This is an article submitted to Veterans Today as follow up to the post Military Divorces continue to increase. It is a Special Report posted in three parts from the article, Welcome To The Great Place - The U.S. Army, Fort Hood, and the War in Iraq from the perspective of an activist Army Spouse, written by Carissa S. Picard, Esq. It is published on Veterans Today with Carissa's permission.

In her article Carissa articulates the experiences facing many military spouses and children that contribute to the increasing divorce rate in the Army and Marine Corps. We wish to thank Carissa for sharing her insightful story with us, and it is posted in the heartfelt and sincere way she wrote it AS IS. Any comments or clarification I have will be reserved for the comments section where they belong.

ROBERT L. HANAFIN
Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired
Editorial Board Member
Veterans Today News Network &
Our Troops News Ladder

In the past, I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors — the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s Aug. 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.”

 Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation — as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all — the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA Torturers Running Scared.”]

COULD TERROR WAR BE RESPONSE BY GOP AND ISRAEL AGAINST THREATS TO THEIR GLOBAL PLANS?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

When nothing adds up, its time we starting looking at what we know.  Our recent terrorist, now dubbed "the crotch bomber" is another dupe.  He could have been working for anyone, drugged, brainwashed or simply influenced, maybe by crazy Arabs, maybe by the Mossad, maybe by the CIA.  We only know the game is falling apart.

We do know a couple of things.  Dad, back in Nigeria, ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad.  He was in daily contact with them.  They run everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism.  Though Islamic, Muttalab was a close associate of Israel.  He has been misrepresented.  His "banking" is a cover.  Next, what do we know about the two Al Qaeda leaders Bush had released, the ones who planned this?

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 In an article with a video posted on CNN News online we have the former head of the Department of Homeland Security who is also a former Governor of the state of my birth and childhood, Pennsylvania, stating quite plainly that there is a class of alleged felon in our country that does not deserve full legal rights under the law.

Does anyone in power in the GOP understand what a radical statement this is coming from a man who has held incredibly high offices in this nation under the GOP banner?  Is this typical GOP thinking?  If it is, we don't have an oppostion party in this country right now, we have separatists.  They then would have a legal view that the U.S. can suspend Constitutional rights whenever it wishes based on emotions and alleged circumstances surrounding an apparent crime aimed at terrorizing an alleged suspect. Wow!

This is America? That article is entitled Tom Ridge: Terror suspect doesn't deserve 'full range' of rights . This is downright scarey. 

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In today's Washington Post we read an article entitled Army wife's blog about her injured husband becomes a window into sacrifice .  It was hard to read but it is a real and genuine window into what less than 1% of the American population, our people in uniform, are bearing up under. I wonder how many of us really care?

Why do I get the continuing and gut wrenching feeling that no one but veterans and Americans under arms care about that percentage?  Here is an excerpt from the article that describes this Army wife's daily blog about her injured husband.  It will rip the heart out of your chest.

There are several articles in today's New York Times that deal with the state of American anxiety concerning air travel safety.  The first one is entitled Obama Seeks to Reassure U.S. After Bombing Attempt and seems to indicate that the President's normal use of charm and calm composure to quell fears is not going to work this time.  This is too serious and was potentially devestating to families. Someone somewhere did not do their job.  The system broke.

The guy was a known individual on the terror watch list and his father warned U.S. officials that he was a danger.  We still let him onto a plane and into the country.  This time, snake charmers' powers are not going to be enough to calm America.  The people want real answers to what could have been a huge tragedy.  It is time for the spin nonsense to stop.  How did this happen?  That is the question that we need to get answered.

ISRAEL DENIES OPERATING ISLAMIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION

AIMED AT UNITED STATES

BBC Middle East

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence. Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group's links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen. The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

Israel's foreign ministry has rejected the accusation as "totally ridiculous".

"A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province.

WHAT TERRORISTS KNOW AND YOU DON'T

By Gordon Duff/STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

I have worked in electronics, both communications and security systems for decades.  The industry is full of magic, satellites that can read license plates, not just from space but inside parking garages and tell you the sex of the baby you may not know you are carrying yet.  Industry people, us and terrorists, all know what exists and where it is.  You only have to track the contracts and installations.  It is all public information, public information the public knows nothing of.  Terrorists know, believe that.

What can we do?  One of the companies I work with is RoamZone.  www.roamzonesecuritysystems.com  Their equipment networks hyper-spatial cameras to allow biometric tagging and worldwide shared databases.  What does this mean?  It means that if you still have the same body, face, smell, anything either with a common facial pattern, body type or  molecular signature, you can be tracked across the planet for life.  This technology is cheap and common.  You can be tracked by the odor of your belt or shoes alone, an odor seen as molecules, not smelled, seen at great distance.

The Borowitz Report  -  December 28, 2009

Department of Homeland Security Issues Terrorist ID Cards

Requires Application, $25 Fee

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - In the wake of the Christmas Day airline terror attempt, the Department of Homeland Security today said it was instituting a bold new series of security measures, including issuing an official "proof of terrorism" I.D. card.
 
"All potential terrorists must have the terrorist I.D. card in order to be barred from boarding," said Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano.  "If you want to get on the no-fly list you'll need a completed application and the $25 fee."

No. 1005-09
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CONTRACTS: NAVY

                Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $98,000,000 modification to the previously awarded cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for special tooling and special test equipment required for the manufacture of Joint Strike Fighter Air System low rate initial production aircraft.  Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas, and is expected to be completed in November 2011.  Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.  The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity (N00019-08-C-0028).

