Manly Men

It isn't often that I think David Horsey misses the point, but his most recent column sure fits in that category.  While what he has to say has some truth to it, he is overlooking some pretty sizable issues.  Ironically, his cartoon hints at those issues, but his column completely overlooks them.

After discussing the World War II affair which General Eisenhower, later to become President Eisenhower, had with Kay Summersby, Horsey laments the current state of affairs in this nation.

This is all fabulous news for media gossip mavens, but not so good for the country. The sudden subtraction of Petraeus’ leadership skills and international expertise is a real loss. There are few, if any, other countries in which a romantic fling would force a man of Petraeus’ stature into retirement. Of course, we can be proud of insisting on such high ethical standards and probably, in the long run, our military and our government institutions are better for it. Still, this is a case where the price for rectitude seems especially high.

Would America be better off if Ike had been brought down by his stolen kisses in time of war?

Yes, yes, yes.  Our puritanical nation loves itself some sexual scandals.  This time, however, there is a bit more going on, and I'm not talking about the "compromised security" bovine excrement. 

First of all, the emphasis of the coverage has shifted from Petraeus and Allen to Broadwell and Kelley, the latter of whom is referred to as "Tampa Kardashian."  The seductresses are getting the blame.  What chance did these poor men have under such sieges?  In other words, it's the women's fault, not the four-star generals' fault.  The women were asking for it, yes?

Tell that to the service women who have been raped and sexually assaulted by soldiers and, yes, major officers (including other generals and admirals), and who have been sexually harrassed up and down the chain of command.  The misogyny is palpable, and such coverage seems to give justification for it.

Which leads me to my second point:  these four-star generals are supposed to be the cream of the crop, the exemplars by which all other officers and service people are judged.  They are supposed to be leaders, with the self-discipline to embody the qualities we expect from our military.  Instead, with feet of very soft clay, they embody entitlement, a sense of "I'm in charge here, and I get what I want," the rules be damned.  This is not disciplined leadership.  It's massive fail.

So, a couple of careers are wrecked? 

Good. 

Unwelcome Move

I learned something interesting during my visit to Watching America this weekend: NIMBYISM is not just an American phenomenon. When it comes to relocating American military bases, other parts of the world can be just as cranky as Americans unhappy with a recycling plant in the neighborhood.

GIs have been relocating from Heidelberg to the Erbenheim section of Wiesbaden since the end of 2009. Another 700 GIs assigned to the legendary U.S. V Corps just arrived recently. By mid-2012, the Army's main land force headquarters is scheduled to complete its relocation of some 4,000 troops to Wiesbaden.

All of this is much to the Left Party's displeasure. State parliamentary leader Willi van Ooyen says that rather than spending billions on war and the expansion of military facilities, the money should be spent on improving social and educational services. To back up his demands, he is reminding the Hessen state president of Article 69 of the Hessen state constitution, which says that the state is officially anti-war.

Perhaps Mr. van Ooyen could send a letter to our Supercommittee expressing the same idea with respect to spending billions on war rather than on improving social and educational services. We could use a shift in priorities as well. I mean, the cost of moving the base to Wiesbaden is quite significant:

The U.S. Army justifies the relocation with the fact that its headquarters facilities in Heidelberg are fragmented and scattered, making them more vulnerable to terrorist attack. In Wiesbaden, on the other hand, there is already a secure and compact facility with two access points. Construction of the command center, along with the necessary support buildings, is expected to cost $130 million, of which the U.S. Congress has already appropriated $60 million. The city of Wiesbaden has already assured the U.S. and German governments that the land necessary for construction would be made available and that it would undertake measures aimed at facilitating the acquisition of necessary permits. [Emphasis added]

Of course, the city of Wiesbaden will cooperate: the presence of the US soldiers means an additional $45 million for the local economy. So, regardless of the Left Party's high-minded objections, the Imperial Army is moving to Wiesbaden.

That's how we roll.

Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight

The opinion piece written by Douglas L. Kriner and Francis X. Shen and published in today's Los Angeles Times confirms what a lot of people have long suspected: wars are actually fought by the economically disadvantaged, and the casualty rate reflects that. Using the data and conclusions from their recently published book, Casualty Gap, the authors point out the inequalities in the way the US wages war and what it means.

Over the last six years, we have studied this inequality by collecting and analyzing data on the hometowns of more than 400,000 members of the armed forces who died in World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. By integrating these records with census data, we demonstrate unambiguously that, beginning with the Korean War, disadvantaged communities have suffered a disproportionate share of the nation's wartime casualties, while richer communities have been more insulated from the costs of war. Furthermore, the data suggest that this "casualty gap" between rich and poor communities has reached its widest proportions in the ongoing conflict in Iraq. ...

