::: THE BEST-KEPT SECRET IN WASHINGTON :::
::: Why America HAS To Have The Oil :::
Brain Food -- Third Quarter, 1999
by Jay Hanson -- www.dieoff.org

{One should bear in mind that since this comes from the fabled
Thule.org ... Might be a good idea to break out the TinFoil Hats}
::: Also bearing in mind Clinton was President at this time.

Read All About it Here

According to the information I have been reading ... and I mean from all sorts of
studies on the subject ... from Gov agencies, conspiracy theorists, scientists,
IHS Energy Group (formerly Petroconsultants)

By 2010, Muslim nations could control 60 percent of the world's oil production and, more importantly, 95 percent of the world's oil exports. In short, the Muslim exporting nations have Western economies by the throat.

One hundred years ago, fundamentally defective economic theories led to two world wars with millions killed. Today, the same defective economic theories are taught to students all over the world and are leading to a new generation of world wars with billions killed.

America will soon lose the stability the framers worked so hard to create because it is becoming wholly dependent upon inherently unstable (authoritarian) oil-producing Muslim nations like Indonesia. It happened twenty-five years ago when OPEC quadrupled world oil prices and plunged America into "stagflation". Fortunately, the non-OPEC producers still had a HUGE unexploited oil cushion to fall back on and simply pumped central bankers out of their economic crisis.

But that was 1973 and this is 1999 -- twenty-five years later the oil cushion is gone. Muslim nations will soon control virtually all of the world’s oil exports. Since neither capital nor labor can create energy, the next round of energy-shortage-induced stagflation will leave central bankers helpless and they will seek military solutions to their economic problems.

It's the best-kept secret in Washington, Whitehall, Brussels, and Jerusalem, but it's just a matter of time until word hits the street…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.bpamoco.com/worldenergy
The United States is physically unable to produce enough oil domestically to keep its economy alive and is forced to rely on imports. In 1998, the United States imported 53 percent of its oil needs. This deficit is growing -- and will continue to grow until the economy collapses exactly like it did twenty-five years ago. What's utterly amazing is that even though these data are available for everyone to see on the BP Amoco web site -- and in every major library for non-surfers -- there's nobody in the Oval Office who seems to know how to search the web (or the library)? Even our "environmentalist VP" -- who claims to have "invented" the Internet -- is apparently unable (or unwilling) to access BP's database

By a hundred years ago, physics had incorporated the laws of thermodynamics. Obviously, energy laws that govern the physical world also govern the economic world. Physical scientists attempted to point out this crucial fact to economists:

"It is, in fact, the fate of all kinds of energy of position to be ultimately converted into energy of motion. The former may be compared to money in a bank, or capital, the latter to money which we are in the act of spending ... If we pursue the analogy a step further, we shall see that the great capitalist is respected because he has the disposal of a great quantity of energy; and that whether he be nobleman or sovereign, or a general in command, he is powerful only from having something which enables him to make use of the services of others. When a man of wealth pays a labouring man to work for him, he is in truth converting so much of his energy of position into actual energy...The world of mechanism is not a manufactory, in which energy is created, but rather a mart, into which we may bring energy of one kind and change or barter it for an equivalent of another kind, that suits us better -- but if we come with nothing in hand, with nothing we will most assuredly return." [Balfour Stewart, 1883] [20]

