"[P]eople talk too much in these cables. You don't have to write everything you think."

--Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; image from; see also John Brown, "10 Percent Intellectual": The Mind of Condoleezza Rice" PRWatch (site is currently being maintained.)

ACTIVISM: Remove torturer Condeleeza Rice as Secretary of State

Dear Friend,

You may have seen the recent revelations about the Bush Administration's policy on torture. After years of denial, there is now evidence that senior Bush officials directly discussed and approved specific torture techniques. And, Condoleezza Rice chaired the White House meetings on this subject.

Now, TrueMajority, is calling on the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to resign from her role as Secretary of State. You can help them kick off the campaign by watching a video and signing their petition today.

Sign their petition demanding Condoleezza Rice resign:

http://www.truemajority.org/condi/

The "West's" view of the Iraki oil situation .

Exxon Mobil Lobby Spent $16.9M

Thu Mar 27, 2008

This is pocket change to Exxon, cheap protection for their racket. -oom

Exxon Mobil spent $16.9M lobbying
March 19, 2008
http://money. cnn.com/news/ newsfeeds/ articles/ newstex/AFX-
0013-23905827. htm
<http://money. cnn.com/news/ newsfeeds/ articles/ newstex/AFX- 0013-23905827. htm>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) Corp., the largest U.S. oil
company, spent more than $16.9 million to lobby the federal government
in 2007, according to a disclosure form. The company lobbied on
various appropriations bills and on legislation dealing with Federal
Aviation Administration reauthorization, patent reform, taxes and
royalties, international relations and trade agreements, lobbying
reform, railroad security and more, according to the form posted
online Feb. 14 by the Senate's public records office.

Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil spent $10.5 million in the second half
of 2007 to lobby on those issues. The energy bill President Bush
signed in December did not include billions of dollars in higher taxes
for large oil companies that many Democrats wanted to use to fund tax
breaks for various clean energy (NASDAQ:CLNE) industries.

Similar proposals were revived earlier this month and are working
their way through Congress. Besides Congress, Exxon Mobil lobbied the
White House, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, U.S. Trade
Representative' s office, the departments of Energy, Defense, Interior,
State, Commerce, Homeland Security and more. Lobbyists are required to
disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and
legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.

===

Iraq to pay oil firms to boost its output

By Randy Fabi and Ahmed Rasheed
http://www.guardian .co.uk/feedartic le?id=7397775
<http://www.guardian .co.uk/feedartic le?id=7397775>

BAGHDAD, March 19 (Reuters) - The Iraqi government is expected to pay
up to $2.5 billion to five top oil companies to increase the country's
oil output by nearly a quarter, a government adviser told Reuters on
Wednesday.In what would be the biggest foreign involvement for
decades, Baghdad is close to signing technical support contracts with
BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total.

Thamir Ghadhban, energy adviser to Iraq's prime minister, said he
expected the contracts, which would add 500,000 barrels per day (bpd)
to current production of 2.27 million bpd, would be signed by early
next month.

"There is a rough estimate that it could cost about $400 to $500
million per field," he said in an interview."So a total could be up to
between $2 (billion) and $2.5 billion over two years that should be
paid by the government to companies.

"With oil prices at around $100 a barrel, the contracts could mean
extra revenues to Iraq of around $1.5 billion a month before costs,"
according to Reuters calculations.

Ghadhban said Iraqi representatives met with company officials last
week in Amman, Jordan, to discuss final details of the initially
two-year contracts, including whether payment would be by cash or by
oil."As far as we are concerned, everything is positive and it's a
matter of time for the minister of oil and oil companies to finalize
and shake hands," he said.

Shell is negotiating for the northern Kirkuk oilfield and is also in
talks, along with BHP Billiton, for the development of the Maysan
fields.BP also has its eyes on Iraq's southern Rumaila field, while
Exxon wants the contract for the Zubair oilfield in Basra.

Finally, Chevron and Total are looking to work together to develop the
West Qurna oilfield.

Ghadhban said he expected the companies to boost output by around
100,000 bpd at each of the fields
.

HEAD START

The ongoing talks have also given the five major oil companies a head
start in efforts to bid for future oil contracts.

"I have no doubt whatsoever those five major companies are going to be
qualified," he said. "They are major oil companies and of course they
will be qualified."

More than 100 companies have registered to compete for oil extraction
and service contracts to help develop Iraq's oil reserves, the world's
third largest.

Ghadhban said the government was expected to announce the list of
qualified companies next month, a month later than initially
expected.He said the technical support contracts with the five oil
majors needed to be finalized before the government could move on to
other contracts.

===

Forbidden fields: Oil groups circle the prize of Iraq's vast reserves

By Roula Khalaf and Steve Negus
March 19 2008
Financial Times

http://www.ft. com/cms/s/ 0/5b24f674- f5e6-11dc- 8d3d-000077b0765 8.html?nclick_ check=1

Royal Dutch Shell has been quietly working with Iraq's oil ministry
over the past two years, advising it on how to increase the production
of two oilfields. Under an agreement struck after the 2003 invasion,
no one from the company, Europe's largest oil group, has set foot in
the troubled country; instead, monthly face-to-face meetings with the
oil ministry have been held in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and
weekly contact has been maintained by video-link.

