Military Doublespeak

by Laurence M. Vance

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government had three slogans emblazoned on The Ministry of Truth building: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. True, the dystopian society depicted by Orwell existed only in his mind. Yet, the doublespeak that existed in that made-up society has increasingly been adopted by governments – our government.

It is a tragic thing that the U.S. government employs doublespeak to deceive the American people; it is even more tragic that most Americans accept government doublespeak as the gospel truth.

There is no greater instance of government doublespeak than when it comes to the military. Here are some examples:

* Serving in the military: getting money for college from the taxpayers.
* Deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan: occupying a sovereign country.
* The global war on terrorism: a cash machine for privileged government contractors.
* Conscription: slavery.
* Stop-loss policy: backdoor draft.
* Dress blues: government-issued costume.
* Troop surge: escalation of a war we are losing.
* Flying sorties: bombing civilians and their property.
* Stationed overseas: helping to maintain the U.S. global empire of troops and bases.
* Enhanced interrogation techniques: torture by the United States.
* Extraordinary rendition: U.S. sanctioned torture by other countries.
* Fighting terrorism: making terrorists.
* Fighting our enemies: making more enemies.
* Defending our freedoms: destroying our freedoms.
* Insurgents: foreigners who resent having their country invaded or occupied.
* Sanctions: killing children without bombs and bullets.
* Military chaplain: trying to serve two masters.
* Military appreciation service: idolatry.
* Praying "God bless our troops": blasphemy.
* Supporting the troops: supporting foreign invasions and occupations.
* Precision bombing: civilian killer.
* Cluster bomb: child civilian killer.
* Land mine: American IED.
* Terrorist: someone who plants a bomb that doesn’t wear an Air Force uniform.
* Enemies of the United States: countries that oppose U.S. hegemony.
* Enemy combatant: someone turned over to U.S. troops in Afghanistan by someone eager to collect a bounty.
* Axis of evil: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government doesn’t like.
* Allies: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government likes.
* Anti-Semite: someone who opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
* Military recruiter: pimp for duped young men who want to sell their services to the government.
* Bomber pilot: long-distance killer.
* Persistent conflict: perpetual warfare.
* U.S. interests: an excuse to police the world.
* U.S. foreign policy: imperialism.
* National security: national police state.
* Collateral damage: the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American bullets and bombs.
* Die for our freedoms: die for a lie.
* War hawk: warmonger.
* Regime change: meddling in the affairs of other countries.
* Congressional supporters of large military budgets: pimps to hook up government and defense contractors.
* Military spokesman: military propagandist.
* Commander in chief: the chief war criminal.

I’m sure there are other words and terms that have been or will be devised or brought to bear to justify the actions of the U.S. military. Reject them, and denounce them for what they are: military doublespeak.

November 19, 2009

Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State and The Revolution that Wasn't. His newest book is Rethinking the Good War. Visit his website.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance188.html

The U.S. Global Empire

There
is a new empire in town, and its global presence is increasing every
day.

The
kingdom of Alexander the Great reached all the way to the borders
of India. The Roman Empire controlled the Celtic regions of Northern
Europe and all of the Hellenized states that bordered the Mediterranean.
The Mongol Empire, which was the largest contiguous empire in history,
stretched from Southeast Asia to Europe. The Byzantine Empire spanned
the years 395 to 1453. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire
stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Hungary in the northwest;
and from Egypt in the south to the Caucasus in the north. At the
height of its dominion, the British Empire included almost a quarter
of the world’s population.

Nothing,
however, compares to the U.S. global empire. What makes U.S. hegemony
unique is that it consists, not of control over great land masses
or population centers, but of a global presence unlike that of any
other country in history.

The
extent of the U.S. global empire is almost incalculable. The latest
"Base
Structure Report" of the Department of Defense states that
the Department’s physical assets consist of "more than 600,000
individual buildings and structures, at more than 6,000 locations,
on more than 30 million acres." The exact number of locations
is then given as 6,702 – divided into large installations (115),
medium installations (115), and small installations/locations (6,472).
This classification can be deceiving, however, because installations
are only classified as small if they have a Plant Replacement Value
(PRV) of less than $800 million.

Although
most of these locations are in the continental United States, 96
of them are in U.S. territories around the globe, and 702 of them
are in foreign countries. But as Chalmers
Johnson has documented,
the figure of 702 foreign military installations is too low, for
it does not include installations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel,
Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Johnson estimates
that an honest count would be closer to 1,000.

The
number of countries that the United States has a presence in is
staggering. According the U.S. Department of State’s list of "Independent
States in the World," there are 192 countries in the world,
all of which, except Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, have diplomatic
relations with the United States. All of these countries except
one (Vatican City) are members of the United
Nations. According to the Department of Defense publication,
"Active
Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,"
the United States has troops in 135 countries. Here is the list:

Afghanistan Albania Algeria Antigua Argentina Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belgium Belize Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chad Chile China Colombia Congo Costa Rica Cote D’lvoire Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji

Finland France Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guatemala Guinea Haiti Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Liberia Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mexico Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua

Niger Nigeria North Korea Norway Oman Pakistan Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Sierra Leone Singapore Slovenia Spain South Africa South Korea Sri Lanka Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Tanzania Thailand Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe

This
means that the United States has troops in 70 percent of the world’s
countries. The average American could probably not locate half of
these 135 countries on a map.

