Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/29/ap/world/main6032803.shtml
Date: Dec 29, 2009
Putin Urges US To Share Missile Defense Data
Putin Says Russia Needs To Build New Weapons, Urges US To Disclose Its Missile Defense Plans
Associated Press writer Matt Lee contributed from Washington.
(AP) MOSCOW (AP) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia wants the U.S. to share detailed data about its planned missile shield under a new arms control treaty, signaling potential new difficulties in the ongoing negotiations between Moscow and Washington.
Putin's televised remarks set a defiant tone as negotiators try to hammer out a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expired on Dec. 5. The two countries had hoped to reach a deal before the end of the year, but problems persist.
Putin also said that Russia will build new weapons to offset the U.S. missile defense system.
The U.S. State Department rejected Putin's call, saying the START successor treaty would only deal with strategic offensive arms.
"While the United States has long agreed that there is a relationship between missile offense and defense, we believe the START follow-on agreement is not the appropriate vehicle for addressing it," spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.
"We have agreed to continue to discuss the topic of missile defense with Russia in a separate venue," he said.
Putin's comments showed that the former Russian president is continuing to shape Russian foreign policy, which under the constitution should be set by his successor, Dmitry Medvedev.
He said that the arms control talks were proceeding in a positive way and added that Medvedev and President Barack Obama will eventually decide whether to strike an arms deal.
But Putin warned that a missile defense system would give the U.S. an edge and could erode the deterrent value of Russia's nuclear forces.
"The problem is that our American partners are developing missile defenses, and we are not," Putin said.
"But the issues of missile defense and offensive weapons are closely interconnected. ... There could be a danger that having created an umbrella against offensive strike systems, our partners may come to feel completely safe. After the balance is broken, they will do whatever they want and grow more aggressive."
Obama removed a major irritant in relations earlier this year by scrapping the previous administration's plans to place interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic - deployments Russia treated as a threat.
The Kremlin has praised Obama for the decision, but Russian officials have also said they want to know more about the sea- and land-based systems the U.S. plans to put in place instead.
Putin said that Russia has no intention to build a missile shield of its own, but will have to develop new offensive weapons to offset a future U.S. missile defense.
"In order to preserve a balance while we aren't planning to build a missile defense of our own, as it's very expensive and its efficiency is not quite clear yet, we have to develop offensive strike systems," he said.
Putin added that the U.S. must share information about their missile defense plans if they want Russia to provide data on its new weapons.
"They should give us all the information about the missile defense, and we will be ready then to provide some information about offensive weapons," Putin said.
U.S. officials have said the negotiations to replace START have become hung up over Russia's opposition to retaining the ban on the encryption of missile flight data. The 1991 treaty banned such encryption so each side could monitor missile tests from a distance and determine whether the other side was developing missiles restricted by the treaty.
Russia has little interest in monitoring such data because it is working to upgrade its missile arsenal, while the United States is not testing new missiles.
Associated Press writer Matt Lee contributed from Washington.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Imprimis: The Future of Western War Victor Davis Hanson
Souce: https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=11 12/2/2009 2:22 PM.
Date: Dec 2, 2009
Imprimis Hillsdale College
November 2009
The Future of Western War
Victor Davis Hanson
Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=11 12/2/2009 2:22 PM.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University. He is a columnist for National Review Online and for Tribune Media Services, and has published in several journals and newspapers, including Commentary, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Hanson has written or edited numerous books, including The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on October 1, 2009, during the author's four-week teaching residency.
I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrients—these are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theorists—human nature will not change. And if human nature will not change—and I submit to you that human nature is a constant—then war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systems—which can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weapons—will of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is water—the same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.
Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britain—as well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere.
Just as this system afforded more prosperity in times of peace, it led to a superior fighting and defense capability in times of war. This is what I call the Western way of war, and there are several factors at play.
First, constitutional government was conducive to civilian input when it came to war. We see this in ancient Athens, where civilians oversaw a board of generals, and we see it in civilian control of the military in the United States. And at crucial times in Western history, civilian overseers have enriched military planning.
Second, Western culture gave birth to a new definition of courage. In Hellenic culture, the prowess of a hero was not recognized by the number of heads on his belt. As Aristotle noted in the Politics, Greek warriors didn't wear trophies of individual killings. Likewise, Victoria Crosses and Medals of Honor are awarded today for deeds such as staying in rank, protecting the integrity of the line, advancing and retreating on orders, or rescuing a comrade. This reflects a quite different understanding of heroism.
A third factor underlies our association of Western war with advanced technology. When reason and capitalism are applied to the battlefield, powerful innovations come about. Flints, percussion caps, rifle barrels and mini balls, to cite just a few examples, were all Western inventions. Related to this, Western armies—going back to Alexander the Great's army at the Indus—have a better logistics capability. A recent example is that the Americans invading Iraq were better supplied with water than the native Iraqis. This results from the application of capitalism to military affairs—uniting private self-interest and patriotism to provide armies with food, supplies, and munitions in a way that is much more efficient than the state-run command-and-control alternatives.
Yet another factor is that Western armies are impatient. They tend to want to seek out and destroy the enemy quickly and then go home. Of course, this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as we see today in Afghanistan, where the enemy is not so eager for decisive battle. And connected to this tradition is dissent. Today the U.S. military is a completely volunteer force, and its members' behavior on the battlefield largely reflects how they conduct themselves in civil society. One can trace this characteristic of Western armies back to Xenophon's ten thousand, who marched from Northern Iraq to the Black Sea and behaved essentially as a traveling city-state, voting and arguing in a constitutional manner. And their ability to do that is what saved them, not just their traditional discipline.
Now, I would not want to suggest that the West has always been victorious in war. It hasn't. But consider the fact that Europe had a very small population and territory, and yet by 1870 the British Empire controlled 75 percent of the world. What the Western way of war achieved, on any given day, was to give its practitioners—whether Cortez in the Americas, the British in Zululand, or the Greeks in Thrace—a greater advantage over their enemies. There are occasional defeats such as the battles of Cannae, Isandlwana, and Little Big Horn. Over a long period of time, however, the Western way of war will lead us to where we are today.
