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Pentagon’s New Robots Eye Creepy New ‘Flex Fuel’

Will Future US Military Vehicles, Robots Feast on the Flesh of the Slain?

The real downside to the Pentagon’s planned army of merciless killbots, besides the inevitable robot rebellion (which the Pentagon is spending billions trying to head off) is all that fuel. Robots need really big batteries, or internal combustion engines, or something. No matter how they’re powered though, it’s not free. Until now.

A Pentagon contractor in Maryland is now working on a robot that can forage for its own food. It could use any biomass in the area. And lets face it, in any really big war there’s plenty of biomass just lying around all shot up or bombed to death and not doing anything for the war effort. So the robots, and potentially vehicles based on the same design, will be feeding off the flesh of slain humans to continue on their mission to slay humans and feed off their flesh.

Besides the obvious ethical issues of creating man-eating, killer robots (which presumably don’t concern the Pentagon any more than the non-man-eating but still killer robots did), the plan will also raise serious concerns about the reliability of body counts. It is difficult enough to get an accurate death toll out of the military when villages present the bodies to local officials. Imagine the skepticism if the villagers have to explain that Pentagon battle droids consumed all the slain villagers and sped off for more mayhem.

Bill Marina, RIP

Revisionist historian William Marina died this morning of a heart attack. Bill was a great libertarian and friend of the late Murray Rothbard.

I encountered Bill several times in the 1970s and always enjoyed his wit and wonderful conversation.

Thanks to Gary North for this sad news. Check out Lew Rockwell’s brief obit. Gary North has a longer obit on Wednesday’s LewRockwell.com.

Check out a few of Bill’s articles:

The Anti-War March on Washington: The Real Issue Is Empire

Holding Up a Mirror to the Face of U.S. â€œExceptionalismâ€

The Three Stooges in Iraq, and the U.S.’s First Stooge

Empires as Ages of Religious Ignorance

Here are Bill’s archives at LewRockwell.com

Bill Marina, we will miss you.

Update: Read David Beito’s post at The Beacon (Independent Institute)

McNamara: A War Criminal, a Liar, and a Director of the Washington Post company

In its obituary article on Robert McNamara today, the Washington Post mentions that McNamara was a director of the Washington Post company.

Was that honor bestowed because of McNamara’s lies or because of his war crimes?

Or maybe he was just a really really great dinner guest at the homes of Post editors and owners.

And people wonder why the Washington Post grovels and helps cover up Leviathan’s worst abuses….

Bock on Sabbatical

Antiwar.com columnist Alan Bock will be taking a break from his weekly column while he finishes writing a book. Be sure to check out today’s installment, “Independence, Empire Donâ€™t Mesh.”

Obama’s Ludicrous Declaration on Torture Day

President Obama issued his statement on the United Nations International Day in Support of Torture Victims.

I wonder if Obama’s ghostwriter was wearing hip boots when this statement was put together.

The opening of his statement could have been recycled from the George W. Bush years: “Torture is contrary to the founding documents of our country, and the fundamental values of our people.”

Obama declares that torture “surrenders the moral authority that must form the basis for just leadership. That is why the United States must never engage in torture, and must stand against torture wherever it takes place.” (He neglected to mention that the U.S. is also obliged to never release any photos documenting torture – unless the torture was committed by foreign governments who were not allied to the U.S.).

Obama declared: “My administration is committed to taking concrete actions against torture and to address the needs of its victims… My budget request for fiscal year 2010 includes continued support for international and domestic groups working to rehabilitate torture victims.”

Well now ain’t that just dandy.

Spending U.S. tax dollars for private groups aiding torture victims supposedly compensates for Obama’s coverup of the evidence of U.S. government torture and his de facto pardon of all the torturers and torture policymakers.

Guarding the Surge Narrative While Iraq Burns

Looking atÂ Margaret and Jason’s close monitoring of the continued bloodshed in Iraq– something like 300 IraqisÂ dead in bombings since last Monday — it’s becoming clear that nothing short of a nuclear bomb dropped on the Green Zone will get administration officials and their supporters in the Washington military establishment to acknowledge that something is really wrong in Baghdad.

There is obviously an agenda , and that agenda is to let the Iraqis have their holiday over our supposed departure on June 30. As I have written, and as Erik Leaver and Daniel Atzmon suggest today, there are a lot of smoke and mirrors engaged here and no one really knows how many U.S troops and private contractors will remain in trouble spots like Baghdad and Mosul after the end of the month.

But this is just one thread of the agenda. The integrity of the Surge Narrative is vital, and any sense that the stability gained in the last year is beginning to dissolve will put a lot of assumptions about the so-called “population-centric” Petraeus Doctrine (“clear, hold and build”) into serious question. That is probably why speakers at the big Center for A New American Security confab were pretty adamant that the recent violence is the mark of al Qaeda “remnants,” and definitely not a reanimated Sunni insurgency. No surprise that retired Gen. Jack Keane, known as the “godfather of the surge” for his work in writing the “plan for success” with Frederick Kagan at AEI and the “new” counterinsurgency manual with Petraeus in 2006, was on hand to suggest we don’t “overreact” to the recent bombings in Iraq.

“The security situation in Iraq is truly a good one,” Keane asserted from the dais of the Willard Continental Hotel ballroom on June 11, a day after a car bomb ripped through a market, killing 30 people in Nasiriyah. Sure there were spates of violence, but “that doesn’t justify the troop presence we have.”

Maybe not. A lot of us don’t think a six-year occupation was justified in the first place. But that seems to be beside the point right now. People like Keane and the aforementioned administration officials are bent on playing down the heartbreaking,Â relentless fragility of a people we deemed necessary to liberate and manipulate to our own geopolitical ends. But yet everyday the violence gets worse and the civil and political situation remains well, a basket case. Rather than suggest, perhaps, the Surge fell short of its exalted goals and gloried, storied distinctions, they will ignore what is right in front of their faces. Political expediency still reigns. If anyone thinks it will be any different for the people of Afghanistan (our other war) a year from now, I have a market to sell them in Adhamiyah.