http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed144.html

I wonder whether the United States hadn’t ought to re-ponder the place of the military in society and in the world. There is not the slightest chance that this will happen, but wondering has not yet been forbidden. It appears to me that bureaucratic clotting set in years back, and is now having its effect in spheres martial. A robust economy can afford frivolities that one in derobustion cannot. And that is where America is.

The US military is the military of World War II, but with better technology. The Navy still consists of carriers surrounded by ships intended to protect the carriers. The heart of the army is still armored and infantry divisions with artillery and close-air support. The Air Force too. All are designed to fight enemies like themselves. However, there are no enemies like themselves, and WWII forces do not well fight the enemies they do have, such as ragtag dispersed guerrillas, because they are not intended to fight them.

Why a World War II military? Because of institutional inertia, because men delight in fast, powerful things that make loud and stirring noises, because the ships and tanks and submarines are magnificent. Relinquishing them is too painful to contemplate. Instead of changing its forces to suit present needs, the Pentagon keeps them as they are and tries to use them where they do not work well.

WWII militaries are intended to destroy expensive point targets and to conquer crucial territory. For example, they try to destroy the enemy’s aircraft and conquer his cities. This America does very well indeed. The difficulty is that dispersed guerrillas do not have any expensive point targets, crucial territory, or cities. The Pentagon is using baseball bats to fight mosquitoes. The absurdity of using a B1 intercontinental bomber for close air support is manifest. But you’ve got the plane, the pilots don’t want to miss the war, and so you find something for them to bomb.

A current American weakness is that it has a small army. Controlling large countries full of dispersed enemies requires large armies. America’s is a small army because it is an All Volunteer army. Not many young men want to be soldiers. The Pentagon likes the All-Vol for two reasons. First, volunteer soldiers are much better than unwilling short-term conscriptees. Second, the public doesn’t care if volunteers get killed. After all, they volunteered. They come from blue-collar families. These regard the death of a son as a noble sacrifice rather than a human sacrifice for large commercial firms. And they have little political influence anyway.

This matters. The Pentagon has learned that it cannot sustain a war in the face of united public opposition. If students in college were drafted, hell would follow. The key is not to disturb the public, which the military recognizes as more of a danger than the enemy actually being fought.

The true enemy, always, is the press. Should reporters turn against a war, they would rouse that great sleeping Public Monster, and then the military would face a war on two fronts. Fortunately the press consists of a few large corporations and holding companies owned by people of the same social class, who are not opposed to the current wars.

Since World War II, political power has become increasingly concentrated in the presidency, the concentration having become very rapid in recent years. Most crucially, the Congress has relinquished its power to decide whether the country goes to war. Thus wars are no longer determined by the national interest but by presidential whim. These whims can be directed by the desires of the president’s friends, by powerful groups with agendas, by writers at intellectual magazines. Quite often these know nothing of war. And the military by enshrining obedience avoids responsibility.

The US is phenomenally if discreetly militarized. The country is neither a democracy, nor a government of laws, nor of men, but an oligarchy of lobbies that press for whatever is of benefit to themselves, though not necessarily to the country. The underlying principle is that honey attracts flies. The federal government collects vast sums in taxes and the lobbies come to get it.

In the military racket, the money is in big-ticket weaponry. The carriers, Aegis boats, subs, fighters, tanks, B1s, B2s, and satellites sell for billions. These sums attract a vast aerospace industry that would collapse without sales to the military. The Pentagon is a captive market, and often a haven for firms that couldn’t compete in the commercial marketplace.

Much of this money goes for pricey gear that is both unknown to the public and of little use for the wars the country fights (but probably shouldn’t). To hide a program from the public, you don’t have to make it secret, which would only draw attention. Just don’t talk about it. The press, which is owned by big business and manned by reporters of preternatural technical puzzlement, will say little. For examples, search on JSF, F22, V22, ABL, and ABM.

As always, the key is to avoid waking the public. Thus the military avoids attention. But add up overt and hidden military expenditure: the “defense” budget, appropriations for the wars, the black programs, the Veterans Administration, the national laboratories, TSA, and so on. The sum is backbreaking for a nation in decline, but the public knows neither that it is backbreaking nor that the country is in decline.

To countries competing with the US, as for example Japan, the American military budget is a godsend, the equivalent of a golf handicap on a rival, because it represents money the US cannot spend to become more competitive. Fortunately for Asia, American military expenditure cannot readily be cut back. Too many jobs, military towns, and corporate profits depend on it. Consequently China builds infrastructure while the US builds fighter planes. The only plausible brake will be conflict with Social Security and Medicare, cuts in which will wake the Public Monster.

