Monday, October 31, 2005

Department of Offense

The Department of Defense has repeatedly failed to fulfill its fundamental mission – the defense of America. The offense is inexcusable. The repeated wrong analysis of war scenarios and their outcomes because of faulty war games run by a deluded civilian military leadership has to be questioned and challenged by We the Maids in order to sweep it out before it is too late. This was best exemplified by the failure of the extensive Department of Defense intelligence gathering apparatus that failed to defend America against the attacks of 9/11. The Pentagon aflame and damaged while military bodies and injured personnel were being attended to by the survivors was a vivid wakeup call of how unprepared the Department of Defense was to protect itself, yet alone the country. The 9/11 Commission made reference to this colossal failure in its final report.

The Department of Defense then compounded its failure by going to war in Iraq – based on bad intelligence, under-staffed, ill-equipped and ill-prepared for the realities on the ground because of rigged war games. How much more offensive can the department become?

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they did not believe the U.S. was facing a broad-based insurgency in Iraq while their own intelligence services and officials were saying that is exactly what they are facing.

“Hillbilly armor” is what the world’s best equipped army is fighting with in Iraq because the Pentagon failed to turn a Cold War military machine into a force capable of confronting today’s military realities.

The Cold War military doctrine centered on what is known as a linear battlefield -- combat units on the front lines while their support units operate in relative safety in the rear. Today’s battles and wars have rendered the fundamental U.S. military assumptions obsolete. In Vietnam, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq guerillas have transformed the battlefield into one that is both nonlinear and noncontiguous that subjects all units, combat and support, to attack. Never have U.S. forces fought in such ignorance of the enemy’s purpose, strength, leadership and order of battle. There are no front or rear lines. All units are subject to attack, especially the unarmed supply and support units that traditionally operated in the rear. As a general rule, support troops outnumber combat soldiers about seven to one.

America’s mighty imposing military machine is badly fractured -- over stretched, exhausted, under-staffed, defenseless -- with discipline eroding and recruits for the all-volunteer army drying up.

Why hasn’t the Department of Defense reshaped the military to fight noncontiguous, nonlinear battles? Why isn’t every military unit that goes out to the battlefield today properly equipped for combat, both offensive and defensive? Why isn’t every soldier trained to fight as an infantryman? “On the larger scale, the system has broken down: The Pentagon has had more than a decade since the Cold War – and 20 months since the fall of Baghdad – to identify and fix these problems to protect its support troops. There is no excuse for its failure to do so,” Philip Carter, a former captain in the U.S. Army said. I concur.

When going to war – and while at war – the Congress has a duty to hold the Department of Defense accountable for the well-being of America’s fighting patriots. Why has Congress not put the responsibility and blame where it belongs several years after the Secretary of Defense and the Department of Defense went to war based on bad intelligence and ill-equipped that resulted in the death, injury and suffering of so many?

Monday, October 24, 2005

Waning Military Heritage

The earliest spontaneous mass protest against the Vietnam War took place on August 26, 1965, when 40,000 draft-age, working-class young men got married before midnight to escape the call-up. The marriage deferment was dubbed the “poor man’s deferment” and was a way out for those unable to afford to go to college or those who did not have the money or connections to avoid the draft. Californians stampeded to Nevada.

People rejoiced in beating Uncle Sam, not in their marriage. Vice President Dick Cheney, with his five deferments, is a representative souvenir of the time. The Vietnam War corrupted the institution of marriage in America. The war also inflicted permanent damage on higher education, medicine, parenthood and patriotism. The large number of parents who condoned and facilitated the quickie weddings revealed an early unease with the Vietnam War. Boys marrying prostitutes, hotrods speeding across the desert and chartered planes making daredevil landings foreshadowed the more desperate draft-dodging schemes to come: obscene tattoos and amputated toes; atheists enrolling in divinity schools; the straight pretending to be gay, the sober to be drunks, the sane to be crazy, and couples conceiving draft-deferment babies.

It is encouraging to read today that the military is losing its appeal as a career and that the U.S. armed forces are having difficulty meeting their quotas of new recruits for the first time since the draft ended in 1973. The fact that the Iraq war has triggered an exodus of active and reserve forces because of their fear of getting killed, injured or deployed for a long period in a war zone is a millennium wake-up call to the military that the armed forces are not being used in a manner that inspires citizens to become soldiers.