To
this list could be added regions like the Indian Ocean territory
of Diego Garcia, Gibraltar, and the Atlantic Ocean island of St.
Helena, all still controlled by Great Britain, but not considered
sovereign countries. Greenland is also home to U.S. troops, but
is technically part of Denmark. Troops in two other regions, Kosovo
and Hong Kong, might also be included here, but the DOD’s "Personnel
Strengths" document includes U.S. troops in Kosovo under Serbia
and U.S. troops in Hong Kong under China.

Possessions
of the United States like Guam, Johnston Atoll, Puerto Rico, the
Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and the Virgin Islands are
likewise home to U.S. troops. Guam has over 3,200.

Regular
troop strength ranges from a low of 1 in Malawi to a high of 74,796
in Germany. At the time the most recent "Personnel Strengths"
was released by the government (September 30, 2003), there were
183,002 troops deployed to Iraq, an unspecified number of which
came from U.S. forces in Germany and Italy. The total number of
troops deployed abroad as of that date was 252,764, not including
U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States. Total military personnel
on September 30, 2003, was 1,434,377. This means that 17.6 percent
of U.S. military forces were deployed on foreign soil, and certainly
over 25 percent if U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States were
included. But regardless of how many troops we have in each country,
having troops in 135 countries is 135 countries too many.

The
U. S. global empire – an empire that Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus,
Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, Justinian, and King George
V would be proud of.

March
16, 2004

Laurence
M. Vance [send him mail]
is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and
economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL. Visit his
website.

Obama Quietly Backs Renewing Patriot Act Surveillance Provisions

By Willam Fisher, IPS News
Posted on November 24, 2009, Printed on December 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/

NEW YORK, 23 Nov (IPS) - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.

And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.

When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.

But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans -- and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois -- the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.

Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.

The parts of the act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:

National Security Letters (NSLs)

The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.

The 'Material Support' Statute

This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since Sep. 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations.

FISA Amendments Act of 2008

This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails.

Asked by IPS why committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other Democrats chose to make only minor changes, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, referred to "the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms -- while publicly stating receptiveness to them." White House pressure, he speculated, "was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor".

He added that some committee members were cautious because of the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others.

Zazi , a citizen of Afghanistan and a legal U.S. resident, was arrested in September as part of a group accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the U.S. Zazi is said by the FBI to have attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.

Leahy acknowledged that, in light of these incidents, "This is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America."

Pitts told IPS, "Short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach."

"In the eight years since passage of the original Patriot Act, it's become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror -- and avoid being accused of being "soft on terror" -- brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed," he added.

In contrast to the Senate, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee's version curbs some of the government's controversial surveillance powers.

The Patriot Act, passed by a landslide after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional powers to thwart terrorist activities, was reauthorized in 2005.

The legislation has been criticized by many from across the ideological spectrum as a threat to civil liberties, privacy and democratic traditions. Sections of the original act have been ruled unconstitutional, with certain provisions violating protected rights.

Judiciary Chair John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the goal of the new legislation was to "craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values".

The proposed new legislation would permit the so-called "lone wolf" provision to sunset. This authority removed the requirement that an individual needed to be an agent of a foreign power to be placed under surveillance by intelligence officials and permitted surveillance of individuals with a much lower evidentiary threshold than allowed under criminal surveillance procedures.

It was intended to allow the surveillance of individuals believed to be doing the bidding of foreign governments or terrorist organizations, even when the evidence of that connection was lacking.

The Justice Department maintains that the "lone wolf" authority is necessary, even though there is no evidence that it has been used. Its opponents believe that existing authorities are sufficient to achieve the goals of the lone wolf provision while more effectively protecting the rights of innocent citizens.

The proposed new House legislation would also restrict the use of national security letters. According to a Congressional Research Service report, "National security letters (NSL) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information."

Under current law, intelligence agencies have few restrictions on the use of NSLs, and in numerous cases, have abused the authority. An FBI inspector general report in 2007 "found that the FBI used NSLs in violation of applicable NSL statutes, Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policies". The reform provisions seek to create greater judicial scrutiny of NSL use.

The bill approved in the Senate contains much more modest reforms. It would retain the lone wolf provision, and is, in general, much more in line with the wishes of the administration. Should both bills pass and go into conference to be reconciled, it is unclear which approach would prevail.

House and Senate versions still need to be voted on by each body separately and then reconciled into a single bill to send to the president for signature.

Pitts told IPS, "President Obama's flip-flop on Patriot Act issues does as much damage as did his flip-flop on the FISA Amendments Act and telecom immunity last year. But it's imperative that we fight, while we still can, to comprehensively reinsert requirements for fact-based, individualized suspicion, checks and balances, and meaningful judicial review prior to government intrusions."

In a report on the Patriot Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, "More than seven years after its implementation there is little evidence that the Patriot Act has been effective in making America more secure from terrorists. However, there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violate the rights of innocent people and squander precious security resources."