The illusion of omnipotence dies hard. The American military has been dominant for so long that neither it nor Americans can grasp that there are limits to its power. America now tries militarily to encircle Russia, Iran, and China, which increasingly looks like an aging pit bull trying to encircle a herd of moose. The Pentagon is planning for a war with China and talks of “Full Spectrum Dominance.” The current government in Washington wants to attack Iran and Pakistan, threatens Syria and Venezuela, and seems bent on igniting another Cold War with Russia (if one ignites cold wars). The Army is to be expanded.

Meanwhile China builds infrastructure.

Taylor Ranked # 1 in the Midwest by U.S.News

08.22.2008

Taylor University has been named the number one Baccalaureate College in the Midwest in the just-released 2009 U.S.News & World Report survey, America’s Best Colleges. It is Taylor’s second straight top ranking and follows ten straight top-three finishes.

Taylor earned 100 rating points while second-place Ohio Northern University (Ohio) received 92 points. Augustana (South Dakota) jumped to third with 86 points. Cedarville (Ohio) and Northwestern College (Iowa) rounded out the top five with a fifth-place tie, scoring 80 points.

Among the Midwest Best Baccalaureate Colleges, Taylor scored high marks in several fields of criteria: first in Freshmen in the Top 25% of their High School Graduating Class (’07), Average Freshman Retention Rate and Average Graduation Rate; and second in Peer Assessment Score and Alumni Giving Rate.

“We are filled with gratitude to God for this honor for Taylor University,” said Dr. Eugene B. Habecker, Taylor University president. “The only appropriate response to this exciting news is praise and thanksgiving to God for the great things He has been doing at Taylor.

“We are deeply appreciative of this external validation from a well-respected publication that has been refining the collegiate survey and ranking process for well over 20 years,” he added. “This accomplishment is shared by every member of our community-from our students, alumni, faculty and staff, to our parents, Board of Trustees and friends-and it again reflects that this Christ-centered University attracts gifted people who together strive to accomplish great things for the Kingdom of God.”

Taylor was also ranked third among Midwest Baccalaureate Colleges in the Great Schools, Great Prices portion of the survey.

“We appreciate the recognition from U.S.News, as it speaks to the return on investment made by students, their families and the Taylor faculty,” said Steve Mortland, dean of enrollment. “There are basic benchmarks by which we can hold ourselves accountable, but there are also intangible aspects of a Taylor education that reinforce its true value. We are collaboratively investing in more than four years and degree programs, but in people who are creating change.”

A complete list of the U.S. News and World Report rankings is available online at www.usnews.com.

About Taylor University: Founded in 1846, Taylor University is an interdenominational liberal arts university of evangelical faith located in Upland, Ind. The 2009 U.S. News and World Report survey America’s Best Colleges ranked Taylor the number one Baccalaureate College in the Midwest. It marked Taylor’s second straight top ranking following ten straight years of being ranked in the region’s Top Three.

Taylor University is a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU).

McCAIN UNFIT TO SERVE
AS SENATOR HE ABANDONED AMERICAN POWS 
 
By: Bill Hendon & John LeBoutillier

Ed. note: This message from former U.S. Congressmen Bill Hendon (R-NC) and John LeBoutillier (R-NY) is being posted today on numerous military blogs and websites.

He [McCain] has told me several times over the years that the myth of live POWs was a cruel hoax on the families. He chaired hearings into the issue in the 1990s and found nothing. “The committee … pored over thousands of records and every claim of a sighting, no matter how outlandish,” says Salter. “It was all untrue.”

Jonathan Alter, When Ross Perot Calls…, Newsweek.com January 16, 2008

Senator John McCain’s heroic and inspiring wartime service in Vietnam notwithstanding, we know from personal experience he is not fit to serve as Commander-in-Chief of America’s armed forces. Here is how we know this:

In mid-summer 1991, the U.S. Senate created the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs and charged it with conducting a no-holds-barred investigation into the long-festering matter of American POWs reportedly still held captive by the Communist North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao. On the day the legislation creating the Select Committee was passed, August 2, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted nationwide showed that 69% of Americans surveyed believed that Americans were still held captive in Southeast Asia and 75% believed the U.S. government wasn’t doing enough to get them home.