But economists never understood the laws of thermodynamics because they evolved to worship the Market God instead.

~~~Warning ~ Brain Vomit Coming Up~~~
So there .... looks like we are in deep doodie and the funny part is months
before the Iraq War, I remember telling one of my friends I had been reading
some papers on the energy supply and had come to the conclusion ~~~~

America HAS to have the OIL ... we have no choice if we plan to continue
living as we do today.

Then Bush and Company went on the SELL to the American people about
the Iraq War ... and being one of the Americans he was trying to SELL,
I got pissed off. At that time, I knew he was not telling us the truth, and
I even remembered tell Charlie we had to have the oil, but listening to
all the rhetoric on the nightly news ... I guess I pushed it into the back-
ground.

I do believe the studies and I do believe we are near the end of having
the kind of oil supply we think we need (and I sure want it like everyone
else). But as I look down the road, I am hoping we can break the barriers
on the really incredible technology hidden by the Oil Barrons and save
ourselves. Of course, if we are talking about Zero Point or Free Energy
and it became a reality tomorrow, it would still take down the economy.
And all the starving third worlders will be soooooo mad we have let
them flounder in poverty, disease and without proper food or water.

Now ... another thought is what they plan to do with the Driected Energy
Weapons they are developing - Classified, of course - Could be we are
just using HAARP in Alaska to work on the Missile Shield. On the other
hand, we could be planning to ZAP the Oil-Rich Countries with the Tesla
Death Ray or just EMP all thier technology, strangle the locals and take
the oil. But we are sure gonna need one heck of a lot more troops for
that job, don't cha know.

Rats-A-Mundo ....What to do, what to do???

Final thought from Yergin ...

WHATEVER THE TWISTS AND TURNS in global politics, whatever the ebb of imperial power and the flow of national pride, one trend in the decades following World War II progressed in a straight and rapidly ascending line -- the consumption of oil. If it can be said, in the abstract, that the sun energized the planet, it was oil that now powered its human population, both in its familiar forms as fuel and in the proliferation of new petrochemical products. Oil emerged triumphant, the undisputed King, a monarch garbed in a dazzling array of plastics. He was generous to his loyal subjects, sharing his wealth to, and even beyond, the point of waste. His reign was a time of confidence, of growth, of expansion, of astonishing economic performance. His largesse transformed his kingdom, ushering in a new drive-in civilization. It was the Age of Hydrocarbon Man.
-- Daniel Yergin, 1992. [1]
- posted by JT @ 11:11 PM |

 
::: America Did Not Use Napalm In Iraq :::

Well, that is comforting ... except we did use something called a "Mark 77 firebomb."

Results are 'remarkably similar' to using napalm

[..]
"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Col. James Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. "Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.
[..]
During the war, Pentagon spokesmen disputed reports that napalm was being used, saying the Pentagon's stockpile had been destroyed two years ago.
[..]
Hundreds of partially loaded Mark 77 firebombs were stored on pre-positioned ammunition ships overseas, Marine Corps officials said. Those ships were unloaded in Kuwait during the weeks preceding the war.

"You can call it something other than napalm, but it's napalm," said John Pike, defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.com, a nonpartisan research group in Alexandria, Va.


Thanks to the Pentagon for clearing that up .... hooah!
- posted by JT @ 5:29 PM |

 
::: Most Iraqis Hate The U.S. Occupiers As Much As Saddam :::
After Reading This, I Hate us Too ::: War On Truth

[..]

Every day now, in the United States, the all-pervasive media tell Americans that their bloodletting in Iraq is well under way, although the true scale of the attacks is almost certainly concealed. Soon, more soldiers will have been killed since the "liberation" than during the invasion. Sustaining the myth of "mission" is becoming difficult, as in Vietnam. This is not to doubt the real achievement of the invaders' propaganda, which was the suppression of the truth that most Iraqis opposed both the regime of Saddam Hussein and the Anglo-American assault on their homeland. One reason the BBC's Andrew Gilligan angered Downing Street was that he reported that, for many Iraqis, the bloody invasion and occupation were at least as bad as the fallen dictatorship.

This is unmentionable here in America. The tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and maimed do not exist. When I interviewed Douglas Feith, number three to Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, he shook his head and lectured me on the "precision" of American weapons. His message was that war had become a bloodless science in the service of America's unique divinity. It was like interviewing a priest. Only American "boys" and "girls" suffer, and at the hands of "Ba'athist remnants", a self-deluding term in the spirit of General Maude's "miscreants". The media echo this, barely gesturing at the truth of a popular resistance and publishing galleries of GI amputees, who are described with a maudlin, down-home chauvinism which celebrates the victimhood of the invader while casting the vicious imperialism that they served as benign. At the State Department, the under-secretary for international security, John Bolton, suggested to me that, for questioning the fundamentalism of American policy, I was surely a heretic, "a Communist Party member", as he put it.