William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
© 2009 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/

US imperialism, 9/11 and the Iraq war

28 November 2009

While the American corporate media has given little attention to it, an official British inquiry into the war with Iraq has brought to light damning testimony about the Bush administration’s deliberate launching of an invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein and subjugate Iraq to American domination.

Former British diplomats and security officials from the 2001-2003 period began testifying this week under oath before a panel headed by Sir John Chilcot, charged with examining the entire course of the war, from its origins to the final British pullout in June 2009.

More than enough evidence has already been produced to indict top Bush administration leaders, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, on the same charge for which Nazi leaders were convicted at the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal—deliberately waging an aggressive war.

Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, described the Bush administration as “hell bent” for a war with Iraq for more than a year before the actual invasion in March 2003. He described the US and British diplomacy to obtain a UN resolution that could be used as a pretext for war, and the impatience of US officials with the delays imposed by maneuvering at the UN Security Council.

The feedback from Washington “included noises about ‘this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what’s going to have to be done anyway—and deal with this with the use of force,’” Greenstock testified.

The sole effect of British diplomacy was to delay the invasion by two weeks, he said. “The momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter,” he said in a written statement to the inquiry.

Greenstock claimed that the US-led invasion was legal under international law, but admitted that it was of “questionable legitimacy” and did not have “democratically observable backing” either among the member states of the UN, or from the population of Great Britain. Some two million people marched in protest of the war in London in February 2003, the largest demonstration in at least a generation, and perhaps in British history.

Both Greenstock and Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, told the inquiry that a meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas was the key decision point for war. This took place in April 2002, nearly a year before the invasion and well before the discussions at the United Nations Security Council in the fall of 2002.

Their testimony confirms the notorious “Downing Street Memo,” leaked to the press in 2005, which pinpointed the April 2002 meeting and declared that all subsequent US and British diplomacy was merely posturing to delude public opinion.

Even more important is the testimony from senior British security officials that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was being openly discussed in British-US talks two years before the invasion, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Sir Peter Ricketts, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that while regime change was discussed as desirable, an invasion for that purpose “was something that we thought there could be no legal basis for.” He said that US and British officials were concerned that the sanctions regime against Iraq was collapsing and that more direct action would be required to oust Saddam Hussein.

Ricketts added that he was “conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change,” citing in particular an academic article written in 2000 by President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, which warned that “nothing will change” in Iraq until Saddam was removed from power.

Sir William Patey, a former Foreign Office official, said that he had commissioned the drafting of a paper on regime change as one of a variety of options in dealing with Iraq. He said the references to regime change were removed as the paper was moved up to the Cabinet level, because this option “was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law.”

He added that the main change brought about by the 9/11 attacks was that responsibility for US policy towards Iraq was shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, headed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a hardline supporter of war with Iraq.

Former ambassador Meyer described a conversation with then US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, on September 11, 2001, in which she first suggested that Saddam Hussein might be connected to the terrorist attacks—one of the principal lies used by the Bush administration to justify the US invasion.

The other major lie was that Iraq possessed vast stockpiles of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD). But Sir William Ehrman, director of international security for the Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002 and director-general of defense and intelligence from 2002 to 2004, told the inquiry that British intelligence was aware, before the US-British invasion, that Saddam Hussein’s regime had dismantled its chemical and biological weapons and hence had no WMD capability.

Meyer added that US officials also cited the anthrax-contaminated letters, which killed five people in the eastern United States in the months after 9/11, as further reason for targeting Saddam Hussein. Bush “just wanted to get over there and kick Saddam out,” he said. “The US military timetable was already in place before the weapons inspectors went in.”

In other words, the Bush administration came into office with a preconceived foreign policy agenda, which included an aggressive push for regime change in Iraq, to “finish the job” begun in the first Gulf War. The 9/11 attacks—carried out by a group formed out of the CIA-organized Islamic fundamentalist guerillas in Afghanistan—was seized on as a useful pretext for justifying an open-ended program of military aggression.

None of this will come as a shock to long-time readers of the World Socialist Web Site. From the inception of the Bush administration propaganda campaign for war with Iraq, the WSWS exposed and denounced the lies about an Iraqi role in the 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda, and the “danger” of Iraqi WMD—this coming from the country with by far the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.

But this record is worth pondering as Bush’s successor prepares to make his propaganda case for another unprovoked imperialist war of aggression—the US war against Afghanistan. Barack Obama goes on national television next Tuesday to claim that—more than eight years after September 11, 2001—tens of thousands more American troops must be sent to Afghanistan to fight those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, the occupation of Iraq continues and none of those responsible for launching this war crime have been held accountable.

Millions voted for Obama in the illusion that he would put an end to the militaristic foreign policy of the Bush administration. Instead, more American troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than at the height of the Bush “surge” in Iraq. The “commander-in-chief” is different, the lies have been somewhat refined, but the axis of imperialist foreign policy remains: the defense of the strategic and economic interests of the financial aristocracy that rules America, served by Obama no less than by Bush.