Nationally, in the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars, communities in the lowest three income deciles suffered 35%, 36% and 38% of the casualties, respectively. Yet communities in the top three income deciles sustained significantly fewer casualties — 25%, 26% and 23% of the casualties, respectively.

More advanced statistical analyses, which account for a variety of other important factors, also offer strong evidence of casualty gaps between communities with different levels of income and education. In Los Angeles, for example, citywide almost 27% of residents hold a college degree. By contrast in the specific L.A. neighborhoods that have lost a young man or woman in Iraq, less than 12% of residents graduated from college. Similarly, in New York City, the citywide average median family income is nearly $42,000, while the average in neighborhoods that have experienced an Iraq war casualty is $34,000, 19% lower.

The authors point out that the military has always depended on the poor to fight wars, and the military has made certain that it has a steady stream of willing fighters by offering some pretty attractive incentives: a job during a time of a high jobless rate, a shot at a decent education via the G.I. Bill, even a fast track towards citizenship for those born elsewhere. Essentially, serving in the military becomes a shot at upward mobility for young men and women who see no other way. The price for the ticket into our society, however, can be extremely steep, as the families of the 6,000 men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan will attest this Memorial Day.

In the mean time, however, the US has a standing army, one ready to be shipped to wherever the politicians/corporatists want to meddle next. And we allow them to do so, often unquestioningly. It is at this point that Kriner and Shen surprised me by pointing out that it doesn't have to remain this way.

What would happen if the nation openly acknowledged the casualty gap? Would citizens rethink questions of war and peace? To find out, we conducted a series of original public opinion survey experiments with nationally representative samples of Americans. We found that citizens informed about the existence of a casualty gap were significantly more likely to oppose ongoing military operations and less willing to support future ones than were their peers who were not informed about casualty inequalities. For example, in evaluating a hypothetical military mission to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program, respondents told about casualty inequalities in the Iraq war said they would tolerate 40% fewer casualties to achieve the mission's goals than would their peers who were not given this information.

These experimental results suggest that if Americans were to learn of wartime inequalities, the public would become more circumspect about future military action. However, the casualty gap is not part of our national dialogue. The reason is clear: Casualty inequalities challenge our fundamental American values. Bringing a frank and honest discussion of the casualty gap into the public sphere could significantly alter the tenor of political discourse in Washington. [Emphasis added]

While the syntax in the quoted section gets downright murky, the point is that knowing that the poor are disproportionately represented in the casualty numbers would cause most Americans to be less likely to support the kind of war-making our nation has engaged in, especially in the last 50 years. If that is true, and I have enough optimism left in the sense of fairness most Americans have to believe that it is true, then the fact that the casualty gap is not part of our national discourse is shameful.

The authors have given us the ammunition to force the discussion. It's time we used that ammunition. We've kept our powder dry for just about 50 years too long.

All In, Indeed

A conservative with a sharp sense of satire and a consummate grasp of snark: who knew such a creature existed? I surely didn't, but this glaring hole in my education was rectified this morning after reading Professor Andrew J Bacevich's op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times. Professor Bacevich (Boston University) is a self-described "conservative Catholic", a graduate of West Point, and the author of several books and many opinion pieces. Make no mistake, the man is a conservative, but not the kind of conservative we are being treated to this summer. He opposed the war in Iraq even before the tragic death of his son there. He has made it clear that militarism is not ever an appropriate form of foreign policy. In this essay, he takes on President Obama's direction of the war in Afghanistan and what he must do.

The military, after hearing Candidate Obama promise to make Afghanistan a winnable war, have made Afghanistan a priority. President Obama is now receiving plenty of advice on what it would take to "win" without ever defining just what "victory" would consist of (sound familiar?). Military leaders want more boots on the ground, but, as far as I can tell, have not yet presented a viable strategy with an end point.

Meanwhile, members of Congress, including Democrats, are not so certain another prolonged war can be sustained. The American public has also made it clear that it is war-weary as well. So, what does President Obama have to do in light of his campaign rhetoric?

Professor Bacevich suggests two possibilities, and it is the first one that really knocked my socks off in its sheer brilliance:

So the president faces a real challenge if he intends to make the case for starting from scratch in Afghanistan. To persuade the American people to buy in, he will have to reassure them on five points:

* Afghanistan constitutes a vital national security interest -- victory in this primitive, impoverished, landlocked and distant country will contribute materially to driving a stake through the heart of violent jihadism.