But where exactly are we today? There have been two developments over the last 20 years that have placed the West in a new cycle. They have not marked the end of the Western way of war, but they have brought about a significant change. The first is the rapid electronic dissemination of knowledge—such that someone in the Hindu Kush tonight can download a sophisticated article on how to make an IED. And the second is that non-Western nations now have leverage, given how global economies work today, through large quantities of strategic materials that Western societies need, such as natural gas, oil, uranium, and bauxite. Correspondingly, these materials produce tremendous amounts of unearned capital in non-Western countries—and by "unearned," I mean that the long process of civilization required to create, for example, a petroleum engineer has not occurred in these countries, yet they find themselves in possession of the monetary fruits of this process. So the West's enemies now have instant access to knowledge and tremendous capital.
In addition to these new developments, there are five traditional checks on the Western way of war that are intensified today. One of these checks is the Western tendency to limit the ferocity of war through rules and regulations. The Greeks tried to outlaw arrows and catapults. Romans had restrictions on the export of breast plates. In World War II, we had regulations against poison gas. Continuing this tradition today, we are trying to achieve nuclear non-proliferation. Unfortunately, the idea that Western countries can adjudicate how the rest of the world makes war isn't applicable anymore. As we see clearly in Iran, we are dealing with countries that have the wealth of Western nations (for the reasons just mentioned), but are anything but constitutional democracies. In fact, these nations find the idea of limiting their war-making capabilities laughable. Even more importantly, they know that many in the West sympathize with them—that many Westerners feel guilty about their wealth, prosperity, and leisure, and take psychological comfort in letting tyrants like Ahmadinejad provoke them.
The second check on the Western way of war is the fact that there is no monolithic West. For one thing, Western countries have frequently fought one another. Most people killed in war have been Europeans killing other Europeans, due to religious differences and political rivalries. And consider, in this light, how fractured the West is today. The U.S. and its allies can't even agree on sanctions against Iran. Everyone knows that once Iran obtains nuclear weapons—in addition to its intention to threaten Israel and to support terrorists—it will begin to aim its rockets at Frankfurt, Munich, and Paris, and to ask for further trade concessions and seek regional hegemony. And in this case, unlike when we deterred Soviet leaders during the Cold War, Westerners will be dealing with theocratic zealots who claim that they do not care about living, making them all the more dangerous. Yet despite all this, to repeat, the Western democracies can't agree on sanctions or even on a prohibition against selling technology and arms.
The third check is what I call "parasitism." It is very difficult to invent and fabricate weapons, but it is very easy to use them. Looking back in history, we have examples of Aztecs killing Conquistadors using steel breast plates and crossbows and of Native Americans using rifles against the U.S. Cavalry. Similarly today, nobody in Hezbollah can manufacture an AK-47—which is built by Russians and made possible by Western design principles—but its members can make deadly use of them. Nor is there anything in the tradition of Shiite Islam that would allow a Shiite nation to create centrifuges, which require Western physics. Yet centrifuges are hard at work in Iran. And this parasitism has real consequences. When the Israelis went into Lebanon in 2006, they were surprised that young Hezbollah fighters had laptop computers with sophisticated intelligence programs; that Hezbollah intelligence agents were sending out doctored photos, making it seem as if Israel was targeting civilians, to Reuters and the AP; and that Hezbollah had obtained sophisticated anti-tank weapons on the international market using Iranian funds. At that point it didn't matter that the Israelis had a sophisticated Western culture, and so it could not win the war.
A fourth check is the ever-present anti-war movement in the West, stemming from the fact that Westerners are free to dissent. And by "ever-present" I mean that long before Michael Moore appeared on the scene, we had Euripides' Trojan Women and Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Of course, today's anti-war movement is much more virulent than in Euripides' and Aristophanes' time. This is in part because people like Michael Moore do not feel they are in any real danger from their countries' enemies. They know that if push comes to shove, the 101st Airborne will ultimately ensure their safety. That is why Moore can say right after 9/11 that Osama Bin Laden should have attacked a red state rather than a blue state. And since Western wars tend to be fought far from home, rather than as a defense against invasions, there is always the possibility that anti-war sentiment will win out and that armies will be called home. Our enemies know this, and often their words and actions are aimed at encouraging and aiding Western anti-war forces.
Finally and most seriously, I think, there is what I call, for want of a better term, "asymmetry." Western culture creates citizens who are affluent, leisured, free, and protected. Human nature being what it is, we citizens of the West often want to enjoy our bounty and retreat into private lives—to go home, eat pizza, and watch television. This is nothing new. I would refer you to Petronius's Satyricon, a banquet scene written around 60 A.D. about affluent Romans who make fun of the soldiers who are up on the Rhine protecting them. This is what Rome had become. And it's not easy to convince someone who has the good life to fight against someone who doesn't.
To put this in contemporary terms, what we are asking today is for a young man with a $250,000 education from West Point to climb into an Apache helicopter—after emailing back and forth with his wife and kids about what went on at a PTA meeting back in Bethesda, Maryland—and fly over Anbar province or up to the Hindu Kush and risk being shot down by a young man from a family of 15, none of whom will ever live nearly as well as the poorest citizens of the United States, using a weapon whose design he doesn't even understand. In a moral sense, the lives of these two young men are of equal value. But in reality, our society values the lives of our young men much more than Afghan societies value the lives of theirs. And it is very difficult to sustain a protracted war with asymmetrical losses under those conditions.
My point here is that all of the usual checks on the tradition of Western warfare are magnified in our time. And I will end with this disturbing thought: We who created the Western way of war are very reluctant to resort to it due to post-modern cynicism, while those who didn't create it are very eager to apply it due to pre-modern zealotry. And that's a very lethal combination.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=11 12/2/2009 2:22 PM.
Date: Dec 2, 2009
Imprimis Hillsdale College
November 2009
The Future of Western War
Victor Davis Hanson
Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=11 12/2/2009 2:22 PM.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University. He is a columnist for National Review Online and for Tribune Media Services, and has published in several journals and newspapers, including Commentary, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Hanson has written or edited numerous books, including The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on October 1, 2009, during the author's four-week teaching residency.
