War

A Military Times survey of more than 750 active-duty troops this week found service members oppose military action in Syria by a margin of about three to one.

“I haven’t heard one single person be supportive of it,” said an Army staff sergeant at Fort Hood who asked not to be identified by name.

Click on the pie chart over there to the right for a series of three charts summarizing the opinions of the men and women in America's armed forces concerning air strikes on Syria, whether President Obama's proposed military intervention in Syria is in America's national interest, and whether or not Congress should pass a resolution on military action against Syria.

From the Daily Mail and Zero Hedge.

It seems that on average, Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that voted for air strikes on Syria collected 83% more in campaign contributions from defense contractors than did Senators who voted against.

We have nothing to add to the two fine columns we linked to above and encourage you to spend a couple minutes with either or better yet both, except to say if you're wondering how the United States Senate can ignore the will of 60% or so of the American people and vote the United States into yet another war, here's a likely answer.

The following chart is from Zero Hedge and also links to the piece from which it was taken.

It seems like Ike got it right.

Many, many years ago a wise, old divorce attorney told me, and I quote,

"Roany me boy" he said, "There are three sides to every story, his side, her side and the truth."

We've all heard the warmongering NeoLibs and their Democrat tools, both in government and media, flogging their story about the criminal Assad dictatorship murdering it's own citizens with sarin gas in much the same fashion that the murderous NeoCons and their significantly fewer but still highly effective Republican tools in government and media, once flogged their story about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

Now let's hear the other side shall we?

Wherein the Russian, Iranian and Chinese supported Assad government provides evidence exposing the murderous practices of the US and Saudi financed al Queda Syrian rebels, the very same terrorist organization that supposedly brought down the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and is widely promoted as being America's mortal enemy.

Your Uncle Roany is buying the third side to this story.

That being that both sides in this tragic c%#&@^$ f&#% are lying, scum sucking murderers that no thoughful person would under any set of circumstances have anything to do with, let alone partner up with.

Now, and here is the enormous catch, it's that thoughtful person thing that trips up both Neocon, Republican, government and media types as well as Neolib, Democrat, government and media tpes.

Who, as the Tea Party figured out during the Bush administration and the Occupy kids are figuring out during the Obama administration there is not an ounce of difference between them, as they are all pathological liars whose words on any issue are completely void of integrity.

This of course makes them identical to the Russian, Iranian, and Chinese backed Assad government as well as the US and Saudi backed al Queda rebels.

Do it not?

Watch this vid, it's short, to the point and should serve to piss you off real good.

As an aside, where are all those impassioned anti-war protesters nowadays?  

You know the ones, those good folks out there in the street, spewing about lies and liars and giving peace a chance during the Iraq and Afghan wars.  

Oopsies, silly question, they're Democrats and as such they only hate Republican wars.

Seventy years ago today, Joseph Stalin issued the now famed Order 227, better known among Soviets/Russians as "No Step Backwards!" in which he commanded that any non commisioned soldiers retreating without orders be shot as traitors or sent to penal units mostly permanantly attached to the front lines, and that officers allowing troops to retreat were to be tried for treason.

There are differences of opinion as to the effect of the order from some who say it was widely ignored by commanders who thought provisions having to do with establishing the buffer units ordered to shoot down retreating soldiers were impractical and a waste of manpower, to others who argue that it was greatly responsible for the destruction of the armies of the Third Reich on the Eastern Front.

Krivosheev counts 427,910 enlisted men having been assigned to penal units, although his numbers are in dispute.

I lack the energy for this issue to wade through the arguments but if you want to, start here.

Anyway, the following is the English translation of Jospeh Stalin's famed and terrible order.

The Order of the National Commissar for the Defense of the Soviet Union.

July 28 1942, Moscow.

The enemy throws new forces to the front without regard to heavy losses and penetrates deep into the Soviet Union, seizing new regions, destroying our cities and villages, and violating, plundering and killing the Soviet population. Combat goes on in region Voronej, near Don, in the south, and at the gates of the Northern Caucasus. The German invaders penetrate toward Stalingrad, to Volga and want at any cost to trap Kuban and the Northern Caucasus, with their oil and grain. The enemy already has captured Vorochilovgrad, Starobelsk, Rossosh, Kupyansk, Valuyki, Novochercassk, Rostov on Don, half Voronej. Part of the troops of the Southern front, following the panic-mongers, have left Rostov and Novochercassk without severe resistance and without orders from Moscow, covering their banners with shame.