* Armed nation-building -- securing the Afghan population, developing the economy, building legitimate institutions, eliminating corruption and drug trafficking -- provides the most realistic and effective way to satisfy those interests.

* The failure of past efforts by other great powers to impose their will on Afghanistan is beside the point -- history has no relevant lessons to teach.

* The United States possesses the money, troops, expertise and will to get the job done -- notwithstanding the recession, the mushrooming deficit, the diminishing enthusiasm of our allies, the stress and strain already endured by U.S. forces and the uneven performance of government agencies in the analogous U.S. effort to "fix" Iraq.

* No other priorities, foreign or domestic, exist that outrank Afghanistan and should have first call on the resources that years of additional war will consume -- several hundred billion dollars and several hundred additional American lives by a conservative estimate.

Or...he can behave as a leader should: recast the terms of the debate and demand reasonable alternatives from his advisers, military and civilian:

As difficult as it is to do so at a time when war has become a seemingly perpetual condition, when it comes to Afghanistan, the really urgent need is to recast the debate. Official Washington obsesses over the question: How do we win? Yet perhaps a different question merits presidential consideration: What alternatives other than open-ended war might enable the United States to achieve its limited interests in Afghanistan?

At this pivotal moment in his presidency, if Obama is going to demonstrate his ability to lead, he will direct his subordinates to identify those alternatives.


Exactly so. Mr. Bacevich, you and I may disagree on any number of issues, but on this one we agree. Nicely done. And thank you.

Your Money At Play

Studies of the contracting 'procedures' in U.S. wars, during the previous maladministration, has shown what seemed probable from the costs as related to production; what procedures? Under a group formed to give close scrutiny to the Pentagon's supply of our troops, staggering expense tracked directly back to staggeringly blasé winging it with public funds and military needs.

The contractors that literally ran rampant through the countries we took over were just one branch that proved profligate with our money. The military showed all the concern for our national treasure usually connected with pigs at a trough.

The bipartisan CWC, commissioned by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), James Webb (D-Va.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine), took several months to study the multitude of ways in which the government has been scammed. Staffed by employees of the relevant government agencies, branches of the military and the private sector, the group analyzed hundreds of audits and reports before seeking out answers in the field.

Their studies led them to investigate relevant government and contractor organizations in Washington, interviewing various employees. Not content with second hand accounts, the CWC then flew staff to Iraq and Afghanistan, where they observed, interviewed and analyzed contractors, and the government employees supposed to be overseeing them.

What they found confirmed their worst fears. Not only is the weather in Iraq unpleasantly hot, but the contracting system is completely broken.
(snip)
...apathy from politicians towards civil service, combined with a lack of a clear legal definition, has led to staff shortages in some agencies being filled by contractors, even though it is done unlawfully.

With the amount of contractors supporting contingencies in Iraq and Afghanistan outnumbering government personnel, the commission feels that this imbalance should be redressed, in part, by clearly defining what cannot be outsourced, and hiring an appropriate amount of government officials accordingly.

A clear example of something that the commission feels should not be outsourced can be found amidst Afghanistan's system of private military contractors. The administration of a private security oversight committee, the Armed Contractor Oversight Division (ACOD) in Afghanistan, was contracted to a British firm, Aegis, upon the ACOD's establishment in Afghanistan in February of this year.

Yes, that’s right. A government oversight division has been contracted. Not only is it fundamentally wrong that private interests are managing a government watchdog, but there is also the potential for conflict of interest. Should Aegis, or an affiliate of the company, bid successfully for a private security contract, then the company would be supervising itself, while collecting two separate checks from U.S. taxpayers. (Emphasis added.)

The gross maladministration of this country extended in many directions, and reached an apogee in its wars. The former chief of the executive branch who came into office by malfeasance, whose whole career was an illustration of avoiding Hard Work, created a mess that extends to every branch of the government. Cleaning up the mess is a hard job, indeed, and will take dedicated public servants' returning to government and slowly but surely taking back this country for the people.

The billions that the previous maladministration blew in its wars would have paid several times over for the health care system that its leftovers are now fighting maniacally to resist.

Colin Powell Too Late For Absentees

While watching Colin Powell join the Obama endorsement crowd that is growing in the GOP I remembered what I heard in the last, 2006, campaign about military voting. One member of the military that I met in Dr. Glenn Melancon's campaign told me he was only able to vote in 2004 because he had happened to be here on leave then. Because of the TX redistricting scandal, absentee ballots weren't mailed out - because the districts were undefined - until after the date they needed to be mailed back in.