The Shell-financed project and the attention showered on Baghdad
appears to be paying off: Shell is now negotiating a technical support
agreement in which it will be compensated for helping upgrade
production of producing fields. The oil company will again set up a
team outside Iraq, helping, among other things, to bring new equipment
into the country and training Iraqis in its use. Shell is one of
several inter­national oil companies including BP and the US groups
Exxon Mobil and Chevron that have been tapping into Iraq's oil
industry by remote control. But now, five years after the invasion,
the oil groups are hoping to take their involvement in the country to
a new level. Baghdad, desperate to increase oil production yet starved
of investment, is starting to dangle what the companies have been
after all along: a chance to develop and later explore what may be the
world's most promising untapped oil reserves. Indeed, as the companies
gear up for technical support agreements, they are also registering to
pre-qualify for the first bidding round of oil development contracts
that are to be offered by Baghdad.

"The [initial projects] were done to work with the Iraqis, get a
feeling for fields and build relationships and knowledge," says one
oil executive, speaking of the assistance projects provided so far.

With parts of the global oil industry threatened with nationalisation
and much of the Middle East still closed to foreign ownership of
reserves, access to Iraq, with the world's third-largest oil reserves,
has long been viewed as a huge prize. Although no decision has yet
been made in Baghdad over the nature of the development or the
eventual exploration contracts that will be on offer, Iraq could prove
one of the rare countries in the region where companies will be
allowed to claim reserves as their own.

"This is the big frontier,"

says Raad Alkadiri, a senior director at
Washington-based PFC Energy. According to the oil ministry, only 27
out of 80 discovered fields are producing in Iraq, the result of
decades of under-investment. A report by Wood Mackenzie, the
consultancy, meanwhile says the scale of Iraq's remaining oil
resources surpasses all other countries in the Middle East, including
Saudi Arabia, and its high-quality reservoirs ensure that production
costs would be very low. But Iraq is also a dangerous frontier.
Companies invited to invest in its oil industry and satisfy
Baghdad's plans at least to double oil production from the current
2.5m barrels a day will be walking into a political, security and
legislative minefield. Their involvement threatens to exacerbate the
sectarian tensions that have torn the country apart since the US-led
invasion.

International oil companies acknowledge that security, although better
over the past year, will still need to improve significantly before
workers are dispatched to Iraq. The weakness of the central government
and its patchy control over the southern part of the country, home to
80 per cent of proved oil reserves, will also be taken into account.
Perhaps most important, however, is that they could be entering a
country with deep political fissures and lingering anger at foreign
intervention, without clear legislation allowing for foreign
participation. Despite American pressure and government desperation, a
law to regulate foreign access to the oil industry has languished in
the Iraqi parliament, a victim of sectarian disputes, particularly
between the Kurds and Arabs. Frustrated by the delays, and virtually
giving up on a successful outcome, the oil ministry has now invited
oil companies to pre-qualify for development of existing fields and
says a cabinet decision will be enough to legitimise foreign
participation. Later bidding rounds are envisaged for exploration
contracts.

Officially, companies say they will insist on having new legislation
in place before investing the billions of dollars that would be needed
for development and exploration. Yet the absence of a law is not
preventing them from embarking on negotiations.

"The companies are positioning themselves; they're playing the game and the oil ministry is trying to create a game for them to play,"

says Mr Alkadiri.

"Of course you can hit a whole set of problems and the companies are aware
of that and they will factor it in. But [outside Iraq] there are no
such reserves in an un­explored territory."

Adding to the complications is uncertainty over who has the rights to
sign contracts in Iraq. The Kurdish regional government, based in
Irbil, claims that the constitution gives it power over its own
resources within the borders of Kurdistan, while the government in
Baghdad rejects this claim completely. It insists it has the sole
constitutional authority to dispose of Iraq's oil resources. A further
difficulty is that oil is unevenly distributed throughout the ethnic
regions of Iraq, with resources concentrated in the Shia south of the
country and the Kurdish north. The minority Sunni Arabs, who formerly
controlled the levers of power under Saddam Hussein, can boast few oil
reserves in their ethnic areas. Their priority in negotiating in the
new Iraq has been to ensure they receive their fair share of oil
revenues. But the competing expectations of Iraq's communities have
never been confronted head on, and were sidestepped by the framers of
the constitution, agreed in 2005, by means of ambiguous language.
Specifically, the constitution' s article 112 says the "federal
government, with the producing governorates and regional governments"
should manage oil and gas, but only from "present" fields. The
document's Article 115, meanwhile, declares that "all powers not
stipulated in the exclusive powers of the federal government" belong
to local or regional authorities. The KRG has taken this to mean that
the federal government has the conditional right to manage fields
currently producing, but that a regional government such as itself has
the power to manage exploration and the production from newly
discovered fields. To exploit this loophole, the KRG has passed its
own oil law, which allows it to sign contracts with foreign oil
companies. It has signed such agreements with several (smaller) groups
from Norway, Turkey, Austria, South Korea and other countries in the
face of Baghdad's objections.