Following months of negotiations between the committee and a very reluctant George H. W. Bush administration, committee intelligence investigators were finally able to obtain the postwar intelligence files relating to live POWs. Committee investigators spent some 2,700 man hours vetting, analyzing and crosschecking the postwar intelligence. They found it a textbook blend of human intelligence (HUMINT); intercepts of secret enemy radio traffic (SIGINT), and images taken by unmanned reconnaissance drones and U.S. spy satellites (IMINT). The committee’s intelligence investigators told the senators that collectively the intelligence indicated the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao had held back hundreds of POWs at Operation Homecoming in 1973 and that many were still alive in captivity during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

By the time committee investigators finally began briefing the senators in secret sessions in early spring, 1992, the issue of live POWs had become, as McCain later described it, “white hot;” this not only because of intense public interest in the plight of the POWs, but also because Texas businessman and longtime POW advocate H. Ross Perot had entered the presidential race, and had done so amid press accounts that he thought President Bush was not doing enough to bring the POWs home. By late May Perot was in first place in the national polls, ahead of President Bush, who was in second place, and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Governor Bill Clinton, who was in third. What would the committee find? Might a ruling that 69% of the American people were right and that, in fact, there were live POWs still held half a world away throw the election to Perot? How could it not?

Enter John McCain.

Given his wartime experiences as a POW in Vietnam, Sen. John McCain was by default the most powerful and influential member of the Select Committee. Members on both sides of the aisle deferred to his judgment; reporters hung on his every pronouncement. And so when McCain, his chief of staff Mark Salter and their allies on the Select Committee joined forces with top Bush administration officials to assail, ridicule, attack, discredit, photoshop, retouch, manipulate, massage and/or “cherry-pick” the intelligence in order to destroy its intelligence value and keep the matter of live POWs from becoming an issue in the 1992 election, the live POWs never had a chance.

How McCain and Salter and the others went about doing this is a case study in how powerful government officials can manipulate intelligence to make it say what they want it to say – and the main reason we believe that John McCain must not be Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces.

During that spring and summer of 1992, McCain and the other members of the committee were briefed on some 925 HUMINT reports the investigators had deemed plausible, credible. These intelligence reports were some of the several thousand reports the U.S. government had received from human sources who testified they had personally observed or had been told or had otherwise learned about American servicemen in captivity after Operation Homecoming. Many of the reports corroborated one another as to location, time and circumstance, e.g., independent sources repeatedly reported seeing American POWs being held in the same area; in the same town or village, and/or at the exact same prison at the same time or over a period of time – and, of course, absent IMINT and/or SIGINT, corroboration by independent human sources is the best lie detector ever devised by man. But what did McCain and Salter make of this crucial intelligence? Not one of these reports of American POWs held prisoner after Operation Homecoming was credible, they loudly declared; instead, all 925 sources were either (1) lying, or (2) confused about what he or she had actually seen. Not one report, McCain and Salter declared, related to American POWs trapped in Indochina after Operation Homecoming.

The SIGINT – the half-dozen or so postwar intercepts of secret Pathet Lao radio transmissions where the PL were heard describing how, when, where and/or why they were holding and/or moving American POWs from one point to another inside their country – got the same treatment. When analyzed carefully by committee intelligence investigators and cross-checked with the HUMINT, it was clear these postwar radio intercepts alone collectively described the confinement and/or movement of well over 100 American POWs inside Laos. McCain’s and Salter’s ruling? Same as with the POWs described in the HUMINT, “nothing to any of it. All radio intercepts are false.”

Finally came the IMINT – the priceless postwar satellite images showing missing pilots’ names, their official secret four-digit authenticators, secret USAF/USN escape and evasion (E&E) codes given to them and/or other “I’m alive, get me the hell out of here” messages our men had laid out on the ground in hopes U.S. spy satellites would image their plea and rescue forces would be dispatched – and the similar, shocking result. A missing USAF flight officer’s name along with a valid USAF/USN escape and evasion code imaged in a field adjacent to a prison in northern Vietnam on June 5, 1992 – photoshopped right out of the image, disappeared, gone! Nineteen four-digit authenticators matching those of missing airmen imaged in rice paddies along Route 4 in northern Laos – similarly photoshopped right out of the satellite image! The name of another USAF pilot and four digit number laid out beside a jungle road in northern Laos – “naturally occurring shadows on the ground,” they said. A valid E&E code followed by the four-digit authenticator of another USAF flight officer in a field adjacent to a prison in northern Vietnam – “natural shadings in the field … not man-made intentional signals.” The letters “USA,” each 12 feet tall and together stretching over 37 feet across, and below them a huge 24 foot tall by 19 feet across valid secret USAF/USN E&E code imaged in a rice paddy in northern Laos – “a young Laotian boy’s handiwork that he had copied off an envelope,” McCain and Salter “explained” in McCain’s 2002 memoir Worth the Fighting For. And on and on it went. (See two versions of map of Indochina showing the 925 postwar HUMINT reports [pins color-coded by DOI] and how they cluster and corroborate one another, and the postwar SIGINT and IMINT hits [yellow squares] at http://www.thepowerhour.com/news3/maps_bill_hendon.htm ). Also see An Enormous Crime, cover photo and Chapter 31, “1992, The Fragging.”