I checked and found that, as I had suspected, Gen. Powell's endorsement came after the date that overseas ballots should have been mailed back in. Last week, October 11 - 15, was Absentee Voting Week for the military serving abroad.

There are other problems with voting overseas. The military votes counted in 2006 reached only 30% of those cast.

Voting in this election is particularly important, she (Army Capt. Holly Landes) said, "because it's a difference between staying in and pulling out ... So it would be nice if it were a little easier and they had more confidence in the system."

Her concerns are mild in comparison to comments from reservists far from active duty, who can comment publicly without fear of reprimand.

"Why are we imposing on military personnel a system that is more onerous than the ones civilians use?" asked Bob Carey, a senior fellow at the National Defense Committee, a private advocacy group. Carey, a 23-year Navy reservist who participated in Desert Storm, blames politicians and Pentagon bureaucracy with failing to find a process that works.

"I can speak out," Carey said. "The active duty soldier duty soldier cannot. They are not allowed to publicly chastise their superiors, with good reason. It's called mutiny."

Voting problems have been around since the Truman administration, Carey said. "This has been going on for 50 years and nothing has changed. Politicians and elected officials have not done anything. The DOD (Department of Defense) has said there is no problem."

This is how military overseas voting works: A registered voter must request, in writing, an absentee ballot from the local election district where he or she last lived. That can take up to 30 days. The soldier waits to receive a paper absentee ballot, then fills it out and mails it back. That can take another 30 days.

There is a long list of things that can wrong with that process — starting with mail getting lost in the U.S. Postal Service or in the Military Postal Service Agency, which ships correspondence by military channels. Mail can sit undelivered if heavy fighting stops supply convoys, or if limited space requires something more important be delivered — ammunition, for example. And because the military is often on the move, ballots can arrive on bases where soldiers are no longer assigned.

Carey favors Internet voting — something the Pentagon championed in 2004 only to abandon after spending $25 million and meeting critics who said online ballots were vulnerable to fraud.
(snip)
"You can send a billion dollars by secure electronic means. The Pentagon can send top-secret information by secure electronic means," he said. "But your ballot still has to go by snail mail."

The role that Gen. Powell has played in the disgraces the right wing has brought on this country is a major one, and many still believe that without his representation of it, the occupied White House could never have persuaded Congress to authorize misused war powers for the Iraqi war. His endorsement comes at a time when it is obvious the next administration will be Democratic. The timing of this endorsement is blatantly useless.

What a sad story this one has become.

*****************************************************

Quotes from 1929:

"The market is following natural laws of economics and there is no reason why both prosperity and the market should not continue for years at this high level or even higher."

– from a "Wall Street Analysis" by Thomas C. Shotwell in The World Almanac for 1929

"The economic condition of the world seems on the verge of a great forward movement."

– Bernard Baruch, financier and presidential adviser, in The American Magazine, June 1929

"The outlook for the fall months seems brighter

than at any time."

– The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 23, 1929

Collateral Damage

The news scroll came up on the bottom of the screen here the other night, 76 civilian deaths in U.S. air strikes, in Afghanistan. U.S. disputing the report, insisting that terrorist/insurgent/opposition forces were killed and touting a victory for the 'coalition'. We groaned here.

For a few days the back-and-forth went on, with the Afghanistan information sources reporting civilians killed, U.S. 'intelligence' maintaining it had great news, there were more successes and only 'the enemy' had been butchered. It's happened so many times, we knew here that it was going to play out that our intelligence was on the level that has caused so many innocents to be detained and tortured all over the world. And that's how it went - the U.N. investigated, there were 90 civilians killed. We are destroying any credibility we ever might have had by our continual bungling.

"Investigations by UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men," U.N. Special Envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide said in a statement."

The U.S. military has launched an investigation into the incident, after saying it was unaware of any civilians killed in what it said was a single air strike in the Shindand district of western Afghanistan on Friday.

Jets had targeted a known Taliban commander and killed 30 militants, the U.S.-led coalition said.

UNAMA sent its human rights team to the Shindand area to investigate, meeting local officials, elders and villagers.

Afghan and foreign soldiers entered the village of Nawabad in Shindand district around midnight on August 21. Operations lasted several hours and air strikes were called in, the villagers told UNAMA.

"The destruction from aerial bombardment was clearly evident with some 7-8 houses having been totally destroyed and serious damage to many others. Local residents were able to confirm the number of casualties, including names, age and gender of the victims," the U.N. statement said.