"In the Kurdistan region, there is a constitution and there is a law.
We have two instruments that we can rely upon: the law and the
constitution are a pair, and they're consistent and in harmony with
each other in our case," says Ashti Hawrami, KRG oil minister.

Baghdad, however, has declared the KRG contracts ­illegal,
blacklisting companies that deal with the Kurdistan region and, more
recently, ­cancelling export deals with South Korean and Austrian
groups that signed exploration deals with the KRG. This has kept
bigger companies away from the north. The Kurds' assertive attitude
has heightened the Sunni Arabs' attachment to strong central control
over the country's regions and their inclination towards economic
nationalism. Their political leaders have pressed for the constitution
to be rewritten to strengthen the federal government and reduce the
powers of the KRG. With no agreement on the constitution, the
hydrocarbons legislation which would set terms for foreign oil
companies along with an agreement on the sharing of oil revenues
locally was controversial from the start.

After months of wrangling, the Iraqi cabinet in February 2007 came to
an agreement on a draft framework that did not include revenue-sharing
legislation. Even that has not been passed by parliament. Moreover, as
talks over the oil law have dragged on, opposition to the
production-sharing agreements (PSAs) favoured by western oil
companies, once relatively muted, has grown among the majority Shia as
well underlining a resurgence in nationalism as much as a reaction
to Kurdish unilateralism. According to Hussein Shahristani, the oil
minister, the cabinet's approval of a draft hydrocarbons law last year
made no reference to PSAs, and what his ministry will offer companies
are "model contracts" that would attempt to balance investors'
expectations of financial return against domestic political concerns,
not least the determination of Iraqis to maintain ownership and
control of oil wealth. Kurdish officials, however, say the contracts
envisaged by Baghdad are PSAs in all but name.

"What's happening is that various parties are jostling for position
now rather than reaching agreement on the oil legislation,

says Yahia Said, Iraq expert and Middle East director at Revenue Watch, a project
at the London School of Economics.

"The KRG is trying to move with as many facts on the ground as possible and the federal government is trying to show that it's in control."

Apotential flashpoint for the oil dispute between Kurds and Arabs is in the oil field of Kirkuk, the
city that Kurds claim as part of their region but whose status is to
be settled by a long-delayed referendum. It is to minimise the risk
of such confrontation that the US has put enormous pressure on Iraq's
politicians to agree the hydrocarbons legislation. Judging it a
crucial element for Iraqi stability, the Bush administration listed
the oil law as one of the benchmarks the Baghdad government was
expected to achieve as the US military surge helped to reduce violence
over the past year.

Even with the likelihood of an oil law approval fading, US officials
continue to insist that it is essential for signing oil contracts with
foreign groups. For international oil companies, the hope is that as
the negotiations proceed over the next year, Iraq's political and
legislative landscape will gain more clarity. Iraqi experts, however,
warn that the oil law may be dead and Baghdad's only choice,
ironically, will be to fall back on legislation from the Saddam
Hussein era. Although meant to protect the nationalised status of the
industry, the legislation did not stop the previous regime from
negotiating specific contracts with foreign companies, which were then
agreed by the rubber-stamp parliament.

"The ministry might be able to get away with [contracts] by leaning on
Saddam-era regulations. Saddam negotiated contracts that were not PSAs
[the oil companies' preferred arrangement] but with Iraq the only
remaining major resource in the world, companies will have to have
some investment there," says Tariq Shafiq, a former director of Iraq's
national oil ­company.

Shut out elsewhere, executives await the end of a long exile Just
months before US tanks rolled into Baghdad and Saddam Hussein was
toppled, US government officials met allies from Iraq's opposition and
decided it was in the country's interest for a new government to open
its oil industry to foreign participation as quickly as possible,
writes Dino Mahtani.

The so called "Oil and Energy" working group of the US state
department, which met four times in 2002 and 2003 and included
influential Iraqi exiles, had put forward the idea as a crucial plank
in Iraq's postwar reconstruction plans. Increased foreign
participation in Iraq's oil industry, members argued, would help
revitalise its most important economic lifeline ravaged by years of
neglect and under investment under Saddam's regime. But it would also
get US oil companies close to Iraq's reserves, which remain
significantly under-exploited compared with those of other big
producers and, according to some geologists, could hold the world's
largest deposits, surpassing even those of Saudi Arabia. The Middle
East has largely been off-limits to international oil companies ever
since a wave of oil industry nationalisation swept the region,
starting in the 1950s.

In Iraq's case, the military coup that forced out the British- and
US-backed royal family in 1958 was followed by the gradual takeover
over the next 14 years of the Iraq Petroleum Company, previously a
concession that gave ownership of Iraq's oil reserves to a consortium
dominated by US, British and French interests. Access to Iraqi oil
today would give western oil companies an important foothold in the
Middle East, home to about 60 per cent of global oil reserves, at a
time when resource nationalism is on the rise and companies are having
trouble finding new oil reserves to replace those they exhaust. The
reserves they claim are a main determinant of their stock prices.

Western oil executives had long been impatient with the reluctance of
Middle Eastern countries to open up to foreign participation. This was
summed up in 1999 by the US vice- president Dick Cheney (below), then
a director at the oil fields services company Halliburton.

