Gloria Goodale - Memorial Day: Among post-9/11 veterans, deepening antiwar sentiment

Despite the end of the Iraq war and the scheduled drawdown in Afghanistan, this Memorial Day arrives against a backdrop of deepening – and some say more troublesome – antiwar sentiment among military veterans.

One of the most vivid and replayed images of protesters at the NATO summit last weekend in Chicago was a group of some 40 vets lined up to toss their war medals over the chain link fence to protest what former naval officer Leah Bolger calls “the illegal wars of both NATO and America.”

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 33 percent of post-9/11 veterans say that neither the war in Iraq nor in Afghanistan “were worth the cost,” and this among a highly motivated cohort who chose to serve.

What this means, says retired US Army Col. Ann Wright, who resigned from a State Department post in 2006 over US policies in Iraq, is that there is a widening gap between the government, military policies, and the soldiers that carry them out.

“Military personnel know America will always have a military, but there is growing concern over the way it is being used,” says the 29-year veteran, adding that an increasing list of concerns include “the use of torture, illegal detentions, and both soldiers and the public being lied to about the actual reasons for going into combat.”

But in contrast to the extremely vocal and visible antiwar movements of the Vietnam War era, many veterans in the all-volunteer military have found it harder to mobilize effective actions, says Cameron White, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq before joining “Iraq Veterans Against the War.”

Read More:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/0526/Memorial-Day-Among-post-9-11-veterans-deepening-antiwar-sentiment

Susanne Posel - Defense Department Seeks Legal Authority to Deploy Reservists onto American Streets

Thanks to Posse Comitatis, the US military are forbidden from responding on the streets of America whenever the whim is announced.

The Posse Comitatus Act, Section 1385, states that only under “circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress” can the military presence on American streets is allowed.

Yet, if the Defense Department has their way, a new authorization act will give them the power to order the armed forces to be used against the American public.

Air Force reservists are slated to be the new response team for domestic disturbances. Disseminated from Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) and other reserve agencies, these men and women could be called to be first response to natural disasters within the US. The legislation would extend mobilizations for indeterminate periods of time.

Read More:

http://occupycorporatism.com/defense-department-seeks-legal-authority-to-deploy-reservists-onto-american-streets/

Renee Parsons - The Export of Weapons: Past, Present and Future

As long overdue negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) begin in early July under UN auspices, central to that discussion, by virtue of its international supremacy, will be the US export of arms that has facilitated the extensive sale of weapons around the planet. With only 19 out of 195 sovereign nations of the world with no military budget, the ATT conference will attempt to establish international standards for the $55 billion a year industry for the import, export and transfer of all conventional (small arms) weapons.

Even a widespread global recession and callous austerity budgets have done little to dampen an insatiable demand for weapons by industrialized nations, undemocratic nations and still developing or unstable nations with an estimated $1.7 trillion devoted to annual military expenditures in 2011, a 50 per cent increase in global military budgets since 2001 -- at the expense of providing a safe, secure world for all its citizens.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/the-export-of-weapons-pas_b_1540165.html

Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer - War Pay

Recent months have seen a flurry of headlines about cuts (often called “threats”) to the U.S. defense budget. Last week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives even passed a bill that was meant to spare national security spending from future cuts by reducing school-lunch funding and other social programs.  

Here, then, is a simple question that, for some curious reason, no one bothers to ask, no less answer: How much are we spending on national security these days? With major wars winding down, has Washington already cut such spending so close to the bone that further reductions would be perilous to our safety?

In fact, with projected cuts added in, the national security budget in fiscal 2013 will be nearly $1 trillion -- a staggering enough sum that it’s worth taking a walk through the maze of the national security budget to see just where that money’s lodged.

If you’ve heard a number for how much the U.S. spends on the military, it’s probably in the neighborhood of $530 billion. That’s the Pentagon’s base budget for fiscal 2013, and represents a 2.5% cut from 2012. But that $530 billion is merely the beginning of what the U.S. spends on national security. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175545/

Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier - Don't Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon's Budget Could Boost the Economy

Should the enormous US military budget—which is more than double the combined levels of military spending by China, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Germany—be cut? This question is finally on the table, thanks to the winding down of combat activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and to Washington’s obsession with tamping down the federal deficits that have arisen from the Great Recession. Many who would like to protect the military from the budget knife raise economic arguments to make their case: Won’t cutting military spending be bad for jobs, just when we need to maintain focus on reducing unemployment? Won’t it threaten the country’s long-term technological capabilities?

The matter assumed increased urgency in November after the Congressional supercommittee failed to agree on a deficit-reduction plan. This failure set in motion an agenda for automatic cuts—or “sequestration” of funds—from military and nonmilitary budgets beginning in January 2013. According to the sequestration scenario, absent the adoption of a large-scale deficit-cutting plan, military and nonmilitary spending would face $55 billion per year in automatic cuts over a decade, relative to previously established spending levels. If Congress and the White House devise a way to exempt the Pentagon from the automatic cuts—as seems increasingly likely—the cuts will instead be taken from healthcare, education, social spending, infrastructure and the environment.