"This is matter of grave concern to the United Nations, I have repeatedly made clear that the safety and welfare of civilians must be considered above all else during the planning and conduct of all military operations," Eide said.

"The impact of such operations undermines the trust and confidence of the Afghan people in efforts to build a just, peaceful, and law-abiding state."

The dead have been more than what our military likes to call 'collateral damage'. They leave behind bitter, alienated friends and family, and a country that wants us to leave. Our operations are so badly conducted, they are proof in and of themselves that we should not be involved where we are knocking off the innocent and enabling our opponents more every time we commit these atrocities.

We are ignorant and blind, and should have laid groundwork before any of our offensive moves. Having proved over and over again that our intelligence is dysfunctional, we need to give over the militarism and let our allies conduct their own affairs. Do we have any allies left? or have we called in air strikes on them as well?

The ignorance the occupied White House has unleashed on the world will be our shame for some time to come.

Ike Was Right

Selecting a subject from Watching America this week was difficult because there were several great candidates.

On a rather ominous note, an opinion piece in Pakistan's The Nation descried US plans to send US Special Forces teams into the Pakistan Tribal Areas to hit "high-value targets" without first getting approval from the Pakistani government. Anti-US fervor is rising in those areas to the point that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are being welcomed as a form of spitting on the US.

On a more hopeful note, Rami Khouri's column in Lebanon's The Star indicates that for the first time there are hints that the US is engaging in traditional diplomacy in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program. What is so surprising is that the State Department is actually proceeding in such a fashion as to give the next administration a decent range of options in the resolution of those issues, since it is clear that Iran is does not plan to close any kind of deal with the current administration.

I finally decided on this piece from Italy's Effidieffe because of its incisive analysis of the US mindset. It begins by noting that the current Defense Department budget includes allocations for a new class of Navy assault vehicles which would use atomic propulsion rather than traditional fossil-fuel systems, thereby adding about $800 million to the cost of a single assault vehicle. Such vehicles hardly seem to be all that useful in the Global War On Terror which does not involve traditional warfare techniques but rather the "asymmetrical" tactics of guerrilla warfare and the like. What's the deal? Is the US contemplating World War III in the foreseeable future?

Not exactly, according to the essay. It's about the money and the industries that will benefit from the contracts for such high-tech goodies. President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about this in his 1961 farewell speech (which is extensively quoted by the author of the essay), and his predictions have been fulfilled.

...the U.S.A. is exactly at the point foreseen by Eisenhower: the large weight of the military-industrial complex has distorted society--economically and spiritually--to such an extent that the society now depends on war like a drug addict depends on his dose.

It's not just that members of Congress invested their money in the huge defense industry; nor is it that the military-industrial complex is a powerful lobby and almost invincible. The fact is that for the people, good jobs (the ones with industrial and professional content) are only in defense departments; following deindustrialization in favor of China and Asia, armed forces are now the greatest employer for qualified and stable jobs. They are also the principal research centers for scientific and technological activities. ...

No future Normandy, no Iwa Jima is going to require atomic landing crafts. There aren't any strategic enemies, and nowhere near, who justify the construction of huge atomic landing crafts or the nuclearization of US fleets; it's just the necessity of making the economy work, of running a society that identifies itself as the industrial-military system, at the extent that it fears peace. ...

Senators encourage excessive armament, with an eye on their constituencies and on military-industrial activities that provide jobs; defense industries are interested in selling atomic landing crafts, F-16s and B-2s, just because they produce a profit; in short, strategic necessities move in the background of the "plc warmongering" paradigm; wars are fought to increase sales although now the huge U.S. power is diminished in Afghanistan and Iraq, where wars are irregular. [Emphasis added]

That is about the clearest analysis of the past four decades of American history that I've ever seen.

But do we really want this kind of economy? And, even more importantly, are we locked into this kind of economy? Hopefully the answer to both questions is "No," but it will take the will and a massive re-ordering of our our priorities to finally pull the plug on the military-industrial complex. A good start would be to force our Congress critters from their habit of approving each new toy that the military-industrial complex dangles in front of them.

It's About The Oil

A couple of months ago, I posted on the sudden attention being paid to Africa, a continent the Bush administration had pretty much ignored. Under the aegis of the military, AFRICOM was ostensibly set up to provide services normally assigned to the State Department and aid agencies: painting schools and digging wells. The real purpose of the new program, however, was pretty clear. It was to protect major oil companies' interests in the region. In an article written originally for Foreign Policy in Focus, and reprinted at Asia Times Online, policy analyst Antonia Juhasz points out just why the US is embarking on this new military adventure.