"Even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."

he said in a speech to the oil industry. After
the US invasion, American officials collaborated closely with their
Iraqi political allies and oil industry executives. Many members of
the Oil and Energy working group had pushed for production-sharing
agreements to be introduced in Iraq after the invasion. These
arrangements would allow companies to claim a share of the reserves
produced as their own, at least for accounting purposes.

In effect, such contracts would amount to a significant step in
reversing Iraq's nationalisation process. The oil industry was
well-placed to lobby for such an arrangement. After the invasion,
former executives of big multinationals acted as consultants to the
new Iraqi oil ministry. The US then hand-picked oil ministry officials
under the coalition provisional authority, which eventually handed
over to the interim government of Iyad Allawi. This in turn advocated
partly privatising Iraq's oil industry. When a transitional government
came into place, the US backed Ahmad Chalabi a man who famously said
in 2002 that

"US oil companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil"

to chair Iraq's Energy Council.

Today, however, the openness of Iraq's oil industry to foreign
participation is still in doubt, not only because of the security
situation. Iraq has no national oil law in place. Its constitution is
vague about the degree of control regional governments can exert over
oil policy.

Iraqi officials know they will have the power to dictate terms to
foreign oil companies. "Iraq is definitely in the driver's seat. They
[the government] know they have one of the most prolific resources
left in the world," says Bob Fryklund, vice-president of IHS, the
international consultancy.

Energy producers such as Russia, Venezuela and Algeria have typified a
new wave of resource nationalism, in effect expropriating foreign
ownership of oil projects. In Libya, another country whose oil
industry has only just opened up to foreign participation after years
of sanctions, the government has now increased its take from all oil
projects to an average of 95 per cent, from 81 per cent in 2000. Even
in Kurdistan, where the regional authority has signed
production-sharing agreements, the government's take of future oil
produced is estimated at 87 per cent, says Mr Fryklund. Oil industry
executives say their companies will not invest if they do not get a
significant part of "the upside", industry jargon for expected
increases in production.

But Tariq Shafiq, a former director of Iraq's national oil company,
says companies would be prepared to accept variations of service
contracts that pay companies fixed returns rather than rewarding them
with control over reserves.

"Given how prolific Iraq is, the return
to international oil companies [under service contracts] would be just
as favourable as under investment [contracts]. And I believe the
companies are aware of that,"

he says.

===

US Company to Help Expand Iraqi Refinery
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN

http://ap.google. com/article/ ALeqM5i3MIE14CmM Tl3e-zkwuFBsPOsO eQD8VGQ6OG0

BAGHDAD (AP) Iraq's Oil Ministry has signed a contract with the
Colorado Industrial Construction Services Co. to help expand a
refinery in Najaf, south of Baghdad, an official said Wednesday. The
$85 million contract is designed to increase the refinery's current
capacity of 20,000 barrels of oil per day by roughly 10,000 barrels
per day, a senior ministry official said.

"We are expecting the work to be done in one year or one year and a
half," the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition
of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to release the
information. The Colorado-based company did not respond to telephone
calls seeking confirmation.

The refinery, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, was constructed in
October 2006 to help meet increasing needs in central Iraq for
petroleum products, including kerosene. The U.S. company will build a
third production unit, the official said.

Last week, the oil ministry inaugurated a second production unit at
the facility and pledged more refineries would be built across the
country, including in Nasiriyah and Karbala, two other cities in the
predominantly Shiite south. Together the new refineries will be able
to refine more than 450,000 barrels daily, it said.

Iraq has the world's third-largest known crude oil reserves, with an
estimated 115 billion barrels, but it suffers acute shortages in
petroleum products as most infrastructure has been damaged or
destroyed after years of U.N. sanctions and then five years of war.

Iraq's three main oil refineries are running at roughly half the
700,000 barrels daily capacity they maintained before the U.S.-led
invasion on March 20, 2003. The shortfall has forced Iraq to turn to
imports from neighboring Iran, Kuwait and Turkey. The country has been
forced to import about 8,000 tons each day, or about 60,000 barrels,
according to figures released last month by the State Oil Marketing
Organization. Insurgents frequently attack pipelines, hoping to rob
the government of oil revenue.

Also of interest in very recent news:

Javno.hr

Global Insight: Violence in Southern Iraq threatening oil exports Petroleumworld.com, Venezuela - 7 hours ago New constitutional allowances for provinces to be bound together into autonomous regions of the likes of the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region are also coming ... Democracy in the making Ha'aretz all 710 news articles »

Heritage Oil announces intention to list on the London Stock Exchange Canada NewsWire (press release), Canada - 1 hour ago The timing is opportune given the high-impact drilling campaigns we will undertake in Uganda and Kurdistan this year. I am delighted to welcome General Sir ... Shareholders of Heritage Oil Corporation Overwhelmingly Approve ... CNW Telbec (Communiqués de presse) all 2 news articles »

BBC News

Return to Kurdistan BBC News, UK - 26 Mar 2008 Kurdistan's future will be difficult enough, with or without the oil from Kirkuk, and these passionate students are the key to the region's growth. ...

