The Pentagon Is Spending Your Tax Dollars to Keep You in the Dark About Its Sprawling Empire

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/pentagon-spending-your-tax-dollars-keep-you-dark-about-its-sprawling-empire




There are hundreds, possibly thousands of U.S. personnel -- the military refuses to say how many -- stationed in the ochre-tinted country of Qatar. Out in the searing heat of the desert, they fly fighter jets or fix them. They equip and arm troops headed to war. Some work in a high-tech command-and-control center overseeing U.S. air operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Greater Middle East. Yet I found myself sitting in a hotel room in Doha, Qatar’s capital, about 30 miles east of al-Udeid Air Base, the main U.S. installation in the country, unable to see, let alone talk, to any of them.

In mid-May, weeks before my arrival in Qatar, I sent a request to the public affairs office at the base to arrange a visit with the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, the unit that, according to the military, carries out a “criti­cal combat mission that spans nearly 6,000 miles from the Horn of Africa to Northern Afghanistan.” Or at least I tried to. Day or night, weekday or weekend, the website refused to deliver my message. Finally, I dug up an alternate email address and sent in my request. Days passed with no word, without even an acknowledgement. I followed up yet again and finally received a reply -- and then it began.

The initial response came on May 28th from the Media Operations Chief at Air Forces Central Command Public Affairs. She told me that I needed to contact the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing’s Public Affairs liaison, Captain Angela Webb, directly. So I repeatedly wrote to Captain Webb. No response. On June 10th, I received an email from Susan Harrington. She was, she told me, “taking over” for Captain Webb. Unfortunately, she added, it was now far too close to my arrival in Qatar to arrange a visit. “Due to time constraints,” she wrote me, “I do not think it will be possible to support this request since we are likely already within that 30 day window.”

Don’t think I was surprised. By now, I’m used to it. Whether I’m trying to figure out what the U.S. military is doing in Latin America or Africa, Afghanistan or Qatar, the response is remarkably uniform -- obstruction and obfuscation, hurdles and hindrances. In short, the good old-fashioned military runaround. I had hoped to take a walk around al-Udeid Air Base, perhaps get a glimpse of the jumbotron-sized screens and rows of computers in its Combined Air and Space Operations Center. I wanted to learn how the drawdown in Afghanistan was affecting life on the base.

[unhappycamper]

1. k&r n/t

[kentuck]

4. I like the quote in your sigline:

"The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings." - John F. Kennedy

[kentuck]

2. Eisenhower was a prophet.

on the military industrial complex.

[JackRiddler]

14. Not at all.

He was describing, with regret, the beast that he had helped to create and presided over.

[G_j]

3. K&R

[think]

5. k&r

[hobbit709]

6. We are all mushrooms.

[marmar]

7. k/r

[MisterP]

8. ever since J. Edgar Hoover, they've wanted to retain secrecy and impunity as their goal

it's actually far, far more important to them than anything they actually *do* with that blanket ability
in fact, they're even okay with their nauseating skulduggery coming out post facto, as long as they can do it again sometime
the likes of Issa and Alex Jones spread chaff so enough people believe "it's just more bogus conspiracy talk" or "it's just another fake scandal like Benghazi!TM";

[woo me with science]

9. K&R

I would also love to know how much of our money is being spent on the propaganda war on us.

[byeya]

10. You could also say that the DoD is spending our tax dollars for the profit of the contractors

whose operations will result in our oppression.

[felix_numinous]

11. While cuts to social programs

and infrastructure make US citizens unsafe in the real world, the MIC surveillance state is after POTENTIAL and THEORETICAL threats, defined for their own convenience and profit.

[Autumn]

12. It almost seems we don't have a government anymore. The Pentagon rules.

rec

[JackRiddler]

15. When was this not the case in the postwar era?

We happen to be in one of the periods where it is more obvious.

[magellan]

16. I was just going to ask...

Is it even possible to get the nod for Presidential candidacy in this country anymore without the backing of the MISC? There are a lot of powerful corporations bound up in that unholy trinity.

[progressoid]

13. Rec.

[Octafish]

17. You know what they say about taxation without representation?

Same thing as unaccountable, secret government: It's tyranny.