I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrients—these are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theorists—human nature will not change. And if human nature will not change—and I submit to you that human nature is a constant—then war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systems—which can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weapons—will of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is water—the same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.
Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britain—as well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere.
Just as this system afforded more prosperity in times of peace, it led to a superior fighting and defense capability in times of war. This is what I call the Western way of war, and there are several factors at play.
First, constitutional government was conducive to civilian input when it came to war. We see this in ancient Athens, where civilians oversaw a board of generals, and we see it in civilian control of the military in the United States. And at crucial times in Western history, civilian overseers have enriched military planning.
Second, Western culture gave birth to a new definition of courage. In Hellenic culture, the prowess of a hero was not recognized by the number of heads on his belt. As Aristotle noted in the Politics, Greek warriors didn't wear trophies of individual killings. Likewise, Victoria Crosses and Medals of Honor are awarded today for deeds such as staying in rank, protecting the integrity of the line, advancing and retreating on orders, or rescuing a comrade. This reflects a quite different understanding of heroism.
A third factor underlies our association of Western war with advanced technology. When reason and capitalism are applied to the battlefield, powerful innovations come about. Flints, percussion caps, rifle barrels and mini balls, to cite just a few examples, were all Western inventions. Related to this, Western armies—going back to Alexander the Great's army at the Indus—have a better logistics capability. A recent example is that the Americans invading Iraq were better supplied with water than the native Iraqis. This results from the application of capitalism to military affairs—uniting private self-interest and patriotism to provide armies with food, supplies, and munitions in a way that is much more efficient than the state-run command-and-control alternatives.
Yet another factor is that Western armies are impatient. They tend to want to seek out and destroy the enemy quickly and then go home. Of course, this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as we see today in Afghanistan, where the enemy is not so eager for decisive battle. And connected to this tradition is dissent. Today the U.S. military is a completely volunteer force, and its members' behavior on the battlefield largely reflects how they conduct themselves in civil society. One can trace this characteristic of Western armies back to Xenophon's ten thousand, who marched from Northern Iraq to the Black Sea and behaved essentially as a traveling city-state, voting and arguing in a constitutional manner. And their ability to do that is what saved them, not just their traditional discipline.
Now, I would not want to suggest that the West has always been victorious in war. It hasn't. But consider the fact that Europe had a very small population and territory, and yet by 1870 the British Empire controlled 75 percent of the world. What the Western way of war achieved, on any given day, was to give its practitioners—whether Cortez in the Americas, the British in Zululand, or the Greeks in Thrace—a greater advantage over their enemies. There are occasional defeats such as the battles of Cannae, Isandlwana, and Little Big Horn. Over a long period of time, however, the Western way of war will lead us to where we are today.
But where exactly are we today? There have been two developments over the last 20 years that have placed the West in a new cycle. They have not marked the end of the Western way of war, but they have brought about a significant change. The first is the rapid electronic dissemination of knowledge—such that someone in the Hindu Kush tonight can download a sophisticated article on how to make an IED. And the second is that non-Western nations now have leverage, given how global economies work today, through large quantities of strategic materials that Western societies need, such as natural gas, oil, uranium, and bauxite. Correspondingly, these materials produce tremendous amounts of unearned capital in non-Western countries—and by "unearned," I mean that the long process of civilization required to create, for example, a petroleum engineer has not occurred in these countries, yet they find themselves in possession of the monetary fruits of this process. So the West's enemies now have instant access to knowledge and tremendous capital.
In addition to these new developments, there are five traditional checks on the Western way of war that are intensified today. One of these checks is the Western tendency to limit the ferocity of war through rules and regulations. The Greeks tried to outlaw arrows and catapults. Romans had restrictions on the export of breast plates. In World War II, we had regulations against poison gas. Continuing this tradition today, we are trying to achieve nuclear non-proliferation. Unfortunately, the idea that Western countries can adjudicate how the rest of the world makes war isn't applicable anymore. As we see clearly in Iran, we are dealing with countries that have the wealth of Western nations (for the reasons just mentioned), but are anything but constitutional democracies. In fact, these nations find the idea of limiting their war-making capabilities laughable. Even more importantly, they know that many in the West sympathize with them—that many Westerners feel guilty about their wealth, prosperity, and leisure, and take psychological comfort in letting tyrants like Ahmadinejad provoke them.
The second check on the Western way of war is the fact that there is no monolithic West. For one thing, Western countries have frequently fought one another. Most people killed in war have been Europeans killing other Europeans, due to religious differences and political rivalries. And consider, in this light, how fractured the West is today. The U.S. and its allies can't even agree on sanctions against Iran. Everyone knows that once Iran obtains nuclear weapons—in addition to its intention to threaten Israel and to support terrorists—it will begin to aim its rockets at Frankfurt, Munich, and Paris, and to ask for further trade concessions and seek regional hegemony. And in this case, unlike when we deterred Soviet leaders during the Cold War, Westerners will be dealing with theocratic zealots who claim that they do not care about living, making them all the more dangerous. Yet despite all this, to repeat, the Western democracies can't agree on sanctions or even on a prohibition against selling technology and arms.
The third check is what I call "parasitism." It is very difficult to invent and fabricate weapons, but it is very easy to use them. Looking back in history, we have examples of Aztecs killing Conquistadors using steel breast plates and crossbows and of Native Americans using rifles against the U.S. Cavalry. Similarly today, nobody in Hezbollah can manufacture an AK-47—which is built by Russians and made possible by Western design principles—but its members can make deadly use of them. Nor is there anything in the tradition of Shiite Islam that would allow a Shiite nation to create centrifuges, which require Western physics. Yet centrifuges are hard at work in Iran. And this parasitism has real consequences. When the Israelis went into Lebanon in 2006, they were surprised that young Hezbollah fighters had laptop computers with sophisticated intelligence programs; that Hezbollah intelligence agents were sending out doctored photos, making it seem as if Israel was targeting civilians, to Reuters and the AP; and that Hezbollah had obtained sophisticated anti-tank weapons on the international market using Iranian funds. At that point it didn't matter that the Israelis had a sophisticated Western culture, and so it could not win the war.
