You Will Anyway: Panetta's Propaganda

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Panetta's Propaganda

In a letter to Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, [Defense Secretary Leon] Panetta warned that after possible cuts in the military budget, "we would have the smallest ground force since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force in its history."

Which would be pretty damn bad… if we wound up having to go to war with America's 1940 army, 1915 navy, or some historical version of America's Air Force. If we're lucky, though, and don't have to go to war with past incarnations of our military, Panetta's comparison is logically nearly irrelevant. In fact, even the most massive cuts currently under consideration would return American military spending only to 2007 levels. So as long as we don't have to go to war with our 2007 military, we should be okay.

Barry Eisler

Maybe we’re safe there.

The rest of Panetta's Very Scary Letter is equally misleading. "You cannot buy three quarters of a ship or a building," he warns. Well, true, three quarters of a ship wouldn't be very useful. I mean, it would be like three quarters of a bullet, or something! But you could settle for, I don't know, say, nine out of the twelve new ships you wanted -- three quarters overall. Either Panetta is too stupid to know this, or he's hoping the public is too stupid to notice it for him.

I think he’s probably counting on public stupidity. Why wouldn’t he?

The closest Panetta comes to anything specific about America's defense needs is to note that cuts would be bad for contractors.

Bingo.

In this post [h/t Jean], Eisler calls the US military a special interest group, and for that gets a tweet from Panetta’s spokesperson saying he’s dissing the troops.

[M]aybe Mr. Little came up with his clever little "how dare you insult the troops" dodge because he doesn't have the wherewithal to respond to any of my substantive arguments. In which case, Mr. Little, I must regretfully conclude that you're just as full of shit as your boss. I'm sure being the Pentagon Press Secretary and SecDef Spokesman has its perks, but wouldn't you rather have some integrity?

Oh, I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. Integrity doesn’t pay nearly as much.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.