"A key mission for US forces [in Africa] would be to insure that Nigeria's oilfields, which in the future could account for as much as 25% of all US oil imports, are secure," explains General Charles Wald, deputy commander of US forces in Europe in an interview with Wall Street Journal writer Greg Jaffe.

To secure and maintain access to oil, if not for the nation, then most certainly for our oil companies, the Bush administration has increasingly turned toward the US military. Author Kevin Phillips coined the term "petrol-imperialism" to describe the Bush administration's policies in this regard, "the key aspect of which is the US military’s transformation into a global oil protection force". Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration has implemented the greatest realignment of US forces since the end of the Cold War. With a map of Big Oil's overseas operations, the world's remaining oil reserves, and oil transport routes, one can now track the realignment and predict future deployments of the US military. [Emphasis added]

We've discovered via the Iraq War just how expensive using the military to protect oil companies' interests can be, and just how devastating. Even assuming that the misadventure in Iraq will wind up costing only $1 trillion dollars (and that's a conservative estimate), the waste of lives and national integrity will wind up costing the US considerably more.

Instead of pouring that kind of national treasure into the back pockets of oil companies, which deal in a product that ultimately is limited, we should be pouring money and resources into the development of alternative sources of energy. A trillion dollars would go a long way into refining and reducing the costs of solar and wind power, for example.

And then we also wouldn't be having these bogus arguments over drilling offshore and in ANWR (site of about a month's worth of oil for US use). Let the oil companies fund their own police forces. I understand Blackwater has some nice specials available this time of year.

Uber Alles

Some things I did not know, but probably should have known:

Individual branches of the military are not allowed by law to lobby Congress.

Each individual branch of the military has an advertising budget.

The Pentagon is trying to downsize the Air Force.

I learned about these things from this story in today's Los Angeles Times. Apparently the Air Force (which has no recruitment problems and continues to meet its recruitment quota with ease) has a new ad campaign out which has raised hackles in Congress and at the Pentagon.

Troubling images flash across the screen, showing black-clad terrorists, tsunami-flooded villages and the Chinese army.

"Only the United States Air Force has the speed, power and vision to defend our nation for the century ahead," the announcer intones as an F-22 fighter jet flies over a snowy mountaintop. "U.S. Air Force, above all."

There is nothing unusual about seeing military recruiting ads right now. But in Congress and the Pentagon, many believe that the new Air Force ads are less about recruiting and more about lobbying for extra money.

Some lawmakers perceive the ads as an Air Force effort to acquire newer equipment. And, in rare criticism from others in the military, some Pentagon officials believe that the ads are meant to buck Bush administration spending priorities and to push the Air Force's agenda. "It doesn't look like a recruiting ad," said a senior Pentagon official. "The Air Force does appear to be pushing the envelope."

The ads are part of a $25-million campaign called "Above All," for television, radio, the Internet and newspapers. Unlike traditional recruiting campaigns, the ads do not highlight what the military offers individuals who join. Instead, they stress how the Air Force protects the nation. [Emphasis added]

Some in Congress are unhappy with the ad campaign, and none of them fall into the category of wild-eyed DFHs anxious to destroy the military: Rep John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) all have expressed their concerns that the Air Force is doing some outright lobbying, which is illegal.

Lewis is particularly incensed over ads that have seemed to target the Washington area. Two full-page newspaper ads ran in the Washington Post, which has a very low circulation outside the capital region. That suggests the ads were "strictly designed to lobby Congress," [Lewis spokesman Jim] Specht said.

Defense Secretary Gates has assuaged some of that concern, but it's clear he wasn't all that thrilled by the campaign either. His job is to make sure that the President's budget (not the individual branch's) is passed. Part of that current budget reflects the intended downsizing of the Air Force. Apparently some of the Air Force generals have decided to try an end-around the Secretary.

And though the Air Force is supposed to shrink, top officials say, they have asked Congress for money to halt the cuts and restore its ranks. The Air Force’s budget proposal, released in February, says the objective of the advertising campaign is to increase the service's "brand awareness."

But here's what set off the bells in my head: Above All. That motto might be a little more graceful than "Army Strong," but it carries a whole lot of extra baggage. The German for that phrase is "Uber Alles." While the motto might fit right in with such other administration mottos as "Department of Homeland Security," it's just a little too blatant.