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the WSWS warned: “The war itself represents a devastating failure of American democracy. A small cabal of political conspirators—working with a hidden agenda and having come to power on the basis of fraud—has taken the American people into a war that they neither understand nor want. But there exists absolutely no established political mechanism through which the opposition to the policies of the Bush administration—to the war, the attack on democratic rights, the destruction of social services, the relentless assault on the living standards of the working class—can find expression. The Democratic Party—the stinking corpse of bourgeois liberalism—is deeply discredited. Masses of working people find themselves utterly disenfranchised.” (“The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq,” March 21, 2003)

Six and a half years later, this perspective has been fully vindicated. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be conducted through the election of Democrats or through putting pressure on the twin parties of big business. Putting an end to war is the task of the working class, in the United States and internationally, which must carry out an independent political struggle on the basis of a socialist program.

Patrick Martin

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n28.shtml

Economic Meltdown -- A Call for Systemic Change

By John Perkins

November 21, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Whenever I hold my two-year old grandson, Grant, in my arms I wonder what this world will look like six decades from now, when he is my age. I know that if we "stay the course" it will be ugly. The current economic meltdown is a harbinger.

Panama's chief of government, Omar Torrijos, foresaw this meltdown and understood its implications back in 1978, when I was an economic hit man (EHM). He and I were standing on the deck of a sailing yacht docked at Contadora Island, a safe haven where U.S. politicians and corporate executives enjoyed sex and drugs away from the prying eyes of the international press. Omar told me that he was not about to be corrupted by me. He said that his goal was to set his people free from "Yankee shackles," to make sure his country controlled the canal, and to help Latin America liberate itself from the very thing I represented and he referred to as "predatory capitalism."

"You know," he added, "what I'm suggesting will ultimately benefit your children too." He explained that the system I was promoting where a few exploited the many was doomed. "The same as the old Spanish Empire -- it will implode." He took a drag off his Cuban cigar and exhaled the smoke slowly, like a man blowing a kiss. "Unless you and I and all our friends fight the predatory capitalists," he warned, "the global economy will go into shock." He glanced across the water and then back at me. "No permitas que te engañen," he said ("Don't allow yourself to be hoodwinked.")

Three decades later, Omar is dead, likely assassinated because he refused to succumb to our attempts to bring him around, but his words ring true. For that reason I chose one of them as the title of my latest book, Hoodwinked.

We have been hoodwinked into believing that a mutant form of capitalism espoused by Milton Friedman and promoted by President Reagan and every president since - one that has resulted in a world where less than 5% of us (in the United States) consume more than 25% of the resources and nearly half the rest live in poverty - is acceptable.

In fact, it is an abject failure. The only way China, India, Africa and Latin America can adopt this model is if they find five more planets just like ours, except without people.

Most of us understand what my grandson does not--that his life is threatened by the crises generated during our watch. The question is not about prevention. It is not about retuning to "normal." Nor is it about getting rid of capitalism.

The solution lies in replacing Milton Friedman's mantra that "the goal of business is to maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental costs" with a more viable one: "Make profits only within the context of creating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world," and to create an economy based on producing things the world truly needs.

There is nothing radical or new about such a goal. For more than a century after the founding of this country, states granted charters only to companies that proved they were serving the public interest and shut down any that reneged. That changed after an1886 Supreme Court decision that bestowed on corporations the rights granted to individuals--without the responsibilities required of individuals.

As an EHM, I participated in many of the events that propelled us into this dangerous territory. As a writer and lecturer, I spent the past few years touring the United States and visiting China, Iceland, Bolivia, India, and many other countries, speaking to political and business leaders, students, teachers, laborers, and all manner of people. I read books about Obama's economic plans, current schemes for reforming Wall Street, and other policies. It struck me that most of the discussions dealt with triage and that while we need to stop the hemorrhaging, we must also ferret out the virus that caused these symptoms.

Hoodwinked presents a plan for a long-term cure. During the days following its November 10, 2009 publication, I spoke about this plan at the United Nations, on radio and TV programs, and at a conference attended by 2400 MBA students at Cornell University.

I come away feeling hopeful that we are finally ready to take Omar's warning to heart and to implement the transformation that will be the salvation for my grandson's generation.

John Perkins is former chief economist at a major international consulting firm. His Confessions of an Economic Hit Man spent 70 weeks the New York Times bestseller list. His website is www.johnperkins.org

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24027.htm

Deformed Babies in Fallujah. Iraq Letter to the United Nations

Global Research
November 19, 2009

H.E. Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki
President of the Sixty-fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations
New York, NY 10017

October 12th 2009

Your Excellency,

RE DEFORMED BABIES IN FALLUJAH

Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukaemias. These deformities are now well documented, for example in television documentaries on SKY UK on September 1 2009, and on SKY UK June 2008. Our direct contact with doctors in Fallujah report that:

In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed.

This can be compared with data from the month of August in 2002 where there were 530 new born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and only one birth defect was reported.

Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects but premature births have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that doctors in Fallujah have said, "a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage".

As one of a number of doctors, scientists and those with deep concern for Iraq, Dr Chris Burns-Cox, a British hospital physician, wrote a letter to the Rt. Hon. Clare Short, M.P. asking about this situation. She wrote a letter to the Rt. Hon.Douglas Alexander, M.P. the Secretary of State of the Department for International Development (a post she had held before she resigned on a matter of principle in May 2003 ) asking for clarification of the position of deformed children in Fallujah.