John McCain could have saved these men but chose not to. For that reason – and because one can photoshop pleas for help out of desert sand and/or rocky, mountain terrain just as easily as one can photoshop them out of jungle terrain, fields and rice paddies – he must not be accorded the highest and most sacred of all honors – that of serving as Commander-in-Chief of America’s armed forces.

~~~~~~~~~

Former Congressman Hendon is co-author with attorney Elizabeth Stewart of the 2007 New York Times bestseller, AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press). Ms. Stewart’s father is missing in action in northern Vietnam. In reviewing their book, Publisher’s Weekly declared “Controversial former North Carolina congressman Hendon and attorney Stewart make the case that the U.S. knowingly left hundreds of POWs in Vietnam and Laos in 1973, and that every presidential administration since then has covered it up.” (Publishers Weekly, week of April 9, 2007) Kirkus Reviews wrote that An Enormous Crime is “[a] sprawling indictment of eight U.S. administrations. Hendon and Stewart…appear nonpartisan in their disdain for governmental inaction and double-dealing. A convincing, urgent argument.” (Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2007) An Enormous Crime is currently available at some 400 libraries in the continental U.S. and overseas. (See list of libraries). You can read almost 100 pages of the book free of charge by going to Google Book Search here.

Hendon served two terms on the U.S. House Task Force on POW/MIA Affairs; as consultant on POW/MIA Affairs with an office in the Pentagon in 1983, and as an intelligence investigator assigned full-time to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs during 1991 and 1992. He has appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes, ABC’s 20/20, Dateline NBC, ABC’s Good Morning America, the NBC Today Show, Saturday Today, CNN’s Larry King Live and on a number of network news and talk shows.

Former Congressman LeBoutillier served on the U.S. House Task Force on POW/MIA Affairs and is the author of VIETNAM NOW; The Case for Normalization (Praeger). He is a NewsMax.com pundit and a nationally recognized political commentator. Mr. LeBoutillier rose to national prominence in 1974 when, as a college student at Harvard, he raised over a quarter million dollars for a former Republican challenger against South Dakota Senator George McGovern. Mr. LeBoutillier’s efforts caught the notice of President Ford’s re-election campaign and in 1976 he was appointed regional coordinator, responsible for all field activities in New Jersey.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College, Mr. LeBoutillier completed a master’s degree at Harvard Business School.

Mr. LeBoutillier has been a prolific writer, beginning with his best-selling book Harvard Hates America (October 1978). Later he authored Vietnam Now (September 1989) and co-authored Primary, a novel (September 1979). He has contributed to many major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

In 1980, Mr. LeBoutillier was elected to represent New York’s 6th District. He defeated a 16-year Democrat incumbent and became the youngest member of the 97th Congress. In the House, Congressman LeBoutillier served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as a member of Special House POW/MIA Task Force.

After leaving Congress, Mr. LeBoutillier continued to be active in POW/MIA affairs. He currently runs Account for POW/MIA Inc., dedicated to recovering living American POWs in Southeast Asia. He also has been a frequent commentator and host of several media programs. He is a frequent guest on radio and television shows. In 1981 he conducted an exclusive interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn for NBC’s Tomorrow show. He has hosted radio talk show programs on WMCA radio and WABC radio. In 1984, Mr. LeBoutillier interviewed Richard M. Nixon for the ABC Network radio in his first live network radio appearance since leaving the White House. He has been a frequent guest on many national talk show programs, including the Today show, ABC’s 20/20, Nightline and CNN’s Crossfire.

Both men have traveled extensively to South and Southeast Asia on behalf of America’s POWs and MIAs. Hendon has visited the region some 33 times; LeBoutillier a dozen times.

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/53228.html

Must the Government Combat Americans’ Addiction to Foreign Bananas?

Americans, we are told again and again, are “addicted to foreign oil” and “in love with the automobile.” These phrases are so common in news commentaries that they glide past our intellect almost unnoticed. Yet, they are the sheerest claptrap, and the arguments that accompany them are a waste of the electrons required to carry them along in the World Wide Web.

Suppose a serious policy of “energy independence” were actually implemented, rather than being merely spewed out along with the rest of the political hot air. Would we be better off? Absolutely not. We would be vastly poorer because we would have to sacrifice a great deal more of the non-oil products we now produce and consume in order to acquire the petroleum products we demanded.

In a sense, every good or service we wish to consume raises the same question: make or buy? If we choose to make it ourselves, we must forgo the value of the goods we might have produced had we allocated our time, effort, and other resources in alternative ways–in the economist’s lingo, there’s an opportunity cost. If we choose to buy the desired good or service instead of making it ourselves, the value of the goods we could have enjoyed had we spent the money for them, rather than for the good actually purchased, represents the opportunity cost. So, whether we make or buy, there’s always an opportunity cost. Rational people answer the make-or-buy question by choosing the option with the lower opportunity cost.