Further, given the propensity of the Air Force to engage in unlawful Christian evangelizing from the Air Force Academy to the field, "Above All" seems more than a little suspicious. The religious connotations, especially in this context, are just as blatant.

Next year the Air Force intends a $50 million advertising campaign. I can't wait for those productions.

Morons.

Army Strong

An article in yesterday's Boston Globe announced some good news and a whole lot of potentially bad news when it comes to Army recruitment.

Two weeks ago, the Pentagon announced the "good news" that the Army had met its recruiting goal for October, the first month in a five-year plan to add 65,000 new soldiers to the ranks by 2012.

But Pentagon statistics show the Army met that goal by accepting a higher percentage of enlistees with criminal records, drug or alcohol problems, or health conditions that would have ordinarily disqualified them from service.

In each fiscal year since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, statisics show, the Army has accepted a growing percentage of recruits who do not meet its own minimum fitness standards. The October statistics show that at least 1 of every 5 recruits required a waiver to join the service, leading military analysts to conclude that the Army is lowering standards more than it has in decades. [Emphasis in the original]

What is particularly interesting (and perhaps frightening) is the breakdown on the use of the required waivers:

...Of the 6,434 enlistees who signed up last month, 792, or 12.3 percent, required waivers for past criminal activity that would have disqualified them, including misdemeanor and felony convictions, according to Army data. ...

The share of new recruits granted waivers for medical reasons, such as failing Army physical fitness standards or for testing positive for marijuana or cocaine use, has also soared in the past five years.

The percentage of medical waivers more than doubled, from 4.1 percent in 2003 to 8.6 percent last month. Drug or alcohol abuse waivers increased by half, from 1 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent last month.

The article notes that the failed drug tests occurred during the recruitment process, which means some of these recruits were using right up to the date they were sworn in, which certainly does not bode well for success in basic training.

I'm not suggesting that troubled kids shouldn't be given an opportunity to turn their lives around, but I don't think the US Army should be the rehab center of choice. I thought we learned that lesson back in the 1960's Viet Nam era.

Unfortunately, the Army finds itself between a rock and a hard place, thanks to the White House decision to run two wars at once and to run them badly. Not only is regular recruitment difficult, retention of already trained personnel is almost impossible. The Army is as close to being broken (if it isn't actually broken) than it ever has been.

Heckuva job, George.

Absolute War Corrupts Absolutely

The Iraq war is a tragedy in so many aspects, it's hard to pick one as worst. But the corruption in contracting and in operation of its many support systems ranks among the rankest.

The army is being forced to look more deeply into the graft because of a personal tragedy, that resulted in suicide, for some vendors who got deeply involved in a corrupt system.

The flashy Laila Tower office building in this wealthy oil capital is a world away from the mean streets of Baghdad. But the U.S. government says they are linked by a web of fraud and bribery that stole millions of dollars provided by American taxpayers to support U.S. combat troops in Iraq.

The U.S. military and prosecutors have launched 83 criminal investigations into alleged contract fraud, including a total of $15 million in bribes.

It was the apparent suicide of an Army major in Baghdad a year ago that brought them to the 15th floor of the Laila Tower. There, overlooking the Persian Gulf, is the firm run by American George H. Lee and his family, a small part of that huge web.

None of the Lees has been charged with any crime. But the Army suspended them from doing business with the U.S. government, and a federal judge in Huntsville, Ala., upheld the order in August, as a military investigation into their case continues.

The case of Lee, a 64-year-old former Army supply clerk from Pennsylvania, provides rare insight into how fraud was able to occur, in part by exploiting the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also shows the flaws in the U.S. system of bids between private contractors and the U.S. military officers who doled out billions of dollars in contracts since 2003, often with little oversight.

Kuwait's close-knit expatriate community also played a role, in a place where business is traditionally done away from the glare of public scrutiny.

"Bribery and kickbacks are common with big projects," said Ali al-Nemash of the Kuwait Transparency Society, a private organization that seeks to combat graft and corruption. "They call it 'gifts,' but it is bribery."

Teams of U.S. investigators are reviewing a sample of about 6,000 U.S. military contracts worth $2.8 billion that were awarded by a single Army office at Camp Arifjan, a huge logistics and supply base about 40 miles south of the Laila Tower.

The U.S. has publicly identified only some of the companies and individuals linked to the alleged bribery and fraud. The Army cited the need to protect "the integrity of the ongoing investigation" in refusing a request by The Associated Press for an interview at Camp Arifjan.
(snip)
Davis' children are seeking to reverse a government order seizing their mother's bank accounts, which were frozen one day before she was found dead of a gunshot wound in Baghdad.

