Man the Swift Boats

It’s reported by the Independent Online that an official and independent report commissioned by the Office of Secretary of Defense claims that our foreign wars, despite the bluster from the Right and the chorus of denials from the Dittoheads, are a major cause of our woes in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

“The US military has long planned for war on two fronts. This is as close as we have come to [that] reality since the Second World War; the results have been disastrous."

The document was compiled by Stephen Henthorne, a former professor of civil-military relations at the Army War College's Peacekeeping Institute and an adviser to the Pentagon who was a deputy-director in the Louisiana relief efforts. Henthorn, from what I read in Stars and Stripes, is a supporter of “staying the course” in Iraq and hardly one who can be called any of the names that the Republicans love to call Democrats. His report is also highly critical of the New Orleans City Government for having diverted flood control funds to “vote getting” projects.

None the less, the report states that Brigadier General Michael D Barbero, commander of the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, refused permission for Special Forces units who volunteered to join relief efforts, to do so. General Barbero also refused to release other troops. We have all seen the video of the Navy helicopter pilots being chewed out for rescuing civilians.

My prediction, of course, is that the failures of the New Orleans Mayor will be played up by the Conservative Press and the shortcomings of our military and the connection of those shortcomings to their being bottled up in meaningless foreign wars will be either ignored or obscured by an attack on the report itself.

The official Fogghorn stopwatch is running. Let’s see how long it is before pictures of Henthorn and Jane Fonda appear. Swift Boats away!