Movies depicting the horrors of war, such as Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line and We Were Soldiers, are a positive step. Seeing the ashen faces of young people leaving the theatre is refreshing. A more consorted effort has to be made to expose all our children to the horrors of war. Not just movies. We need more efforts such as the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, an area of the city retained as it was after “Little Boy,” the uranium-235 atomic bomb that killed some 200,000 people. And Holocaust museums.

“I want the foolishness of war to end,” said Japanese artist Katsushige Nakahashi, from Otsu City. “If my generation doesn’t talk about World War II, the next generation never will,” he said as he put the finishing touches to the crumpled skin of photos that forms a replica of a Zero fighter that he burned on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Reading how Serb, Taliban and Iraqi conscripts went into hiding in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Iraq in the face of massive bombing when they received their mobilization notices was a reminder of U.S. draft dodgers and conscientious objectors fleeing to Canada and elsewhere during the Vietnam War.

Some believe even George W. Bush went AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during the Vietnam War. It is also an encouraging sign of the waning appeal of guns and war at the dawn of the 21st century. There were 3,500 conscientious objectors registered in the U.S. during World War I, 37,000 during World War II, 4,300 during the Korean War and 200,000 during Vietnam. Marine Reservist Lance-Cpl. Stephen Funk became the first conscientious objector to the Iraq war. He was followed by hundreds of soldiers who went missing during home leave. Time will tell what the real number will be. Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia best articulated why so many were deserting: “You come face to face with your emotions and your feelings and you try to tell yourself that you did it for a good reason, then, you know, it becomes pretty tough to accept it – to willingly be part of the war”.

To make matters worse, many of those soldiers willing to be part of the war effort disobey “suicide mission” orders of their superiors because of inadequate equipment, body armor or security. No different than the high number of patriots and British officers in the Royal Navy and Army that refused to fight against their cousins in America when the 13 colonies produced the Declaration of Independence in 1776 – and all wars since.

A group of Israeli elite commandos in 2003 refused to participate in military operations against Palestinians. Israeli Air Force pilots refuse to bomb civilians inside Palestinian territory because they regard their missions as illegal and immoral. Reserves in the Israel Defense Forces who are prepared to die for Israel refuse to participate in a military occupation that has over the decades made Israel less secure.

Ishai Menuchin, a major and chairman of Yesh Gvul, the Israeli soldiers’ movement for selective refusal, is firm in his justification. “Being a citizen in a democracy carries with it a commitment to democratic values and a responsibility for your actions,” he said, explaining his group’s refusal to serve. “It is morally impossible to be both a devoted democratic citizen and a regular offender against democratic values. Depriving people of the right to equality and freedom, and keeping them under occupation, is by definition an anti-democratic act.”

Former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in jail for disclosing Israeli nuclear secrets “to prevent a holocaust”. No matter how one feels about what he did, he is to be respected for the principles he believes in and speaks up about.

Listening to U.S. troops who fought to remove Saddam say they have lost faith in the Army is heart-warming. “If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I’d ask him for his resignation,” one disgruntled soldier told ABC’s Good Morning America. “I would ask him why we are still here. I don’t have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq,” another added. “I despise this war, and 99.9 percent of the people I served with feel the same way. We should bring our troops home now,” said U.S. Army Reservist Charity Thomson.

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, triggered calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation when he asked Rumsfeld why vehicle armor was in short supply. “Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?” he asked. The defense secretary’s curt no-nonsense answer was widely regarded as having betrayed the trust of the soldiers taking heavy losses because of his poor leadership and planning.

Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and returning war veterans started by Army Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, is comprised of more than 170 Iraq veterans from across the political spectrum. As an infantry platoon leader, Rieckhoff spent 10 months conducting combat operations in central Baghdad. The truth they are advocating is about poor war planning, overstretched troops and ill-equipped soldiers on the front lines. “We’ve been right about every issue,” said Rieckhoff. “Tell me there is a connection to 9/11? There’s not. Are there weapons of mass destruction? There’s not. Tell me the war will be over soon? It won’t.”

Watching families of soldiers killed in Iraq buck the U.S. military culture which prohibits speaking out against a war, marching with black wreaths at Dover Airbase in Delaware where the bodies from Iraq are returned was a millennium reminder that America, including military families, will no longer blindly accept war as a political solution. Their words and actions are echoed by a group of 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military leaders known as Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change. The group includes former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak and Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, the former director of the CIA. They are true patriots who stood up to career politicians and their sclerotic bureaucratic military leadership.