She and others may have fallen into what Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, referred to as a "culture of corruption" at Camp Arifjan, where about a dozen people gave out contracts worth tens of millions of dollars.

The occupied White House tore down the guards of regulation and loosed the contracting process in seeming confidence that the market would work to keep all the dollars flowing and that would make everybody happy. Corruption, though, is the byproduct of the deregulated system, and it has resulted in poor quality of services to our troops as well as the unbridled throwing our dollars down the drain of graft. That hasn't worked out very well for anyone. Caught up in the crookedness, some of the civilian cogs seem to have gotten crushed.

The helter-skelter nature of the war has shown up the weaknesses in letting contracts through laissez faire methods, and ought to serve as a lesson for all time in how regulation keeps the systems running, and the servers of that system in line so that it can operate.

Another Six Month Plan

The macho military culture is finally ready to admit that war causes pyschological injuries. Now, the military wants six months to figure out what to do about that, according to an article in yesterday's Sacramento Bee.

The Pentagon's top health official said Thursday he wants to see better mental health assessments, stronger privacy protections and a "buddy system" to change the military's stigma against seeking help for anxiety and depression.

Speaking to Congress as the military rushes to improve its much-criticized mental health system, S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, also acknowledged that the Army's touted plans to hire 25 percent additional mental health specialists may prove hard to fulfill for awhile because of problems in recruiting and retaining active-duty professionals.

"It's not easy to get people into the military," said Casscells, referring to plans by Army Surgeon Gen. Gail Pollock. "We cannot hire 200 Army psychiatrists, which Gen. Pollock wants to do, we can't do that overnight. So we need everyone to reach out and look out for service members."

Why the sudden interest in improving the military's mental health system? Well, the number of military personnel suffering from mental health problems is simply too large to ignore any longer, for one thing:

Casscells' comments came as the Pentagon and Congress are reviewing 95 recommendations made last month by a task force chaired by Navy Surgeon General Donald Arthur. Issuing an urgent warning, the panel found that more than one-third of troops and veterans currently suffer from problems such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder and urged stronger leadership, more money and a fundamental shift in treatment to focus on prevention and screening. ...

About 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of Marines report psychological conditions such as brain injury and PTSD after returning from deployment. Among members of the National Guard, the figure is much higher - 49 percent - with numbers expected to grow because of repeated and extended deployments.

And the response to those numbers has been predictable: the Secretary of Defense has ordered that a plan be developed and has given the military six months to develop such a plan, which makes the plan due in September.

Six months to put together a plan in a war that has been going on for over four years.

Stunning.

Expensive Fly-By

An article from yesterday's Sacramento Bee bugged me most of the day for a couple of reasons. Here's the basic info from the article:

Between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. a KC-135 refueling aircraft, two F-16 fighters and a U-2 reconnaissance plane rattled windows as politicians on the steps of the Capitol welcomed the start of Air Force Week. The Air Force is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Later Monday, a KC-10 transport plane and T-38 supersonic jet trainer thrilled fans at Raley Field in West Sacramento.

The activities are intended to have residents reflect on the Air Force's role, and they culminate with the California Capital Airshow on Saturday and Sunday at Mather Airport. The event's headliner is the U.S. Air Force's Thunderbirds precision flying team. [Emphasis added]

A sidebar to the article contained a partial list of the military aircraft which would be participating in the airshow:

• Airbus A-300

• B-1 bomber

• C-130 Hercules

• C-5 Galaxy

• EA-6 Prowler

• F-15 Eagle

• F-18 Hornet

Now, I know that a lot of people are genuinely interested in airplanes, especially those of the military variety. After all, we paid for those craft and I guess we are entitled to see how our money was spent. Still, it has to be pretty expensive to send all of this flying hardware to buzz the California capital, if only in terms of jet fuel, which I suspect costs even more than regular unleaded gasoline.

And for what? A public relations campaign and recruitment drive for the Air Force? Look, most folks are well-aware of the national defense role of the Air Force, and I doubt that the Air Force is having the same recruitment problems that the Army is having. I think there's more going on here.

The subtext reminds me of those May Day parades in Moscow we used to see on television during the Soviet era: miles of tanks, artillery pieces, soldiers, all on display to show the military might of that nation to its citizens and to the world. The Air Force fly-bys mentioned in the article have the same muscle-flexing feel to them. It's a kind of less lethal "shock and awe," one calculated to show Americans and the rest of the world just how powerful we are.

And I'm very uncomfortable with that display.