She received a reply dated 3rd September 2009 (two days after the Sky TV broadcast of 1st September 2009 ) from a junior minister, deputy to The Secretary of State, Mr. Gareth Thomas MP, Duty Minister, Department for International Development. In his reply he denies that there are more than two or three deformed babies in Fallujah in a year and asserts that there is, therefore, no problem. This is at wild variance with reports coming out of Fallujah. One grave digger of a single cemetery is burying four to five babies a day, most of which he says are deformed.

Clare Short passed us a copy of this letter. It bears a remarkable similarity to three other written answers we have received over a four year period, in regard to child health and the use of depleted uranium. All these letters are based on lies and an aim to confuse the recipients. In her autobiography "Honorable Deception?" Clare Short says "The first instinct of Number 10 (Downing Street) is to lie."

We regard the mendacity of Mr. Thomas's letter, and of the other letters we have received, as extremely serious. These letters do not deal with minor matters of corruption, or taxes, but do deal with the use of armed forces and deadly weapons.

The use of certain weapons has tremendous repercussions. Iraq will become a country, if it has not already done so, where it is advisable not to have children. Other countries will watch what has happened in Iraq, and imitate the Coalition Allies' total disregard of the United Nations Charter, The Geneva, and Hague Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Some countries, such as Afghanistan, will also come to experience the very long term damage to the environment, measured in billions of years, and the devastating effect of depleted uranium and white phosphorous munitions.

If, as we say in our letter to the Duty Minister of the Department for International Development, the UK Government clearly does not know the effects of the weapons it uses, nor, as a matter of policy, does "it do body counts", how can the UK Government judge whether it is conducting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan according to International Law, especially in terms of "proportionality" and long term damage to the natural environment? How can the UK know about the illegality of the weapons systems it sells on the international market, such as the "Storm Shadow" missile, if the very Department of the Government that is supposed to assess the deaths and medical needs of children and adults in Iraq is not telling the truth.

We request from the United Nations General Assembly the following:

1. To acknowledge that there is a serious problem regarding the unprecedented number of birth defects and cancer cases in Iraq specifically in Fallujah, Basra, Baghdad and Al - Najaf.

2. To set up an independent committee to conduct a full investigation into the problem of the increased number of birth defects and cancers in Iraq.

3. To implement the cleaning up of toxic materials used by the occupying forces including Depleted Uranium, and White Phosphorus.

4. To prevent children and adults entering contaminated areas to minimize exposure to these hazards.

5. To investigate whether war crimes, or crimes against humanity, have been committed, and thereby uphold the United Nations Charter, The Geneva and Hague Conventions, and The Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court.

Please find enclosed a copy of our letter to Mr Gareth Thomas, dated 12th October 2009, and his letter to The Rt Hon Clare Short, M.P. dated 3rd September 2009, and enclosures relating to this matter.

Yours faithfully,


Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai ( Iraq Minister of Women's Affairs 2006 -2009)



Dr. David Halpin FRCS (Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeon)

Malak Hamdan M. Eng in Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering.

Dr Chris Burns-Cox MD FRCP

Dr. Haithem Alshaibani (Environmental Sciences)

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (Author and Journalist)

Nicholas Wood MA, RIBA, FRGS

Enclosures to follow by surface mail:


1: Copy of Sky Television Documentary 1 September 2009 "The Deformed Babies of Fallujah":

2: Copy of Sky Television Documentary June 2008 "The Deformed Babies of Fallujah".

3: Frieder Wagners's film "Deadly Desert Dust" 2006.

4: Report by doctors in Fallujah 4 March 2008 " Prohibited Weapons Crisis"

5: Film the "Dying children of Iraq",compiled by Nicholas Wood.

6: US Army briefing on the use of White Phosphorous in Fallujah on "Shake and Bake Missions"

7: Report "Who Can Forgive the Crime of using Depleted Uranium Against Iraq and Humanity" by Dr Haithem Alshaibani, September 2009 .

8: Written Answer by Mr Hilary Benn, Secretary of State, Department for International Development to Parliamentary Question. 10 March 2005.

9: Letter by Mr Hilary Benn, Secretary of State, Department for International Development to The Independent, 20 January 2007, in reply to the 98 Doctors' letter to the Prime Minister.

10:Letter by Rt.Hon. Des Browne, M.P. UK Former Minister of Defence to Rt. Hon. Tony Benn, November 2008

11: Black Country Coroner's District ( Sandwell, Dudley.and Walsall: ) Coroner's Report into death of Stuart Raymond Dyson. 18 September 2009.

12: Calculations of expected child abnormalities in a city the size of Cardiff or Fallujah using UK statistics , David Halpin FRCS

Letter from Mr Gareth Thomas M.P. Duty Minister, Department for International Development, 3 September 2009 to Rt. Hon. Clare Short M.P.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16156

Would Our Government Really Start a War to Try to Stimulate the Economy?

by Washington's Blog

Global Research, November 16, 2009

Washington's Blog - 2009-11-14

I've written two essays attempting to disprove "military Keynesianism" - the idea that military spending is the best stimulus. See this and this.

