Books on Eisenhower, Marshall and MacArthur

New York Times Book Review: By Michael Beschloss

A lifelong Army man, Eisenhower had watched Marshall and MacArthur during their differences with Roosevelt and Truman. When he entered the White House in 1953, he was probably better schooled to know both the importance and the limits of military advice than any other president of his century.

Though the story does not appear in either book, in the late 1950s, Eisenhower’s generals — especially in the Air Force — were clamoring for a huge increase in the defense budget. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was declaring that his country was cranking out planes and nuclear missiles “like sausages” and would soon overtake the United States.

Knowing from secret intelligence that Khrushchev’s claims were a fraud, Eisenhower held down military spending. His fortitude opened him to charges from Senator John F. Kennedy and other politicians that he was tolerating a “missile gap” and leaving America undefended. But his decision probably meant the country was able to avoid the ruinous inflation that afflicted its economy in later years.

In case that does not persuade you of how important it is to have presidents with the wisdom and experience to know when, and when not, to take military advice, it is worth remembering that Ike Ike was the leader in 1954 who scoffed at warnings that the free world would be in peril unless we immediately went to fight in Vietnam.

Truth About Tillman ... Murder's Not 'Friendly Fire'

Huffington Post: By RJ Eskow

Once again, the Administration is pulling the old magician's trick of misdirection, this time in the Pat Tillman case. And once again, the press is falling for it. Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers focused on 'what they knew and when' -- to borrow the Watergate phrase -- rather than the core issue at the heart of the Pat Tillman matter, which is this:

Pat Tillman was almost certainly murdered, and fratricide is not 'friendly fire.'

Yet a Google News search on the terms 'Tillman' and 'friendly fire' yielded 1,044 hits today, all from the last 24 hours. That's after the facts behind the fratricide are widely known - and after a number of clues that suggest the entire command structure, from the White House on down, concealed a murder from the public and took no steps to investigate it.

There's your story....

I have not been following this story with great care. Eskow puts many of the (post-fratricide) pieces together in compelling, and chilling, form. Read it.

Badgers for Freedom

What are those beady little eyes watching? | blog.bioethics.net:

Via the Washington Post and the BBC, apparently, comes a story that's just too good to check. The Post cites a BBC translation of an article in the Iranian newspaper Resalat:

'A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task.'

...Still, there's no way this story of spy squirrels could be true... right? I mean, everyone knows the cutting edge of animal weapons systems is the ill-tempered badger.

-Greg Dahlmann

U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05

New York Times: By MARK MAZZETTI

A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled...

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.

The decision to halt the planned “snatch and grab” operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.

Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become virtual havens for the terrorist network. ...

In early 2005, after learning about the Qaeda meeting, the military developed a plan for a small Navy Seals unit to parachute into Pakistan to carry out a quick operation, former officials said.

But as the operation moved up the military chain of command, officials said, various planners bulked up the force’s size to provide security for the Special Operations forces.

“The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan,” said the former senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he thought the mission was worth the risk. “We were frustrated because we wanted to take a shot,” he said.

My Interview With Mikey Weinstein

Jason Leopold, Truthout | : Follow link for video interview

More than two years ago, Mikey Weinstein launched the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit government watchdog group that aims to keep a close eye on the military to ensure its adherence to the law mandating the separation between church and state, after his son, a student at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, was harassed about his Jewish faith and urged by other cadets and Air Force officials to convert to Christianity.

Weinstein is no military outsider. He describes his and his family's background this way: As a 1977 honor graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Weinstein spent 10 years in the Air Force as a "JAG," or military attorney, serving as both a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney. His oldest son and daughter-in-law are 2004 Air Force Academy graduates, and Weinstein's youngest son is currently a first classman (senior) at the Academy and the sixth member of the Weinstein family to attend the institution. Weinstein's father is a distinguished graduate of the United States Naval Academy.

Since he launched his watchdog organization, Weinstein has been contacted by more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity, he told me during a recent interview at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Weinstein said the military has been hijacked by a right-wing, fundamentalist Christian agenda, in what appears to be a clear-cut violation of the constitutional separation between church and state, that has rippled across all four branches of the military under President Bush.

"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into its own personal faith-based initiative."

Weinstein is, apparently, a conservative and a Republican. Still seems right to me on this one. I think I remember the days when conservatives (or some of them) believed in the Bill of Rights--that is, more than the Second Amendment.

Anti-Semitic Bible Teachings Disappear From Army Site

: By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report

A series of Bible study guides were removed from the US Army's Fort Leavenworth web site late Monday following a report by Truthout that disclosed how the materials used by chaplains during Bible sessions for soldiers appeared to be anti-Semitic, and that disseminating it through a web site maintained by the federal government may have violated the law mandating the separation between church and state.

The Bible study guides were discovered last week by researchers at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a government watchdog group. The group's founder, Mikey Weinstein, said in an interview Tuesday that scrubbing the web site does not adequately address the problem of rampant evangelical Christian fundamentalism that continues to ripple throughout the military. Weinstein, a former White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, still intends to file a lawsuit against the US Army for alleged constitutional violations. ...

"Today, there's a constant flow of religion into national politics and the military," Weinstein said. "And not just any religion either, but the dominionist, evangelical, Fundamentalist, us-versus-them, my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God, steel-fisted variety of Christian evangelism. There was a time, and not so long ago, when this nation worshiped a humbler God, but this invidious and cultish clan that is consuming our military believes they have a God-given right to rule the country, create a Christian nation, and eventually, a Christian empire."