Ghana Broadcasting Corporation

Five Years On - Invasion And occupation CounterCurrents.org, India - 14 hours ago The Turkish government is negotiating oil concessions with the Kurdish “Regional” government and Turkish companies have been heavily investing in the area. ... Wobbling all over the place Economist all 9 news articles »

KRG Natural Resources Ministry: Oil, gas, mining sector appointments Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq - 25 Mar 2008 As well as developing a robust private sector, the MNR’s petroleum programme will include the institutional development of a Kurdistan National Oil Company ...

San Diego Union Tribune

Iraqi Forces Clash With Sadr Militants in Basra for Third Day Bloomberg - 22 hours ago An oil pipeline in southern Iraq was on fire after a bomb exploded underneath it, the Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified official in Basra. ... The Shiite - Shiite "Awakenings"...or Chalabi's revenge ? uruknet.info Good Morning, Vietnam! Huffington Post Iraqi Prime Minister Gives Shiite Militia 72 Hours to Surrender Bloomberg Bloomberg - Bloomberg all 3,964 news articles »

AFP	Norway's DNO revises oil deal with Iraq's Kurdish authorities AFP - 14 Mar 2008 OSLO (AFP) — Norwegian oil company DNO International said Friday it had revised an agreement with Kurdish authorities on splitting oil production in two ...

Dispute over Kurdistan oil deals might be solved at federal court ... International Herald Tribune, France - 10 Mar 2008 A national oil and gas law is stuck in parliament, with Kurdish and Arab leaders fighting over who has the final say in managing oil and gas fields. ...

Oil-rich Kurdistan still under thumb of Baghdad ministers The Herald, UK - 20 Mar 2008 Kurdistan's oil minister, Ashti Harami, told us there are no limits to the success they can achieve: "You could create a new Dubai in every city in Iraq. ...

Iraq says it won't recognize oil deals with regional Kurdish ...
International Herald Tribune, France - 8 Mar 2008
AP ANKARA, Turkey: Iraq's oil minister said Saturday his government will not recognize any oil deals that the northern Kurdish self-governing region has ...

The Tenacity of American Militarism

My comment - YES, BUT

There are OTHER FORMS of national service that can be undertaken. These are NOT ON THE TABLE!!

Instead, military service remains the "first option" for us poor unfortunates left without any choices.

It's about increasing CHOICES, not saying MAKE DO.

There is plenty, plenty to be done to secure America's future besides the perceived strategic ones. Sometimes I think TomDispatch slips into lalaland.

Please read James Kunster instead for a real strategic agenda. Why notr prepare for the worst case scenario and get at least a little up to speed? We cannot put off a vigorous stabilization plan reliant ONLY On the force of the US military .. and that's the trend today.

We must come up with better kinds of oversight of the Department of Defense, the CIA (Ugh), the alphabet soupers and the now overwhelming presence of outsourced professionals used by, gasp, the State Department.

Any wonder people with BRAINS would support democrats over neocons!! Fuck, not too hard to figure that out. Do I see a bit of intellectual snobbery hidden in the remarks??

That said, he does have a point; the US military ain't going away anytime soon and this is a question progressives must wrestle with urgently as new budget priorities are drawn up after the deluge and purge of the neocon regime.

And hey! Upon high school graduation I applied to the US Air Force. They didn't take me and the rest is history. I didn't want to be in the Navy like all my relatives had been.

Veeger

The Tenacity of American Militarism
What Progressives and Other Critics Don’t Get About the US Military

by William J. Astore

Recent polls suggest that Americans trust the military roughly three times as much as the president and five times as much as their elected representatives in Congress. The tenacity of this trust is both striking and disturbing. It’s striking because it comes despite widespread media coverage of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the friendly-fire cover-up in the case of Pat Tillman’s death, and alleged retribution killings by Marines at Haditha. It’s disturbing because our country is founded on civilian control of the military. It’s debatable whether our less-than-resolute civilian leaders can now exercise the necessary level of oversight of the military and the Pentagon when they are distrusted by so many Americans.

What explains the military’s enduring appeal in our society? Certainly, some of this appeal is obvious. Americans have generally been a patriotic bunch. “Supporting our troops” seems an obvious place to go. After all, many of them volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way to protect our liberties and to avenge the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. For this, they receive pay and benefits that might best be described as modest. Trusting them — granting them a measure of confidence — seems the least that could be offered.

Before addressing two other sources of the military’s appeal that are little understood, at least by left-leaning audiences, let’s consider for a second the traditional liberal/progressive critique. It often begins by citing the insidious influence of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex,” throwing in for good measure terms like “atrocity,” “imperialist,” “reactionary,” and similar pejoratives. But what’s interesting here is that this is often where their critique also ends. The military and its influence are considered so tainted, so baneful that within progressive circles there’s a collective wringing of hands, even a reflexive turning of backs, as if our military were truly from Mars or perhaps drawn from the nether regions where Moorlocks shamble and grunt in barbarian darkness.

If you want to change anything — even our increasing propensity for militarism — you first have to make an effort to engage with it. And to engage with it, you have to know the wellsprings of its appeal, which transcend corporate profits or imperial power.

