Buried inside all the usual morning news noise was this piece regarding Obama's not visiting the wounded troops in Germany. The Obama campaign is saying that they were told by the Pentagon that they could not visit the troops as his trip was now political rather than an official congressional visit. That they say is why he was allowed to visit wounded troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There's a video game, not unlike many of the first person shooters, called America's Army. You fight in military formation, you kill terrorists, you get points. It's very popular, and has made its makers a lot of money. Except that this video game was made by the Pentagon to boost recruiting, and it's working great. An informal Army study of the same year showed that 4 out of 100 new recruits in Ft. Benning, Georgia, credit "America's Army" as the primary factor in convincing them to join the military. Sixty percent of those recruits surveyed said they played the game more than five times a week. And a 2004 Army survey found that nearly a third of young Americans aged 16 to 24 had some contact with the game in the previous six months. It also might be a violation of international treaty obligations, at least according to the ACLU, but I'm pretty sure those are non-binding on the US because of the awesomeness of this country.

More on juvenile militarism after the flip.  

U.S. commanders are asking the Pentagon for up to 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan.

The request was a subject of discussion when President Bush met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

But getting more troops to the increasingly violent battle zone is unlikely to happen before Bush leaves office in January, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

Edit: thanks to brady4747 for the link to this article (also here thanks to MattR) which corrects my belief that the military had been denying the presence of the C-130 in the area on 9-11. I'm not going to delete my comments below which mention that, but I do stand corrected. I think this is still an interesting piece of history.

A long time ago I posted a short 1-minute clip of footage I shot next to the Pentagon on 9-11. I never properly labelled the tape, so I was not sure where the footage was hiding, but I just got a 500GB drive so I could start capturing everything on every tape I've ever shot, and within a day I'd found the footage buried between a bunch of shots of people in DC nightclubs.

Has anyone else noticed how the Pentagon is racially manipulating the photos of Obama's trip to show that only the larger cheering groups of soldiers are almost completely black while any images of his contact with white soldiers are few with their expressions looking suspect?

Is it possible that the Pentagon, under the scheme that "a picture is worth a thousand words", is trying to convey with a twist, what Bill Clinton tried in south Carolina, that Obama is the "Black Soldier's Candidate?"

Just wondering?

Last week, I posted an interviewI did with former KBR worker, Ben Carter, and the reaction I got was huge. Many, many people congratulated Ben on having the courage to face public scrutiny in order to bring the abuses of KBR to the public, and hundreds of you sent an email to DoD Chief Financial Officer, Tina Jonas (or signed the petitionto her after she blocked her email address), asking her to cut off funding to KBR until a full public investigation is made into each of their alleged abuses.

I had ended my post with a heads up that the following week (meaning, today) I would be posting a breaking new story from Ben about a lawsuit against the contracting company that has been kept hidden by the Department of Justice. Well, bad news: Ben's story is so hot, it hasn't gotten the legal clearance to go public yet. I have been told to hold out for a few more days on that, so keep your fingers crossed!

One of the reasons I felt so buoyed by all the support shown for Ben is that I had long felt disturbed by both the magnitude of corruption among war contractors and the lack of coverage on the issue in the press.

For a long time now, I have been following the KBR corruption storyline: the dirty water, the electrocutions, the rape cover ups and the tax dodging.

KBR was turned loose on our troops because the Bush administration's blind adherence to right-wing dogma — "government bad, private industry good" — drove it to outsource the management of the war to dozens of private contractors. And, no surprise, the abuses don't end with KBR

In a study due to come out soon, sponsored by the Pentagon, recommendations are about to be made that would make Barack Obama's withdrawal plan look slow by comparison.

According to Newsweek

Expected to be completed in about a month, it will recommend that U.S. forces be reduced to as few as 50,000 by the spring of 2009, down from about 150,000 now. The strategy is based on a major handoff to the increasingly successful Iraqi Army, with platoon-size U.S. detachments backing the Iraqis from small outposts, with air support. The large U.S. forward operating bases that house the bulk of U.S. troops would be mostly abandoned, and the role of Special Forces would increase.

