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As politicians and financial gurus spin happy talk about the chimera of a recovery, and America’s ‘private banks’ cue up on the receiving end of the so-called public/private partnership offered by the Treasury Department, regular working Americans see something else on the horizon and prepare for a coming cataclysim, the Associated Press writes;

“From teachers to real estate agents, these budding emergency gurus say the dismal economy has made them prepare for financial collapse as if it were an oncoming Category 5 hurricane. They worry about rampant inflation, runs on banks, bare grocery shelves and widespread power failures that could make taps run dry.”

At least working America’s interest in end-times preparedness has created a bit of survivalist-bubble, the AP reports;

“The surge in interest in emergency stockpiling has been a bonanza for camping supply companies and military surplus vendors, some of whom report sales spikes of up to 50 percent. These companies usually cater to people preparing for earthquakes or hurricanes, but informal customer surveys now indicate the bump is from first-time shoppers who cite financial, not natural, disaster as their primary concern, they say.”

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Associated Press : Crisis spurs spike in ’suburban survivalists’

Six years after shocking and awing those who hate our freedoms, it is left to the Obama team of trivials to attempt to clean up the shameful mess in Iraq by prolonging it. The war did not destroy the already rotted US economy, but it will certainly reduce the chances of a meaningful recovery during the Obama, Jindal, Jenna Bush or Bristol Palin administrations.

The apologies and reparations demanded by decency and international law may be too much to hope for, but it must be amazing for foreigners to watch America grapple with the ignominious anniversary through a series of narcissistic thought pieces. The Associated Press offers a brief summary of the catastrophic fiasco, employing, apparently without irony, the phrase “America’s costly mission” :

“Six years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the end of America’s costly mission is in sight, but the future of this tortured country is much less clear.

With violence down sharply, most Iraqis feel more secure than at nearly any time since the war began March 20, 2003 — March 19 in the United States.

But violence still continues at levels that most other countries would find alarming. Last week, suicide bombers killed a total of 60 people in two separate attacks in the Baghdad area, and an American soldier was fatally injured Monday on a combat mission in the capital.

Fighting still rages in Mosul and other areas of the mostly Sunni north. Competition for power and resources among rival religious and ethnic groups is gearing up, even as the U.S. military’s role winds down.

Both the Sunni and Shiite communities face internal power struggles that are likely to intensify ahead of national elections late this year. Sunni-Shiite slaughter has abated, but genuine reconciliation remains elusive.”

Reuters covers much of the same territory, describing the fragile, violent situation without reference to the fact that it was illegally imposed on Iraqis by Americans through what is recognized around the world as a criminal invasion and occupation :

“The announced end to the U.S.-led occupation overshadows everything in today’s Iraq, where a government beset by rivalries struggles to put a stop to violence that has killed tens of thousands and displaced 4.7 million people since 2003 and to piece together an economy and society shattered by war.

Washington’s plan to withdraw all troops by 2012 focuses attention on whether Iraq can prevent violence from flaring anew and whether it can defuse explosive feuds over oil and power.

Hazim al-Nuaimi, a political analyst in Baghdad, said the six years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s had been traumatic for Iraq’s economy, its political conflicts and the security of its people.

’The only thing that has changed is that now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. But it seems six years is not enough to be able to reach that light,’ he said.”

As for the costs, beyond the inestimable damage to America’s reputation, very few ever believed the rosy scenarios floated by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. The enormous true costs of the war have long been clear to public policy experts and were discussed by veteran economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Blimes in this excerpt from their book The Trillion Dollar War, published more than a year ago year in the Times :

“The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

The cost of direct US military operations – not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans – already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that’s $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today’s dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.”

Associated Press : Iraq better but future shaky

Reuters : Iraq traumatised and divided six years on

Times : The three trillion dollar war

The San Diego Police Department has announced the purchase of a 25-foot armored mobile observation tower, to be used in crowd control and emergency relief situations. The device, manufactured by Arlington, Virginia-based ICx Technologies, has been customized to the Department’s specifications and will be delivered in February. The $120,000 tower was procured with assistance from the federal Department of Homeland Security after San Diego police tested a prototype for several months.

According to a report in the San Diego Union-Tribune, police have deployed the test version of the mobile observation tower over Labor Day weekend at a local beach, at shopping malls over the holidays, and at a regular season NFL game between the Chargers and the Oakland Raiders. Police Captain Shelley Zimmerman, who was involved in testing the device, told the newspaper, “It has assisted us in making arrests and has certainly been a huge deterrent.”

Local and state law enforcement agencies across the country are taking advantage of DHS grants to equip themselves with the latest paramilitary and surveillance technology, and the ICx Skywatch observation unit has become apart of public events in major cities such as Chicago, Seattle, and New York, which owns several of the mobile watchtowers, using them at sporting events and, recently, New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square. Protesters at immigration rights rallies have become familiar with the towers, which feature cameras, public address systems, bulletproof glass, and gun turrets.

cross posted at

redstateupdate.net

The Pentagon has reported that a record number of soldiers and veterans have committed suicide as the US military is stretched thin with troops occupying two countries.

Although the final number for 2008 has not been tallied, the US Army has reported that through October 2008, 117 of its soldiers have committed suicide. That figure outpaces last year’s record number of suicides by army personnel of 115 suicides. Last year’s figure represented the highest rate of soldier suicide since the army began to track this statistic in 1980.

The Department of Veterans affairs reports that suicide rates among veterans who served in the Iraqi occupation and who fought in Afghanistan doubled between 2004 and 2006. In 2004 52 Iraq/Afghanistan veterans killed themselves, while in 2006 that number had risen to 110 soldiers. The number of suicides of veterans of Iraq/Afghanistan operations is currently out pacing the rate of suicides in the civilian population.

The US Marines Corps is also reporting a spike in suicides in its ranks. The Marine Corps reported 41 actual or suspected suicides in 2008, which is a 20 percent increase over the 33 reported in 2007. Almost all of the Marines who committed suicide in 2008 were 24 years old or younger.

Army psychologists believe that the lengthy and repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan that are mandated by the US military to carry out the occupation of these countries are a proximate cause of the rise in suicides among military personnel. It has not been uncommon over the term of US engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan for soldiers to be ordered to fulfill multiple consecutive 12 to 15 month tours of duty with minimal allowance for rest between deployments. More than 60 percent of the soldiers who killed themselves in 2008 were deployed or had been recently deployed in the Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Army has sought the assistance of the National Institute of Mental Health to attempt to make sense of the sharp increase in the suicides of its troops. Last October, the Army and the NIMH submitted a proposal seeking $50 million to track soldiers in an attempt to understand what influences lead soldiers to consider suicide.

cross posted at

redstateupdate.net

The foreign secretary of the UK, David Miliband, recently said that he has long considered that the concept of a “war on terror” is flawed and using the term over the past years has perhaps caused “more harm than good.”

Miliband called into question the construct advanced by the Bush administration as a rational for tactics such as extraordinary rendition, warrantless wire-tapping and torture in a speech in Mumbai India, the site of a recent terror attack where more than 170 people were killed.

Miliband said the more western powers “draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common.” Miliband defined terrorism as a “deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology.” Democracies, Miliband told his audience, must respondto terrorism by “championing” instead of subordinating the rule of law.”

cross posted at

redstateupdate.net