A fourth check is the ever-present anti-war movement in the West, stemming from the fact that Westerners are free to dissent. And by "ever-present" I mean that long before Michael Moore appeared on the scene, we had Euripides' Trojan Women and Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Of course, today's anti-war movement is much more virulent than in Euripides' and Aristophanes' time. This is in part because people like Michael Moore do not feel they are in any real danger from their countries' enemies. They know that if push comes to shove, the 101st Airborne will ultimately ensure their safety. That is why Moore can say right after 9/11 that Osama Bin Laden should have attacked a red state rather than a blue state. And since Western wars tend to be fought far from home, rather than as a defense against invasions, there is always the possibility that anti-war sentiment will win out and that armies will be called home. Our enemies know this, and often their words and actions are aimed at encouraging and aiding Western anti-war forces.
Finally and most seriously, I think, there is what I call, for want of a better term, "asymmetry." Western culture creates citizens who are affluent, leisured, free, and protected. Human nature being what it is, we citizens of the West often want to enjoy our bounty and retreat into private lives—to go home, eat pizza, and watch television. This is nothing new. I would refer you to Petronius's Satyricon, a banquet scene written around 60 A.D. about affluent Romans who make fun of the soldiers who are up on the Rhine protecting them. This is what Rome had become. And it's not easy to convince someone who has the good life to fight against someone who doesn't.
To put this in contemporary terms, what we are asking today is for a young man with a $250,000 education from West Point to climb into an Apache helicopter—after emailing back and forth with his wife and kids about what went on at a PTA meeting back in Bethesda, Maryland—and fly over Anbar province or up to the Hindu Kush and risk being shot down by a young man from a family of 15, none of whom will ever live nearly as well as the poorest citizens of the United States, using a weapon whose design he doesn't even understand. In a moral sense, the lives of these two young men are of equal value. But in reality, our society values the lives of our young men much more than Afghan societies value the lives of theirs. And it is very difficult to sustain a protracted war with asymmetrical losses under those conditions.
My point here is that all of the usual checks on the tradition of Western warfare are magnified in our time. And I will end with this disturbing thought: We who created the Western way of war are very reluctant to resort to it due to post-modern cynicism, while those who didn't create it are very eager to apply it due to pre-modern zealotry. And that's a very lethal combination.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=11 12/2/2009 2:22 PM.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Democrat Senate: Sen. Sanders Unfiltered: An Unwinnable War
Drooping Levels of Support for the War in Afghanistan
Author's Google docs:
Obama: Humanist ~ Utopian Commander in Chief
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.c08ced83-30b0-47e0-8506-abd86f55322a
Military Oaths General Orders, Jerry Stokes 2009–08–26
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFZGY1MGIyNzQtYjAwNy00OTVhLTk5ZTMtMDg0MDQzMjc5YjA4&hl=en
Are We Holding Our Current Leaders Accountable to Their Oath?
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFMWM4NDgyNTAtZTBjNS00YTc3LTgwOTgtNGIzMWQ2ZWY5MTc0&hl=en
Law of Unintended Consequences
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.4e1e6bac-2f8f-4195-b95a-665df4725fb3&hl=en
Fall of Capitalism Rise of Islam
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.ed370757-b2ac-4657-8bee-f70e84259ec4
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Jeff Stokes Kept the Brown Water Navy in South Nam Running
Q: what did these river assault boats evolve into the new Navy?
Arlington National Cemetery Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Source: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/visitor_information/tomb_of_the_unknowns.html
Source Feed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJraMJ0sAE4&feature=channel_page
Date: March 4, 1921
The Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., is also known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and has never been officially named. The Tomb of the Unknowns stands atop a hill overlooking Washington, D.C. On March 4, 1921, Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American soldier from World War I in the plaza of the new Memorial Amphitheater.
On Memorial Day, 1921, four unknowns were exhumed from four World War I American cemeteries in France. U.S. Army Sgt. Edward F. Younger, who was wounded in combat, highly decorated for valor and received the Distinguished Service Medal in "The Great War, the war to end all wars," selected the Unknown Soldier of World War I from four identical caskets at the city hall in Chalons-sur-Marne, France, Oct. 24, 1921. Sgt. Younger selected the unknown by placing a spray of white roses on one of the caskets. He chose the third casket from the left. The chosen unknown soldier was transported to the United States aboard the USS Olympia. Those remaining were interred in the Meuse Argonne Cemetery, France.
The Unknown of World War II and Korea
On Aug. 3, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill to select and pay tribute to the unknowns of World War II and Korea. The selection ceremonies and the interment of these unknowns took place in 1958. The World War II Unknown was selected from remains exhumed from cemeteries in Europe, Africa, Hawaii and the Philippines.
The Unknown of Vietnam
The Unknown service member from the Vietnam War was designated by Medal of Honor recipient U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Allan Jay Kellogg Jr. during a ceremony at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, May 17, 1984. The Vietnam Unknown was transported aboard the USS Brewton to Alameda Naval Base, Calif. The remains were sent to Travis Air Force Base, Calif., May 24. The Vietnam Unknown arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., the next day. Many Vietnam veterans and President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan visited the Vietnam Unknown in the U.S. Capitol. An Army caisson carried the Vietnam Unknown from the Capitol to the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, May 28, 1984. President Reagan presided over the funeral, and presented the Medal of Honor to the Vietnam Unknown.
Military Funerals
The most frequent ceremony carried out at Arlington National Cemetery is usually private and intensely emotional. Customs for funerals are time honored - here a brief overview and for visiting clergy a guide to procedural protocol... More
Wreath Layings
The gift of flowers at a memorial site is a ritual that occurs around the world, understood in every culture. The floral tributes at funerals bespeak both the beauty and the brevity of life and evoke memories of other days. These sorts of offerings are made each day at Arlington National Cemetery, ... More
The Origin of the 21-Gun Salute
The tradition of saluting can be traced to the Middle Ages practice of placing oneself in an unarmed position and, therefore, in the power of those being honored... More
The Origin of "Taps"
During the Civil War, in July 1862, Brig. Gen. Daniel Butterfield whistled a tune and asked the bugler to sound it for him... More
Ruffles and Flourishes
Ruffles are played on drums, and flourishes are played on bugles... More
The Sentinels of the Tomb of the Unknowns
The Tomb of the Unknowns is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and in any weather by Tomb Guard sentinels - considered to be the best of the elite 3rd U.S. Infantry... More
The 3rd U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard)
Home page of the infantry regiment that mounts the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and assists with funeral services through casket teams, honor guards, and caisson transport.
