The U.S. military is on track to spend $113 billion on its operations in Afghanistan this fiscal year, and it is seeking $107 billion for the next. To many of the president’s civilian advisers, that price is too high, given a wide federal budget gap that will require further cuts to domestic programs and increased deficit spending.
Phi Beta Iota: The President and Congress do not control the government. They have lost control in part because they lost their integrity. Washington operates on 2% of the relevant information and substitutes ideology for intelligence and corruption for integrity. Absent a compelling narrative rooted in the transparent truth, we expect no change between now and 2016.
The comments expressed in this interview exactly reflect my views–recommended!
Bill Moyers Interviews Andrew Bacevich
Thursday 2 June 2011
by: Bill Moyers, The New Press
Our finest warriors are often our most reluctant warmongers. They have seen firsthand the toll war exacts. They know better than anyone that force can be like a lobster trap that closes with each stage of descent, making escape impossible. So it was when the liberal consensus lured America into Vietnam during the ’60s, and again after 9/11, when neoconservatives clamored for the invasion of Iraq. With the notorious ferocity of the noncombatant, the neocons banged their tin drums and brayed for blood, as long as it was not their own that would be spilled.
Andrew Bacevich
One old warrior looked on sadly, his understanding of combat’s reality tempered by twenty-three years in uniform, including service in Vietnam. A graduate of West Point, Andrew Bacevich retired from the military to become a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, a public thinker who has been able to find an audience across the political spectrum, from The Nation to The American Conservative magazines. In several acclaimed books, including The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, and his bestselling The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Bacevich speaks truth to power, no matter who’s in power, which may be why he reaches both the left and the right.
Phi Beta Iota: The world is in an interregnum, between “rule by secrecy” and lies from power as the norm, and a very ugly baby Web 4.0 in which bottom-up truth struggles to emerge. We will have a great deal of baby poop to deal with, but over time, public intelligence in the public interest will find its edge, and truths that shock publics into extreme action will emerge. Below is are a few extracts from a very sharp and ably illustrated story, and one expert author's evaluation of that story. Provided for information, “sharing our confusions.” WARNING NOTICE: This story should be read in conjunction with the recent Pentagon declarations that cyber-attacks will be considered a declaration of war. An Israeli virus in US nuclear control systems (attributed to Iran of course), with or without the help of the US Government, could be used to justify World War III starting with an attack on Iran and “precision” attacks on Pakistani nuclear facilities. We believe Israel is “all in” at this point; and we believe President Obama and Congress have lost all semblance of control over the U.S. military-industrial-secret intelligence complex.
The Digital Citizen Project builds upon the new digital capabilities of television broadcasting and the Internet’s advances in social engagement, to bring an unprecedented degree of citizen participation to news programming for the 2012 election period. The project is premised on the belief that, when offered the chance to appear in media as “informed citizens,” a large number of people will rise to the challenge.
How it Works: Digital Citizen 2012 is a cross-platform and converged media series that seamlessly connects people using social and mobile applications, to television programming of the 2012 campaign. Using well-established online engagement tools, public participants contribute video, audio, text and still images of themselves to the station’s website, stating their opinions and posing questions. Initially, the online community will vet contributions. Producers will join in, to assure the inclusion of representative groups in this process and to track contributors whose posts are popular among the community. Utilizing the digital capabilities of modern studio production equipment, a significant number of the pre-recorded contributor questions and comments will appear on the live programs.
A much smaller number of contributors, whose articulate positions prove popular with the community, will be offered the opportunity to appear live via webcam on the TV program. These participants will be required to take part in a carefully designed online facilitation process that bolsters their arguments with facts, and introduces them to others with different opinions. These “informed citizens” will then be able to speak directly with journalists, experts and candidates during the programs.
McKinney Leads DIGNITY Delegation of Independent Journalists to Libya on Fact-Finding Mission
1 June 2011
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – Today, independent journalists from across the United States departed on a truth-telling, fact-finding mission to Libya. This coincides with what was supposed to have been a debate in Congress on U.S. involvement in the war against Libya, but the debate got sidelined due to the fact that the legislation requiring a pullout by the U.S. could actually have passed. Both Democratic and Republican leadership are responsible for pulling the bill at the last minute.
Al Jazeera film footage shows that Western soldiers have their “boots on the ground” in Libya overstepping authority granted by the United Nations Security Council for action in Libya. Every day that President Obama contributes to the military action against Libya, he tests the United States Congress and defies the United States Constitution and the War Powers Act which limit Presidential acts of war, subject to authorization by the U.S. Congress.
Incredibly, in what yet may prove to be another act beyond the mandate of the United Nations Security Council Resolution, NATO extended its operations in Libya for another 90 days.
Because the public has become increasingly unable to rely on embedded media to tell the American people the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” the DIGNITY Delegation will shed rare light on NATO's actions inside that country.
According to some estimates, the American people and the global community were lied to 935 times by Administration officials and the media in the lead-up to the Iraq War. As Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” The DIGNITY Delegation is expected to make daily reports while on the ground of the ongoing NATO actions in the country.
