Some communities in Germany, Japan, S. Korea face closing of commissaries

[lebkuchen]

"Help" is on the way.

http://estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=19044

But the Pentagon’s bottom-line decision making didn’t sit well with Gen. B.B. Bell, commander of U.S. Army Europe. In a scathing memo to Abell last month, he said it is wrong to add to the stress of families with deployed servicemembers.

“To close these facilities which are operated for local military families, at a time when military sponsors are deployed to hostile-fire environments, in my view approaches the unconscionable,” Bell wrote.

“Seeking relatively minor fiscal efficiencies through reduced services and loss of benefits in this overseas environment during a war erodes the commitment we have made to the total force.”

<snip>

“It’s sad, especially for some families who don’t have vehicles or only one car,” said Sharon Diaz, an Army family member and two-year customer of the Neubrücke commissary. “It’s going to be really tough on them when winter comes.”

[bpilgrim]

1. "War is a RACKET" Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]

WAR IS A RACKET

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

more...
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

peace