Kennedy's in Arlington:
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/historical_information/JFK.html
When the United States was drawn into the war, Kennedy enlisted in the Navy as did his older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Jack became commander of a PT boat and fought in the Pacific Theater against the Japanese. Joe became a Navy flyer and, after getting his wings, flew missions in the Caribbean. Kennedy's boat, PT-109, was rammed the night of Aug. 1 and 2, 1943, by an enemy destroyer. Lt. Kennedy managed to lead 10 of the crew to a nearby island where they were rescued a week later.
A month later, Joe Kennedy became part of the first U.S. Navy squadron to fly B-24s with the British Naval Command. After many missions, extending his term of service twice, the elder brother died Aug. 12, 1944, on a secret mission to attack a V-2 Rocket position in Normandy by crashing a pilotless drone loaded with high explosives into it. The drone exploded before its pilots could transfer radio control to a mother aircraft and bail out.
Source Feed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJraMJ0sAE4&feature=channel_page
Date: March 4, 1921
The Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., is also known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and has never been officially named. The Tomb of the Unknowns stands atop a hill overlooking Washington, D.C. On March 4, 1921, Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American soldier from World War I in the plaza of the new Memorial Amphitheater.
On Memorial Day, 1921, four unknowns were exhumed from four World War I American cemeteries in France. U.S. Army Sgt. Edward F. Younger, who was wounded in combat, highly decorated for valor and received the Distinguished Service Medal in "The Great War, the war to end all wars," selected the Unknown Soldier of World War I from four identical caskets at the city hall in Chalons-sur-Marne, France, Oct. 24, 1921. Sgt. Younger selected the unknown by placing a spray of white roses on one of the caskets. He chose the third casket from the left. The chosen unknown soldier was transported to the United States aboard the USS Olympia. Those remaining were interred in the Meuse Argonne Cemetery, France.
The Unknown of World War II and Korea
On Aug. 3, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill to select and pay tribute to the unknowns of World War II and Korea. The selection ceremonies and the interment of these unknowns took place in 1958. The World War II Unknown was selected from remains exhumed from cemeteries in Europe, Africa, Hawaii and the Philippines.
The Unknown of Vietnam
The Unknown service member from the Vietnam War was designated by Medal of Honor recipient U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Allan Jay Kellogg Jr. during a ceremony at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, May 17, 1984. The Vietnam Unknown was transported aboard the USS Brewton to Alameda Naval Base, Calif. The remains were sent to Travis Air Force Base, Calif., May 24. The Vietnam Unknown arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., the next day. Many Vietnam veterans and President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan visited the Vietnam Unknown in the U.S. Capitol. An Army caisson carried the Vietnam Unknown from the Capitol to the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, May 28, 1984. President Reagan presided over the funeral, and presented the Medal of Honor to the Vietnam Unknown.
Military Funerals
The most frequent ceremony carried out at Arlington National Cemetery is usually private and intensely emotional. Customs for funerals are time honored - here a brief overview and for visiting clergy a guide to procedural protocol... More
Wreath Layings
The gift of flowers at a memorial site is a ritual that occurs around the world, understood in every culture. The floral tributes at funerals bespeak both the beauty and the brevity of life and evoke memories of other days. These sorts of offerings are made each day at Arlington National Cemetery, ... More
The Origin of the 21-Gun Salute
The tradition of saluting can be traced to the Middle Ages practice of placing oneself in an unarmed position and, therefore, in the power of those being honored... More
The Origin of "Taps"
During the Civil War, in July 1862, Brig. Gen. Daniel Butterfield whistled a tune and asked the bugler to sound it for him... More
Ruffles and Flourishes
Ruffles are played on drums, and flourishes are played on bugles... More
The Sentinels of the Tomb of the Unknowns
The Tomb of the Unknowns is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and in any weather by Tomb Guard sentinels - considered to be the best of the elite 3rd U.S. Infantry... More
The 3rd U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard)
Home page of the infantry regiment that mounts the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and assists with funeral services through casket teams, honor guards, and caisson transport.
Kennedy's in Arlington:
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/historical_information/JFK.html
When the United States was drawn into the war, Kennedy enlisted in the Navy as did his older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Jack became commander of a PT boat and fought in the Pacific Theater against the Japanese. Joe became a Navy flyer and, after getting his wings, flew missions in the Caribbean. Kennedy's boat, PT-109, was rammed the night of Aug. 1 and 2, 1943, by an enemy destroyer. Lt. Kennedy managed to lead 10 of the crew to a nearby island where they were rescued a week later.
A month later, Joe Kennedy became part of the first U.S. Navy squadron to fly B-24s with the British Naval Command. After many missions, extending his term of service twice, the elder brother died Aug. 12, 1944, on a secret mission to attack a V-2 Rocket position in Normandy by crashing a pilotless drone loaded with high explosives into it. The drone exploded before its pilots could transfer radio control to a mother aircraft and bail out.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Military chief seeks new plan to woo Muslims Mullen says actions, not words, needed to erase 'arrogant Americans' label
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32589657/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/
Date: updated 6:30 a.m. PT, Fri., Aug 28, 2009
New York Times Thom Shanker
Mullen says actions, not words, needed to erase 'arrogant Americans' label
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says American messages to counter information coming from extremists abroad "lack credibility."
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written a searing critique of government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world, saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting.
The critique by the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, comes as the United States is widely believed to be losing ground in the war of ideas against extremist Islamist ideology. The issue is particularly relevant as the Obama administration orders fresh efforts to counter militant propaganda, part of its broader strategy to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Admiral Mullen wrote in the critique, an essay to be published Friday by Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal.
