Panetta: Pentagon, Next War

25 October 2011 |permalink | email article

As President Obama’s CIA director Leon Panetta oversaw the raid which killed Osama bin Laden last spring. Now, as Defense Secretary Panetta is leading a Pentagon which he warned lawmakers ominously, “was a blind, mindless” one which could “badly damage our capabilities” and “truly devastate our national defense.” The New York Times, in a series about The Next War, reported Monday. Panetta’s concern that after every major conflict – World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the fall of the Soviet Union – “we hollowed out the force, largely by going deep, across-the-board –cuts that impacted on training, impacted on capability.”
Panetta did make clear that despite hundreds of billions of dollars in expected Pentagon cuts, the United States would remain a Pacific power even as China expanded its military presence in the region. He recently said “the most importance thing we can do is to project our force into the Pacific – to have our carriers there, to have our fleet there, to make very clear to China that we are going to protect international rights to move across the oceans freely.” 

Rubio, tell the truth

During his rise to political prominence, as The Washington Post reported, and propelled to office by the tea party, young Republican U.S. Senator Mario Rubio often repeated a compelling version of his family’s history which had a special resonance in South Florida. He was fond of telling audiences he was the “son of exiles,” Cuban Americans forced from their beloved island after a “thug,” Fidel Castro, took power. Documents clearly show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted to permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before Castro’s took power on New Years Day 1959. Facts are that his parents returned to Cuba several times after Castro came to power to “assess the situation.”  Mitt Romney says Rubio’s on the short list of people he’d consider as his running mate if he’s the Republican presidential nominee, and won’t consider the kerfluffle a factor as the issue stands now.. 

Read ‘em and weep

Catholic, disordered and MSNBC pundit Pat Buchanan’s new book, “Suicide Of A Superpower,” is a blasphemous commentary by a burnt out racist. From the chapter, The Death of Christian America: “Obama’s White House thus enlisted in the long and successful campaign to expel Christianity from the public square, diminish it’s presence and reduce it’s role to just another religion.” From the chapter, The End of White America: “Those who believe the rise of power in an Obama rainbow coalition of peoples of color means that the whites who helped to engineer it will steer it are deluding themselves. The whites may discover what it’s like to ride in the back of the bus.” 

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