Military

Young soldiers at Guantanamo Bay would have been in grade school when the 9/11 attacks occurred. But the government is making sure the terrorist attacks are fresh in their minds. The FBI now holds briefings for military personnel stationed at Guantanamo about the attacks and their connection to the island prison.

Two Afghan villagers who traveled about 7,000 miles to testify against a U.S. soldier who massacred their relatives didn't get to say everything they wanted to in court Wednesday. And elsewhere, Maj. Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim soldier and Army psychiatrist on trial for a shooting rampage that killed 13 people in TX, for all purposes rested his case without contention in court — choosing instead to wage a campaign in the media. Coupled with the enormity of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's 35 year prison sentence, it's been a busy day in America's military courts.

Not satisfied with the wars in the Middle East, America's military-industrial complex has sought out a new target demographic: border security. The immigration bill in the Senate already includes requirements for six radar systems ($9.3 billion a pop) and 15 Black Hawk helicopters ($17 million per bird). Get ready for the next wave of corporate welfare.

For three decades, Ronald Reagan's missile defense system known as "Star Wars" has been a colossal failure on a Jar Jar Binksian level. Then again, huge costs and poor performance rarely cause any government program to be terminated — evidence of this effect is exhibited by the continued flow of money to the project despite thirty years of failure and little promise of success in the future.

The Pentagon's effort to account for tens of thousands of Americans missing in action from foreign wars is so inept, mismanaged and wasteful that it risks descending from "dysfunction to total failure," according to an internal study suppressed by military officials.

The top U.S. special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public. The secret move set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules.

In a procedure that looks even more brutal and yes, torturous, in actuality than it does on paper, actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) undergoes standard procedure for force-feeding Guantanamo Bay prisoners on hunger strike. Warning: The accompanying video is incredibly disturbing.

As the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay continues, and American citizens join in on the protest, there are other steps to take that don't risk life and limb for the equal treatment of all humans.

When the Monterey County Herald first reported restricted access to The Guardian, the newspaper which broke the Edward Snowden NSA story, they thought it was limited to the Presidio of Monterey. It turns out the action was taken Armywide.

Do you read Salon or The Onion? Are you a federal employee? Then you could be deemed a high risk for leaking classified information, according to the Pentagon.