“I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”
While President Obama has sought to differentiate himself from his predecessor, George W. Bush, in the eyes of the Muslim world — including through a widely praised speech in Egypt on June 4 — the perception of America as an arrogant oppressor has not changed noticeably, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, where United States forces remain engaged in war, and in Pakistan, where American-launched missiles aimed at militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda have killed civilians.
Last week, during a visit to Pakistan by Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy, Pakistanis told his entourage that America was widely despised in their country because, they said, it was obsessed with finding and killing Osama bin Laden to avenge the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
American messages 'lack credibility'
Admiral Mullen expressed concern over a trend to create entirely new government and military organizations to manage a broad public relations effort to counter anti-Americanism, which he said had allowed strategic communication to become a series of bureaucracies rather than a way to combat extremist ideology.
He also challenged a popular perception that Al Qaeda operates from primitive hide-outs and still wins the propaganda war against the United States. “The problem isn’t that we are bad at communicating or being outdone by men in caves,” Admiral Mullen wrote. “Most of them aren’t even in caves. The Taliban and Al Qaeda live largely among the people. They intimidate and control and communicate from within, not from the sidelines.”
American messages to counter extremist information campaigns “lack credibility, because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises,” he wrote.
As a guide, Admiral Mullen cited American efforts at rebuilding Europe after World War II and then containing communism as examples of successes that did not depend on opinion polls or strategic communication plans. He cited more recent military relief missions after natural disasters as continuing that style of successful American efforts overseas.
“That’s the essence of good communication: having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves,” Admiral Mullen wrote. “We shouldn’t care if people don’t like us. That isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time.”
Members of Congress also have expressed concern about the government’s programs for strategic communication, public diplomacy and public affairs. Both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have raised questions about the Pentagon’s programs for strategic communication — and about how money is spent on them.
The Senate Armed Services Committee issued a budget report last month noting that while “strategic communications and public diplomacy programs are important activities,” it was unclear whether these efforts were integrated within the Pentagon or across other departments and agencies. “Nor is the committee able to oversee adequately the funding for the multitude of programs,” the Senate report stated.
'Certain arrogance'
Admiral Mullen did not single out specific government communications programs for criticism, but wrote that “there has been a certain arrogance to our ‘strat comm’ efforts.” He wrote that “good communications runs both ways.”
“It’s not about telling our story,” he stated. “We must also be better listeners.”
Q: HOW DO NAVY SEALS ANSWER CALLS FROM TERROR?
Author's Google docs: not all of us are shocked at Obama's new way to face off our dangerous enemies. His world view is a definite utopian. He is taking this action even though he took the oath of office on Lincoln's family Bible to protect us as his work is constitutionally defined. Our previous Pres. Bush certainly was not flawless but he never failed to take actions to keep us safe with humility. To call his actions arrogant make us wonder what planet Adm Mullen has been on for the years since 9/11?
Obama: Humanist ~ Utopian Commander in Chief
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.c08ced83-30b0-47e0-8506-abd86f55322a
Military Oaths General Orders, Jerry Stokes 2009–08–26
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFZGY1MGIyNzQtYjAwNy00OTVhLTk5ZTMtMDg0MDQzMjc5YjA4&hl=en
Are We Holding Our Current Leaders Accountable to Their Oath?
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFMWM4NDgyNTAtZTBjNS00YTc3LTgwOTgtNGIzMWQ2ZWY5MTc0&hl=en
Law of Unintended Consequences
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.4e1e6bac-2f8f-4195-b95a-665df4725fb3&hl=en
Fall of Capitalism Rise of Islam
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.ed370757-b2ac-4657-8bee-f70e84259ec4
Date: updated 6:30 a.m. PT, Fri., Aug 28, 2009
New York Times Thom Shanker
Mullen says actions, not words, needed to erase 'arrogant Americans' label
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says American messages to counter information coming from extremists abroad "lack credibility."
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written a searing critique of government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world, saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting.
The critique by the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, comes as the United States is widely believed to be losing ground in the war of ideas against extremist Islamist ideology. The issue is particularly relevant as the Obama administration orders fresh efforts to counter militant propaganda, part of its broader strategy to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Admiral Mullen wrote in the critique, an essay to be published Friday by Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal.
“I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”
While President Obama has sought to differentiate himself from his predecessor, George W. Bush, in the eyes of the Muslim world — including through a widely praised speech in Egypt on June 4 — the perception of America as an arrogant oppressor has not changed noticeably, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, where United States forces remain engaged in war, and in Pakistan, where American-launched missiles aimed at militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda have killed civilians.
Last week, during a visit to Pakistan by Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy, Pakistanis told his entourage that America was widely despised in their country because, they said, it was obsessed with finding and killing Osama bin Laden to avenge the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
American messages 'lack credibility'
Admiral Mullen expressed concern over a trend to create entirely new government and military organizations to manage a broad public relations effort to counter anti-Americanism, which he said had allowed strategic communication to become a series of bureaucracies rather than a way to combat extremist ideology.
He also challenged a popular perception that Al Qaeda operates from primitive hide-outs and still wins the propaganda war against the United States. “The problem isn’t that we are bad at communicating or being outdone by men in caves,” Admiral Mullen wrote. “Most of them aren’t even in caves. The Taliban and Al Qaeda live largely among the people. They intimidate and control and communicate from within, not from the sidelines.”
American messages to counter extremist information campaigns “lack credibility, because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises,” he wrote.
As a guide, Admiral Mullen cited American efforts at rebuilding Europe after World War II and then containing communism as examples of successes that did not depend on opinion polls or strategic communication plans. He cited more recent military relief missions after natural disasters as continuing that style of successful American efforts overseas.
“That’s the essence of good communication: having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves,” Admiral Mullen wrote. “We shouldn’t care if people don’t like us. That isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time.”
Members of Congress also have expressed concern about the government’s programs for strategic communication, public diplomacy and public affairs. Both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have raised questions about the Pentagon’s programs for strategic communication — and about how money is spent on them.
The Senate Armed Services Committee issued a budget report last month noting that while “strategic communications and public diplomacy programs are important activities,” it was unclear whether these efforts were integrated within the Pentagon or across other departments and agencies. “Nor is the committee able to oversee adequately the funding for the multitude of programs,” the Senate report stated.