If we were talking about bananas, everybody would see immediately the foolishness of seeking “banana independence.” Nobody would fall for half-baked arguments about our addiction to foreign bananas or our love affair with banana bread. It’s obviously uneconomic to grow millions of bananas in this country; it could be done, but doing it would entail much greater costs than buying them from producers in places better suited to their production (that is, places where they can be produced at lower opportunity cost).

The argument with regard to oil, or anything else, is identical.

Nor is it necessary for the U.S. military to police the Middle East in order to ensure access to oil for Americans. The Gulf sheiks have no desire to drink the oil brought up from beneath their desert despotisms; they have every interest in selling that oil. And once it has been sold, it enters, as it were, a vast worldwide supply pool from which all of the world’s demanders draw, because a barrel of (a given grade of) oil here is the same as a barrel there, and the barrels get shifted around to minimize transportation costs while accommodating everyone willing to pay the world price.

Arguments that we must resort to U.S. imperialism in order to enjoy the imported oil or the security of having continued access to it are bogus. If policy makers really believe such nonsense, they are bigger idiots than we thought–and they ought to fire those thousands of economists on the government payroll on grounds of rank incompetence. U.S. imperialism may spring from various motives, but the popular notion of “war for oil” makes no economic sense.

The U.S. government may wish to exercise hegemony in the Persian Gulf so that politically well-connected big oil companies can reap a bigger share of the handling income from producing and transporting the Gulf oil (but if these companies didn’t perform these tasks, other companies would do so). It may wish to intimidate or suppress Israel’s enemies. It may wish to discomfit the Russians. And so forth. But the idea that unless the U.S. government stands astride the Middle East, Americans will be unable import oil or to have confidence in their ability to import in the future (always at the prevailing world price, of course) is a contemptible argument.

David Ricardo explained these sorts of things clearly two hundred years ago. They are explained in every introductory economics course taught in college. It’s high time the pundits caught up with the essentials of their subject.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4516566.ece

To millions of women it has been the great liberator over the past four decades, allowing them the freedom to control their fertility and their relationships. But the contraceptive Pill could also be responsible for skewing their hormones and attracting them to the “wrong” partner.

A study by British scientists suggests that taking the Pill can change a woman’s taste in men — to those who are genetically less compatible.

The research found that the Pill can alter the type of male scent that women find most attractive, which may in turn affect the kind of men they choose as partners. It suggests that the popular form of contraception — used by a quarter of British women aged between 16 and 50 — could have implications for fertility and relationship breakdowns.

The findings, from a team at the University of Liverpool, add to growing evidence that the hormones in the Pill influence the way that women assess male sexual attractiveness.

The Pill is thought to disrupt an instinctive mechanism that brings together people with complementary genes and immune systems. Such a couple, by passing on a wide-ranging set of immune system genes, increase their chances of having a healthy child that is not vulnerable to infection.

Couples with different genes are also less likely to experience fertility problems or miscarriages. Experts believe that women are naturally attracted to men with immune system genes different to their own because of their smell.

Commenting on the latest study, the researchers said that it could indicate that the Pill disrupts women’s ability to judge the genetic compatibility of men by means of their smell.

They said that this might not only impact on fertility and miscarriage risk, but could even contribute to the end of relationships as women who stop or start taking the Pill no longer find their boyfriend or husband so attractive.

Several previous studies have suggested that women tend to prefer the smell of men who are different from them in a cluster of genes called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which governs the immune system. Some of these studies have also found that this effect is not seen among Pill users.

The latest study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, has now assessed the impact of Pill use in the same women, both before and after they began using oral contraception. A group of 97 women was tested, some of whom started taking the Pill during the course of the research. All had their MHC genes tested and were asked to sniff T-shirts worn in bed by men with different patterns of MHC genes.

Unlike some previous studies, the research did not find any preference for dissimilar MHC genes. However, when the women started taking the Pill their preferences shifted towards the scent of men with more similar genes to their own.

This suggests that Pill use has an effect on perceptions of scent attractiveness, even if there is no underlying female preference for similar or dissimilar MHC genes.

Craig Roberts, who led the study, said: “The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the Pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odours. Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems, but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the Pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners.”

