The Defense Budget Is Foreign Aid

Paul Krugman’s “Eat The Future” column brings out some interesting statistics on spending cuts that we the wee people want,

That’s the lesson from a new survey by the Pew Research Center, in which Americans were asked whether they favored higher or lower spending in a variety of areas. It turns out that they want more, not less, spending on most things, including education and Medicare. They’re evenly divided about spending on aid to the unemployed and — surprise — defense.

The only thing they clearly want to cut is foreign aid, which most Americans believe, wrongly, accounts for a large share of the federal budget.

Like stashing nuclear weapons research in the Education Department to obscure the fact that it is defense related spending, Defense spending in foreign nations to maintain troop levels and facilities using local, non American labor, has a multiplier effect in all 200 odd nations that the empire benign democratic grandfather has operations in.

That is US taxpayers subsidizing foreign nations under the guise of maintaining the empire Pax Americana.

There is some logic in having Australian shipyards fabricating Naval vessel hull components and assembling those components somewhere else so as to confuse magnetic signatures, if we ever get into another war like WWII, which according to the nuclear doctrine of MAD shouldn’t happen, but who knows, maybe some nation spending a tenth, or hundredth, of what the US does for defense will think to themselves, “Hey! We can do this!”

Which is why we need to cut Pell Grants and such, because college kids might notice this stuff and say, “WTF!”

McCain’s Foreign Policy Experienced Crew

McCain Adviser’s Horrifying Iraq Track Record: Will the Press Notice?

Scheunemann was a crucial Washington backer of Ahmad Chalabi, the now-disgraced Iraqi exile who helped feed the CIA false intelligence on Saddam’s WMD program and has since been accused of giving US state secrets to Iran. In the years leading up to the invasion, the two were so tight that the spokesman for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress shared a Washington address with both CLI and Scheunemann’s private lobbying firm and Scheunemann was mentioned in press reports as a candidate for the job of formal envoy to the Iraqi opposition. During this period, Scheunemann, who acted as a crucial link between Chalabi and John McCain, was a go-to guy for reporters seeking pro-Chalabi quotes. He told The New York Times that Chalabi possessed “tremendous attributes that would be of immeasurable benefit to an Iraq in transition to democracy” and separately called him “an Iraqi patriot.”

Experience you can count on.

State Department Undersecretary for Management Calls Germans Morons

State Dept. Double Standard: Diplomats Barred From Obama’s Berlin Speech, But Not McCain’s In Ottawa»

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Embassy in Berlin “instructed Foreign Service personnel stationed there not to attend Sen. Barack Obama’s [D-IL] public rally” in Tiergarten Park because the event is “‘partisan political activity‘ prohibited under its regulations for those serving overseas.”

The diplomats’ union objected to the ruling, calling it an “unnecessarily narrow interpretation” of the Foreign Affairs Manual. “The fact that you are working for the U.S. government overseas should not preclude political activity that you could engage in in the United States,” one retired senior Foreign Service officer said. But a State official explained the ruling:

But “we always maintain that no U.S. government Foreign Service person overseas should be seen to be advocating one side or the other,” State Department Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy said, adding that “it has nothing to do with who” the candidate is.

“When a German sees you there, they’re not going to think, ‘Oh, he or she is on their off time.’ It’s ‘Oh, they are a Democrat, a Republican, an independent,’ God knows what,” Kennedy said in an interview.

Yeah Americans should refraiin from being seen by Germans altogether, unless of course your a liberal fascist klan loving hate filled political participating far leftist running for President.

The article notes the participation of the State Department directly in McCain’s visit to Canada, which technically, for the geographically impaired McCain, is not overseas, unless John says it is. Then of course the media will report how Saint John of Angry Man has parted the sealed and safe northern border with the waters of life, liberty and the pursuit of coziness.

Ht

Things Still Go Bada Boom

Iraqi police die in suicide blast

At least 15 people have been killed by a female suicide bomber in the northern Iraqi city of Baquba, police say.

I watched as much FOX News this morning so you don’t have to, as I could stand, and the word was the Times admitting the truth about violence in Iraq.

The underlying argument still being the surge was only a military operation with only military goals. All the benchmarks being forgotten. I think they have their panty hose a size to small.

(No collars, I couldn’t tease on that.)