In response, a reader challenged me to prove that anyone would advocate military spending or war as a fiscal stimulus.

In fact, the concept of military Keynesianism is so widespread that there are some half million web pages discussing the topic.

And many leading economists and political pundits sing its praises.

For example, Martin Feldstein - chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, an economics professor at Harvard, and a member of The Wall Street Journal's board of contributors - wrote an op-ed in the Journal last December entitled "Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus".

And as the Cato Institute notes:

Bill Kristol agrees. Noting that the military was "spending all kinds of money already," Mr. Kristol wondered aloud, "If you're buying 2,000 Humvees a month, why not buy 3,000? If you're refurbishing two military bases, why not refurbish five?"

***

This is not the first time that defense spending has been endorsed as a way to jump-start the economy. Nearly five decades ago, economic advisers to President Kennedy urged him to increase military spending as an economic stimulus...

Similar arguments are heard today. The members of Connecticut's congressional delegation have been particularly outspoken in their support for the Virginia-class submarine, and they haven't been shy about pointing to the jobs that the program provides in their home state. The Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey program wins support on similar grounds. Despite serious concerns about crew safety and comfort, the V-22 program employs workers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Texas, and a number of other states.

Professors of political economy Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler write:

 

Theories of Military Keynesianism and the Military-Industrial Complex became popular after the Second World War, and perhaps for a good reason. The prospect of military demobilization, particularly in the United States, seemed alarming. The U.S. elite remembered vividly how soaring military spending had pulled the world out of the Great Depression, and it feared that falling military budgets would reverse this process. If that were to happen, the expectation was that business would tumble,unemployment would soar, and the legitimacy of free-market capitalism would again be called into question.

Seeking to avert this prospect, in 1950 the U.S. National Security Council drafted a top-secret document, NSC-68. The document, which was declassified only in 1977, explicitly called on the government to use higher military spending as a way of preventing such an outcome.

Are they right about NSC-68?

Well, PhD economist Robert Higgs confirms the importance of NSC-68:

 

Previously administration officials had encountered stiff resistance from Congress to their pleas for a substantial buildup along the lines laid out in NSC-68, a landmark document of April 1950. The authors of this internal government report took a Manichaean view of America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union, espoused a permanent role for the United States as world policeman, and envisioned U.S. military expenditures amounting to perhaps 20 percent of GNP. But congressional acceptance of the recommended measures seemed highly unlikely in the absence of a crisis. In 1950 “the fear that [the North Korean] invasion was just the first step in a broad offensive by the Soviets proved highly useful when it came to persuading Congress to increase the defense budget.” As Secretary of State Dean Acheson said afterwards, “Korea saved us.” The buildup reached its peak in 1953, when the stalemated belligerents in Korea agreed to a truce.

 

And Chalmers Johnson - Professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, and former CIA consultant - writes:

 

This is military Keynesianism — the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption.

This ideology goes back to the first years of the cold war. During the late 1940s, the US was haunted by economic anxieties. The great depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production boom of the second world war. With peace and demobilisation, there was a pervasive fear that the depression would return. During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around the USSR’s European satellites, the US sought to draft basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated 14 April 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman on 30 September 1950, it laid out the basic public economic policies that the US pursues to the present day.

In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: “One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living”.

With this understanding, US strategists began to build up a massive munitions industry, both to counter the military might of the Soviet Union (which they consistently overstated) and also to maintain full employment, as well as ward off a possible return of the depression. The result was that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites. This led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address of 6 February 1961: “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience” — the military-industrial complex.

By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in US manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined US military budgets amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, US reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything, ratcheted up, thanks to the massive vested interests that have become entrenched around the military establishment.

 

You can read NSC-68 here.

Leading political journalist John T. Flynn wrote in 1944 :

 

Militarism is the one great glamorous public-works project upon which a variety of elements in the community can be brought into agreement.

 

But Flynn warned that:

 

Inevitably, having surrendered to militarism as an economic device, we will do what other countries have done: we will keep alive the fears of our people of the aggressive ambitions of other countries and we will ourselves embark upon imperialistic enterprises of our own.

 

Indeed, the creator of the theory of military Keynesianism himself warned that those who followed such thinking would fearmonger, appeal to patriotism and get us into wars in order to promote this kind of economic "stimulus". As The Independent wrote in 2004:

Military-fuelled growth, or military Keynesianism as it is now known in academic circles, was first theorised by the Polish economist Michal Kalecki in 1943. Kalecki argued that capitalists and their political champions tended to bridle against classic Keynesianism; achieving full employment through public spending made them nervous because it risked over-empowering the working class and the unions.

The military was a much more desirable investment from their point of view, although justifying such a diversion of public funds required a certain degree of political repression, best achieved through appeals to patriotism and fear-mongering about an enemy threat - and, inexorably, an actual war.

At the time, Kalecki's best example of military Keynesianism was Nazi Germany. But the concept does not just operate under fascist dictatorships. Indeed, it has been taken up with enthusiasm by the neo-liberal right wing in the United States.

I disagree that this is a partisan issue. The Independent piece portrays the "neo-liberal right" as special warmongers; I don't believe there is much difference with the "neo-liberal left", or "neo-conservative right", or whatever. Indeed, political labels are fairly meaningless. What is important is the actions one takes, not his rhetoric about his actions.