'Certain arrogance'
Admiral Mullen did not single out specific government communications programs for criticism, but wrote that “there has been a certain arrogance to our ‘strat comm’ efforts.” He wrote that “good communications runs both ways.”
“It’s not about telling our story,” he stated. “We must also be better listeners.”
Q: HOW DO NAVY SEALS ANSWER CALLS FROM TERROR?
Author's Google docs: not all of us are shocked at Obama's new way to face off our dangerous enemies. His world view is a definite utopian. He is taking this action even though he took the oath of office on Lincoln's family Bible to protect us as his work is constitutionally defined. Our previous Pres. Bush certainly was not flawless but he never failed to take actions to keep us safe with humility. To call his actions arrogant make us wonder what planet Adm Mullen has been on for the years since 9/11?
Obama: Humanist ~ Utopian Commander in Chief
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.c08ced83-30b0-47e0-8506-abd86f55322a
Military Oaths General Orders, Jerry Stokes 2009–08–26
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFZGY1MGIyNzQtYjAwNy00OTVhLTk5ZTMtMDg0MDQzMjc5YjA4&hl=en
Are We Holding Our Current Leaders Accountable to Their Oath?
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFMWM4NDgyNTAtZTBjNS00YTc3LTgwOTgtNGIzMWQ2ZWY5MTc0&hl=en
Law of Unintended Consequences
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.4e1e6bac-2f8f-4195-b95a-665df4725fb3&hl=en
Fall of Capitalism Rise of Islam
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.ed370757-b2ac-4657-8bee-f70e84259ec4
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Jeff Stokes Mechanic on these Rigs 2 Tours till Killed 1971
Google docs:
Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.7505039f-1bb8-410b-b928-a798e4aa4ecb&hl=en
Bill of Rights not a Suicide Pact
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.2a6348af-1434-42f0-bbc0-af8ae726c390&hl=en
Current Leaders Forgot Their Sacred Oaths!!
Source: http://militaryoath.us/Home_Page.html
The Commissioning Oath
"I, _____ , having been appointed an officer in the (Service) of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)
The Enlistment Oath
"I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
Google docs:
Are We Holding Our Current Leaders Accountable to Their Oath?
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFMWM4NDgyNTAtZTBjNS00YTc3LTgwOTgtNGIzMWQ2ZWY5MTc0&hl=en
Oaths: Ethics & Loyalty
In the United States, oaths were a part of life from the early colonial days. In 1620, when the Mayflower landed, the Pilgrims established the Mayflower Compact- which served as an oath, a covenant, and a constitution- and then pledged allegiance to King James, agreeing to work together as a “civil body politic” for their betterment and preservation. As settlers established colonies, they developed their own version of an oath of allegiance to English royalty.
The Military Oath
The Commissioning Oath
"I, _____ , having been appointed an officer in the (Service) of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)
The Enlistment Oath
"I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
Google docs:
Are We Holding Our Current Leaders Accountable to Their Oath?
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFMWM4NDgyNTAtZTBjNS00YTc3LTgwOTgtNGIzMWQ2ZWY5MTc0&hl=en
My Brother Jeff Stokes Swift Boat Mechanic Was Killed in Nam After 2 Tours!!
Author's Google docs:
Are We Holding Our Current Leaders Accountable to Their Oath?
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFMWM4NDgyNTAtZTBjNS00YTc3LTgwOTgtNGIzMWQ2ZWY5MTc0&hl=en
G.I.’s Shocking Failed Promises & Consequences
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0jE9taMWseFNTcxNmMzM2QtNmVmMC00NjQzLWJiMTQtZTI1M2NjMDVmMTdl&hl=en
Is it Safe to Vote for Any Party Who Would Make This Man Their National Leader?
Author's Google docs: will any sane person vote for a leader who shamed the American military to gain votes in an anti-American decade?
Obama: Humanist ~ Utopian Commander in Chief
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.c08ced83-30b0-47e0-8506-abd86f55322a
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Military Delta Groups C.I.A. Interrogation Report Draws Investigation
Source: http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2009/08/cia-interrogation-report-draws-investigation.html
Date: Aug 25, 2009
FIND LAW.COM
By Caleb Groos on August 25, 2009 9:59 AM | No TrackBacks
Details from a report by the C.I.A.'s Inspector General in 2004 into detention and interrogation practices in the War on Terror are finally seeing the light of day. What's inside appears to have factored into Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether violations of U.S. law occurred.
First, if this report is from 2004, why is it just being acted upon now? As described by Human Rights Watch attorney Joanne Mariner, who wrote a breakdown of the report's contents and importance, the report was classified "Top Secret" in 2004. In 2008, the ACLU got a very heavily redacted version released through a Freedom of Information Act request. More litigation finally resulted in the release of this lesser redacted version (with still 35+ pages blacked out).
But the report is not new to the Department of Justice (DOJ) or Congress. As the Wall Street Journal reports, in 2004, the C.I.A. gave the full report to the Bush administration's DOJ, and both Senate and House Intelligence Committees. At that point, DOJ prosecuted (and won conviction of) only one person -- a C.I.A. contractor who reportedly beat a detainee to death.
Yesterday, Attorney General Holder appointed special prosecutor John Durham to conduct a preliminary investigation into other potential federal crimes connected to detainee interrogations overseas.
See the full (but redacted) report below.
Ref: Wall Street Journal Obama Prosecuting the C.I.A.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574371090019115348.html
Double Talk Issues: 'It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department." –Attorney General Eric Holder, April 2009
Then in Actual Practice: "Justice Department Names Prosecutor to Reopen CIA Abuse Cases" –Wall Street Journal, yesterday Mr. Holder had it right the first time. His about-face yesterday, compounded by his release of a 2004 internal CIA report on that agency's handling of terrorists, opens a political war that President Obama, the CIA and above all the country will live to regret.
Authors Google docs:
Obama: Humanist ~ Utopian Commander in Chief
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.c08ced83-30b0-47e0-8506-abd86f55322aMonday, August 24, 2009
Veteran’s End of Life Guide: ‘Your Life Your Choices’ Death Book for Vets?