You compare this to Obama's withdrawal plan, which would start shortly before the time this plan would be completed, and the Pentagon would have most of our troops out of Iraq over a year before Obama's plan would. So why is Obama's plan so naive and radical again?

Analysis from Ilan and Michael of Democracy Arsenal after the jump.

The House Oversight Committee has released a Report into the misinformation around the death of Pat Tillman and the rescue of Jessica Lynch and it, as suspected, leads to the White House and Rove.

The report details all kinds of changing stories and faulty memories in the 'higher ups' but still comes to the conclusion that:

Neither case involved an act of omission. The misinformation was not caused by overlooking or misunderstanding relevant facts. Instead, in both cases affirmative acts created new facts that were significantly different than what the soldiers in the field knew to be true. And in both cases the fictional accounts proved to be compelling public narratives at difficult times in the war.

Update: After receiving an influx of emails prompted by this story, the Cheif Financial Officer, Tina Jonas, took down or blocked her email address. This may cause you to get an error message. We are now compiling signatures for a petition, which will be sent to her: http://progressivefuture.org/...

[cross-posted from www.progressivefuture.org]

Ben Carter is a water safety expert and a caring family man. Passionate about his work, Carter went to Iraq to support the troops and reconstruction efforts. Yet soon after he arrived in Iraq he found KBR/Halliburton cutting essential corners, resulting in U.S. troops being forced to shower in wastewater. KBR’s indifference to the contaminated water led Carter to resign. Since leaving Iraq he’s spoken out about Halliburton, was one of the subjects of Brave New Films' "Iraq For Sale," testified before the Democratic Policy Committee and worked to warn soldiers of the dangers of contaminated water.

It all began with an April 24, 2008 column in The Washington Post by Dana Milbank.  It began, "Lt. Col. Billy Hall, one of the most senior officers to be killed in the Iraq war, was laid to rest yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Pentagon doesn't want you to know that."

Today, more than two months later, Milbank returns to the story—with news that the public affairs director at Arlington seems to have agreed with that assessment, and has now been fired, quite possibly as punishment.

The scandal of not allowing images of returning coffins and many other images of war, as I have often written, has percolated since the beginning of the Iraq conflict.

Call it a qualified victory.

On July 1, the Pentagon agreed to investigate the showers built by KBR, a private military contractor in Iraq. More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have been fatally electrocuted by faulty wiring in the showers. There has been a lot of blogger commentary and reporting about the electrocution, including several items I wrote for Progressive Future.

And while I think we certainly helped push this issue into the mainstream, I'm pretty sure all the blogger activism in the world would not have made a bit of a difference without the efforts of Cheryl Harris.

I know, you're disappointed to miss out on another thrillingly breathless tome on FISA and how We! All! Must! Do! Something! Now!

While you were reading the last 40 FISA diaries, something else happened which people should note.

On Friday the Defense Department released two reports to Congress about Afghanistan (as required by law). One is the first biennial report on security in the country, the other a plan for sustaining the Afghan National Security Forces (both PDFs). The news is grim. But just as with the Iraq quarterly reports, the DoD tries to put a positive spin on things. This time the best evidence of that is on display in purple font (literally).

The security report indicates that the situation is deteriorating so badly that the Pentagon expects the Taliban to continue to grow in strength (it has "coalesced into a resilient insurgency"); expand its strongholds in the south and east while moving into the north and west; and "maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008" (IED attacks were up 35% in 2007). June has seen 40 coalition soldiers killed in Afghanistan, a new high since the invasion. Even though we have only 32,000 troops deployed there, US deaths in Afghanistan in May outnumbered those in Iraq. It's fair to say that things are falling apart.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, told reporters this week that violence there had increased 40 percent over the level of last spring.

Schloesser said the attacks by Taliban insurgents are increasingly sophisticated: rather than a simple roadside bomb being detonated by a convoy, his troops are now seeing roadside bomb detonations followed immediately by intense enemy small-arms fire from both sides of the road, and a second roadside bomb being detonated as U.S. reinforcements arrive...

