From ABC:

Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.

The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.

The MOP is the the military’s largest conventional bomb, a super “bunker-buster” capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.”

What urgent need? The Pentagon referred questions on this to Central Command…

So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran’s flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried.

“You’d use it on Natanz,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “And you’d use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly.”

This is too rich: The Pentagon gets caught recruiting on a gay networking site.

Gulf War Air Force Chief Gen. Tony McPeak happens to be my all-time favorite interview. He’s also the star endorser of Barack Obama’s latest campaign commercial.
Watch it here.

Two items today should make all of us call our congressmen.

First is this news from the St. Louis Dispatch, that the Pentagon has been discharging tens of thousands of combat troops on the pretense that the mental health problems they’ve developed after serving in Iraq aren’t PTSD — but rather pre-existing “personality disorders.”

The pre-existing part is the kicker — because it means that the Pentagon, acting like your least favorite HMO, won’t pick up the cost of the medical care of these troops after it discharges them.

“They’ve kicked out about 22,000 troops who they say have pre-existing personality disorders. I don’t believe that,” Missouri Sen. Kit Bond told the newspaper. “And when you kick them out, they don’t get the assistance they need, they aren’t entitled to DOD or Veterans Administration care for those problems.”

Bond and Obama have introduced a bill to attempt to remedy this outrage.

Number two is almost as aggravating:

Turns out the Army is nickel and diming National Guardsmen returning from 22 months in Iraq. More than 1,100 of these troops should be eligible for full educational benefits under the G.I. bill. But the clever bean counters at the Pentagon deployed them for only 729 days… exactly one day short of the 730 days needed to guarantee thousands of dollars a year for college.

This war is tragic enough without our government shortchanging our soldiers. Now if only these real outrages could move our congressmen to take action for our men and women in uniform — rather than serve up ever more bullshit resolutions in response to MoveOn and Rush Limbaugh.

Star Wars began as a Reagan-era fantasy. But Bush made the fantasy real, spending billions to build a weapons system that has never been successfully tested and will never be finished. And it’s completely unnecessary. Read Jack Hitt’s story from the current issue of Rolling Stone and check out an interactive demonstration of how the SBX system works here.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran. There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

— “A source with close ties to British intelligence”, quoted in the Times of London

The Los Angeles Times breaks the news that the Pentagon’s favored plan for a “way forward” in Iraq has nothing to do with the diplomacy and redeployment proposed by the Baker Hamilton report.

Their answer: more troops.

And a new enemy: Moqtada al Sadr and his militias.

The exact number of troops is still unclear. 40,000 gets floated, though it’s unclear if the Armed forces even have that much troop capacity to give. The Times also reports that there will be an increase in the overall size of the Army.

It’s garish that the proponents of this strategy have no plan for victory. Just a gut feeling that this is worth a shot. Their gambling vocabulary says it all:

“I think it is worth trying,” one defense official said. “But you can’t have the rhetoric without the resources. This is a double down.”

“No one should go into this thinking if we double the size of the military, the result will be victory,” said another. “You are buying the opportunity to enter a lottery.” (more…)

From Chapter 16 of the Walsh Iran / Contra Report:

Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment of Gates for his Iran/contra activities.