Finding therapists proves hard for troops

Army Times:

WASHINGTON — Soldiers returning from war are finding it more difficult to get mental health treatment because military insurance is cutting payments to therapists, on top of already low reimbursement rates and a tangle of red tape.

Wait lists now extend for months to see a military doctor and it can takes weeks to find a private therapist willing to take on members of the military. ...

Maybe now that all the shrinks are no longer tied up watching and debating the Sopranos...?
(Speaking of obsessive behavior...)

Fort Leavenworth Chaplains Accused of Anti-Semitic Publishing

From Truthout :

At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic.

The Fort Leavenworth chaplains have posted these lesson plans on the Internet under a web address that is maintained by the federal government, giving off the appearance that the religious materials in question are endorsed by the Pentagon. Moreover, disseminating the ideology via a government funded web site may violate the law mandating the separation between church and state. ...

In one of the study guides, Galatians, posted on the Fort Leavenworth chaplain web site, the materials refer to Jews as "Judaizers" - persons who without being Jews follow in whole or in part the Jewish religion or claim to be Jews - and claim that "the Judaizers were zealous people much like the zealous Moslems have become today."

The 34-page Galatians study guide deals primarily with "Paul," who the Jews "persecuted," according to the study guide.
"Why did the Jews persecute Paul? Because of his teachings," the study guide says. "The cross was an offense to the Jews. Jesus had victory over the cross (death)."

The study guide then says that anyone who turns from Christianity to Judaism "should be condemned to spiritual death and hell."

"The Judaizers attempted to destroy the two foundations of the Christian religion: a. The Grace of God, and b. The Death of Christ," the Galtatian study guide says, adding that Judaism is a religion of "bondage" and Christianity a religion of "freedom."

In discussing modern day Jerusalem, chaplains ask soldiers to provide an answer to the following question: "How does the present Jerusalem represent slavery?"...

[ In the 14-page study guide Nehemiah, chaplains discuss a portion of the Sanballat, the first high priest of the temple at Samaria, who, according to the Bible study, had to deal with a "Jewish problem." He mocked the Jews' efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the hopes that they would give up.

The study guide then poses the following questions for soldiers: "How do you interpret Sanballat's reaction to the Jews progress? Anxiety and fear? In light of what we know about the Jews performance today, were his fears reasonable?"]

[Activist Mikey] Weinstein said a right-wing fundamentalist Christian agenda under President Bush has hijacked the military.

"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative."

Over Memorial Day weekend, Weinstein lashed out at the Air Force for co-sponsoring, along with evangelical Christian organizations, a three-day event celebrating the Air Force's 60th anniversary. ...

Plans for the event prompted a forceful response from watchdog groups. In a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Acting Secretary of the Army Peter Geren, the Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), called the event "a stunning display of the federal government using vast resources to trumpet a religious celebration."

Lynn added: "Military personnel and veterans come from many religious traditions and no religion at all. So it is wholly disingenuous for the organizers of this evangelical Christian gathering to promote it as a salute to all our troops. It is anything but."

Got to get those Crusaders ready for the millennial battles still to come.
Where are "Christians United" on this one? Interesting test of proposed "partners".

Don’t Ask, Don’t Translate

From The New York Times:

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” does nothing but deprive the military of talent it needs and invade the privacy of gay service members just trying to do their jobs and live their lives. Political and military leaders who support the current law may believe that homosexual soldiers threaten unit cohesion and military readiness, but the real damage is caused by denying enlistment to patriotic Americans and wrenching qualified individuals out of effective military units. This does not serve the military or the nation well.

Consider: more than 58 Arabic linguists have been kicked out since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was instituted. How much valuable intelligence could those men and women be providing today to troops in harm’s way?

In addition to those translators, 11,000 other service members have been ousted since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was passed by Congress in 1993. Many held critical jobs in intelligence, medicine and counterterrorism. An untold number of closeted gay military members don’t re-enlist because of the pressure the law puts on them. This is the real cost of the ban — and, with our military so overcommitted and undermanned, it’s too high to pay.

Jailing whistleblowers

Jury: 6 months in prison for Navy lawyer - Yahoo! News (AP):

NORFOLK, Va. - A military jury recommended Friday that a Navy lawyer be discharged and imprisoned for six months for sending a human rights attorney the names of 550 Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz was convicted Thursday of communicating secret information about Guantanamo Bay detainees that could be used to injure the United States and three other charges of leaking information to an unauthorized person....

After the first day of his trial Monday, Diaz had told The Dallas Morning News he felt sending the list — which was inside an unmarked Valentine's Day card — was the right decision because of how the detainees were being treated.

"My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States," Diaz said. "I'm not a criminal."

In early 2005, as he was concluding a six-month tour of duty as a legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Diaz sent an anonymous note to a New York civil liberties group containing the detainees' names.

The Center for Constitutional Rights earlier had won a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling that terrorism suspects had the right to challenge their detention. But the
Pentagon was refusing to identify the men, hampering the group's effort to represent them.

"I had observed the stonewalling, the obstacles we continued to place in the way of the attorneys," Diaz told the newspaper. "I knew my time was limited. ... I had to do something."

U.S. Examines Iraq Battlefield Ethics

TIME: "U.S. Examines Iraq Battlefield Ethics
By AP/PAULINE JELINEK

(WASHINGTON)—A new Pentagon survey of troops in Iraq found that only 40 percent of Marines and 55 percent of Army soldiers would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.

In the first internal military study of battlefield ethics in Iraq, officials said Friday they also found that only a third of Marines and roughly half of soldiers said they believed that noncombatants should be treated with dignity.

The study also ... showed that more than 40 percent of Marines and soldiers said torture should be allowed to save the lives of troops.