Antiwar.com Blog

That’s the projected price of “defense” for 2004. Why so much higher than the $399 billion Pentagon budget request?

Many of the Pentagon’s new expenses are unplanned, indirect consequences of the continued fighting. The Army, for instance, is shipping home and reconditioning the tanks and combat vehicles that spearheaded last spring’s attack on Baghdad.

That unanticipated cost is $12 billion to $19 billion this year and each year on into the future as forces rotate through the combat zones, Army Gen. Paul Kern, who oversees the effort, said in an interview. … Continue reading “$461,000,000,000”

Five years ago, NATO bombers that terrorized Serbia kept above 15,000 feet in fear of ground defenses, which had downed many drones, cruise missiles and even a couple of aircraft (including the famous F-117 Stealth).
In two weeks, the Serbian military will destroy the last of its shoulder-launched anti-air missiles, under a program quietly initiated last year and funded by the US government, announced Reuters today. Continue reading “Serbia destroys air defenses?”

The Japanese Defense Ministry has made clear that criticism of the upcoming deployment could result in a “news blackout.” However, the Japanese news media does not seem to be willing to fall into lockstep with government propaganda and censor themselves as so many of America’s media outlets have sadly done since 9-11.

Ahead of its most sensitive dispatch of troops abroad since World War II, the Japanese government has warned media not to “obstruct” its mission in Iraq or face a news blackout, a stance that has local critics fuming. A letter to the media from the Defence Agency last week was labelled by critics as a reminder of Japan’s wartime censorship, and an affront to the freedoms it pledged to help restore in war-battered Iraq.

“Japan’s militant nationalism has gone, but the methods for controlling the Japanese media have remained,” Teruo Ariyama, a journalism professor at Tokyo Keizai University, told AFP. “The Japan Defence Agency will decide what information is safe or not and no one can inspect what the standard is,” Ariyama said.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters the requests “just means that we want you to report while taking security issues into consideration.” But analysts said the intention was just the opposite. “This is no different than the (wartime propaganda) ‘Announcement from Imperial General Headquarters’,” wrote Rikkyo University mass media professor Takaaki Hattori in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. “The brazen, anachronistic attitude of the Defence Agency is nothing short of amazing,” he wrote.

News outlets insisted they would exercise their own judgment as to what to report. Publicly funded network Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) said it would continue to report developments on the ground “as they happen”. “It is the role of news organisations to answer the public’s right to know,” it said in a statement to AFP. “Even if we take into consideration the safety of troops, we cannot accept the Defence Agency’s request as it is.”

First article

UPDATE: An additional article from The Japan Times covers this matter as well as security leaks believed to be coming from the Defense Agency. (Note their banner motto: “All The News Without Fear or Favor.”)

Second article

That possibility has been brought up by a close aide to the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani:

KUWAIT, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Iraq’s most revered Shi’ite cleric could issue an edict that would ban Iraqis backing a U.S.-appointed council and spark mass protests if Washington does not hold direct elections, a close aide said on Thursday.

“The imam insists on his opinion that general and comprehensive elections should be conducted in all regions of Iraq so that the Iraqi people will have the final say,” Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Mohri, a Kuwait-based aide to Sistani, told Reuters.

“He (Sistani) also says we don’t accept letting people from outside rule, and by that the imam means the coalition forces.”

…Mohri earlier told Abu Dhabi television Sistani would issue a religious edict if the U.S. administrator in Iraq ignored his opinion. “If Bremer rejects…Ayatollah Sistani’s opinion, he would issue a fatwa depriving the U.S-appointed council of its legitimacy,” he said.

“After this, the Iraqi people will not obey this council, as it will be a caricatural council named by Americans.”

Read complete article

It’s funny, but Bill Evers used to be one of those libertarians who went around giving everyone else a purity test, and he often found them wanting. Back in the good old days, he used to write a column for Libertarian Vanguard, the newspaper of the Radical Caucus, called “Brickbats and Bouquets,” in which he handed out kudos and judo chops to those that, in his view, deserved them. The ideologially pure were praised, and the deviationists were denounced in no uncertain terms. How fitting that he – the self-appointed enforcer of libertarian political correctness turned apostate, who makes Judas Iscariot look like Horatio at the bridge — should now be the recipient of one of the biggest brickbats of all time.

Oh, but don’t hold it against him. I, for one, am glad to see that Bill has finally settled down and found himself a decent job. After all, how long can you pretend to be a grad student – at the age of fifty-something?

Today’s Wall Street Journal as an OpEd by one of my oldest friends.

I got involved with the libertarian movement in 1972. One of the first libertarians I met and quickly became friends with was Bill Evers. In 1973 I initiated a faction fight in California’s Peace and Freedom Party (which I had been active in for a few years) between libertarians and socialists. By 1974 we had won a statewide primary fight and took control of the legal structure of the Party.

Bill Evers was one of the intellectual guiding lights for our successful faction. He co-wrote the 1974 platform of the California Peace and Freedom Party, which was unabashedly libertarian and specifically Rothbardian. Later that year, Murray Rothbard changed his earlier position and joined and endorsed the young Libertarian Party (LP).

At the 1975 national LP convention, Murray Rothbard and Bill Evers rewrote the party platform. The essential hardcore elements of the Rothbard-Evers platform continue today, partly due to LP rules which make it extremely difficult to change platform planks.

In 1978, Justin Raimondo, Bob Costello, and I formed the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus (LPRC) to continue to move the LP toward more principled stands, with a central focus on foreign policy. Shortly after the formation of the LPRC, Bill Evers joined and urged Murray Rothbard to do the same. We expanded the LPRC Central Committee to include Bill and Murray. Bill’s friends Colin Hunter and Scott Olmsted soon joined the Central Committee.

For the next few years (also the heyday years of the LP), the LPRC grew and gained influence within the LP. In 1983 the LPRC dissolved after the Central Committee split over the choice of a Presidential nominee for the LP. At the time, Bill Evers attacked Raimondo and me for "selling out" by supporting the Cato Institute-affiliated candidate, Earl Ravenal, over the "hardcore libertarian" choice of David Bergland.

During his involvement with the LP, I remember Bill Evers as Murray Rothbard’s closest associate, practically joined at the hip. The pair were explicit anarchists and proud enemies of the state.

In the 1990s Bill became a Republican and began his campaign to get a "high" government job. Bill was largely unsuccessful, landing only a low-level advisory position, rather than the assistant cabinet status he has been seeking, with a focus on the federal and California departments of education, while working at the Hoover Institution. The War on Terror changed everything, including for Bill. There was now an important connection (for the Empire) between the Department of Education and the Pentagon. Bill, with his unrivaled expertise in foreign affairs, soon became a more valuable asset.

In August 2003, Hoover announced that Bill was appointed senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Education. Actually, he would be working for the Pentagon via the Coalition Provisional Authority. Bill returned last month to Hoover as a hero, with his political future much brighter. In today’s article in the Wall Street Journal, Bill describes how successful the Pentagon has been at restoring public eduation in Iraq.

When Bill ran for Congress in 1982, he called for withdrawal of all US forces from around the world. He even made a point of calling for the abolition of the Marine Corps, in a challenge to his opponent, noted antiwar Republican (and ex-Marine) Paul McClosky.

I don’t know when Bill became pro-war, but I understand that he was a strong advocate of the invasion of Iraq, egging on the Stanford College Republicans to support the war.

Is Murray Rothbard rolling over in his grave?