Of course, framing the deficit issue in terms of military versus social spending cuts ignores other options, such as raising taxes on the wealthy. It also erroneously assumes that reducing the federal deficit is necessary now, before the economy has settled onto a sustainable recovery path out of the recession. Even more fundamental, today’s debate largely skirts the question of what the military budget needs to be after Iraq and Afghanistan, and fails to grapple honestly with the impact that major military spending reductions would have on the economy, especially in terms of job opportunities and technology.

Read More:

http://www.thenation.com/article/167811/dont-buy-spin-how-cutting-pentagons-budget-could-boost-economy

Steve Watson - Air Force Document: Drones Can Be Used To Spy On Americans

A newly discovered Air Force intelligence brief states that should fleets of unmanned drones accidentally capture surveillance footage of Americans, the data can be stored and analyzed by the Pentagon for up to 90 days.

The instruction, dated April 23, admits that the Air Force cannot legally conduct “nonconsensual surveillance” on Americans, but also states that should the drones”incidentally” capture data while conducting other missions, military intelligence has the right to study it to determine whether the subjects are legitimate targets of domestic surveillance.

Read More:

http://www.infowars.com/air-force-document-drones-can-be-used-to-spy-on-americans/

US Military Taught Officers: ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics For ‘Total War’ On Islam

The U.S. military has been teaching its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims will be necessary to protect America from terrorists, according to documents released today in a stunning story in Wired's Danger Room.

A cartoon included in the Joint Staff Forces College presentation on "Jihad: Defined and Operationalized" contains a number of ugly stereotypes. Hundreds of US military officers have enrolled in the course on Islamic radicalism since it was first offered four years ago at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

Among the other chilling assertions in the documents:

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/10-4

Eloise Lee - The Way The Pentagon Is Predicting Your Potential To Become A National Threat Is Frightening

Tom Cruise made "pre-crime'" a futuresque and controversial method of law enforcement in the 2002 movie Minority Report.

Ten years later, the idea of preemptively identifying a criminal — particularly an inside threat — is taking shape within the U.S. Defense Department, reports Joe Gould at Army Times.

Whether it's a low-ranking soldier intent on dumping secret information to WikiLeaks, or a rogue Sergeant going on a shooting rampage, insider threats can seriously plague the military and the government as a whole.

Taking a novel approach, the Pentagon is spearheading research into studying the predictive behavior of personnel in the lead-up to a betrayal. 

From Army Times:

The Army’s efforts dovetail with a broader federal government initiative. President Obama signed an executive order last October that established an Insider Threat Task Force to develop a government wide program to deter, detect and mitigate insider threats.

Among other responsibilities, it would create policies for safeguarding classified information and networks, and for auditing and monitoring users.

In January, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo directing government agencies that deal with classified information to ensure they adhere to security rules enacted after the WikiLeaks debacle.

Read More:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-number-of-ways-the-pentagon-is-working-on-to-predict-your-behavior-is-frightening-2012-5#ixzz1uJcj0GXR

Col. Ann Wright - The Dark Side of the Prestigious Marine Barracks

According to Marine Corps lore, semper fidelis, a Latin phrase for “always faithful,” commands Marines to remain a “brotherhood, faithful to the mission at hand, to each other, to the Corps and to country, no matter what. Becoming a Marine is a transformation that cannot be undone and once made, a Marine will forever live by the ethics and values of the Corps.”

The Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., is the official residence of the commandant of the Marine Corps. It is the home of the Marines who are the ceremonial guard for the president during official U.S. government functions and the security force for the White House and Camp David. The Marine Band, also located at the Barracks, is known as “The President’s Own.” The Barracks is the showplace of the Marine Corps with its Silent Drill Platoon giving weekly military precision performances for the public during the busy summer tourist season.

But the Marine Barracks has its dark and ugly side. It is also the home of officers and enlisted men of the Marine Corps who have been accused of sexually harassing, assaulting and raping female Marine officers and enlisted and civilian women who work there.

According to information provided by the Marine Barracks Washington legal adviser at the request of the Senate Armed Services Committee minority counsel, from 2009 to 2010 three female Marines and two civilian women reported to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that they had been raped by male Marines. Two of the female Marines held high-visibility jobs at the Barracks and said they were raped by senior officers.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_dark_side_of_the_prestigious_marine_barracks_20120508/

Paul Joseph Watson - Yes, The Re-Education Camp Manual Does Apply Domestically to U.S. Citizens

A shocking U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers contains numerous clear references to the fact that the policies do apply domestically to U.S. citizens.

Despite the fact that the manual is well over 300 pages long and would take hours to read properly, within minutes of posting our story yesterday a minority of commenters were claiming that the policies outlined in the document only pertained to foreign combat operations and did not apply domestically to U.S. citizens.

This is similar to the denial witnessed prior to the passage of the NDAA when some argued that the indefinite detention provisions did not apply to American citizens despite numerous legal analysts asserting they did and President Barack Obama himself acknowledging they did when he signed the bill.

Click here to read the full document entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations.

Read More:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/yes-the-re-education-camp-manual-does-apply-domestically-to-u-s-citizens.html