The population of our country, who love and respect the Red Army, start to be discouraged in her, and lose faith in the Red Army, and many curse the Red Army for leaving our people under the yoke of the German oppressors, and itself running east.

Some stupid people at the front calm themselves with talk that we can retreat further to the east, as we have a lot of territory, a lot of ground, a lot of population and that there will always be much bread for us.

They want to justify the infamous behavior at the front. But such talk is falsehood, helpful only to our enemies.

Each commander, Red Army soldier and political commissar should understand that our means are not limitless. The territory of the Soviet state is not a desert, but people - workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, children. The territory of the USSR which the enemy has captured and aims to capture is bread and other products for the army, metal and fuel for industry, factories, plants supplying the army with arms and ammunition, railroads. After the loss of Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic republics, Donetzk, and other areas we have much less territory, much less people, bread, metal, plants and factories. We have lost more than 70 million people, more than 800 million pounds of bread annually and more than 10 million tons of metal annually. Now we do not have predominance over the Germans in human reserves, in reserves of bread. To retreat further - means to waste ourselves and to waste at the same time our Motherland.

Therefore it is necessary to eliminate talk that we have the capability endlessly to retreat, that we have a lot of territory, that our country is great and rich, that there is a large population, and that bread always will be abundant. Such talk is false and parasitic, it weakens us and benefits the enemy, if we do not stop retreating we will be without bread, without fuel, without metal, without raw material, without factories and plants, without railroads.

This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating.

Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan.

It is necessary to defend each position, each meter of our territory, up to the last drop of blood, to cling for each plot of Soviet land and to defend it as long as possible.

Our Motherland is experiencing hard days. We must stop, and then to throw back and smash the enemy regardless of cost. The Germans are not so strong, as it seems to the panic-mongers. They strain their last forces. To withstand their impact now, means to ensure our victory in some months.

Can we withstand the impact, and then throw back the enemy to the west? Yes we can, because our factories and plants in the rear are fine and our army receives ever more and more airplanes, tanks, artillery and mortars.

What do we lack?

There is no order and discipline in companies, battalions, regiments, in tank units and air squadrons. This is our main deficiency. We should establish in our army the most stringent order and solid discipline, if we want to salvage the situation, and to keep our Motherland.

It is impossible to tolerate commanders and commissars permitting units to leave their positions. It is impossible to tolerate commanders and commissars who admit that some panic-mongers determined the situation on the field of combat and carried away in departure other soldiers and opened the front to the enemy.

The panic-mongers and cowards should be exterminated in place.

Henceforth the solid law of discipline for each commander, Red Army soldier, and commissar should be the requirement - not a single step back without order from higher command. Company, battalion, regiment and division - commanders and appropriate commissars, who retreat without orders from higher commanders, are betrayers of the Motherland.

These are the orders of our Motherland.

To execute this order - means to defend our lands, to save the Motherland, to exterminate and to conquer the hated enemy.

After the winter retreat under pressure of the Red Army, when in German troops discipline became loose, the Germans for recovery of discipline imposed severe measures which resulted in quite good outcomes. They formed 100 penal companies from soldiers who were guilty of breaches of discipline because of cowardice or bewilderment, put them at dangerous sections of the front and commanded them to redeem their sins by blood. They have also formed approximately ten penal battalions from commanders guilty of breaches of discipline through cowardice or bewilderment, deprived them of their decorations, transferred them to even more dangerous sections of the front and commanded them to redeem their sins. Finally, they have formed special squads and put them behind unstable divisions and ordered them to shoot panic-mongers in case of unauthorized retreats or attempted surrender. As we know, these measures were effective, and now German troops fight better than they fought in the winter. And here is the situation, that the German troops have good discipline, though they do not have the high purpose of protection of the Motherland, and have only one extortionate purpose - to subdue another's country, and our troops have the higher purpose of protecting the abused Motherland,and do not have such discipline and so suffer defeat. Is it necessary for us to learn from our enemies, as our grandparents studied their enemies in the past and achieved victory?

I think it is necessary.

