Who invents names for military operations??? Operation Odyssey Dawn???

Beyond the clearly PR-ish, like Operation Enduring Freedom, now, with the air action against Libya, we have Operation Odyssey Dawn.

Is nobody in the military, or Pentagon civilians, familiar with Homer's epic? Odysseus taking a decade to get home, including time with the lotus-eaters, on an island off today's Tunisia. The whole epic is about getting lost or stuck on various places on the edges of North Africa.

Yet another reason Obama might be worse than Bush?

The Obama Pentagon apparently was trying to extralegally seize the head of Wikileaks whilst he might be here in America.

Only thing was that Wikileaks punked the What-A-Gon with some Twitter deception.

Yet another reason to idealistically question Obama

Why do the Obama Administration FBI, CIA and Pentagon hate WikiLeaks so much? And, why isn't The One actually addressing that?

You know the answer. This is the latest manifestation of how he was, and is, largely full of hot air on civil liberties.

The ‘intelligence satellite gap’

So, now that North Korea has launched whatever it launched, the Pentagon says we need more spy satellites.

Sure we do.

And you, of course, expect Congress to sign the blank check.

Real questions about Obama’s Iraq withdrawal

Jeremy Scahill asks the questions the mainstream media hasn’t, like:

· What will be done with the 163,000 “contractors,” err, mercenaries?
· Will all the U.S.bases be closed?
· Will the Pentagon find a way to rip off taxpayers for “withdrawal” costs? (To which I add my own sidebar, “Will KBR do the same”?)
· Will Obama classify even more combat troops as non-combatants? (A number of brigade combat teams will be relabeled as parts of a “transition force headquarters” in August 2010.)
· After the last three coalition partners – Australia, Britain and Romania – withdraw in July, what will the U.S. do differently? Will public perceptions change?

Scahill, the author of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army,” has plenty more questions where those came from.

Your Pentagon at work spying on you and more

The FBI’s notorious National Security Letters? Being used by the Pentagon to monitor American citizens’ telephone and Internet usage.

“Newly unredacted documents released today reveal that the Department of Defense is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL power,” said the ACLU, whose lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court.

ACLU attorney Melissa Goodman said the Pentagon does not have the authority to get e-mail and phone records or lists of Web sites that people have visited, but noted the FBI can get that through NSLs.

Meanwhile, the Whatagon is going to get tough with colleges that have traditionally blocked or restricted its on-campus recruiting efforts. Per Army Times:

Under rules that will take effect April 28, defense officials said they want the exact same access to student directories that is provided to all other prospective employers.

Students can opt out of having their information turned over to the military only if they opt out of having their information provided to all other recruiters, but schools cannot have policies that exclude only the military, defense officials said in a March 28 notice of the new policy in the Federal Register.

And, the DoD is morphing “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays to “do know, don’t fly” for gay civilians, it would seem. The Pentagon initially refused to let Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin’s partner, Lauren Azar fly with her to Europe on a military plane on a Congressional trip:

The Pentagon said it was merely following House rules, which do not define domestic partners as spouses. (Speaker of the House Nancy) Pelosi’s office countered that the Pentagon has its own rules about who can go on its planes.

Both sides agree that Defense Secretary Robert Gates reversed the decision to keep Baldwin's partner, Lauren Azar, off the plane after getting contacted by Pelosi.

“It’s a matter of fairness that spouses should be allowed to go, and she is Ms. Baldwin's spouse,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly.

Ahh, it’s not like the brass hats have anything serious to worry about, like telling the truth about Iraq or something.

No wonder Pentagon sees no Iraq fraud

It’s happening on the inside:

Richard T. Race, the Pentagon inspector general's chief investigator of procurement fraud and official misconduct, quit his job and pleaded guilty last month to violating U.S. banking laws.

The previously unpublicized case was filed Feb. 26 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to court papers. Race, 61, admitted he made cash deposits at the Pentagon's credit union on three straight days in March 2007 that were designed to evade laws that track large currency transactions. The government seized the total of $20,000 in deposits as part of the plea deal.

It appears Race was trying to avoid some IRS reporting, as well.

So, he’s the perfect person to oversee Halliburton and its dodging, filching and mismanagement on government contracts, all while surely taking IRS write-offs for all of this mismanagement, or even possible downright fraud.