As for the great human catastrophe in Iraq, the bereft hospitals, the children dying from thirst and gastroenteritis at a rate greater than before the invasion, with almost 8 per cent of infants suffering extreme malnutrition, says Unicef; as for a crisis in agriculture which, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation, is on the verge of collapse: these do not exist. Like the American-driven, medieval-type siege that destroyed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives over 12 years, there is no knowledge of this in America: therefore it did not happen. The Iraqis are, at best, unpeople; at worst, tainted, to be hunted. "For every GI killed," said a letter given prominence in the New York Daily News late last month, "20 Iraqis must be executed." In the past week, Task Force 20, an "elite" American unit charged with hunting evildoers, murdered at least five people as they drove down a street in Baghdad, and that was typical.

::: Re Jessica Lynch, who probably wants to go crawl into a hole! :::

The august New York Times and Washington Post are not, of course, as crude as the News and Murdoch. However, on 23 July, both papers gave front-page prominence to the government's carefully manipulated "homecoming" of 20-year-old Private Jessica Lynch, who was injured in a traffic accident during the invasion and captured. She was cared for by Iraqi doctors, who probably saved her life and who risked their own lives in trying to return her to American forces. The official version, that she bravely fought off Iraqi attackers, is a pack of lies, like her "rescue" (from an almost deserted hospital), which was filmed with night-vision cameras by a Hollywood director. All this is known in Washington, and much of it has been reported.

This did not deter the best and worst of American journalism uniting to help stage-manage her beatific return to Elizabeth, West Virginia, with the Times reporting the Pentagon's denial of "embellishing" and that "few people seemed to care about the controversy". According to the Post, the whole affair had been "muddied by conflicting media accounts". George Orwell described this as "words falling upon the facts like soft snow, blurring their outlines and covering up all the details". Thanks to the freest press on earth, most Americans, according to a national poll, believe Iraq was behind the 11 September attacks. "We have been the victims of the biggest cover-up manoeuvre of all time," says Jane Harman, a rare voice in Congress. But that, too, is an illusion.

[..]

::: Office Of Special Plans :::

Most of the lies were channelled straight to Downing Street from the 24-hour Office of Global Communications in the White House. Many were the invention of a highly secret unit in the Pentagon, called the Office of Special Plans, which "sexed up" raw intelligence, much of it uttered by Tony Blair. It was here that many of the most famous lies about weapons of mass destruction were "crafted". On 9 July, Donald Rumsfeld said, with a smile, that America never had "dramatic new evidence" and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz earlier revealed that the "issue of weapons of mass destruction" was "for bureaucratic reasons" only, "because it was the one reason [for invading Iraq] that everyone could agree on."

The Blair government's attacks on the BBC make sense as part of this. They are not only a distraction from Blair's criminal association with the Bush gang, though for a less than obvious reason. As the astute American media commentator Danny Schechter points out, the BBC's revenues have grown to $5.6bn; more Americans watch the BBC in America than watch BBC1 in Britain; and what Murdoch and the other ascendant TV conglomerates have long wanted is the BBC "checked, broken up, even privatised . . . All this money and power will likely become the target for Blair government regulators and the merry men of Ofcom, who want to contain public enterprises and serve those avaricious private businesses who would love to slice off some of the BBC's market share." As if on cue, Tessa Jowell, the British Culture Secretary, questioned the renewal of the BBC's charter.

The irony of this, says Schechter, is that the BBC was always solidly pro-war. He cites a comprehensive study by Media Tenor, the non-partisan institute that he founded, which analysed the war coverage of some of the world's leading broadcasters and found that the BBC allowed less dissent than all of them, including the US networks. A study by Cardiff University found much the same. More often than not, the BBC amplified the inventions of the lie machine in Washington, such as Iraq's non-existent attack on Kuwait with scuds. And there was Andrew Marr's memorable victory speech outside 10 Downing Street: "[Tony Blair] said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both those points he has been proved conclusively right."

Almost every word of that was misleading or nonsense. Studies now put the death toll at as many as 10,000 civilians and 20,000 Iraqi troops. If this does not constitute a "bloodbath", what was the massacre of 3,000 people at the twin towers?

