The unclassified version of a report on the war in Afghanistan was finally published for public viewing last Friday. The report is by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a seventeen-year Army veteran who just returned from his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. It asserts military leaders in Afghanistan have lost much of their integrity and have routinely distorted the truth of the war.

The Pentagon today announced its “lighter” budget, which should more accurately be referred to as its reorganization of the military. It’s hard to call this a smaller budget when you look at this fact sheet. The only reason the budget gets “smaller” is the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The President made some brief remarks at the Pentagon during the introduction of the new “austerity” defense budget. He stressed that the US will still have the most powerful fighting force in the world, that even after the cuts the defense budget would grow over the next five years, and that the overall budget will still amount to as much as the next ten largest militaries combined. So it’s hard to make the turn, given all those facts, that this is a real sacrifice on the part of the military.

Two major year-end pieces of legislation were readied yesterday, and in this case, House and Senate negotiators reached agreement on the measures, expecting to pass them by the end of the week. First, appropriators agreed to a $1 trillion omnibus spending bill covering the rest of the fiscal year (to September 30 of next year) on domestic spending. They also agreed on the defense spending bill, which still allows indefinite detention of suspects.

This needless drive to place little army men around the globe like it’s a Risk board, regardless of the expense, only serves a purpose for the little megalomaniacs in the Pentagon who think we have to stretch our military might everywhere. For the rest of us, it just flushes our tax dollars down the drain.

This is the right move for the wrong reason. The troops are coming home only because Iraq’s government would not give legal immunity to the remaining forces in the field.

This may be how the Iraq War ends, over the denial of a grant of immunity. I’d say private security contractors are far more likely to fill in than NATO forces, because all NATO countries save for the US have pulled out of Iraq, and member states would likely face a huge backlash if they put their imprimatur on a training mission there. A base confinement strategy, furthermore, would make these troops sitting ducks for a Beirut-style bombing, as the Sadrist forces still reject any presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil after December. So I could see officials with the US defense companies selling Iraq billions in military equipment and fighter jets training the Iraqis before NATO. And possibly now, before the US military, given this development.

At 12:01am, the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was formally repealed. Gays and lesbians can now serve freely in the US Armed Forces. The official notice from the US Army was released last night, in a completely understated document. “The law is repealed,” says the letter from Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno, Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler. “It is the duty of all personnel to treat each other with dignity and respect, while maintaining good order and discipline throughout our ranks. Doing so, we will help the US Army remain the strength of the Nation.”

Stand with Lt. Dan Choi: Oppose His Punishment at the Hands of the White House and Military.

As U.S. drones continue to take flight over Pakistani soil and that country’s restive population becomes more and more resentful of what it views as excessive foreign meddling in its affairs by various actors – the West, Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists, and its old rival India – I think the topic of empire is more relevant than ever to the two countries that I consider my own.

There’s a lot of talk about defense budgets, and some internal squabbling between Congressional liberals and Leon Panetta over balancing cuts to the military with cuts to the safety net. But I think some of this misses the larger point, that the budget that needs to be put under control is the largely secretive one, the budget of the intelligence agencies. Because it’s pretty clear that warmaking capabilities are being moved out of the Defense Department and into covert ops.