Or things like the following, just be warned, big shocker incoming:

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/12/treasury-department-at-the-center-of-us-invention-abroad/

Asst. Treasury Sec.: Banks Back US Intervention

Assistant Secretary Details Banking Industry's Key Role in Foreign Policy

by Jason Ditz, October 12, 2009

When covering America’s interventionist foreign policy, certain departments and agencies come up a lot. The Defense Department, certainly. The CIA, usually. The State Department, the NSA, the list goes on. Rarely does the Treasury Department come up, but maybe it should.

Speaking at a conference for the American Bankers Association, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury David S. Cohen went into excruciating detail about his department’s role in ensuring that the American banking industry is on the front lines of fights the world over.

And it really is the world over. From propping up Mexico’s government in what he called “a courageous fight against the drug cartels” to preventing Iran from “developing nuclear weapons,” there appears to be no overseas endeavor in which Secretary Cohen doesn’t envision a massive role for the Treasury Department, and for the ostensibly private organizations that make up the banking industry.

Though Cohen made some interesting revelations with respect to Afghanistan, including the somewhat surprising claim that the Taliban is much better financed than al-Qaeda, the bulk of his speech detailed a chilling ambition to see the banking industry pulled ever deeper into the war at home as well as abroad, and his claim that “routine suspicious activity” could be the centerpiece of uncovering international terror networks suggest that the average person’s financial transactions will be under ever-increasing scrutiny.

It's always nice when a noble gifts us peasants with its insight. Bipartisan centrism in action.

I am sorry to hear you depended on me. I would have told you not to volunteer because when you depend on volunteers to fight wars it is harder to fight wars when volunteers don't volunteer.

As Mr. Bacevich has written the US made a choice to become an Empire, 700+ military bases don't show up all over the globe on accident but as policy. Half a trillion in spending there seems to be more going on there than patriotism. As Mr. Bacevich says in his article we are at a tipping point and Commander and Chief Obama's level of "commitment" to Afghanistan will determine the Empire's behavior in the future.

One decision will bode well for the foreigner killing ambitions of future volunteers but not so well for me, and vice versa, so I have difficulty supporting foreigner killing. I just don't see any benefit in killing foreigners. If I were a foreigner I certainly wouldn't want people supporting others if they were trying to kill me, from the sky with flying killbots. Even if the killbots told me they were trying to help me. I don't think I would believe them. I'm cynical and selfish.

Maybe Nobel Peace Laureate Obama will resist the screams of the Nazgul and the perturbing babysteppers can claim a victory. That would be the best outcome in this latest round of political chessmastering.

It is kind of strange how the start of all these shenanigans started around the same time America fell in love with secrecy. A conspiratorial coincidence of course because history just happens.

Just like the Empire.

It's almost as if they were made for each other.

we'll see who

Like I said, you have the right to believe whatever you want. We'll who is protecting what in the future now that Posse Comitatus has been rendered quaint.

If anybody is to blame, it is us. They depend on us to protect them from unnecessary war, to keep them out of harm's way unless it is a matter of national security, and for the past decade we have failed them miserably. But they have never failed us. Ever. Their coffins prove it.

Those are very emotional words but Soldiers in the US volunteer to give their lives serving the State and so it is ultimately their fault if the State squanders them. The State will also find ways to fight as long as it has a steady flow of volunteers to do the fighting.

The US is ultra-interventionist and soldiers should know that before they get involved or at least be informed of it. If they are so interested in the "Why?" they should do their homework before they leave they have plenty of time for maybe a few quick primers on the cultures they'll be helping oppress. If they choose not to do their homework or do their homework and decide to go anyway oh well it's a free country they volunteered and have the right to believe whatever they want. Just don't try and tell me that soldiers rely on me when they volunteered.

refereeing...

That's very funny coming from an American. Have you not been paying attention over the past few years?

What do you call a million dead civilians in Iraq and referring a few games of ethnic cleansing?

None Dare Call It Genocide...

oh bullshit. Enough of the platitudes and emotion, what do you personally have at stake there?

And if you feel so strongly why aren't you over there volunteering? If you are too old to serve in the military surely you have other skills that are desperately needed over there to fulfill your goalless mission? Why spend your time playing propagandist on the internet when you could be playing war hero for the Empire?

Never mind, I've asked you why you haven't volunteered many times already and you refuse to answer. You must be content with sending ignorant teenagers to die killing your perceived bad guys. Like a real hero.