(ANTIWAR.COM) — Monday night’s out-of-nowhere statement from the White House, claiming a Syrian chemical weapon attack was imminent and promising to make Syria pay a heavy price must’ve been successful, Secretary of Defense James Mattis reasoned, since no chemical attack happened after all.
(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — The punishment should fit the crime. That’s what we’re taught to believe in this society. We’re told it’s a fundamental element of justice.
Chelsea Manning’s crime, if you believe what she did was a crime at all, was to bring attention to an ugly situation. To shed light on behavior that ran counter to her moral compass.
(ANTIMEDIA) — The U.S. has allocated $1.769 billion to train and equip Iraqi and Syrian forces as part of the Pentagon’s budget for 2018, a document from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has revealed.
Iraq is set to get the majority of the funding, as Syria’s share will only be around $500 million.
ISIS militants hold up their flag as they patrol in a commandeered American Humvee in Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo)
The US military lost track of $1 billion worth of arms bound for Iraq and Kuwait, according to a US Department of Defense audit obtained by Amnesty International.
The government audit, from September 2016, reveals that the DoD “did not have accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location” of a vast amount of equipment pouring into Kuwait and Iraq to provision the Iraqi Army.
(MPN) Last week, mainstream media outlets gave minimal attention to the news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach had spilled an estimated 94,000 gallons of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean.
(ANTIMEDIA) If you’re one of the countless Americans who was distraught to learn of the revelations made by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, the mere idea that there might be yet another agency out there — perhaps just as powerful and much more intrusive — should give you goosebumps.
Over a mere two decades, the Pentagon lost track of a mind-numbing $10 trillion.
Over a mere two decades, the Pentagon lost track of a mind-numbing $10-trillion — that’s trillion, with a fat, taxpayer-funded “T” — and no one, not even the Department of Defense, really knows where it went or on what it was spent.
Servicemen of the “Fighting Eagles” 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, walk by tanks that arrived via train to the US base in Mihail Kogalniceanu, eastern Romania, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017. (AP/Andreea Alexandru)
U.S. forces patrol on the outskirts of the Syrian town, Manbij, a flashpoint between Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, in al-Asaliyah village, Aleppo province, Syria, March 7, 2017. (Arab 24 via AP)
Trump’s budget for 2018, proposes cutting lots of stuff, from the EPA to the NEA and even small cuts at NASA. One of the few departments that will not see any cuts was the US Department of Defense.
(ANTIMEDIA) The U.S. Defense Department is considering proposing that the U.S. send conventional ground combat forces into northern Syria for the first time to hasten the fight against ISIS, according to CNN.
“It’s possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time,” one defense official told CNN.
