MEDIA ROOTS- Since the federal government tends to refer to anyone in Afghanistan with a gun as member of the “Taliban”, it’s difficult to take stories from the corporate media about the Taliban at face value. However, the first official US military estimate of how much money the US has paid the Taliban through “reverse money laundering” since the invasion has been disclosed: $360 million.

Considering how any official Pentagon budget has always been the most conservative estimate when compared to independent analysis, it’s safe to say that this number is a gross underestimate of the true amount of funds the US government has paid to the “terrorists” we are supposedly fighting in the region. For more breaking down the logic of why the US funds the opposition to sustain the Afghan war check out MR Original – Afghanistan War: Resources for Endless Control.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS– After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

In a murky process known as “reverse money laundering,” payments from the U.S. pass through companies hired by the military for transportation, construction, power projects, fuel and other services to businesses and individuals with ties to the insurgency or criminal networks, according to interviews and task force documents obtained by the AP.

“Funds begin as clean monies,” according to one document, then “either through direct payments or through the flow of funds in the subcontractor network, the monies become tainted.”

More than half the losses flowed through a large transportation contract called Host Nation Trucking, the official said. Eight companies served as prime contractors and hired a web of nearly three dozen subcontractors for vehicles and convoy security to ship huge amounts of food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan.

The Defense Department announced Monday that it had selected 20 separate contractors for a new transportation contract potentially worth $983.5 million to replace Host Nation Trucking. Officials said the new arrangement will reduce the reliance on subcontractors and diminish the risk of money being lost. Under the new National Afghan Trucking Services contract, the military will be able to choose from a deeper pool of companies competing against one another to offer the best price to move supplies. The new arrangement also gives the U.S. more flexibility in determining whether security is needed for supply convoys and who should provide it, according to a description of the contract.

HEB International Logistics of Dubai, a Host Nation Trucking prime contractor, “made payments directly to malign actors,” one of the task force documents reads. In 2009 and 2010, an HEB subcontractor identified in the document only as “Rohullah” received $1.7 million in payments. A congressional report issued last year said Rohullah – whose name is spelled Ruhallah in that report – is a warlord who controlled the convoy security business along the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan.

Read more about $360M Lost To Insurgents, Criminals In Afghanistan

© 2011 The Associated Press

Photo by Flickr user azalea

MEDIA ROOTS- Fighting wars with robots is becoming an increasingly popular way for the US government to engage in combat. With the lack of US troop presence in the country, people might hardly consider America to be at war with Pakistan. However, US drone strikes in the region have dramatically escalated under the Obama administration, destroying thousands of families and further devastating the land that is still recovering from last year’s devastating floods.

Despite the government and corporate media’s propagandistic talking point about only alleged “militants” being the targets and victims of US drone strikes, the evidence compiled by independent researchers paints a more realistic picture: 90% of casualties from drone strikes are innocent civilians. Glenn Greenwald further analyzes the discrepancy between the government’s official line and the perception of Pakistanis.

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SALON– Two weeks ago, President Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, excoriated the White House for its reliance on drones in multiple Muslim nations, pointing out, as Politico put it, that those attacks “are fueling anti-American sentiment and undercutting reform efforts in those countries.” Blair said: “we’re alienating the countries concerned, because we’re treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us.” Blair has an Op-Ed … in The New York Times making a similar argument with a focus on Pakistan, though he uses a conspicuously strange point to make his case:

Qaeda officials who are killed by drones will be replaced. The group’s structure will survive and it will still be able to inspire, finance and train individuals and teams to kill Americans. Drone strikes hinder Qaeda fighters while they move and hide, but they can endure the attacks and continue to function.

Moreover, as the drone campaign wears on, hatred of America is increasing in Pakistan. American officials may praise the precision of the drone attacks. But in Pakistan, news media accounts of heavy civilian casualties are widely believed. Our reliance on high-tech strikes that pose no risk to our soldiers is bitterly resented in a country that cannot duplicate such feats of warfare without cost to its own troops.

Though he obviously knows the answer, Blair does not say whether this widespread Pakistani perception about civilian casualties is based in fact; if anything, he insinuates that this “belief” is grounded in the much-discussed affection which Pakistanis allegedly harbor for fabricated anti-American conspiracy theories. While the Pakistani perception is significant unto itself regardless of whether it’s accurate — the belief about drones is what fuels anti-American hatred — it’s nonetheless bizarre to mount an anti-drone argument while relegating the impact of civilian deaths to mere “belief,” all while avoiding informing readers what the actual reality is. Discussions of the innocent victims of American military violence is one of the great taboos in establishment circles; that Blair goes so far out of his way to avoid discussing it highlights how potent that taboo is.

