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November 1st, 2007

Intemperate, blimpish colonels and the militarisation of politics - or should that be the politicisation of the military? US Army PR flack Col Steve Boylan, spokesman for Iraq force commander General Petraeaus, has been throwing his weight around on various blogs for a while now:

Time and again, the military in Iraq under Gen. Petraeus and Col. Boylan has aligned itself with the most extreme right-wing blogs and plainly partisan “journalists,” and has either excluded or expressed outright hostility towards everyone else. It ought not be necessary to explain the significance of that development.

But he picked the wrong blogger to bully this time. The colonel may yet come to to regret hitting ’send’. This is much bigger than one public affairs officer with delusions of imperial grandeur by proxy.

On the home front, a survey of British military spouses has found that a siezable portion don’t actually want to be military spouses at all:

In the Army survey, 45% of officers’ spouses and 39% of soldiers’ spouses said they had “very often” or “often” discussed leaving the Army with their spouse. …. And 20% of officers’ spouses and 15% of soldiers’ spouses had often or occasionally put pressure on their partners to leave.

A sample of military feelings:

Tomorrow I celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary. well I ordered flowers and bought a card to give to the wife. As she drops me off for the transport to brize at silly a.m. to fly out and finish my 5th operational tour since we got married. Throw in 3 batus, 1 kenya, God knows how many FTX, pre deployment trg, various courses, adventure training, duties and a whole host of other piddly cr@p that keeps me out of my kennel. The result? One p1ssed off wife! And I am one of the luckier ones!

Sound familiar? Weary US soldiers have taken to “search and avoid” instead of ’seek and destroy’

WATERTOWN, New York, Oct 24 (IPS) - Iraq war veterans now stationed at a base here say that morale among U.S. soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, a practice dubbed “search and avoid” missions…

“We were hit by so many roadside bombs we became incredibly demoralised, so we decided the only way we wouldn’t be blown up was to avoid driving around all the time.”

“So we would go find an open field and park, and call our base every hour to tell them we were searching for weapons caches in the fields and doing weapons patrols and everything was going fine,” he said, adding, “All our enlisted people became very disenchanted with our chain of command.”
[...]

Other active duty Iraq veterans tell similar stories of disobeying orders so as not to be attacked so frequently.

“We’d go to the end of our patrol route and set up on top of a bridge and use it as an over-watch position,” Eli Wright, also an active duty soldier with the 10th Mountain Division, told IPS. “We would just sit with our binoculars and observe rather than sweep. We’d call in radio checks every hour and say we were doing sweeps.”

Wright added, “It was a common tactic, a lot of people did that. We’d just hang out, listen to music, smoke cigarettes, and pretend.”

At least they had the guts to go - unlike some.

Barney, the nation is relying on you….Bush confidante Mrs Manhands, aka Karen Hughes, is leaving the White House. Yet another Bush office wife bites the dust.

While the US military and its associates appear to be taking all the tax dollars, agribusiness lobbying and porkbarrelling representatives are quietly crippling the economy and public health:

Congress Debates the Farm Bill

The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products�the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

Political house arrest without charge or trial is now apparently legal in the UK. Former Gitmo detainee Moazzam Begg writes in the Guardian about the House of Lords’ failure to stop the government’s use of the unjustcontrol order:

The question that should be asked is this: how much of a threat can these people be? And why aren’t they being questioned? One of the men under a control order told his lawyer of an encounter he had with a UK minister. He said while out shopping in Fulham he’d spotted Jack Straw, then foreign secretary. The man approached Straw to tell him about the unjust nature of control orders - and point out that had he really been a member of a terrorist group he could have done something unpleasant to him right there. Straw, who was alone, listened attentively as the man explained that he was not like that. He just wanted to live a peaceful life with his family. Straw said he’d look into it. This man’s family have since left the UK and he has been re-arrested and imprisoned for breaching his control order.

On a lighter note, a group of German grannies have turned their knitting circle into a company selling kinky knitwear.

Their range includes lingerie, face masks and willy warmers, as well as conventional woollen clothing.

Manuela Buesch-Dankewitz, 45, who manages the group of lady knitters said: “The women love to knit, and it’s great to earn something from it.

“Our oldest team member is 86. She makes willy warmers and other gear just like the rest.”

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