The Pentagon Ate Our Government

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

Courtesy of Stephen Semler, let’s take a look at the federal budget recently signed into law by President Biden:

The biggest boost in spending from 2023 to 2024 went to the Pentagon. Of course! Even though the Pentagon has yet to pass an audit. Throw money at it as a reward!

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Niger Finds Itself Trapped in America’s Foreign Policy Roach Motel

Does even one American in hundred, make that one in a thousand, possibly one in a million, feel we must be involved militarily in Niger? I doubt it. But the U.S. military, from Commander In Chief Joe Biden on down, certainly do. He’s got 1,000 troops in Niger. The new Niger government wants them out.

US presence in Niger goes back to 2013. Authorized by President Obama, it has continued under both Trump and Biden. In 2015, 4 US troops were killed in an ambush. It made no dent in Obama’s foreign policy acquiescing in every cockamamie intervention the military demands.

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The Biden Administration’s Compliance Decision Is a Disgrace

The Biden administration takes a page out of the Mike Pompeo playbook:

The U.S. has deemed Israel in compliance with U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security memorandum stipulating that recipients of U.S. weapons must be in compliance with international law, nor may they block the provision of humanitarian assistance.

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Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: The French Road to Nuclear War

This originally appeared on Consortium News.

France could be leading the American people down a path toward a nuclear conflict decidedly not in the interests of the American people – or of humanity itself, VIPS warns President Joe Biden.

U.S. President Joe Biden preparing to disembark Marine One, July 2021. (White House, Adam Schultz)

March 24, 2024

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: On the Brink of Nuclear War

Mr. President:

France is reportedly preparing to dispatch a force of some 2,000 troops – roughly a reinforced brigade built around an armored battalion and two mechanized battalions, with supporting logistical, engineering, and artillery troops attached – into Ukraine sometime in the not-so-distant future.

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If You’re a US Reporter, Anything but Rabidly Pro-Israel Coverage Is Dangerous to Your Career

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

Early in 2003, Ashleigh Banfield was a star in the making. A rising journalist at MSNBC, she covered the opening stages of the Iraq War. Before that, she’d made a name for herself covering the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. Smart, pretty, highly skilled, she was heading nowhere but up. Until she gave an honest lecture on her experiences in Iraq and the Middle East on April 24, 2003.

I’ve written before about Banfield’s honest and heartfelt critique of Iraq war coverage in the U.S. mainstream media, which won her no friends at NBC News. In fact, the NBC brass sidelined and essentially exiled her. I recently reread her Landon Lecture at Kansas State University and realized NBC wasn’t just angry about her critique of mainstream media war coverage: they were likely even more incensed at how she humanized and empathized with Palestinians and other Middle Eastern peoples and groups, including organizations like Hezbollah.

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