Read the full commentary about Pakistani Belief About Drones: Perceptive or Paranoid?

Written by Glen Greenwald

© 2011 Salon

Photo by Flickr user JimNTexas

MEDIA ROOTS- It’s hard to take the government’s talk of “shared sacrifice” amidst our debt crisis and economic hardships seriously, when there isn’t more than a peep about sacrificing dough from the most overfunded department of all: defense. The US government spends half of all taxpayer revenue on war. Yet, instead of acknowledging how the department’s increasingly bloated budget (which has doubled since 2001) might have something to do with the fact that our country is broke, the debt deal is set to mostly make cuts to severely depleted social programs.

Cutting a significant fraction of military spending isn’t even on the table, because of the western world’s blind acceptance to needing a global “war on terrorism.” Therefore, the cost of imperialism trumps the needs of the middle and working class once again.

However, maintaining American hegemony does not just mean strategically occupying resourceful Middle Eastern countries– it also means the funding and training of extensive special operations armies that are currently engaged in over 120 countries in the world, carrying out covert missions such as “assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.” Alternet takes a look at an under reported element of US imperialism that isn’t on too many Americans’ radars: the secret forces that are currently interfering with 120 other countries’ political processes and democratic evolutions– all at the expense of the US taxpayers.

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ALTERNET– Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission.  Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day.  Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.  This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight.  It was atypical.  While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency.  By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120.  “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently.  This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987.  Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.  Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions.  Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions.  These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

Read more about Our Commando War in 120 Countries: Uncovering the Military’s Secret Operations In the Obama Era.

© 2011 AlterNet

Photo by Flickr user world_armies

COMMON DREAMS– As same-sex couples in New York prepare this weekend to tie the knot, their brethren in Massachusetts — the first state to legalize gay marriage — have some advice.

Enjoy the wedding because afterward, they will realize that there are 1,000 or so benefits gay couples can’t get because of the federal defense of Marriage Act: Joint federal tax returns, federal health plans for spouses, and access to spouses’ federal pensions.

“Let them enjoy their joy, but they will soon realize that their marriage is not being seen equally at the federal level,” said Dorene Bowe-Shulman, who married her longtime partner, Mary, in 2004 in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage.

New York’s law takes effect at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, with the state where the gay rights movement began more than 40 years ago joining five other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing same-sex marriage.

While many married gay couples are hoping for the repeal of the 1996 law, known as DOMA, the measure’s supporters are pushing back, arguing that marriage is a union between a man and a woman and that repeal would violate the views of most Americans.

“That definition of marriage has been the position of the nation for many, many years, with the raising of children and the benefit to those children from a male-female household,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman at the advocacy group Focus on the Family.

DOMA says that traditional marriage “is something we value as a nation,” she said.

As gay couples prepare for their weddings in New York, the largest state yet to legalize same-sex marriage, their counterparts in Massachusetts are telling them that their push for equal rights doesn’t end with the ability to get married.

Dorene Bowe-Shulman and her partner were among a group of gay couples and widowers who filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of DOMA, which prevents the federal government from recognizing gay marriages.

Read more about Mass. Gay Couples to N.Y.: DOMA Still Denies You Benefits

© 2011 Associated Press

Join Al Franken to repeal DOMA! Sign your name to the petition: http://www.alfranken.com/index.php/splash/doma_0711

Photo by Flickr user Mad Hausfrau

WIRED– The Pentagon’s top researchers have rushed a classified and controversial intelligence program into Afghanistan. Known as “Nexus 7,” and previously undisclosed as a war-zone surveillance effort, it ties together everything from spy radars to fruit prices in order to glean clues about Afghan instability.

The program has been pushed hard by the leadership of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They see Nexus 7 as both a breakthrough data-analysis tool and an opportunity to move beyond its traditional, long-range research role and into a more active wartime mission.

But those efforts are drawing fire from some frontline intel operators who see Nexus 7 as little more than a glorified grad-school project, wasting tens of millions on duplicative technology that has nothing to do with stopping the Taliban.

“There are no models and there are no algorithms,” says one person familiar with the program, echoing numerous others who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the program publicly. Just “200 lines of buggy Python code to do what imagery analysts do every day.”

During a decade of war, American forces have gathered exabytes of information on its enemies in Afghanistan. Nexus 7 aims to tap that data to find out more about the U.S.’ alleged friends: the people of Afghanistan, and how they interact with their government and with one another.

Read more about Exclusive: Inside Darpa’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine

© 2011 Wired

Photo by Flickr user RayVanEng