A U.S. Army mental health assessment this spring said that American troops in Afghanistan face a more dangerous and violent environment than in Iraq, and consequently are experiencing higher levels of stress.

One of the main culprits for the deterioration of security is Bush's adventure in Iraq, which beginning in 2002 just a few weeks after the collapse of the Taliban government diverted men and resources from Afghanistan.

The turnaround poses a dilemma for the Bush administration, which had counted Afghanistan as the pinnacle of its success in the war on terror. U.S. commanders say they need more forces, but they can only be provided through withdrawing troops from Iraq. As a result, the administration may have to choose between accepting a smaller U.S. presence in Iraq or facing the prospect of turmoil in Afghanistan.

Senior Pentagon officials and military commanders have ordered a top-to-bottom review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The review was prompted by high-level concern that the U.S. "was losing ground and slipping backwards," said a senior military official familiar with the review.

Friday's security report describes wider problems than just the resurgent Taliban. Afghanistan is close to becoming a failed state again. The Kabul government cannot exert control over much of the country...in the east and south because of the Taliban and the apparent meddling of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency, and everywhere else because of warlords and criminals.

"Up to the first quarter of 2008, the most significant threat to stability in the north and west of the country has come from warlords, criminals and drug traffickers."

That has led to almost unchecked corruption.

"Examples abound of corrupt public officials who are immune from prosecution, judges and prosecutors whose discretion is subject to influence, and police who not only refuse to take action to stem corruption, but also engage in corrupt activities themselves."

David Wood of the Baltimore Sun adds:

The Pentagon report's assessment of corruption echoed remarks this week by Afghanistan's attorney general, who told a gathering in Washington that "we have many people who are above the law [and] we cannot touch them."

Abdul Jabbar Sabit, at a conference sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace, said powerful warlords and drug lords, as well as senior government ministers "are too powerful for the police to arrest them."

And the opium trade has reached record levels in 2007 despite aggressive programs to stamp it out. The report concedes that...

"overall counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan have not been successful"

The Afghan media is less and less free.

"Government repression and armed groups prevent the media from operating freely."

Human rights abuses are routine, even among the National Security Forces.

"Afghanistan's human rights record remains poor and serious abuses continue. The [Afghan government] and its partners are fighting an insurgency that respects no boundaries in perpetrating violence upon civilian populations. Afghan National Security Forces and tribal and regional leaders' Human rRights abuses include extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest and detention, poor prison conditions, official impunity, prolonged pretrial detention, torture, and abuse of authority. Restrictions on freedoms of movement and association continue as does violence and societal discrimination against women, minorities, and religious converts; trafficking in persons; abuse of worker rights; and child labor."

That passage (on page 40), like several others in the version of the Afghan security report posted at the DoD website on Friday, includes what appear to be several additions and deletions (purple font in the original) waiting to be finalized. Thus the Pentagon seems to have slipped up in not posting the final draft of the report, but instead perhaps the penultimate draft.

If that's the case, we can see several instances where the DoD is trying to craft a less embarrassing report. In the foregoing passage, somebody wanted to delete an explicit reference to the Afghan National Security Forces' involvement in murder, torture, and abuse. That was replaced with a unspecific reference to "human rights" abuses; responsibility was to be assigned to nobody in particular. It seems a likely interpretation that a decision was made at a higher level in the Pentagon that it would not do to embarrass the Afghan military by accusing it explicitly in the US of human rights abuses.

Similarly, on page 72 a sentence is inserted late for the purpose of beefing up the claim, otherwise vague and weak, that Iran has been arming the Taliban. The insertion, a claim that the Taliban "has access to Iranian weaponry" produced as late as 2007, helps to obscure the admission in the previous sentence that "the lethal support that has been provided to the insurgency in Afghanistan has not proven militarily significant".

