year but denied the troops would extend President Bush’s troop “surge” through next spring, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reported Tuesday that a “worst case scenario” would stretch military ranks as troops leave for their 15-month rotations.

“They may have to reach down into the National Guard or Army reserve” to maintain the troop levels, Starr said.

Military commanders began to expect earlier this year that the surge would have to be extended into next year. In an article that appeared in the Washington Post in May, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who manages day-to-day operations in Iraq, said the surge needed to last “through the beginning of next year, for sure.” Odierno noted at the time that new regulations extending tours of duty to 15 months would allow for the surge to last through spring 2008.

By Walter Pincus

The Pentagon has steadily tightened its grip over U.S. aid and foreign policy in recent years. Now, the Senate Armed Services Committee is trying to pry it loose.

In its lengthy June report accompanying the 2008 Defense Authorization bill, the Senate panel sheds light on the workings of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), a little-known Pentagon group that is central to the Defense Department’s forays into foreign assistance. Aware that the Defense Department’s share of U.S. foreign aid has grown from 7 percent to 20 percent over the past few years, the Armed Services panel cut one-third of the DSCA’s requested $673.4 million program budget in the authorization bill, according to the report. Among other things, the DSCA manages $12 billion in foreign military sales each year, has 900 security assistance personnel in 102 countries, supervises 14,000 international military students annually and spends $50 million in humanitarian aid.

The DSCA also handles Section 1206 funds, whose “Global Train and Equip” programs are designed “to build the capacity of partner nations supporting the global war on terrorism operations,” according to the budget that the DSCA submitted to Congress in February. With State Department concurrence, those funds are used to instruct and supply other countries’ forces to support military or stability operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to the committee.

More at the Washington Post

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

Joe Haldeman, a Vietnam vet and award-winning science fiction writer, told the following story in the introduction to a 1986 sci-fi anthology:

A friend of mine in Vietnam took a sniper’s bullet in the back but his life was saved, at least for the time being, by his inability to spell: the bullet lodged in the dictionary he kept in his rucksack to help with letters home. The incident was written up in the Pacific Stars and Stripes, but somehow the dictionary had become a Bible; it was over his heart, not his spine; and the bullet had stopped on the world “peace.”

I love this story, which I view as three stories in one. The first story is what really happened. The second is the fictitious story. And the third story is about how and why someone decided the first story should be changed.

Veterans will likely appreciate the true story of Haldeman’s buddy. Some of them might take the fatalistic view, but regardless, the story’s ironic, and captures the absurdity of war - poor spelling and dumb luck saved the guy. Other people clearly prefer the second story. For them, it might be hopeful, but it also posits the existence of a God and an order to the universe, even in war. It feels like a reward for faith and trusting some higher power. Personally, I-ve always loved the third story the most, because I feel it encompasses both of the others, and I-m fascinated by the mindset that feels the need to essentially improve on the truth. (When I-ve told someone the “first” story, then told them it was re-written, it doesn-t take much prodding for them to guess the book became the Bible.)

Last year’s Letters From Iwo Jima was a stronger film than its complimentary film, Flags of Our Fathers, but both tried to tell true war stories. Flags of Our Fathers especially mirrors Haldeman’s tale. Examining the truth and mythology behind the famous photo at Iwo Jima, Flags… tried to tell all “three” stories. Whether it’s a war, a specific event, or a film or story about an event, some people definitely prefer that second story to the first, true one.

Haldeman’s tale touches on the nature of truth and storytelling. It’s a theme woven throughout the work of another Vietnam vet, Tim O-Brien. In his extraordinary collection of interrelated short stories, The Things They Carried, he has a piece called “How to Tell a Real War Story.” It relates several striking tales. O-Brien writes:
Read more »

American public opinion means nothing. The overwhelming opinion is already GET US OUT, and they don’t care.

The White House and Pentagon are under increasing pressure from Congress and the public to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But the Pentagon is considering maintaining a core group of forces in Iraq, possibly for decades.

Two factors may determine the course of the war in Iraq - political progress inside Iraq and American public opinion. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll finds only 25 percent of Americans say America is moving in the right direction. And Iraq is a big reason for those who think the country is not.

Numbers like that may help to explain a carefully worded public statement this month from Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Testifying before the Senate, he was asked if the Pentagon has made any contingency plans to withdraw from Iraq.

“We have published no orders directing the planning for the overall withdrawal of forces,” Pace replied. “We do have ongoing replacements of forces, and we do change the size of the force over time so that that system is available to either plus-up or draw down, but we have published no orders saying come up with a complete plan for total drawdown.”

More at NPR

But of course they do………

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court said Friday the Pentagon has the authority to pick and choose which labor issues it will negotiate with unions representing more than 600,000 civilian employees.

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The policy has been on hold since early last year when a federal judge said it eroded collective bargaining rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned that ruling Friday, saying in a 2-1 decision that Congress temporarily authorized the policy change until 2009.

The policy gives Defense Secretary Robert Gates greater flexibility to change workers’ assignments and refuse to negotiate over certain issues.

The American Federation of Government Employees said the policy also unfairly restricts the appeals process for unfavorable personnel decisions and allows the Pentagon to avoid negotiating at all.

“This undermines the fundamental concept of collective bargaining,” said Ward Morrow, assistant general counsel for AFGE. “If they disagree with our offer, they can just take it off the table. What kind of bargaining is that?”

Read more at Yahoo News

Same ole same ole. They decide the do or don’t want people to do something or have access to something, and then they make up a reason why.

SAN FRANCISCO - YouTube’s co-founders on Thursday challenged the Pentagon’s assertion that soldiers overseas were sapping too much bandwidth by watching online videos, the military’s principal rationale for blocking popular Web sites from Defense Department computers.

“They said it might be a bandwidth issue, but they created the Internet, so I don’t know what the problem is,” Chief Executive Chad Hurley said with a hearty laugh during an interview with The Associated Press.

Hurley, Chief Technology Officer Steve Chen and YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan emphasized that the online video company is trying to work with the Pentagon in hopes the military will reverse course or at least partially repeal the ban.

“We’d like to explore what’s at issue here and talk about what we can do to sort out what’s the issue here,” Supan said.

The Pentagon said this week it was cutting off service members’ access to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other Web sites, some of which are used by soldiers on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan to post videos and journals for friends and family back home.

In a Pentagon news conference Thursday, Defense Information Systems Agency Vice Director Rear Adm. Elizabeth Hight said the decision was primarily driven by concerns about bandwidth, or the capacity of the Pentagon network to handle data-heavy material such as video.

More at Yahoo News

Such bullshit. But it was ok when Georgie pointed to a map of Iraq showing where all the U.S. soldiers outposts were. An of course, the Pentagon will continue to post it’s propaganda.

The Pentagon will from today ban soldiers serving overseas from using popular video’sharing and social networking websites, claiming they are a security risk.

The Pentagon will continue to post its own videos on networking websites.
The US defence department said videos, recordings and messages uploaded by troops in the field on to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other websites posed a “significant operational security challenge”, and a drag on the military’s computer network.

Critics of the policy said it was designed to prevent troops either delivering bad news or receiving it from videos posted by Iraqi insurgents on the internet.

The US military has always barred its members from sharing information that could jeopardise their missions or safety, but the new policy creates a blanket ban on military personnel exchanging messages, pictures, video and audio with family and friends, which could also be seen by millions around the world.

Members of the military can still access the sites on their own computers - but Pentagon computers and networks are the only ones available to soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More at The Telegraph