The research also found differences between women in relationships, who tended to prefer odours of men with different MHC genes, and single women, who tended to prefer the smell of MHC-similar men.

This could potentially indicate that if women are tempted to have an affair, they are more likely to choose a man with very different genes, to maximise the diversity of any offspring that they might have.

The scientists said that more work was needed to explain the way various studies have obtained different results on whether women naturally prefer men with different or similar MHC genes. They also cautioned that the importance of scent in human mating preferences remains uncertain.

The research backs up an earlier study of how women’s perceptions of partners can alter when taking the Pill. Psychologists from St Andrews and Stirling universities found that women on the Pill tend to prefer macho types with strong jaw lines and prominent cheekbones.

However, women who are not taking that form of contraception seem to be more likely to go for more sensitive types of men without traditionally masculine features.

The “official” debt of the United States is only around $10 trillion dollars as of August 6, 2008. This is a manageable number; we could pay it off in a few decades if we quit buying luxuries like food and clothing, and take a few other minor economy measures. Unfortunately, the “$10 trillion” number was produced by government accounting, which among other things allows one to ignore Social Security, Medicare, and the new prescription drug benefit. This is like ignoring rent, food, and utilities in your household budget… it will lead to a few bounced checks. Our real debt is about ten times higher.

Who says so? The President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, Richard W. Fisher. In a May speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, he states that the US national debt is close to $100 trillion. You can read his whole speech at the Federal Reserve web site.

The Real Debt

Here is what he said regarding the actual US debt:

“Add together the unfunded liabilities from Medicare and Social Security, and it comes to $99.2 trillion over the infinite horizon. Traditional Medicare composes about 69 percent, the new drug benefit roughly 17 percent and Social Security the remaining 14 percent.”

Interested readers will notice that the new prescription drug benefit is projected to be more fiscally crushing than all of Social Security.

Mr. Fisher points out that this $99.2 trillion will be a bit of a burden to pay off:

“Let’s say you and I and Bruce Ericson and every U.S. citizen who is alive today decided to fully address this unfunded liability through lump-sum payments from our own pocketbooks, so that all of us and all future generations could be secure in the knowledge that we and they would receive promised benefits in perpetuity. How much would we have to pay if we split the tab? Again, the math is painful. With a total population of 304 million, from infants to the elderly, the per-person payment to the federal treasury would come to $330,000. This comes to $1.3 million per family of four—over 25 times the average household’s income.”

You do have $1.3 million in your pocket, right? What, are you some kind of deadbeat?

Speaking of deadbeats, the “$99.2 trillion” estimate does not include the subprime bailout. So for those who like large round numbers, by the end of 2008 the real National Debt should be large, round, and about $100 trillion.

Other Unfunded Liabilities

The Fed’s numbers do not include some other liabilities the US has acquired over the years. One massive but unquantifiable liability is the probability of future wars. If it cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars to invade the fifth-rate kleptocracy of Iraq and the foreign-aid regime of Afghanistan, how many trillions would wars against real powers cost? Perhaps I should ask “how many US cities” such wars would cost.

Some nations could legitimately plan for peace. Sweden has not fought a foreign war since 1814 (as many Swedes have pointed out in emails regarding my Swiss article). Switzerland, not since 1815. The US record is less hopeful.

The US is rarely not in foreign wars, and the current Administration has openly announced that the “Global War On Terror” will never end. Yet our government accounting is predicated on perpetual peace, on an ever-increasing flow of money into the official pyramid schemes.

In any case, whether you are pro- or anti- Empire, real accounting demands some reserves for future war contingencies. When even a few US cities are burning radioactive pyres, the flow of funds to Social Security and Medicare will suffer some interruption.

Any fiscal plan demands amortization of the accumulated hatred our foreign adventures have accumulated. The US taxpayer has aided every evil dictator since 1945. Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot, Nyerere, Idi Amin, go right down the roster and US money helped pay for the barbed wire and bullets (and the nuclear reactors, in the case of the Kim Dynasty rulers of Korea).

So far blowback has been quite mild. But in a world full of easy do-it-yourself WMD technologies, our luck can’t hold forever. If the US were a private company, the “badwill” on our books would reach into the tens of trillions.

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Gitmo_detainees_subject_to_detentio_08052008.html

Some detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will likely never be released because of the danger they pose, and those tried and acquitted will still be subject to continued detention as enemy combatants, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, made the remarks as Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, awaited a verdict in the first war crimes trial to be held under a special regime created for “war on terror” suspects.