Our Military, Ourselves

Despite often compelling evidence to the contrary, Americans like to think of their societal institutions as being open, fair-minded, and democratic. If you look without prejudice at our all-volunteer military, you quickly realize that it truly is one of the least elitist, most diverse institutions of power in American society. Most progressive voices fail to recognize this. Yet it’s my belief most Americans do and it’s a big reason why they say they trust it.

Our military is demonstrably diverse — racially, by class, and even more politically than most critics imagine. As a retired military officer who now finds himself a liberal arts professor in academia, I’m struck by the relative conformity of the latter, at least when contrasted to the diversity I found in my former life. Racial minorities from the lower classes are well represented in our military. (Some critics have claimed that they are over-represented, at least in frontline infantry units.) I’ve seen more black or brown faces in positions of authority within our military than in academia. (In my last job in the Air Force, my boss was a black female colonel.) Indeed, until very recently in American society, our military was one of the few places where African Americans and Hispanics routinely bossed around whites. (Louis Gossett Jr.’s drill instructor in the 1982 movie An Officer and A Gentleman was not exceptional; many times I’ve witnessed real versions of him in action.)

Politically, our military tends, of course, to be conservative, though not necessarily monochromatically Republican. Again, the world of academia provides a stark contrast, especially in liberal arts departments in top-tier colleges and universities, which do tend to be overwhelmingly Democratic and left of center. To cite only one example, of 42 professors in the English, history, sociology, and political science departments at Brown University who registered to vote, all registered as Democrats.

Ordinary Americans trust the military, in part, because the “have-nots” have direct access to it — far more access than most will ever have to elite universities, elite law firms, mainstream media outlets, Washington lobbying outfits, or other institutions of influence and power. Indeed, our military remains deeply rooted in the broad middle-and working-class elements of society. Our Ivy League schools, our white-shoe law firms, Boston’s Beacon Hill, New York’s Upper West Side have little presence in it. Yet everywhere you go in small-town and rural America, you bump into ordinary people who know someone in the military: a nephew, a cousin, a close buddy from high school, even, these days, the girl next door.

If you were to place yourself among the rank-and-file of today’s military, you’d find yourself among young people (many of color, some of them recent immigrants) who more accurately mirror the composition of our old small towns and new inner city neighborhoods than nearly any other institution of power. In that sense, the military is a grandly successful social mélange, with, of course, a notable exception. Women. The all-volunteer military is predominately male and will remain so, at least for the foreseeable future. Military service remains largely a gendered activity, commonly associated within academia with retrograde notions of aggressive (and disreputable) masculinity and therefore dismissed as outmoded, even pathologically so.

Our Military, Our Young Men

Of course, supporting — and trusting — the military is hardly the same thing as joining it. Increasing numbers of Americans, not just academics or the obvious critics, no longer see joining its ranks as part of anyone’s citizenly duty. This is now well known in a society where the first urge of a commander-in-chief/president, when it comes to the public, is not to mobilize them for duty in what he’s termed “war time,” but to urge them to visit Disney World and keep on spending. Nonetheless, surprising numbers of young men do continue to join up, despite increasingly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This leads me to the second blind spot in the academic/progressive critique of our military — the failure to recognize the enduring attractiveness of military service to young men seeking to construct their own identities. To many of these potential recruits, American culture today appears feminized — or, at least demasculinized — a mommy-state, a risk-averse society with designer drugs and syndrome-of-the-day counselors to ease our pain. In response, what we’re seeing is a romantic yearning among young men for the very hardness, the brutality even, epitomized by military service and warfare.

In talking to young men in the rural, conservative area of Pennsylvania where I live, what strikes me is how many of them have seen all 10 episodes of the HBO World War II series, Band of Brothers, and how many admire the bravery, camaraderie, and sacrifice it depicts in portraying paratroopers of the 101st Airborne fighting their way across France and into Germany in 1944-45. Seasoned Marines, a colleague reports, confess that one thing working to sustain recruiting, despite the war in Iraq and regular news reports on an overstrained and exhausted military, is young men who, raised in self-esteem-touting, gender-bending environments (on TV, if nowhere else), sign up to experience “the other side.”

It’s easy to dismiss such yearnings as Neanderthal. The irony is that that very dismissal creates an inviting taboo for a whole segment of young American males to challenge. For academia and progressives, war is today what sex was to society in the Victorian age, involving as it does emotions nice people don’t feel and acts nice people don’t opt to commit. Yes, many volunteers join the military with educational or career possibilities in mind, but among young men who enlist, there is also a certain element, conscious or unconscious, of taboo-breaking — and of self-affirmation.

For women, gender identity is often shaped by biological rites of passage: menstruation, pregnancy, menopause. Male identity is arguably less secure and defined more by the gaze of other men — you’re a man when other men, men you respect, say you are. Men have gender too — and many seek to construct and assert their maleness within the military, a cultural setting they perceive as patriotic, meritocratic, and sanctioned by the trust and respect of friends, family, and community.

The challenge for progressives is to recognize this and then to work to create viable alternatives to military service in which masculinity and patriotism can be demonstrated in non-lethal settings. An example is my father’s service as a forest laborer and firefighter in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Oregon from 1935 to 1937. There could be many opportunities for our young men to assert their masculinity in non-military and nonviolent settings — fixing our nation’s roads and bridges, rebuilding our inner cities, rescuing places torn apart by disaster, natural or otherwise, like New Orleans; and from these, too, funded educational openings and future career possibilities could arise.