Too Late For Enron

Pipeline opens new front in Afghan war

The pipeline proposal goes back to the 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with California-based Unocal Corp. – and its U.S. government backer – while considering a competing bid by Argentina’s Bridas Corp. Those U.S.-Taliban talks broke down in August, 2001. India, which desperately needs natural gas imports to fuel its growth, later joined the revived project.

Why whatevah do you mean?

Yeah, I Remember Those Iraqi Benchmarks

Democrats no longer talk of the 18 benchmarks for measuring progress in Iraq because so much progress has now taken place.

Well, if the benchmarks were all-important to Democrats in the fall of 2007, they have become meaningless to them in 2008. When is the last time you’ve heard a benchmark reckoning from Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? The reason for the deafening silence on this matter is simple. The military and political progress in Iraq has proved so monumental that the majority of the benchmarks have now been met.

What are Iraq’s Benchmarks?

“The purpose is to infuse a sense of urgency into the political process in Baghdad,” says Andrew Exum, formerly of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“I want to see life starting to come back,” Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) told the New York Times in mid-2007. “I want to see people in markets.” Other lawmakers have pressed for more specific metrics to gauge whether or not the surge is working. “The key question is: What have we won?” asks Exum. “Have we set the Iraqi government on a path toward stabilization or reconciliation? Or have we just won the right to stay in the country for another six months?”

“It makes sense to have benchmarks as a part of our discussion on how to go forward,” Mr. Bush said, even as he threatened to veto the House plan, approved on a 221-to-205 vote Thursday night, which would require him to seek approval in two months for the balance of the war money.

Obvious an ingenious political ploy to cover up the pigeon dung on the bench,

Government Benchmarks:
Perform constitutional review. – Unmet
Enact de-Ba’athification reform. – Partial
Form semi-autonomous regions. – Unmet
Hold provincial elections. – Unmet
Address amnesty. – Unmet
Establish support for Baghdad Security Plan. – Met
Ensure minority rights in Iraqi legislature. – Met
Keep Iraqi Security Forces free from partisan interference. – Unmet

Security Benchmarks:
Disarm militias. – Unmet
Provide military support in Baghdad. – Partial
Empower Iraqi Security Forces. – Partial
Ensure impartial law enforcement. – Unmet
Establish support for Baghdad Security Plan by Maliki government. – Unmet
Reduce sectarian violence. – Partial
Establish neighborhood security in Baghdad. – Met
Increase independent Iraqi Security Forces. – Unmet

Economic Benchmarks:
Implement oil legislation. – Unmet
Distribute Iraqi resources equitably. – Partial

Heh heh, my my.

Feed Bumped

The First Casualty Of War Is Truth

The death just gets stretched out by the proponents. The cake walk became a quagmire, and the six month surge has been going on for a year and half. But given enough time…

Update:Michael Ware has been pointing out for years why we can’t just withdraw from Iraq, and this PM he was pretty blunt about Iran, that for the most part most of Iraqi factions are proxies of Iran. That’s one elephant, the other is that this is an American made mess.

Everyone in the region has played us. Everyone.

We can blame the has been all we want, but America, as a nation, is responsible for destabilizing the Middle East.(this wasn’t even close to accurate) All the told you so’s won’t change that, and so I fail to see how listening to the same people that got us into this mess is going to be of any use since they are going to say whatever is necessary to salve their own egos.

This is after all what they spent their lives working to become, experts, and now that they are discredited by the reality of Iraq as it is, they will talk up another one over and over again until one finally works. Frankly I don’t really care to hear from the original pie in the sky experts. These are the dogs that are chasing their own tails and can’t hunt. Surely in this nation we have more experts than the ones who got us into this mess.

News Flash for Neo-Cons- real men go to Tehran- to negotiate. It’s bad enough you’ve passed the cost of the war on to our children and grandchildren, but apparently your ideology demands they fight your misbegotten war as well.

Update: I included a link to an article or post that is more informative.

Oh Obsoletely, The Cold War II

You would think that conservatives would understand the huge difference between having troops in Korea, Japan and Germany, and the current conflict, the treaty impositions of an all out war, and the shock and ahhh, of Iraq.

John McCain is stuck in his generations world view, World War Two and the silent absorption of the liabilities of the British Empire. It has nothing to do with his biological age, I hope he lives to a hundred and still works rubics cubes. But we can ill afford a President that is still slaying dragons from a mythological era.

(I tightened it up bit)