Note: I submitted this letter to the editor at the Times Union. Apparently it was not picked for publication in the newspaper, so I’m publishing it here.
This week [late April 2005] the Times Union ran an article about how our military has been using equipment known to be faulty in the line of fire. This is just the latest in a series of stories about faulty or lacking equipment that has been coming in throughout the Iraq War. Many may remember the candid pow-wow Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld held with members of the armed forces a few months ago where soldiers pressured him to explain why they had to use scraps of metal found on the ground to patch up their “armored” vehicles. It’s bad enough that these men and women have been thrust into an unnecessary war, but it’s even worse that the richest military in the world can not keep them properly equipped.
At home, taxpayers must be concerned about what the $437 billion spent by the Department of Defense in 2004 is being used for. Does it really cost that much to run a force of 1.2 million soldiers? I doubt it — China, which has a force twice the size of ours and 4 times the total population, spends only one-sixth as much on their military. In fact, the United States spends more on its military than the next twenty nations combined.
So either the U.S. military is spending the $437 billion poorly or it is using the momentum of the fear of terrorism procured by 9/11 and the war to stock up on funds for the future. Either way, everyone has a reason to be outraged. American taxpayers should be concerned about the first scenario, while the second scenario paints the U.S. as a threat to the rest of the world. What must be the intentions of a nation who stockpiles nuclear weapons with the same aggression as people stockpiling food and water in the path of an impending hurricane? Does the U.S. military have a particular ‘hurricane’ in sight?
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54
Too bad he was proven wrong.
On March 21 President Bush awoke from his slumber to sign the “Palm Sunday Compromise,” an unnecessary bill by Congress to step into the Terri Schiavo fiasco. Bush effectively voted in favor of keeping Schiavo alive, which he has the right to do, but it turns out he’s flip-flopping on the issue. In 1999, as governor of Texas, he signed a bill with the opposite effect: it gave the spouse (or next of kin) full rights on pull-the-plug situations. Seems to me that he made a rational decision in ‘99 but is now caught up in the emotional wave of the right to save Schiavo from a non-life of incoherence and unawareness of the world around her. Also remember that Bush saw 150 executions during his term as governor; clearly his views on life and death are clouded.
Source: Kansas City Star
Thanks to a still-undisclosed bill signed quickly after 9/11, the CIA has the power to secretly take terror suspects abroad on normal commercial airlines to countries where they can torture the subjects without worrying about U.S. policy. Guess this is what they have to resort to since Attorney General Gonzalez’s encouragement of torture was uncovered.
The Bush administration’s secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.
The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.
The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government’s efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration’s public pledge to provide safeguards against torture.
Source: NY Times, March 6, 2005
The more I read about life in other countries, the more I realize how not-so-well we have it here, despite what was pounded into our heads as children. This editorial sums it up nicely.
No. 1?
By Michael Ventura
No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is “No. 1,” “the greatest.” Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name “America Is No. 1.” Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled “un-American.” We’re an “empire,” ain’t we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We’re No. 1. Well … this is the country you really live in:
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