To Transform, We Must Engage

The point is this: It’s not enough simply to rail against the military or militarism, however enlightened it makes you feel. There are powerful reasons why Americans trust our military and continue to join its ranks. Unless these are grasped, efforts to redirect our nation along less militaristic lines will founder on the shores of incomprehension.

After all, isn’t the full media story not only that our all-volunteer military is having trouble meeting its recruiting goals — hardly surprising, given two major, exceedingly hard wars in which victory, however defined, remains frustratingly out of sight — but also that the military is nonetheless close to meeting those goals? Admittedly, recruiting standards have been relaxed, signing bonuses increased, and waivers and promotions liberally granted. Even so, our military is not just signing up the rural poor, urban dead-enders, or knuckle-dragging hayseeds (though some critics seem to think otherwise, judging by the unfortunate title of a recent piece in Slate, “Dumb and Dumber”). The comment by John Kerry in 2006, to the effect that students who can’t make it in college end up “stuck in Iraq,” struck many Americans as grossly unfair precisely because military service still remains a proud first-choice for many young Americans.

If the operating equation is military = bad, are we not effectively excusing ourselves or our children from any obligation to serve — even any obligation simply to engage with the military? Indeed, are we even patting ourselves on the back for the wisdom of our non-choice and our non-participation? Rarely has a failure to sacrifice or even to engage come at a more self-ennobling price — or a more self-destructive one for progressive agendas.

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He has taught cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy, officers at the Naval Postgraduate School, and currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism, among other books. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.

CIA Sets Changes To IG's Oversight, Adds Ombudsman - remarks

imho, it would take 16 alphabet soup agencies to keep up with the CIA Bad Boyz with THIS lazy Congress which pedals influence and protects no one, not even themselves.

The woman bomber story - "mentally ill women" use strapped on bombs - is the one that tells me that the CIA is beating out all efforts to amend their ways.

The are using people who are giving drugs to "dumb them up", strap bombs on them (this is SO like waterboarding), the bombs are ladden with strange chemicals, the bombs are "remotely" denoted and the survivers can't remember what happened.

What is in those bombs? How many nations and rogue states now have those chemicals?

Troubling questions. Think an "ombudsman" is going to amass all the evidence as to who is at the bottom of it??

Doubt it mayself -- Since the CIA is now seen as "just as bad as Saddam Hussein", and instituted this "leave no marks" policy, the craziness has come out "sideways".

And Condi, Bolten, Andrew Card and the rest of the sadists in power (and their little dog, the dictators and opporunists) now have something else to point to.

Like the Fillipino monkey interference that they ran last month, this story is going to have to be thoroughly deconstructed. THOROUGHLY.

The key is - showing where else there are women bombers being used, what chemicals these women are given, what chemicals are in these bombs!!

Veeger

By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 2, 2008; Page A03

The CIA's inspector general has agreed to tighter controls over its investigative procedures, agency officials revealed yesterday, in what appeared to be an attempt to soften resentments among agency officials over the watchdog's aggressive probes into the legality and effectiveness of the CIA's counterterrorism efforts and detention programs.

The revisions, which include the appointment of a special ombudsman to oversee the IG's work, were disclosed by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden in an e-mail sent to employees, announcing the end of an unusual inquiry into the performance of Inspector General John L. Helgerson, a 36-year CIA veteran and the man chiefly responsible for the spy agency's internal oversight.

The inquiry, begun last year, had raised concern among lawmakers who worried that the CIA was seeking to undermine the independence of Helgerson and his staff of auditors and inspectors. Helgerson angered top officials at the agency after leading aggressive investigations into the CIA's performance before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as well as its use of secret prisons and harsh interrogation methods against suspected terrorists.

Hayden, in the note to employees, praised Helgerson and his staff as being "committed to performing investigations . . . of the highest quality, integrity and timeliness," but said the inspector general had agreed on the need for changes.

"John has chosen to take a number of steps to heighten the efficiency, assure the quality and increase the transparency of the investigation process," Hayden said in the e-mail.

The changes include measures intended to speed up investigations and require the watchdog to keep CIA employees and managers informed about both the process and results of investigations. In addition to appointing an ombudsman, Helgerson also agreed to name a "quality control officer" who would make sure that reports "include all exculpatory and relevant mitigating information," Hayden said.

The agency did not make Helgerson available for comment, but CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the inspector general had "concurred with the director's statement and was comfortable with the steps agreed upon."

Helgerson, who joined the CIA in 1971, wrote a report that harshly criticized the agency for failing to anticipate al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. That report, parts of which were released last fall under a congressional order, recommended that some CIA officials be held accountable for failing to do more to prevent the attacks. But the agency's then-management decided against sanctions.

Helgerson also drafted a classified report critical of the CIA's interrogation of top al-Qaeda suspects. The report said the use of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation methods by CIA officers violated the Geneva Conventions' ban on torture.

Women's REAL issues corner

Yeah, it's called - Halliburton discriminates at the workplace !!