The best news of the 21st century was President George Dubya’s campaign pledge in the 2000 campaign not to “overextend” U.S. forces or send them to police future conflicts, a pledge he made before September 11 and then conveniently forgot. Instead, he cut health care benefits for war veterans and then went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Senate Bill 89 and House Bill 163 introduced during the 2004 legislative session proposed the draft begin again in the spring of 2005. The bills didn’t go far during an election year and may be re-introduced at some later date. Under the proposed legislation, all people between the ages of 18 and 26 would be eligible. Student deferments will not be an option. What is disturbing about the legislation is the secrecy in which it is being broached. The Pentagon has quietly begun a campaign to fill the 10,350 draft board positions and the 11,070 appeal board slots nationwide.

Friday, October 21, 2005

The Hidden Costs of War

The human cost and suffering goes beyond military budgets, Iraq’s war budget, the servicemen killed in action and those wounded. It is the hidden costs on the families, businesses and taxpayers that support the patriots serving in the National Guard and reserves, and the mental health costs of those traumatized in battle. “The reservists too long from home and the enlisted soldiers too long under fire measure the cost of a military too small for its missions and a tax cut too large for its time”, Ronald Brownstein, the political correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, wrote.

From the beginning of the U.S. war on terror after 9/11 to September 3, 2004, the U.S. mobilized 423,025 reservists and National Guard members – civilian soldiers who leave their non-military jobs to fight for their country. Most are police officers and firemen, so their deployment takes a high toll on their communities. Of the 37,000 uniformed members of New York City’s Police Department, 273 are on active duty and another 1,155 are reservists who could be called up at any time.

A report by the Veteran’s Health Administration said 2,279 Iraq veterans had been diagnosed with mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder as of July 29, 2004. Of 168,528 Iraq war veterans, roughly 16 percent, or 27,571, sought health care in the Veterans Administration system by July, according to a VA report. By comparison, 11 percent of combat veterans in Afghanistan had sought care. Veterans Administration health care is free for two years for problems related to wartime activity.

An Army-supported study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004 found 15.6 to 17.1 percent of soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq met the screening criteria for major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, compared with 11.2 percent of those from Afghanistan. “Only 31 percent of soldiers deployed to Afghanistan reported having engaged in a firefight, as compared to 71 percent to 86 percent of soldiers and Marines who had been deployed in Iraq,” the report said. “Of those whose responses indicated a mental disorder, only 23 percent to 40 percent had sought mental health care.”

The murder charges filed against Jacob Burgoyne, Mario Navarrete and Alberto Martinez, three soldiers who returned from Iraq and killed their fellow returnee Richard Davis for ruining their evening in a nightclub; and the court martial of Specialists Charley Hooser and Rami Dajani of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division serving in Iraq, shed some light on how these hidden costs can accidentally kill innocent friends.

Burgoyne, Martinez, Navarrete and Davis had been in a popular club near Fort Benning, Georgia just 72 hours after their return from Iraq in 2003. They were asked to leave after Davis hit one of the dancers in the eye. Davis’s body was later discovered with no fewer than 33 stab wounds believed to have been inflicted by his buddies for his rowdy behavior that ruined their evening.

Specialists Hooser and Dajani worked on dangerous missions down sniper alley with an Iraqi interpreter called Luma – whose last name was withheld to protect her family. The three would relax together, watch movies and get caught up in the dark humor that comes easily in Iraq – the threat to kill each other and bury the body in a hole.

On November 24, 2004, Hooser and Luma had just finished cleaning up the interrogation room where they worked when they began wrestling. Luma told Hooser, laughing, “I’m going to get you,” according to testimony. Dajani remembered fetching a 9mm pistol the military had given Luma. Hooser said he heard Dajani check the weapon for a bullet in the chamber. Dajani said he never “cleared” the weapon.

A prosecutor said Dajani admitted putting a clip of bullets into the pistol, which by base safety rules should have been unloaded. Hooser then pointed the gun at Luma, something he had done with others when he was joking around, according to testimony. He pulled the trigger and the bullet tore through Luma’s skull. The two men lied to investigators, saying Luma was playing with her own gun when it went off.

When the troop deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq are considered together, some experts believe that the number of troops needing mental health treatment could exceed 100,00.

“Fort Bragg” is a code term for what the stress of combat can do to a soldier returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. It includes senseless murders and suicides among America’s elite forces. Soldiers who killed their wives and then committed suicide. The suicide rate among soldiers serving in Kuwait and Iraq is one-third higher than in previous conflicts.