Americans, says Time magazine, live in "an eternal present". The point is, they have no choice. The "mainstream" media are now dominated by Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network, which had a good war. The Federal Communications Commission, run by Colin Powell's son Michael, is finally to deregulate television so that Fox and four other conglomerates control 90 per cent of the terrestrial and cable audience. Moreover, the leading 20 internet sites are now owned by the likes of Fox, Disney, AOL Time Warner and a clutch of other giants. Just 14 companies attract 60 per cent of the time all American web-users spend online.

[..]

And there is much more ... on America's bloody covert operations and the trail of lies manufactured and spoon fed to the American people through which ever "media" was under the government's thumb ... from "Remember The Maine" to "We Will Never Forget" to "Bring 'em On"

::: This article is well worth the read and is guaranteed to get yer dander up :::
- posted by JT @ 12:31 AM |

 
:::Ok, NOW ::: Back To Bush and the Pentagon Screwing The Troops :::

Get this tidbit ...

Friday, August 15, 2003

Troops could lose raise in combat pay
Sparking outrage, military says increase is too costly

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon wants to cut the pay of its 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, who already are contending with guerrilla-style attacks, homesickness and 120-degree-plus heat.

Unless Congress and President Bush take quick action when Congress returns after Labor Day, the uniformed Americans in Iraq and the 9,000 troops in Afghanistan will lose a pay increase approved in April of $75 a month in "imminent-danger pay" and $150 a month in "family separation allowances."

The Defense Department says its budget can't sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities. But the proposed cuts have stirred anger among military families and veterans' groups and even prompted an editorial attack in the Army Times, a weekly newspaper for military personnel and their families that is seldom so outspoken.

"It's all part of the lie of the Bush administration, that they say they support our troops," she said.

It's rare for the independent Army Times, which is distributed widely among Army personnel, to blast the Pentagon, the White House and Congress. But in this instance, the paper has said in recent editorials that Congress was wrong to make the pay raises temporary, and the Pentagon is wrong to call for a rollback.

"The bottom line: If the Bush administration felt in April that conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan warranted increases in danger pay and family-separation allowances, it cannot plausibly argue that the higher rates are not still warranted today," the paper said in an editorial


Cowardly Snakes!!! I Want to see every one of those low life, arrogant turkeys in Washington sweating in the broiling Iraqi sun ... with only 3 litters of water daily, still eating MREs, under fire constantly, dust in every pore of their skin ... YES!! All of them ... Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Card, Poindexter, Ashcroft, Libby, Feith, Bolton, ETC.
- posted by JT @ 12:12 AM |

 
::: Fox News NOT Fair & Balanced

Ok, while I was listening to all the coverage of the Black Out, I was flipping
channels and landed on the dreaded Faux News. And what do you think
they were reporting: Doom & Gloom

Yep ... it was all about how vulnerable we are, all the obvious weakness in
our infrastructure, cause our nuke plants are not safe and our water supply
is vulnerable and our ports are not safe and the border security sucks and
how much more $$ we needed to spend on Homeland Security to be more
Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...Safe...

Yadata, Yadata, Yadata. And There Could Death Rays From Mars!

When their consultant was asked about the Energy Bill stuck in Congress
for so long and why it had not passed, he glossed right over the fact that
Bush has his Alaska Drilling plan stuffed in the middle of the Bill ... the
consultant said it was "just politics."

Yet ... on all the other cable channels, most were praising the residents
of New York for their kindness and courtsey and how everyone was
performing heroic acts in helping others. Indeed, when I saw the
video of thousands of people inching down the streets on foot, and
bottlenecked at the dock trying to get on ferries, I was sure there
would be at the very least ... rudeness, not to mention the "concert
stampede syndrome."

And these comments were repeated in other cities as well, even though
there were a few incidents in most towns.

One of my favorites spots in the news today was when the reporters
told Iraqis the power was out in New York and many other cities. The
reactions were mixed. One fellow said, "we have been living like this
for 35 years and they are complaining about a few hours?" And the
other man interviewed kept saying, "Power is out in New York? No,
that is not true. No America is rich country, they can do ... no that
is not true." (or something close... not a direct quote but the gist is
he was not believing it at all)

One of the announcers said tonight, "New Yorkers are tough, we will
make it fine."

And my first thought was, "True, but I suggest AMERICANS are tough,
and we will make it fine."