All brought to you by that great democratic and socially just institution, the US State Department! Yeah, boyz and grrrrrrrrrrrlz - let's hear it one more time for that fantastic feminist, Ms. Condileeza Rice! who can't think more than about two minutes ahead!!

Why do you suppose these intelligent, oh so well educated neo cons, cannot see the down the road the CONSEQUENCES of their decision and decide on SOLUTIONS to the crap they leave strewn around on the carpet? Hmmm?? Got any GREAT ideas as to why that is?

I do not.

For some INEXPLICABLE reason, the US bloody State Department who has a Big Fat Budget and loadsa hired legal hands simply cannot construct some way of dealing with MERCENARIES, folks! Are they,, um .. our enemy combantants? Are they .. um .. colonial murderers .. um .. are they subject to the laws of ANY WHERE. My o my!

Maybe it's time to get some oversight? Maybe perhaps it's time to take this all to the ICC? Maybe a Special Prosecutor should be called in when there is sucha spineless CONgress? Eh, what?

Just maybe??

Maybe We The People should get out the word to all the single moms out there who just have NO IDEA of the trap they all in for trying to get all that LOVELY money to support their kids so that they can get more toyZ than .. you know, ah you know, doncha. Everyone's being HAD. Signing up to fight assymetric, logistical warfare ain't working out all that well, is it?

THEY ARE BANKRUPTING OUR FUTURE: and the women (and kidz) get denied adequate legal representation under the Reich!!

And Condi, lovely overeducated Condi, who plays a wicked piano at dinner paw-ties is helping right out. We the People are paying Ms. $3,000-per-pairra Shoes. Think we're getting our money's worth??

She's sacrificing the sisters while planning her School of Public Diplomacy to come.

Ain't you just glad to pay HER? Our own little southern aristocratic diplomat of diplomats with her own little version of Dizzeeknees ala Karen Hughes.

Gawd! What a horrible case of "spin" those two did for Dubya. America has Never Before Had Such a Case of Bad PR. Little did they expect that the Whole World is Watching.

Time to turf Condi OUT and put in Valerie Plame in her place. Pronto.

What say YOU? What say we all?

Think Ms. $3,000-per-pairra Shoes should be shown the door sometime within the next 360 days insteadda waiting around for her gettaway?? Think she should be given a real job? Like making shoes in a prison somewhere for the rest of her life?

FOR FRIGGIN SHAME CONDI!! FOR FRIGGIN SHAME!!!

We've already posted about it on this blog, give mercenaries a bit of search!!

The rule of law must be followed!! Otherwise, folks, it's fascism time!!

[Sorry about all the exclamation points. I can't help myself. Rant now over. Snap, lock and LOAD.]

		AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
		Private military and security contractors like Blackwater and Halliburton could be getting away with murder - and rape and torture - in Iraq. Please help Amnesty International put an end to the culture of impunity for military and security contractors.
		Dear XXXXX, Jamie Leigh Jones testifies before Congress about her alleged rape in Iraq by co-workers. Help Amnesty end abuses by Blackwater, Halliburton, and other private contractors in Iraq. Imagine you're a security contractor dispatched to Iraq - a place where your greatest fear is being hit by a roadside bomb. But mere days after you arrive, you are gang raped by co-workers... and then pressured by company management to "get over it" or lose your job. This is the story of 23-year-old American Jamie Leigh Jones, who recently recounted her personal horror in Iraq two years ago as an employee of KBR, Halliburton's former subsidiary, before a House subcommittee. There are an estimated 180,000 private contractors working in Iraq, yet they seem to operate above the law both in Iraq and the U.S. This culture of impunity allows abuse and killings to thrive - with little recourse for the victims. Amnesty International is working to stop this - and we need your help to succeed. It's been more than 4 years since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Even though the Army's internal reports indicated contractor involvement in the abuses and the Department of Justice (DOJ) established a "Detainee Abuse Task Force" in 2004, it has not prosecuted a single contractor for abuses in Iraq to date. When pressed for answers, DOJ has simply said these cases remain "open" and that investigations are continuing. Through our new "Counter Terror with Justice" campaign, Amnesty is working to reverse these injustices that further denigrate our nation's reputation around the world. All companies and contractors have an obligation to respect human rights at home and abroad. And the business community as a whole has a wider responsibility - moral and legal - to use its influence to promote respect for human rights. With the stakes growing higher every day, we must move quickly to stop these egregious abuses in the "war on terror." Please consider making a gift today to help Amnesty to: Pressure the Justice Department to expedite investigations and prosecute cases of clear human rights violations by contractors. Pressure the Senate to pass a loophole-free version of the Security Contractor Accountability Act, a bill that would ensure that private military and security contractors are not above the law. A similar bill has already passed in the House, but we need your help to keep up the momentum! Drive increased media and public attention to the U.S.'s illegal practices in the war on terror. Our protests on January 11th generated huge TV and print media coverage around the world! Help support Amnesty's work to hold private contractors accountable for the human rights abuses they commit by making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you for your commitment to creating a more just and peaceful world. Sincerely, Larry Cox Executive Director Amnesty International USA

See also: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977203863