Washington's Blog is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Washington's Blog

15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams

By David DeGraw, Amped Status
Posted on November 21, 2009, Printed on November 21, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/144109/

Editor's note: The following is an edited excerpt from the Amped Status report, "The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society."

The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack.

1) The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The U.S. already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top 1 percent, the gap between the top 1 percent and the remaining 99 percent of the U.S. population has grown to a record high.

2) As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and just surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefited the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Bloomberg reported: “Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, and it is also benefiting by only paying 1 percent in taxes.

3) The profits of the economic elite are “now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth."

As the looting is occurring at the top, the U.S. middle class is just beginning to collapse.

4) Workers between the ages of 55 to 60, who have worked for 20 to 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans went up by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion.

5) Home foreclosure filings "hit a record high in the third quarter (of 2009)… They were the worst three months of all time… 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter" in this three-month period; “3.4 million homes are expected to enter foreclosure by year’s end, with some experts estimating that next year will be even worse.”

President Obama has enacted a $75 billion taxpayer funded program that has been a spectacular failure in stemming the foreclosure crisis and has proven to be another massive waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.

6) 25 million people are unemployed or underemployed.

This means we have 25 million people who urgently need to increase their income, and they’re quickly running out of options. The unemployment rate is expected to rise further and remain high for several years. “The president’s chief economic adviser warned that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay ‘unacceptably high’ for years to come."

The New York Times reports: "Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse. Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking….” As this ratio continues to grow, it will lead to a further reduction in wages -- average worker wages have seen a sharp decline over the past year.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, a man who accurately predicted our current crisis, just reported on unemployment stating: “Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening…. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.”

7) As the few elite banks thrive, there have been 123 U.S. bank failures thus far this year. Recently, three banks that the government declared “healthy” and gave taxpayer money, have folded. The Wall Street Journal reports: “U.S. regulators have seized or threatened at least 27 banks that got capital infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, including some lenders government officials knew were troubled when they awarded the money. The troubles put taxpayers at risk of losing as much as $5.1 billion invested in the banks since TARP was launched in October 2008.”

8) As bankruptcies surge across the board, 10 U.S. states are on the verge of bankruptcy, with several ready to declare a financial state of emergency. California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are all “barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services."

9) This is occurring at a time when the “federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before."  In total, "U.S. public debt topped $12 trillion for the first time in history… The public debt topped $10 trillion in September 2008. The debt is quickly approaching the statutory limit of $12.104 trillion, meaning Congress would have to raise the ceiling to prevent a shutdown of government operations."

Economist Dean Baker explains the risk of running such a large deficit: "The debt limit must be increased at regular intervals in order to allow the government to function normally because the government is currently operating at a deficit. If the debt limit is not passed, then at some point the government will not be able to pay workers and contractors. It won’t be able to send out Social Security checks or make payments for Medicaid and unemployment insurance to state governments. And, it will not be able to make interest payments on government bonds, effectively defaulting on the national debt."

Needless to say, all of this will make life drastically more difficult for American citizens. As the middle class continues on the path of economic decline, the number of citizens living in poverty has already hit an all-time high.

10) Although the government’s official figure tries to low-ball the number, 47.4 million U.S. citizens live in poverty, and the U.S. poverty rate is the highest in the industrialized world.

Predictably, homelessness is rising at an increased rate as well. "The U.S. government does not tally the numbers but interested organizations say that more than 3 million people were homeless at some point over the past year…. The fastest growing segment of the homeless population is families with children.”

Children have been hit especially hard by the economic crisis:

11) * 50 percent of U.S. children, one out of every two children, will need to use food stamps to eat.

One out of every two children in the United States of America will need to use a food stamp… to EAT!

If you didn’t think starvation was a serious threat in the U.S., just read this new Washington Post report: “The nation’s economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people — including almost one child in four — struggled last year to get enough to eat… Several independent advocates and policy experts on hunger said that they had been bracing for the latest report to show deepening shortages, but that they were nevertheless astonished by how much the problem has worsened. 'This is unthinkable. It’s like we are living in a Third World country,' said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America."

The United States Department of Agriculture released these findings in a study that was completed in December 2008, which means these numbers don’t take into account the millions more unemployed throughout 2009. The numbers of people living in poverty and struggling to eat has seen a significant increase since then.

This a national tragedy. But it gets much worse.

12) In 2008, according to the Census Bureau, the number of U.S. citizens without health care grew to a record 46.3 million. “The new figures, however, understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of the nation’s job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey."

13) Lack of health insurance has caused 45,000 preventable U.S. citizen deaths in the past year. The American Journal of Medicine recently released a study that stated, “Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness.”

A Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study reported that 17,000 children have died due to lack of health care. You can also add in a recent report that revealed that 2,266 U.S. veterans have died in 2008 due to lack of insurance.

