Obama & Afghanistan: Funneling More Soldiers and More Money into the Demonic Suction Tube

[Karmadillo]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/09-1

The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For now.

That's how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually.

A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for how many additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan. Now, deployment of 21,000 more is a done deal, with a new total cap of 68,000 U.S. troops in that country.

But "escalation" isn't mere jargon. And it doesn't just refer to what's happening outside the United States.

"Escalation" is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at home to the idea of more military intervention abroad -- nothing too sudden, just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper -- nothing too abrupt or jarring, while thousands more soldiers and billions more dollars funnel into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "demonic suction tube," complete with massive violence, mayhem, terror and killing on a grander scale than ever.

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Meanwhile, the White House is reenacting a macabre ritual -- a repetition compulsion of the warfare state -- carefully timing and titrating each dose of public information to ease the process of escalation. The basic technique is far from new.

In the spring and early summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson decided to send 100,000 additional U.S. troops to Vietnam, more than doubling the number there. But at a July 28 news conference, he announced that he'd decided to send an additional 50,000 soldiers.

more...

[Baclava]

1. DynCorp, Fluor Win Afghan Work Worth $7.5 Billion

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- DynCorp International Inc. and Fluor Corp. have been selected over KBR Inc. for five-year contracts worth as much as $7.5 billion for each company to support the U.S. troop build-up in Afghanistan, an Army official said.

Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. and Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp. each won basic one-year contracts worth as much as $1.5 billion that include four one- year options for the same annual amount, Jim Loehrl, executive director of the Army’s Rock Island, Illinois, Contracting Center, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aMvHvWx8Ra0c

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The war machine keeps turning.

[Mari333]

2. knr

[Baclava]

3. shhhhhhh

"Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that no limit has been set. Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he sounded an open-ended note: "There is not a ceiling on troop levels in Afghanistan."

Mullen's comment was scarcely reported in U.S. media outlets. It has become old news without ever being news in the first place."

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. Just great!

:grr: :banghead: :argh:

[Mari333]

6. k

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

4. K&R!