The other new Pentagon report, on the Afghan National Security Forces (the Army and police), doesn't make pleasant reading either. As of March (when it was completed), only one of the Army's 85 battalions was rated as capable of operating independently in the field (page 16). The Afghan Air Force consists of only 17 helicopters and 7 cargo planes.

That's as good a measure as any how little the Bush administration has achieved in Afghanistan during the last six and a half years. David Wood again:

Since 2001, the United States has spent about $23 billion in Afghanistan, most of it in training and equipping Afghan security forces. Total international assistance has reached $30 billion, but U.S. officials and non-governmental reports have said much of that aid has been wasted and poorly coordinated.

Update [2008-6-30 15:16:51 by smintheus]: Sometime in the afternoon or evening of Saturday, June 28, the DoD website switched the version of the Afghan security report described here (with last minutes edits showing up in purple font) to the version that was supposed to have been released (with those edits fully incorporated in the text). h/t Janus The web address remains unchanged.

The incorporation of those edits went precisely as predicted, e.g. on p. 40 the report's final version eliminated any explicit mention of the Afghan Security Force's involvement in murder, torture, and abuse. I saved a copy of the penultimate draft that was posted by mistake. Hence by comparing that with the final draft it's possible to observe how the Pentagon finishes putting its spin on such a sensitive report as this one.

by Max Keiser

I'm all for Exxon competing in the global market for profits, but I'm against giving them corporate welfare. I'm also against the White House appeasing arsonists when they should be holding them accountable. If Exxon were forced to compete without massive handouts from US tax payers, they would go out of business (or be forced to change their business model). Free-market capitalism would triumph over Wall Street-Washington corporate-communism and its axis of price-fixers, market manipulators, and insider traders.

We would, in a true meritocracy, expect a company like Exxon, and its business model of arson-for-hire to go out of business when cost-efficient, carbon-neutral alternatives for energy exist.

So how do we get the market working again? How do we raise the cost of abusing the system and the environment high enough to curtail Exxon?

This week the Washington Post will be taking a two-part, front page look at the failure of al-Hurra, an Arabic-language propaganda network financed by the U.S. government and created to win those ever-elusive hearts and minds in the Middle East.  But let’s save you some time because the reason for this $350 million dollar failure is pretty much summed up in these three lines:

[A] succession of executives who either had little experience in television or could not speak Arabic.

One news anchor greeted the station's predominantly Muslim audience on Easter by declaring, "Jesus is risen today!"

In 2004, when an Israeli airstrike killed the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, virtually all Arabic news channels interrupted their regular programming. Al-Hurra continued with a cooking show.

And now that the mystery of why al-Hurra only manages to attract 2% of its target audience is solved, perhaps the Washington Post could take some time to investigate the Pentagon sponsored propaganda program that propelled us into a war in Iraq.  The one that has cost more than $500 billion, 4,103 American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives.   Because the Washington Post still hasn’t bothered to report on that story.

by Max Keiser

Probably the worst effect Americans can expect from the U.S. government's approval of the pro-spy laws that give telcos immunity from prosecution for breaking the law is more inflation.

Immunity from prosecution in this case means immunity from competition and this means higher prices. As long as the telco's have been given a government guaranteed free ride to collude, expect prices for telephony, data, and cable to continue to increase exponentially. You won't be any safer, but you'll definitely be poorer.

For five years now, I have been chronicling the disturbing number of "noncombat" deaths in Iraq, often suicides, which usually come to light only due to the diligence of local newspapers.  As part of that effort, last August I briefly described  yet another case, involving a 20-year-old Texas woman named Kamisha Block, who apparently was much loved in her Vidor hometown.  It was said to be death by "friendly fire," which officially is fairly rare in Iraq, so I kept an eye on it for days, in case of an update.

Many more nonhostile deaths arrived, and so I forgot about Kamisha.  Last night, a reader sent me a link to a diary here by "greenies,"  which in turn led me to a news article in yesterday’s Beaumont Enterprise.    I'm updating and expanding that diary now.

Forget friendly fire.  It turns out that Spc. Block was actually murdered, and the killer, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Brandon Norris, then turned the gun on himself.