THAT POSSIBLE INDIAN INTELLIGENCE AGENT PLACED BOMBER ON PLANE VERIFIED:  DUTCH POLICE LOOKING FOR ACCOMPLICE

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor (and attributed sources)

Reuters reports Dutch military police are investigating claims that an accomplice (identified as "very well dressed Indian man") may have helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab board Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Christmas day without a passport, a story first told here on MLive.com

Claims that the Detroit bomber got on a plane for America while on a terrorist watchlist are false.  There is a process requiring an extensive background check and interview at the US Embassy before any travel.  Any existing visa would have been withdrawn, which would have prohibited travel to, certainly the US but also any nation not listed as a terrorist haven.  This check goes far beyond any "no fly list".  We have also learned that, while in Amsterdam, the terrorist had been disguised as a Sudanese refugee with NO PASSPORT and had been escorted to the plane by an Indian "official".  This was witnessed by a Detroit couple, both attorneys, who heard and saw all of it in detail.   

BAGHDAD — Capt. Margaret H. White began a relationship with a warrant officer while both were training to be deployed to Iraq. By the time they arrived this year at Camp Taji, north of here, she felt what she called “creepy vibes” and tried to break it off.

In the claustrophobic confines of a combat post, it was not easy to do. He left notes on the door to her quarters, alternately pleading and menacing. He forced her to have sex, she said. He asked her to marry him, though he was already married. He waited for her outside the women’s latrines or her quarters, once for three hours.

“It got to the point that I felt safer outside the wire,” Captain White said, referring to operations that take soldiers off their heavily fortified bases, “than I did taking a shower.”

In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.

In today's Washington Post there is an editorial entitled Unconnected dots, yet again, on a terror attempt that shows how unhappy the editorial board at that paper is with the U.S.' attempt to control airplane borne terrorists.  Apparently our on the ground and in-flight international system for screening terrorists is as effective at blocking unwanted elements as a screen door on a submarine.

I don't know what else to say. "Ooops!" just does not seem to do it.  This is very bad. We apparently need to relearn some security lessons.  Now what?

In today's Washington Post there is an article entitled Argentina puts officials on trial over the abuses of the 'Dirty War' and it tells of the long awaited prosecution of the top henchmen who tortured perhaps 30,000 people, often killing them, in Argentina's "Dirty War" of 1976-1983.  Argentinian families had to wait decades for justice, but apparently it is coming to them now at least in some small measure.  The military more or less orchestrated all this.

What do you think?  Government supported torture? Government mandated killings?  People thrown out of airplanes for political affiliation?  Secret prisons?  Threats to the victims delivered by military people to shut up or be killed?  Hmmmm!

Do you think we might have anything to learn from the Argentine justice system? Just asking.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)

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In today's New York Times we have several articles that give us a window into the ever-expanding and seemingly unstoppable American military presence in the Middle East.  We need to strap ourselves in now.  It is becoming more and more clear that we are simply not going to leave that region of the world, no matter what the people of this nation desire relative to deployment of American troops.  We are going to be there in a big way for many decades.  This much is certain.  The price will be high.

Well then, lets consider what grows out of that reality.  The first story, Another Peril in War Zones: Sexual Abuse by Fellow G.I.’s should not come as a shock to anyone.  It is worth considering since it is a very real problem and is now part of the military landscape.  This ain't your grandfather's armed forces!

ARE AMERICA'S MERCENARY ARMIES REALLY DRUG CARTELS?

DID BUSH/CHENEY REBUILD REAGAN'S "IRAN CONTRA" DRUG GANG?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

News out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India reports massive corruption at the highest levels of government, corruption that could only be financed with drug money.  In Afghanistan, the president's brother is known to be one of the biggest drug runners in the world.  In Pakistan, President Zardani is found with 60 million in a Swiss Bank and his Interior Minister is suspected of ties to American groups involved in paramilitary operations, totally illegal that could involve nothing but drugs, there is no other possiblity.

POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS, BRIBERY AND TERRORISM

Army Times reports that for some troops deployed to Afghanistan, ‘it's not beginning to look a lot like Christmas.'

Several troops interviewed by the Associated Press expressed this, however we also found those who take a wartime Christmas with a sense of humor. This of course is not the first time American troops have been in combat on such a holy day, and it sure as heck won't be the last Christmas.

Robert L. Hanafin
Veterans Today Staff Writer

This "halo" appeared over Moscow earlier this year.  Odd huh?

If we link this to the UFO-sighting in broad daylight that hovered for hours last month over the Kremlin and connect it to the apparent Russian-caused sky show over Norway two weeks ago, we have a bunch of Russian nuttiness that needs some sort of explanation.  What is Ivan doing that is causing all this trouble with sub-Arctic skies?  Is it defense related?

What do you think?  The video is here and is entitled Halo over Moscow.

Did America slip into a semiliterate, polarized, pre-fascist state over the past decade or so, allowing greedy oligarchs and corporate elites to run the government? Two books I recently read offer reasonably persuasive evidence and arguments that the country did, and a third suggests that dictatorial mindsets could besiege Americans, with an assist from the Internet, if they don't come to their more deliberative senses. Each of the books offers an informed diagnosis of the dangers that widespread ignorance and ideological polarization pose for American democracy, though none offers a comprehensive treatment for the malaise.

I read the three books in less than two weeks; friends ask how that was possible. The trick is to avoid not only Facebook and Twitter but also: celebrity news, cable news, Oprah, Jerry Springer, American Idol, The Swan, other reality-TV shows, professional wrestling, violent pornography, positive psychology and right-wing Christian fundamentalism.

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That was a great Christmas. Back to the Obama wars that are indistinguishable from the Bush wars and its neocon propaganda, aka lies. From Gaza to Afghanistan, how much more freedom can the world endure?

But hey, maybe President Obama will cut the military budget.

Maybe Obama will hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity?

Keep hope alive.