As a result, the U.S. military felt forced to relax its high standards in order to even come close to meeting its replacement quotas. High schoolers and dropouts were prime targets of unscrupulous recruiters. Don't have a high school diploma? Don't need one. Felony record? Don't worry about it; we've got "moral waivers" now. Poor physical health? Here, have some more pizza and desserts. A gang member on the streets of L.A.? Here's your assault rifle, soldier, and welcome to the brotherhood.
And when lowering the standards still didn't yield the required numbers, the military went to simple bribery. Sign up now and get a $25,000 signing bonus. Not enough? How about $30K?
The military also is trolling for mercenary recruits among non-citizens in Latin America and elsewhere; those who sign up with the U.S. military are told that it could take them six months to become a U.S. citizen rather than 12 years.
But even with all those waivers and inducements, many potential recruits stay away; they are quite aware that troops in Iraq face serial deployments, rotations extended to 15 months each time, a constant high rate of deaths and injuries. Check out what seven serving NCOs have to say in the New York Times about the realities of this war. So it's no wonder that the Administration has taken to increasing the hiring of "independent contractors," at high salaries, to carry out tasks often associated with the professional military.
No wonder the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and perhaps even Defense Secretary Gates, are suggesting, as best they can without being summarily dismissed by the political lunatics in charge, that the U.S. military is stretched as thin as it can get in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that initiating more hostilities with other countries in the region (Iran and Syria come to mind) would not make much military or any other kind of sense.
OUTSOURCING EXTREME TORTURE
In addition to outsourcing its military and intel gathering, one has to mention the outsourcing of interrogation and torture, especially of High Value Prisoners (HVPs). (Torture, as we all know by now, under CheneyBush, is officially-sanctioned state policy.)
CheneyBush send these suspects on CIA planes to secret U.S. interrogation centers abroad and then often forward the more recalcitrant detainees and other HVP to countries that specialize in especially brutal torture, including Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, even Syria.
These "rendition" flights abroad are not only to keep the U.S. vaguely in line with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law, but also because those other nations have torturing down to a science by now, and, as long as these countries get paid off well, seem to have few moral scruples about breaking down the minds and bodies of prisoners sometimes even to the point of death.
"CATAPULTING THE PROPAGANDA"
The Administration sees the same polling numbers as the Democrats do and realizes that in order to be able to continue its surge at least through Election Day 2008 -- which would, they believe, get CheneyBush off the blame-hook for the "loss" of Iraq -- they need to mount an enormous public-relations campaign to cancel out the lies and sell the escalated war to the American public and Congress. Scapegoats for that "loss" are already being put in place: al-Maliki, the Democrats, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Petraeus, etc. etc. Never Cheney, never Bush.
When governmental policies stink, no policies are changed; instead, the common practice is to tell more lies and hire public-relations firms to disguise the crap being peddled by dousing it heavily with rose petals. Sell your policies like soap or perfume; the theory rests on a belief that enough Americans will buy the fragrant, handsomely-packaged new product to make politicians think twice about opposing Administration policy.
And so the Pentagon has set up an Iraq Communications Desk to coordinate the campaign to sell the Petraeus Report findings, and, through a covert "cut-out" organization, a new White House-connected group called Freedom Watch has launched a $15 million pro-war propaganda campaign in various media markets. The spots already are running, and they often feature Iraq War veterans and/or their surviving family members delivering the White House spin ("patience," "we're making progress in Iraq," "stop them there so they can't come here," etc. etc.).
In coordination with the Freedom Watch campaign, a powerful P.R. program has begun to aid in the transition away from the prickly Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki, to a more malleable, pro-U.S. figure, most likely former prime minister (and former CIA asset) Ayad Allawi. Hired to coordinate the campaign is the GOP lobbying outfit of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers.
CheneyBush are peddling the continue-the-surge idea because that's all they've got at this stage. That and the long-discredited attempt to link Iraq and 9/11 in the public mind. And why not? That latter lie worked for a few years after 9/11, so why not haul it out again? Haul out anything again that might confuse the American citizenry and bump up the pro-surge numbers so as to divide the Democrats and keep the war going at least past Election Day 2008 and, ideally, keep U.S. troops in their permanent Iraq bases for another decade or two.
Or, at the very least, FUBAR the situation there so badly that a Democratic president in 2009 would be unable to extricate U.S. forces easily or maybe even at all.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Over 65% of budget on Intelligience in all services and bran
According to a recent report and discussion on DEMOCRACY NOW. Currently 65% or more of our governments' intelligience is outsourced.
Regardless as to whether the Reagan, Clinton or Bushies administration started this trend, IT IS TIME TO TAKE THE oxymoron out of iU.S. government intelligience.
The armed forces and federal government need to to hire the thousands of badly needed but eager young americans applying for state department and intelligience related jobs.
Over 85% of the candidates are turned away because of fairly faulty reasoning or due prejudice against the candidates word view or background--i.e. party politics and indoctrinated intelligientsia ONLY need apply to work at the state department etc.
by
ALONE (152 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 337 comments)
on Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 1:27:25 PM
2 comments
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