Morrell said Hamdan, a former driver of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, could appeal the verdict in US courts.

“But in the near term, at least, we would consider him an enemy combatant and still a danger and would likely still be detained for some period of time thereafter,” he said.

Morrell said there were plans for at least 20 more such trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba but he said a significant portion of the detainees being held there would neither be tried nor released.

He said efforts were being made to reduce the size of the population through transfers of prisoners to their home countries for incarceration or release.

“But I think, you know, there are still a significant population within Guantanamo who will likely never be released because of the threat they pose to the world, for that matter,” he said.

The U.S. must be the strangest “empire” in the history of the world.  Virtually all other empires destroyed other countries and made them pay tribute so that the empire could continue its conquests.  The U.S. empire destroys other countries and then spends its own taxpayer money to rebuild the country. 

It’s not a coincidence that the economy here is suffering badly.  Why not just leave the other countries alone. . .?

Anyway, here’s the article.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/05/iraq.oil/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Iraq is raking in more money from oil exports than it is spending, amassing a projected four-year budget surplus of up to $80 billion, U.S. auditors reported Tuesday.

Leading members of Congress, noting that Washington is paying for reconstruction in Iraq, expressed outrage at the assessment. One called the findings “inexcusable.”

“We should not be paying for Iraqi projects while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank, including outrageous profits from $4-a-gallon gas prices in the U.S.,” said Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We should require that U.S. taxpayers be reimbursed for the cost of large projects.”

Baghdad had a $29 billion budget surplus between 2005 to 2007. With the price of crude roughly doubling in the past year, Iraq’s surplus for 2008 is expected to run between $38 billion and $50 billion, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The United States has put about $48 billion toward reconstruction since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, auditors reported. About $23 billion of that was spent on the oil and electricity industries, water systems and security.

Iraq spent $3.9 billion on those sectors from 2005 through April 2008, according to the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress. The ongoing fighting there, a shortage of trained staff and weak controls have made it difficult for the Iraqi government to spend its surplus on needed projects, the agency’s report concluded.

Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has been an outspoken critic of the slow progress of reconstruction and an advocate of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. His criticism Tuesday was echoed by Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican who is the former chairman and now a leading member of Levin’s committee.

“Despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue in the past five years, U.S. taxpayer money has been the overwhelming source of Iraq reconstruction funds,” Warner said in a joint statement with Levin. “It is time for the sovereign government of Iraq, using its revenues, expenditures and surpluses, to fully assume the responsibility to provide essential services and improve the quality of life for the Iraqi people.”

In its written response to the audit report, the Treasury Department said U.S. officials are working with Iraqis to address the issue, “and we believe progress is being made.”

“The report shows Iraq’s budget surplus is likely to grow significantly over the course of 2008, but it is equally important to realize that spending in Iraq is also increasing,” Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Andy Baukol wrote to the GAO.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government submitted a $22 billion supplemental budget to the Iraqi parliament in July, including $8 billion in proposed capital expenditures, Baukol wrote.

The issue raised the hackles of several members of Congress earlier this year — particularly because Bush administration officials said on the eve of the war that Iraqi oil money would pay for reconstruction.

In 2003, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the House Appropriations Committee: “We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said Tuesday’s report “is going to make a lot of American families very angry.”

“The record gas prices they are paying have turned into an economic windfall for Iraq, but the Iraqi government isn’t spending the money on rebuilding,” said Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Levin spokeswoman Tara Andringa said the senator hopes to tighten rules governing U.S. expenditures on Iraqi reconstruction efforts in the next Pentagon authorization bill.

The Iraqi surplus has piled up even though the country’s oil production has only recently matched prewar levels, according to the Brookings Institution’s latest Iraq Index.

The country spent about 80 percent of its $29 billion operating budget in 2007, including public services and salaries, but only 28 percent of its $12 billion investment budget, the GAO found.

The export of crude oil accounted for 94 percent of Iraq’s revenues from 2005 to 2007, the GAO reported.

Honorable Exit From Empire
by Patrick J. Buchanan