For you see, for all of Granny's investigation, and interest in all things
conspiratorial, no matter what nefarious plot seems to be
true and it follows we should investigate more and stay on the Neo-Dubyas
butts ... I just cannot get an 8 X 10 of Americans just laying down to
anyone coming to take our country, our freedom or our lives.

We will jump right up off our fat duffs, winded for sure, and
fight like mad to preserve our way of life. Yep, it is too great
to let slip away."

USA...USA...USA...USA...USA...USA...USA...USA... USA...USA...USA...USA...
- posted by JT @ 11:20 PM |

 
::: Ok Ok, I Know I Said Back To the Troops :::
::: BUT ::: Had To Do The Inquiring Minds Thing :::

Just a few conversational questions.

Wonder how long it will be before we can shame the media into at least a pretense
of truthful coverage?
::: Afghanistan Slipping Into Hell

Does anyone wonder? ... I mean, I understand fully why the "rich" love Dubya,
but I am at a loss to understand why ordinary American Republicans are still
denying the obvious ... the White House is running over with lying snakes.
::: Thank You Molly Ivins - Lies Revealed
::: William Rivers Pitt "We Stand Our Ground"
::: William Rivers Pitt "We Stand Our Ground" ~ Audio<
::: "...A Pack Of Lies"
::: We said OSB, Dead or Alive, Now Its "It doesn't Matter"
::: Pentagon Officials Deny Using Napalm in Iraq ~ And its Sorta True

With all the evidence being presented lately, how can anyone think the country
is doing great?
::: What If Gore Is Right -"Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong with our country"

Does anyone think we can find a canidate that has a prayer of cleaning up
this mess created by the Neocons?

Boy, that last one is up for grabs folks. What are we going to do?
Who can help us? When will we start?

- posted by JT @ 1:18 PM |

 
::: Finally ~ That Old Devil Dog Poindexter Resigns :::
::: Taking Just A Minute ::: Twist And Shout :::

My advice is watch the backdoor

Poindexter Resigns but Defends Programs
Anti-Terrorism, Data Scanning Efforts at Pentagon Called Victims of Ignorance
By Bradley Graham
The Washington Post

Wednesday 13 August 2003

John M. Poindexter took issue yesterday with critics of his Pentagon efforts to develop new data scanning systems and an online futures market for flushing out terrorists and predicting Middle East developments, saying the programs had fallen victim to ignorance, distortion and Washington's "highly-charged political environment."

In a letter of resignation ending a controversial 20-month Pentagon tenure, Poindexter pressed his case for employing new technologies to discern terrorists' plans in such everyday transactions as credit card purchases, travel reservations and e-mail. He said innovative approaches are needed to overcome the historic barriers among U.S. intelligence agencies and gain access to stores of information not available to the government.

[..]

The five-page letter, submitted yesterday and made available to The Washington Post, provided Poindexter's first opportunity to address critics after being ordered by Pentagon officials last autumn to avoid public comment because, he was told, he had become too much of a "lightning rod."

[..]

His departure was demanded by lawmakers who questioned his judgment as well as his regard for privacy issues, and who argued that Poindexter's history as a central participant in the Iran-contra affair of the 1980s made him a poor choice to manage such a politically sensitive project.

"I was not anxious to come back into government," Poindexter wrote his boss, Anthony Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), "but in discussions with you and others concluded that was probably the best way to explore research and development of information technologies and concepts to help solve the enormous problems of combating terrorism." He added that he had wanted to step down "for months now" but had stayed longer at Tether's request.

"I regret we have not been able to make our case clear and reassure the public that we do not intend to spy on them," he wrote, adding that he had "done all that I can do under the circumstances" and so would be leaving on Aug. 29.

The letter contained no acknowledgement of personal error. In the case of the futures trading plan, he said, an unauthorized decision by an outside contractor -- the small California firm Net Exchange -- to post "some extremely bad examples" on the program's Web site gave critics ammunition to distort the effort as a proposed market in terrorism. The examples included the possibility of betting on the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or the overthrow of Jordan's monarchy.

[..]

Getting the DARPA job in January 2002 had been something of a comeback for Poindexter. He was national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan during the Iran-contra scandal, in which sales of arms to Iran were used to finance rebels fighting in Nicaragua at a time such assistance was banned by Congress.

Poindexter was convicted in 1990 on five felony counts, including lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing congressional inquiries into the affair. Although the conviction was overturned in 1991 -- on grounds that Poindexter had been granted immunity from prosecution as a result of his testimony before Congress -- it still troubled many in Congress.

So there .... Full Article