The 50 million now uninsured and the 45,000 preventable deaths per year statistics are expected to drastically rise over the next few years. As the Senate continues to strip meaningful amendments from a health care bill that wouldn’t even take effect until 2013, it has become clear that, despite the media hype, the health care bill is going to fall far short of meaningful reform and continue to rig the game in favor of large insurance company profits at the expense of the U.S. population. With the highest cost healthcare in the world, current trends will continue and much needed change is not on the horizon.

Never before has the United States had so many citizens with so little means, little to no income and heavy debt. Debt and costs of living have now shackled U.S. citizens just as they have shackled people throughout the world. The economic hit men have now hit the United States as well and millions of American citizens are now effectively sentenced to a slow death.

Economic Imperial blowback has hit the mainland.

And the clock is ticking louder by the day…

And here’s two more facts for you:

14) The gun and ammunition manufacturing industry in the United States has over 200 companies producing billions of dollars in annual revenues. This huge manufacturing base cannot fulfill demand quickly enough. The demand for guns and ammunition has hit a record high and the gun industry cannot produce enough bullets to keep up with orders.

Americans are arming themselves to the teeth!

15) In the past year, 100 new armed militia groups have been formed, as militia members have doubled in numbers. Federal authorities are gravely concerned about the “uptick in militia activities." One federal authority recently said, “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."

So let’s break down these numbers.

You have a population of 50 million people who are in desperate need of money, they most likely have no health insurance and can’t afford to get health care or help of any kind. Part of this population probably also has loved ones who can’t get life sustaining medical treatments, or loved ones who have already died due to lack of costly medical treatment. The clock is ticking loud for these people and they are running out of options fast, and time delayed is time closer to death.

While the richest 1 percent have never had it so good, a significant percentage of the U.S. population now has firsthand experience in this. Millions upon millions of Americans are poor, broke, struggling, starving, desperate… and armed.

We are sitting on a powder keg!

We are now witnessing the critical unraveling of U.S. society.

You can read the rest of the report here.

© 2009 Amped Status All rights reserved.


View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144109/

Lou Dobbs v. Jon Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Lowering the Bar: Kindergarten Recruitment

Tuesday 17 November 2009
by: Jon Letman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed


How old is old enough for students to be approached by military recruiters?

High school? Junior high? Fourth grade? How about ten weeks into kindergarten?

Last week at the dinner table, my five-year-old son announced blithely, "Soldiers came to school today." He then added, "They only kill bad people. They don't kill good people."

He made the announcement with the same levity he uses in recalling the plot line of Frog and Toad or a Nemo video.

My wife and I looked at each other incredulously.

"Soldiers came to school? What do you mean?" I asked.

He repeated himself and then I remembered - it was "Career Day" at school. My son mentioned a bus driver too, but it was the soldier who stuck out in his mind. When my wife asked if the soldier was cool, he nodded yes.

The soldier had given my five-year-old a gift. From his yellow backpack, he produced a six-inch, white, plastic ruler with big, bold, red letters reading "ARMY NATIONAL GUARD" next to a waving American flag and below that  www.1-800-GO-GUARD.com.

So, now we know the answer to the above question.

Kindergarteners - children with Dora the Explorer and Spiderman backpacks and bedrooms full of stuffed animals who are still working to master their A-B-C's - are now targets for early conditioning by the US military. Never mind that Hawaii's schools have just cut almost 10 percent of classroom time, dropping the state's public schools' instructional days down to the fewest in the nation. Teacher furloughs or not, time was found for the Army National Guard to give a pitch (and a gift) to wide-eyed five-year-olds.

Fortunately (from the military's perspective), the economic collapse has been a boon for military recruiters  as education and job-hungry young people  flock to a place they know will offer what many other employers cannot - a job with benefits.

And with Department of Defense projections indicating that the baseline Pentagon budget will grow over the next decade by $133.1 billion, or 25 percent (even before war funding), it appears likely there will be plenty need for more soldiers in 2022 when my son and his classmates turn 18.

In his book "The Limits of Power,"  Boston University history Professor and retired Army Col. Andrew J. Bacevich describes a near future in which the US is in an almost constant state of war. He writes, "Rather than brief interventions ending in decisive victory, sustained presence will be the norm ... The future will be one of small wars, expected to be frequent, protracted, perhaps perpetual." If Bacevich's bleak assessment proves true, it's no wonder the National Guard sees value in chatting up kindergarteners.

After raising my concerns about military personnel pitching to my five-year-old on career day to the school's principal, I was told the soldiers (who were dressed in uniform) were there to focus on "the good things they do." To be sure, in times of natural disaster, the National Guard can do a tremendous amount of good.

But in what must certainly have been a first encounter for my son and his classmates, the take-away message was "they kill people. But only the bad ones."



As a parent, how does one explain what killing "only bad ones" means when the child asks why a NATO airstrike obliterated dozens of civilians, an unmanned drone flattened a mountain village killing children just like them or a deeply disturbed soldier goes on a rampage on a US base in Iraq  or in Texas , and projects the violence he has learned against his fellow soldiers?

Whether you find the Army National Guard visiting kindergarteners utterly disturbing or perfectly normal, each of us needs to ask ourselves, in an era when our government spends trillions of dollars supporting wars with no end in sight, at a time when we can't even fund our schools or public services at a minimum standard and only begrudgingly support health care reform, what kind of society and future are we building for our children?