“We think we have the finest military hardware in the world, and if India is upgrading its defense capabilities, they should buy American.”
••• That’s US State Department spokesman Phillip J. Crowley, explaining how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carried water for American aerospace firms in a meeting Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony.
“The ISI can put pressure on the Taliban to leave the [proposed trans-Afghanistan natural gas] pipeline alone,” said the [Afghan government] source. “This represents the best chance we have for regional stability.”
••• The pipeline may also be the best chance for a positive return on investment on the Afghanistan war. The US government controls nearly two times the number of shares in the Asian Development Bank, which is financing the long-imagined TAPI pipeline, as the four nations whose territory it will cross (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan).
“The U.S. and South Korea navies kicked off anti-submarine warfare exercises yesterday in the waters off the Korean peninsula, sending what officials call an important message of deterrence to North Korea…”
••• So says the Pentagon wire.
“The provocative war exercises being staged by the south Korean war-like forces in collusion with the U.S. are increasing the military threat to the DPRK and escalating tensions.”
••• So says the North Korean wire.
[C]ontractors had grown to 39 percent of the Pentagon workforce from 26 percent since 2001 because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the availability of supplemental funding.
••• Put another way, one in three people working for the US military are in it for the money.
“[The US Defense Department] cannot identify with precision what proportion of its resources are devoted specifically to counterproliferation.”
••• Why should it, when it’s so busy proliferating?