Gay – get an Army boot; skinhead – get an Army pass

Whether top Army brass will do anything about it or not, Stars and Stripes reveals just how deep and numerous skinheads, neo-Nazis, etc. are, inside U.S. armed forces. Private-sector journalists have already reported on how military recruiters turn blind eyes to things like swastika tattoos as part of meeting recruiting goals, and how, at the same time, the violently inclined among these groups want the military training.

In short, the U.S. military, and Department of Defense civilians who aren’t acting either, are supporting the development of home-grown terrorism.

Obama already weaseling on Iraq ‘withdrawal’

Per the New York Times, in a story getting little airplay with swine flu fears the U.S. and Iraq are supposed to start negotiating exceptions to the June 30 deadline for American troops to start withdrawing from Iraqi cities.

It’s pretty clear the U.S. Army’s brass hats want to stay in Mosul, Iraqi government be damned.

And, in the ultimate weaseling, Camp Victory is considered to not be a part of any city – but that weaseling is bipartisan between both countries’ armies.

Gear up the Badr Brigades?

Anyway, this is why the MSLBs are slipping, IMO. None of the bigs among "liberal" blogs has covered this in any real way.

Tom Ricks – Close West Point

Coming from the dean of American newspapers’ war correspondents, the call to close U.S. military academies isn’t a shot in the dark.

Ricks says it takes twice as much to educate an officer at one of the military academies rather than through ROTC, and that – ROTC grads make better officers and get better educations.

Read the full story for more of Ricks’ thinking.

I think he’s on to something. It’s far short of a draft, but relying on just ROTC officers might connect the military with the outside world more.

AEI wingnuts boo-hoo about defense budget

The United States spends more on national “defense” than the rest of the world combined, and so two American Enterprise Institute wingnuts worry that Defense Secretary Robert Gates F-22 cuts and other defense cuts mean the end of the free world is nigh.

Gates in no hurry to end DADT; neither is Obama

In fact, on Fox News Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he and President Barack Obama had “a lot on our plates right now,” so he’ll need to “push (don’t ask, don’t tell military policy on gays) down the road a bit.”

Several things to note.

First, Gates says he’s speaking for Obama, not just himself.

Second, the two comments, about lack of time and pushing things down the road, on something that isn’t hard to do, make clear that Obama’s breaking another campaign promise.

Third, Fox vs. a more mainstream network? Is Obama pandering to social conservatives? Indicating how unimportant this issue is to him? Not sure of the message here.

Milbloggers would get more respect if they earned it

At Mudville Gazette, Grayhawk says Obama needed to have a Stryker brigade in Iraq appear more needed in Afghanistan, even if that Stryker unit had 10 months of now-useless Arabic training, and even if it means moving another Stryker unit from Fort Lewis, Wash., to Iraq, ahead of schedule.

He’s got some interesting, even good points.

Grayhawk may well be right to fault the claim of a moved brigade that’s being replaced part of the “drawdown.”

And, in my original post, I said I agreed with him:

As a left-liberal who voted Green the past two elections, this doesn't totally surprise me. I doubt Obama will have all troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, and, of course, his plan only includes Army and Marines; says nothing about USAF.

But, I added:

That said, the nutbar "conservatives" here fulminating about the pseudo-liberal media are good for a laugh. Time to put your tinfoil hats back on.

But, try to talk even halfway sense, and you get accused of calling soldiers mouth-breathers and worse.

As I posted in a second comment, it seems like a lot of people in wingerland have a big-time martyr complex.

And, on the other hand, a commenter there noted that troop rotations don’t just pop up out of nowhere; the claim that the goofy rotation, and the wasted Arabic training, was all Obama’s initiative, is ridiculous. Troop rotations are planned in advance and this started in the Bush Administration.

Military chaplains don’t get First Amendment

Multiple military chaplains, in response to complaints that groups such as Campus Crusade for Christ are, in essence, infiltrating the military, say things such as, “We represent our own faith while respecting other faith groups .” per Carleton Birch of the Army’s Chief of Chaplains Office.

Uhh, atheists and agnostics aren’t a “faith group,” Mr. Birch. Try reading your First Amendment again. You obviously need to:

Mikey Weinstein, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and a retired Air Force officer who has become an outspoken advocate on the issue, said his group now received more than 500 complaints of religious bias a month from members of the military.

It’s approaching the discrimination level against gays in the military.

Having people told to pray to any God, whether the Christian version (whatever strain thereof) or some other one, violates that First Amendment.

On the tire swing for the Osprey

AP writer Bradley Klapper says the V-22 Osprey, our military’s biggest waste of money in the last decade outside the war in Iraq itself, really does work.

Of course, in his own story, he notes that the V-22 Osprey isn’t used on daytime flights at all.

And, he ignores the fact that, Marine pilot enthusiasm aside, it’s apples and oranges comparing it to a helicopter nearly 40 years old. (I could make a Sea Knight II better than an Osprey, I have no doubt, especially if I borrowed from Russian as well as U.S. helicopter expertise. Remember the Hind of Rambo films?)

The ‘real’ price of oil – about $85 per barrel

I put “real” in scare quotes because, of course, the actual real price of oil is what is being paid for it today.

That said, here’s my take on all the burdens, with price, a barrel of oil carries in the way of overhead.

• Speculation — $15
• Dollar inflation — $10
• Iraq invasion premium — $10
• U.S. military oil use in Iraq — $5
• Iran-related instability — $10
• Instability in Nigeria, etc. — $5

That’s a total of $55/bbl, which would give us a price of $85 a barrel, otherwise.

