Today’s Washington Post informs us that “for the holidays, the spies say they’ll scrimp.” [W]ith budget cuts looming, party plans are being pared back for the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA. … Under then-director Leon E. Panetta last year, the CIA brought in shipments of California wine, and served fried oysters, grilled shrimp [...]
That’s the title of a timely paper by MIT researcher Dr. Cindy Williams [.pdf]. The summary points: 1. The United States currently devotes about 4.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to national defense and another 1.5 percent to broader security efforts, including international affairs, homeland security, veterans’ affairs, and intelligence. 2. What share of [...]
The Project on Defense Alternatives sends along “Pentagon Cuts in Context: No Reason for ‘Doomsday’ Hysteria” [.pdf]. Key points: * The Budget Control Act (BCA) provides for assured caps and reductions on Pentagon spending only if the Joint Select Committee – the “super committee” – fails in its mission or if Congress fails to accept [...]
Can YOUR card do this? AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you how war fits into this. I mean, you co-wrote the book with Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War. How does war fit into our problems with the economy? JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, war fits in because you’re creating a liability, you’re spending money. And [...]
At 8:16 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the world got a glimpse of its own mortality. At that moment, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a fireball that sent waves of searing heat, then a deafening concussion, across the landscape. Three days later, a second bomb hit Nagasaki. … [President Dwight D.] [...]
“The entire COIN strategy [the COunterINsurgency strategy engineered by Petraeus and McCrystal et.al.] is a fraud perpetuated on the American people,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the [...]