The countless stories of U.S. brutality in Afghanistan and Iraq echo Vietnam-era atrocities and blunders. The parallels between Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were hammered home by the endless carpet-bombing of the mountain caves in Afghanistan and cities in Iraq. These, like the bombing of the underground tunnels of Vietnam, did not stop the insurgents from fighting and winning.

It was American colonialists who wrote the book on guerilla tactics. It was the first country to defeat a world power. It devised the tactics and lessons later used by the Vietnamese, Afghanis and Iraqis.

To paraphrase singer Toby Keith, angry Americans can’t blindly and apathetically go around the world sticking their boot into others’ mud courtesy of the red, white and blue and then be surprised when America’s boots and their wearers are returned home in body bags courtesy of the red, green and black.

Any wonder so many Americans are disgusted with the country and are abandoning it?

Monday, October 10, 2005

Citizen Soldiers

Recent wars have revealed the inequity in the makeup of America’s fighting forces. For National Guardsmen and women to have to fight to get their jobs back after they return from fighting in Iraq is not only unconscionable but illegal. And it is unfathomable that reservists lose pay while serving in Iraq, causing some to default on their mortgages and loan payments. Forcing soldiers to re-enlist makes the country look like a banana republic. Threatening soldiers to re-enlist or be shipped to Iraq is unconscionable. Punishing the families of soldiers who have returned – not to mention the soldiers – by sending them back to Iraq a second time is incomprehensible. And let’s not forget that a disproportionate number of our forces are made up of African-Americans.

Worse yet is keeping soldiers injured in Iraq in hospitals back in the States that are inaccessible to family and friends. They are the casualties of poor military preparations and planning. Why prolong the pain, suffering and agony? To hear military leaders say that they had not planned for injured returnees is crazy. “No one really thought much about this before,” Col. Barbara J. Scherb, who oversees the wounded soldiers initiative for the Army Forces Command, said. Why not? Why can’t these wounded patriots be in hospitals on bases close to home, where they deserve to be? Why should their families have to travel at their own expense to states across the country? The requirements for medical treatment of injured National Guard and reservists is another unbelievable minefield. For example, someone who leaves active duty and seeks treatment from his own doctor qualifies for medical insurance known as Tricare -- for only six months. Advocates for the National Guard say one in five guardsmen lacks medical insurance from his or her regular job, leaving no room for health problems that may linger. Most Iraq war veterans are not eligible for treatment in the 157 V.A. hospitals and 845 clinics across the country until they are retired from military service or discharged from active duty. Talk about We the Maids having to sweep in major health-care reforms for veterans!
To bar pictures of flag-draped caskets of the heroes who died for their country is a national disgrace.

More U.S. patriots have been killed each month since Saddam Hussein’s arrest than before. Bad months result in more than 100 U.S. fatalities. What is astounding is the U.S. military’s refusal to confirm or deny the figures compiled by adding up the numbers from the press releases put out by the Central Command in Florida. It is outrageous for the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad to claim that the figures are only kept for two-month periods. It is just mind-boggling that the military can’t keep track when URL Iraq Coalition Casualty Count – warcasualties/summary.aspx can easily track all the deaths for 18 months. Is it right for the military to sweep under the rug the number of patriots who died for their country?

Not all patriots are like NFL player Pat Tillman, who turned his back on fortune and football fame to serve and die for his country. Most are poor minorities, many of whom become homeless upon their return to America. Others get arrested upon their arrival and are hauled off in handcuffs, in front of bewildered relatives, for unpaid traffic and parking tickets.

The American all-volunteer army has 1.4 million men and women on active duty, 876,000 guardsmen and women and reservists in units, and 287,000 individual ready reserves serving in 146 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Tens of thousands are not U.S. citizens. The U.S. military is spread thin. About 40 percent of the troops are Southerners, 60 percent are white, 22 percent are black, and a disproportionate number come from empty states like Montana and Wyoming, Time reported in 2003.

The number of blacks in the Army is more than double their representation of the national population. The Navy has the highest percentage of minority recruits. Overall, 37 percent of sailors are minorities. The Air Force has the highest percentage of women in the military, and the smallest percentage of minorities.