As any military historian will testify, among the most difficult of maneuvers is the strategic retreat. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, Lee’s retreat to Appomattox and MacArthur’s retreat from the Yalu come to mind. The British Empire abandoned India in 1947 – and a Muslim-Hindu bloodbath ensued.

France’s departure from Indochina was ignominious, and her abandonment of hundreds of thousands of faithful Algerians to the FALN disgraceful. Few American can forget the humiliation of Saigon ’75, or the boat people, or the Cambodian holocaust.

Strategic retreats that turn into routs are often the result of what Lord Salisbury called “the commonest error in politics … sticking to the carcass of dead policies.”

From 1989 to 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and breakup of the U.S.S.R., America had an opportunity to lay down its global burden and become again what Jeane Kirkpatrick called “a normal country in a normal time.”

We let the opportunity pass by, opting instead to use our wealth and power to convert the world to democratic capitalism. And we have reaped the reward of all the other empires that went before: A sinking currency, relative decline, universal enmity, a series of what Rudyard Kipling called “the savage wars of peace.”

Yet, opportunity has come anew for America to shed its imperial burden and become again the republic of our fathers.

The chairman of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party has just been hosted for six days by Beijing. Commercial flights have begun between Taipei and the mainland. Is not the time ripe for America to declare our job done, that the relationship between China and Taiwan is no longer a vital interest of the United States?

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government wants a status of forces agreement with a timetable for full withdrawal of U.S. troops. Is it not time to say yes, to declare that full withdrawal is our goal as well, that the United States seeks no permanent bases in Iraq?

On July 4, Reuters, in a story headlined “Poland Rejects U.S. Missile Offer,” reported from Warsaw: “Poland spurned as insufficient on Friday a U.S. offer to boost its air defenses in return for basing anti-missile interceptors on its soil. …

“‘We have not reached a satisfactory result on the issue of increasing the level of Polish security,’ Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a news conference after studying the latest U.S. proposal.”

Tusk is demanding that America “provide billions of dollars worth of U.S. investment to upgrade Polish air defenses in return for hosting 10 two-stage missile interceptors,” said Reuters.

Reflect if you will on what is going on here.

By bringing Poland into NATO, we agreed to defend her against the world’s largest nation, Russia, with thousands of nuclear weapons. Now the Polish regime is refusing us permission to site 10 anti-missile missiles on Polish soil, unless we pay Poland billions for the privilege.

Has Uncle Sam gone senile?

No. Tusk has Sam figured out. The old boy is so desperate to continue in his Cold War role as world’s Defender of Democracy he will even pay the Europeans – to defend Europe.

Why not tell Tusk that if he wants an air defense system, he can buy it; that we Americans are no longer willing to pay Poland for the privilege of defending Poland; that the anti-missile missile deal is off. And use cancellation of the missile shield to repair relations with a far larger and more important power, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Consider, too, the opening South Korea is giving us to end our 60-year commitment to defend her against the North. For weeks, Seoul hosted anti-American protests against a trade deal that allows U.S. beef into South Korea. Koreans say they fear mad-cow disease.

Yet, when a new deal was cut to limit imports to U.S. beef from cattle less than 30 months old, that too was rejected by the protesters. Behind the demonstrations lies a sediment of anti-Americanism.

In 2002, a Pew Research Center survey of 42 nations found 44 percent of South Koreans, second highest number of any country, holding an unfavorable view of the United States. A Korean survey put the figure at 53 percent, with 80 percent of youth holding a negative view. By 39 percent to 35 percent, South Koreans saw the United States as a greater threat than North Korea.

Can someone explain why we keep 30,000 troops on the DMZ of a nation whose people do not even like us?

The raison d’être for NATO was the Red Army on the Elbe. It disappeared two decades ago. The Chinese army left North Korea 50 years ago. Yet NATO endures and the U.S. Army stands on the DMZ. Why?

Because, if all U.S. troops were brought home from Europe and Korea, 10,000 rice bowls would be broken. They are the rice bowls of politicians, diplomats, generals, journalists and think tanks who would all have to find another line of work.

And that is why the Empire will endure until disaster befalls it, as it did all the others.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/13/AR2008071301644.html

“As a forward operating site, Bagram must be able to provide for a long term, steady state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements,” the Army said in requesting the money.

When he initially sought the funds last year, Adm. William J. Fallon, then commander of U.S. Central Command, described Bagram as “the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia.”

In another sign that U.S. troops will be there a long time, the Army requested, and Congress provided, $41 million for a 30-megawatt power plant at Bagram. It is capable of generating enough electricity for a town of more than 20,000 homes.

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Looks like the FedGov is planning on staying for awhile in order to meddle in Central Asia.  I guess the FedGov didn’t learn it’s lesson in SE Asia 30+ years ago.