Hope this means D.A.R.P.A. is headed down the poop shute:
Read more on Poindexter.
And Theres This on Poindexter


Baby steps, but we are allowed a slight smile .... now ... back to the Troup Abuse, Pentagon Lies and Liars and our desire to see them ride off into the sunset.


- posted by JT @ 12:51 PM |

 
::: Department Of Defense Is Treating Our Soldiers Like Garbage :::
::: OR ::: The More I Get to Know Them, The More I Hate Them :::

This post was so dreadful, Granny just had to bring it over from
post by Joe Fish on Democratic Veteran ~~ Credit where credit is due
~~ path was through SouthKnoxBubba ~~ Thanks Guys, Great Work

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dead Soldier, Family Punk'd by 1600 Crew

I had to wait until my rage subsided enough to blog this. The story is via Thousand Yard Glare, one of my daily reads.

The outrage, well, you read it then tell me The original story is here.

One of the most surprising statements to come from The Power Hour interview conducted on “The Genesis Network” was that while the son, Josh Neusche, was a healthy young soldier on June 26, 2003, when he reported that he was going to serve on the secret hauling mission, by July 1, 2003, he was in a coma, and that day was suddenly classified by the military, as medically retired from the Army without Josh or his family’s consent. Josh did not die until July 12, 2003. Among other problems that this new classification created was that the DOD was no longer obligated to assist the family in getting to Germany to be with their son as he lay in a coma. Because the DOD would not provide even so much as plane or taxi fare for the Neusche family, all 650 members of the 203 Engineer Battalion each contributed $10.00 to make the family’s final visit possible. (some emphasis added)I can't even begin to imagine how my family would have felt if that were me. I can't imagine Senior Army leadership (of the Uniformed variety) breaking the faith with the troops like that. I can imagine some civilian DoD NeoCon chickenhawk deciding that it's more cost-effective to reclassify the kid as medically retired, since his prognosis is terminal, and dump him in a hole in the ground in Germany and send his family a letter "blah blah blah...honorable....grateful nation...blah blah blah".

It makes me proud to see the soldiers in his battalion got his parents over there. It's wrong on so many levels that they even had to consider doing that, much less do it; but that's what soldiers do they take care of their own. Something Chickenhawks will never, ever understand.

I hope all the tax-cutting shithead Chickenhawks and non-Chickenhawks out there are justly proud of this bit o'thrift. And that you choke on your money...all of it.

We have had two residents of the Oval Office in the last 10 years. The wrong one got impeached.

Granny agrees completely Fish and just had to jump in. I have been searching around a bit since I tracked over to this post on SKB, plus I had already printed out several outrageous items from TruthOut. Might as well do the "eye openers" in consecutive posts. It makes for

posted by Jo Fish on 08.12.03 at 04:56 PM

And ~~~ It just keeps getting better and better for the troops according to Paul Krugman on TruthOut

In his article he blames Military Privatization ~~ War On The Cheap!

It seems the same Horse's Ass DoD is to blame, trying to run their noble liberation OIL GRABBING Operation on the cheap.

Krugman details a litany of woes.

A few days ago I talked to a soldier just back from Iraq. He'd been in a relatively calm area; his main complaint was about food. Four months after the fall of Baghdad, his unit was still eating the dreaded M.R.E.'s: meals ready to eat. When Italian troops moved into the area, their food was "way more realistic" - and American troops were soon trading whatever they could for some of that Italian food.

Other stories are far worse. Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?

Colonel Hackworth blames "dilettantes in the Pentagon" who "thought they could run a war and an occupation on the cheap." But the cheapness isn't restricted to Iraq. In general, the "support our troops" crowd draws the line when that support might actually cost something.

The usually conservative Army Times has run blistering editorials on this subject. Its June 30 blast, titled "Nothing but Lip Service," begins: "In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap - and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the
nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." The article goes on to detail a series of promises broken and benefits cut.

Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills - reversed when the public heard about it - was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)

There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat - and the system failed.

According to the Newhouse News Service, "U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up." Not surprisingly, civilian contractors - and their insurance companies - get spooked by war zones. The Financial Times reports that the dismal performance of contractors in Iraq has raised strong concerns about what would happen in a war against a serious opponent, like North Korea

These stories and many more to come are just a speck of the extent to which the American people are being deceived by the smart guys in Washington. More ghastly stories on the way.

- posted by JT @ 1:31 AM |