The Supreme General Headquarters of the Red Army commands:

1. Military councils of the fronts and first of all front commanders should:

a) Unconditionally eliminate retreat moods in the troops and with a firm hand bar propaganda that we can and should retreat further east, and that such retreat will cause no harm;

b) Unconditionally remove from their posts and send to the High Command for court martial those army commanders who have allowed unauthorized troop withdrawals from occupied positions, without the order of the Front command.

c) Form within each Front from one up to three (depending on the situation) penal battalions (800 persons) where commanders and high commanders and appropriate commissars of all service arms who have been guilty of a breach of discipline due to cowardice or bewilderment will be sent, and put them on more difficult sectors of the front to give them an opportunity to redeem by blood their crimes against the Motherland.

2. Military councils of armies and first of all army commanders should;

a) Unconditionally remove from their offices corps and army commanders and commissars who have accepted troop withdrawals from occupied positions without the order of the army command, and route them to the military councils of the fronts for court martial;

b) Form within the limits of each army 3 to 5 well-armed defensive squads (up to 200 persons in each), and put them directly behind unstable divisions and require them in case of panic and scattered withdrawals of elements of the divisions to shoot in place panic-mongers and cowards and thus help the honest soldiers of the division execute their duty to the Motherland;

c) Form within the limits of each army up to ten (depending on the situation) penal companies (from 150 to 200 persons in each) where ordinary soldiers and low ranking commanders who have been guilty of a breach of dicipline due to cowardice or bewilderment will be routed, and put them at difficult sectors of the army to give them an opportunity to redeem by blood their crimes against the Motherland.

3. Commanders and commissars of corps and divisions should;

a) Unconditionally remove from their posts commanders and commissars of regiments and battalions who have accepted unwarranted withdrawal of their troops without the order of the corps or division commander, take from them their orders and medals and route them to military councils of fronts for court martial;

b) Render all help and support to the defensive squads of the army in their business of strengthening order and discipline in the units.

This order is to be read in all companies, cavalry squadrons, batteries, squadrons, commands and headquarters.

The national commissar for defense: J. Stalin.

From Spiegel Online International.

As always click on the photo below for the entire story along with a short photo essay.

Way super highly double recommended ... and then some.

The Woes of an American Drone Operator

By Nicola Abé

A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit of the United States Air Force in New Mexico. He kills dozens of people. But then, one day, he realizes that he can't do it anymore.

The container is filled with the humming of computers. It's the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren't flying through the air. They're just sitting at the controls.

Bryant was one of them, and he remembers one incident very clearly when a Predator drone was circling in a figure-eight pattern in the sky above Afghanistan, more than 10,000 kilometers (6,250 miles) away. There was a flat-roofed house made of mud, with a shed used to hold goats in the crosshairs, as Bryant recalls. When he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact.

"These moments are like in slow motion," he says today. Images taken with an infrared camera attached to the drone appeared on his monitor, transmitted by satellite, with a two-to-five-second time delay.

With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.

Nice chairs.

Sixty Minutes has done this story twice now.

This particular video however is from the BBC series Modern Spies which we, being for the most part guys, really like.

From Wikipedia.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Arabic: رافد أحمد علوان‎, Rāfid Aḥmad Alwān; born 1968), known by the Central Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is an Iraqi citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.[1] Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.[2][3]

Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government utilized them to build arationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory.[1][4] On November 4, 2007, 60 Minutes revealed Curveball's real identity.[5] Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth."

From AlJazeera's Faultlines program.

We'll say it again, AlJazeera is simply the single best news gathering outfit on earth ... bar none ... and it renders what passes for news gathering in the U.S. a joke.

Over the past decade, the US military has shifted the way it fights its wars, deploying more unmanned systems in the battlefield than ever before.

Today there are more than 7,000 drones and 12,000 ground robots in use by all branches of the military.

These systems mean less American deaths and also less political risk for the US when it takes acts of lethal force – often outside of official war zones.

But US lethal drone strikes in countries like Pakistan have brought up serious questions about the legal and political implications of using these systems.

Fault Lines looks at how these new weapons of choice are allowing the US to stretch the international laws of war and what it could mean when more and more autonomy is developed for these lethal machines.

So many secrets at the CIA.

So many bankers at the CIA.

Coincidence?

Versions of this map with differing messages have been going around for a couple months now.

This particular version offers the most umvarnished message.

If you're counting, I believe there are 45 stars, one for each base.

Nobody here has been able to figure out who did the original map as attributions are confused.

If you have an idea who posted the original, let us know.

Just a little something to consider.

"It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. 

It is the only one international in scope.

It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.

Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about.

It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.

Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

With regards to the credentials and resume' General Butler's stands on while making the above statement.

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.

I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.

I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.

I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.

In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.

The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts.

I operated on three continents.