Source: http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=4646#more-4646
Date: Aug 23, 2009
By Cathryn Friar
Americans are uncomfortable these days with end-of life discussions especially when they are coming from our government. Now there is an end of life planning guide provided to veterans called ‘Your Life Your Choices’ — also called the VA Death Book — that is causing heartburn for Barack Obama’s administration. Read more below, see photo and video.
Are veterans being urged to die? Are they being told they are a burden to society? Apparently, a guide for veterans’ end-of-life care called “Your Life Your Choices,” was suspended under the Bush administration for just those very concerns. Some even went so far as to call this guide “a death book” for vets! But, now, this veterans’ end of life guide been revived and is promoted throughout the VA’s vast network of hospitals and nursing homes by the current Department of Veterans Affairs. With ‘death panels’ still a fresh memory, this end of life planning guide is once again raising a lot of questions with the potential of congressional hearings in the works.
The author of “Your Life Your Choices” is Dr. Robert Pearlman, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
According to Jim Towey, the former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives under President Bush, the 52-page booklet end of life planning document written by Dr. Pearlman makes injured veterans feel like a burden, encourages the severely injured to die and shouldn’t be anywhere near our veterans — especially those coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with catastrophic injuries.
Towey says that “Your Life Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll” would do. For example, a worksheet on page 21 of the so-called “death book for vets” lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”
Some of the physical circumstances listed in the vet’s end of life guide include ones that are quite common among our elderly and disabled such as: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.”
And get this: there is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” I think I may have even said that myself but I would kill my family if they actually did it!
And there are also some lovely guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that heartwarming one of “my situation causes severe emotional burden for my family.”
Geez.
But Tammy Duckworth, an injured veteran of Iraq herself and the assistant secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Obama’s administration, said the “Your Life Your Choices” death book for vets end of life planning guide is still under revision — as stated in a disclaimer on the official Web site — and has not officially been “reinstated.” She calls this veteran’s end of life guide one of many options for injured veterans and “simply a tool.”
“This ultimately is about the … health care for veterans,” Duckworth said
Hmm. This sounds so familiar. Where have we heard all of this before?
The bottom line is this: Yes, there is an undeniable slippery slope factor here. But there are no shortages of end-of-life care literature available from the private sector as well as government agencies. You can find the veteran’s end-of-life guide “Your Life Your Choices” here. Death book for Vets? Read the booklet yourself, and make up your own mind. I’ve made up mine.
Authors Google Docs:
Life and Human Dignity Jerry Stokes 2009
Be a City on a Hill Mt 5:14 Did Our Forefathers Try to Apply This?
Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.7505039f-1bb8-410b-b928-a798e4aa4ecb&hl=en
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Promises Made to G.I.'s Shockingly Failing Today
Q: What promises did we make?
“ We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.2a6348af-1434-42f0-bbc0-af8ae726c390&hl=en 6/27/2009 10:45 AM.
Q: what is the G.I. Bill?
A: Safe Origins: The G.I. Bill (officially titled Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, P.L. 78-346, 58 Stat. 284m) was an omnibus bill that provided college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as Gis) as well as one year of unemployment compensation. It also provided many different types of loans for returning veterans to buy homes and start businesses. Since the original act, the term has come to include other veteran benefit programs created to assist veterans of subsequent wars as well as peacetime service.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_Bill 6/27/2009 9:48 AM.
· Shocking Homelessness Rate
· Suicide Rate 120 kill themselves every week
- Shocking Unemployment Rate Older male veterans of previous wars are at greater risk for nonemployment than nonveterans? 75% percent of all eligible men served in World War II. ,http://74.125.155.132/custom?q=cache:2zQISghOfEQJ:www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/12/art3full.pdf+veterans&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=google-csbe 8/23/2009 2:24 PM.
More than 500,000 Homeless G.I.’s Today??
1981 the nation’s first law that addresses and combats the plague of chronic homelessness among veterans. The Homeless Veterans Comprehensive Assistance Act authorizes $1 billion in programs to help veterans find and retain jobs and provides them with housing, counseling, and medical care they need to rebuild their lives.
Our Heroes Are Tired of Feeling Bad
GI Suicides in 2008 Highest on Record
http://www.military.com/news/article/gi-suicides-in-2008-highest-on-record.html?col=1186032310810 8/23/2009 12:43 PM.
How Is The Current Obama Admin Responding?
1. Shocking Reacting To Suicides?
Pentagon downplays GI suicides
http://www.iacenter.org/military/gi_suicides020809/ 8/23/2009 12:52 PM.
2. Obama’s Shocking End-of-Life Care Guide for Veterans
Makes Heroes Feel Like Burdens When in Costly Treatment
This new official document encourages suicide not healing.
Shocking G.I. Unemployment Rates
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2006/may/wk5/art01.htm 8/23/2009 1:35 PM.
Older Male Veterans Of Previous Wars Are at Greater Risk
For Nonemployment Than Nonveterans?
http://74.125.155.132/custom?q=cache:2zQISghOfEQJ:www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/12/art3full.pdf+veterans&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=google-csbe 8/23/2009 2:24 PM.
In the years preceding the Vietnam era (1950 to 1966),54 percent of blacks were rejected
by the military because of low scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, while only 19 percent of the whites were rejected. The study revealed that white veterans who served in the Vietnam era had a greater relative risk of nonemployment as compared with similarly aged white nonveterans, The study found that Vietnam-era generation minority veterans had a greater prevalence of substance abuse disorders than nonveterans. The significant increase in the level of nonemployment among Vietnam-era veterans from 1999 to 2003
Q: as we study the way we as a nation are fulfilling promises to our war heroes how can we turn around our departure from their basic liberties past generations enjoyed?
A: Reagan asked in his day if the nation was already too far gone to save from Marxism. Although he made some inroads it was us who fell asleep in 2007 and didn’t vote. When we live in a democracy God commands us to make every vote count. Many of us stayed away because we were mad at this or that politician. But who would have thought 6 months into Obama’s first term he would be proudly doing away with capitalism and establishing Marxist tyranny?
Google docs
G.I.’s Shocking Failed Promises & Consequences
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