Of that, we can pin about half that on Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Obviously, we have $15 directly related. I’ll add $5 each from Iran instability and speculation, and another $5 as negative feedback from that to dollar inflation. That makes $25 as a broader-market war premium.

That said, the other $10 of speculation money is legitimate, if you’re a speculator. It’s largely based on Peak Oil fears gaining broader acceptance, despite the efforts of traditional Big Oil and part of OPEC to sweep that under the rug.

And, speaking of that, to look at things from the demand side, speculators are exactly right, also.

Kevin Drum somewhat trumpets a relatively minuscule 2 percent drop in highway miles, albeit while admitting it’s just a drop.

And, that’s the whole point. The American public is comfortable with the denialism of American political leaders and oil companies on Peak Oil. As for the latter part of the equation, it’s easier to blame Big Oil conspiracies (even if ExxonMobil is selling all of its gas stations), or now, the conspiracy of speculators, rather than admitting that worldwide discovery and production of halfway easy oil has definitely peaked.

In other words, the small minority of Americans who have actually heard more than two sentences about Peak Oil and tried to listen for more than 2 minutes have stopped listening soon enough thereafter, for the most part.

The sheeple want Washington leaders, above all a president who, as their “civic religion” leader, will soothe them with anodyne, rather than, like Jesus or an Old Testament prophet, actually challenge their complacency and self-delusion.

Call it a spin-off of American exceptionalism.

Joint Chiefs chair has slow learning curve on Pakistan

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says he is only now learning how complex Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier can be:

“I am learning as I go that these tribal areas are extraordinarily complex. There’s no simple answer,”

You’re learning that as you go? Inspires plenty of confidence in how our military handles legitimate questions of dealing with terrorists.

The total cost of civilian casualties in Iraq

Salon has an excerpt from Chris Hedges’ new book, “Collateral Damage.” Hedges says:

The God they knew, or thought they knew, failed them. The church or the synagogue or the mosque, which promised redemption by serving God and country, did not prepare them for the awful betrayal of this civic religion, for the capacity we all have for human atrocity, because the stories of heroism used to mask the reality of war. …

Each generation responds to war as innocents. Each generation discovers its own disillusionment, often at a terrible personal price.

Hedges makes it clear that this training starts from the day the typical soldier or Marine sets foot in Iraq or Kuwait, starting with the incessant use of the word “haji.”

I know some ex-military liberal bloggers like Blue Girl will try to defend the military more than I, but this isn’t defensible. And, because it’s such an ingrained part of military culture, you can’t make the “few bad apples” claim.

And, yes, this is what the mainstream media is failing to cover in the general cutback in Iraq coverage.

You have a right to be an atheist in the U.S. Armed Forces

Even if it takes a lawsuit to defend that right.

You know, it’s a pretty effing sad commentary on how much heavily evangelistic religious right groups have infiltrated the U.S. military when the Turkish General Staff has to give an American major general a lecture spelling out what American church-state separation actually means.

Here’s hoping Mikey Weinstein’s lawsuit against the U.S. Army on behalf of Spec. Jeremy Hall leads others to come forward, assuming there is, as there seems to be, a pattern of religious abuse in the military.

Oh, and reports of other soldiers in Iraq talking about fragging Hall show that hate, not love, is the driving force behind a lot of these insider evangelist groups.

Blackwater not the only bad guys in Iraq

In his latest column, Ted Rall reminds us of U.S. troops who have done the same or worse.

While the percentage of bad apples may not be that high in the Army or Marines, it’s certainly more than minuscule.

Why the Army shouldn’t censor military blogs

Slate magazine makes a good case for this being the best way for non-coms and lower-ranking officers to hold top brass accountable for tactical and strategic mistakes:

It’s by circumventing organizational filters that blogs and soldiers’ writings allow unconventional and controversial views to percolate up to senior leaders and the public. An important article in the Armed Forces Journal by Army Lt. Col. Paul Yingling illustrates the point. For years, the Army’s general officer corps congratulated itself for its stewardship of the Army during America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yingling, who is one of the Army's “jedi knights” trained at its elite School of Advanced Military Studies, wrote that today's generals in Iraq failed to commit sufficient resources, failed to understand the dynamic situation on the ground after April 2003, failed to adapt to these changed circumstances, and then failed to tell their civilian political leaders about the risks of these choices. The article should have provoked self-examination among the Army's generals. (Though friends in the Pentagon tell me it has been met by deafening silence.)

The new Army regulations would likely squelch dissents like Yingling's, along with the many other journal articles and professional exchanges about the war that have contributed much to public knowledge. Such discussions and Web sites are now increasingly restricted to Army personnel only. This policy constricts the Army’s marketplace of ideas by preventing civilians from participating in professional discussions about strategy and tactics. Such rules are particularly myopic for an interagency effort like counterinsurgency, where the best ideas may come from academics, contractors, or State Department employees.

Of course, these two paragraphs explain exactly what, far beyond the “aiding al Qaeda” cover story, IS the Army’s real reason for reining in blogs.

Brass hats never like having their intelligence questioned, doubly so in public.

Contrary to myth, the “boots on the ground” don’t support Bush either on Iraq

In a story that’s gotten very little national media play (so much for another tired myth, that of the “liberal media hating the war”) only 35 percent of U.S. forces support the war in Iraq and only 41 percent thought we should have gone there.

No, there’s not been some huge upsurge in liberals in the armed forces, either. And, in a number of related questions in the poll, unvoiced dissatisfaction with Bush policies appears to be growing; on many questions, the “no opinion” numbers hit 20 percent.

The mail-in poll may not be strictly scientific. The authors of the story say it probably weighs in the direction of career members of the military and perhaps a bit higher up the ranks.