Donald Rumsfeld went on the NPR show Marketplace in an attempt to promote his new book, but he was met with perhaps the hardest questioning he’s ever faced.
This clip from the Majority Report, live M-F at 12 noon EST and via daily podcast at Majority.FM
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“We hope this information will serve to eliminate some of the myths surrounding the Pentagon and give an appreciation of the size of this building.”
RT’s Lori Harfenist, “The Resident,” explores stories of every day life—and some interesting trivia, too!—from the U.S. military industrial war machine. Smiles, everyone! Smiles!
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According to the Pentagon, the production and acquisition costs of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, the military’s most expensive weapons program, have risen yet again, this time by 4.3% since 2010 to $395.6 billion. If you’re talking about the total cost of the system, including maintenance and support for the nearly 2,500 planes that will some (endlessly delayed) day be produced for the military, that has now reached an estimated $1.51 trillion, a 9% rise since 2010. All this for a plane that some experts doubt has any particular purpose in the future U.S. arsenal.
At last, however, the House of Representatives seems to have had enough of wasteful spending programs. Perhaps its members also read the recent poll that shows Americans generally support more funds for the Defense Department — until, that is, they are told just how much is spent on defense compared to other budget items. Then, 75% of them (67% of Republicans) back significant cuts, an average of 18%, in that budget to reduce the federal deficit.
Whatever the explanation, last week the Republican-dominated House finally took out the pruning shears and acted with remarkable decisiveness. They sent a bill to the Senate cutting $310 billion from the deficit over the next decade. The F-35 program went down in flames.
Oh wait, that’s my mistake. Actually, they slashed food stamps, children’s health care, funds to hospitals that serve the poor, and Medicaid — all in order to shield the Pentagon from future cuts. In fact, the House bill actually adds more than $8 billion to the Pentagon budget. As the New York Times reports, if the House bill were to become law, “the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that more than 20 million children would face reduced food and nutrition support, almost 300,000 would be knocked off the federal school lunch program, and at least 300,000 would lose access to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.”
-Tom Engelhardt
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His victims were all asleep as the 38-year-old US staff sergeant began trying, door by door, to force himself into the mud-walled homes of Afghan farmers.
Eventually, a lock gave way, and the gunshots that killed the first of 16 civilians meant the others, mostly women and children, were awake when he arrived to murder them, said Agha Lalai Dastgiri, a senior official charged with investigating the shooting spree in the early hours of Sunday morning. -The Guardian
A senior U.S. defense official in Washington rejected witness accounts that several apparently drunk soldiers were involved. “Based on the preliminary information we have this account is flatly wrong,” the official said. “We believe one U.S. service member acted alone, not a group of U.S. soldiers.” -Reuters
So familiar…
“It was just a small massacre in the context of much greater atrocities,
much bigger massacres.”
~Noam Chomsky~
AND THANK YOU SO MUCH
FOR READING ALONG!
And please remember,
Sang Lee is dead.