While the sacrifices of war have been borne in an inequitable way by African-Americans and the reservists who have to disrupt their lives and careers, We the Apathetic People behave as if nothing has changed. During the Vietnam War, student deferments allowed middle-class Americans to sit out the war. Harry S. Ashmore, the Pulitzer-Prize winning academic, wrote: “The great majority of the grunts who manned the front lines in Vietnam were blacks, Southern rednecks, and urban ethnics. The casualty rate among blacks was more than twice their proportion in the population.” Unfortunately, we are seeing history repeat itself in Iraq.

What is really refreshing for the New World Order is that President Clinton’s “coward’s war” may redefine conflict in the new century. For the three months of the NATO operation in Kosovo, Clinton was a lone voice. His insistence that the conflict be conducted from the air was denounced as the irresponsible reverie of a non-military man.

After NATO troops entered Kosovo, not as a force of invasion but as enforcers of peace, Clinton completely rewrote the rules of war. There would still be skirmishes and casualties in Kosovo – but he had gone a long way toward defining a new type of conflict. Tanks and fighter planes have become as ineffective with today's electronic warfare as the cavalry did when tanks appeared. The bombing of the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorist targets in Afghanistan confirmed this millennium reality. Iraq sealed the pact.

But at what civilian price? The time it takes to receive the necessary clearances required before bombs are released allowed the Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders to get away. Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders who could have been killed in air strikes escaped because of a cumbersome approval process and disagreements within the U.S. Central Command. Any wonder the number of recruits needed by the National Guard cannot be met?

Monday, October 03, 2005

U.S. - Japan Military Folly

Just as America is coming to terms with Vietnam, and Germany has come to terms with its World War II follies, Japan will have to come to terms with its official hypocrisy and deception for its wartime role in China and other countries it invaded.

The issue is highlighted in Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the country’s war dead, including 14 war criminals. Japan’s prime ministers make annual visits to the shrine, which has caused concern about separation of church and state. But because the shrine is also a symbol of Japanese militarism and imperialism to those countries Japan conquered in World War II, it has become extremely controversial. China cites the prime ministers continued annual visits as the reason it bars top Chinese leaders from going to Japan, even though Japan is China’s largest trading partner.

The hypocrisy is further magnified by the lawsuit filed by 32 elderly Japanese war orphans left in China after the war who returned to Japan at the dawn of the 21st century. They seek compensation from the government for its failure to promptly repatriate and resettle them. They received little or no Japanese-language education or job-search support after they returned. “Japan is a nice country, but you have criminal leadership,” former world chess champion Bobby Fischer said on his release from detention in Japan.

The highly acclaimed three-hour film Japanese Devils shows 14 former Imperial soldiers discuss and confess their brutal roles during the war. One Japanese war veteran confesses to 328 murders. A former army sergeant describes throwing babies on to campfires for
laughs. Another says he raped and killed a woman, then carved up her body to feed to his troops. “I actually had that kind of experience myself,” a 77- year-old veteran said, coming out of the movie theatre with tears in his eyes. “I was in China. Nanking. I was wrong.”

Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has suggested that Japan’s self-defense forces are a “military” instead of simply a “force” and Article 9 of their constitution should be amended to allow Japan to be a military state that can take offensive measures -- not just defensive. The U.S. imposed the military ban in the constitution after Japan’s defeat in World War II. The fact that America now agrees to the amendment because of Japan’s desire to support the U.S. missile defense shield is doubly worrisome.

The U.S.-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan and the Iraq war saw the quiet re-emergence of Japan’s naval forces from constitutionally mandated quarantine. Two Japanese destroyers and a supply ship sailed to the Indian Ocean to support America in Afghanistan, along with ships and peacekeeping troops in Iraq. This decision was supported by the U.S., but it has to be questioned by We the Apathetic Maids.

Japan has the raw materials and technology to develop nuclear weapons in less than a year. That assumes they haven’t already done so. With plutonium for 25 bombs missing from the Japanese nuclear reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, one wonders if the conclusion of the 15-year probe into the shortage, which blamed it on shoddy book keeping, is believable. To attribute the shortage to faulty calculations in a country that prides itself on its precision engineering and quality control is at the very least highly suspect.

The passage of a law allowing Japan to send self-defense forces to maintain peacekeeping in Iraq marks a dangerous new era of Japanese militarism and violates the constitution imposed by America after WWII. The constitution reads: “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. Land sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

The Japanese right-wing faction makes Bush’s neo-cons look like innocent pacifist choir boys. “Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, with Bush administration support, is pursuing a dangerous political course. By committing to military involvement in Iraq, he is trying to end one of the last vestiges of the Second World War – the prohibition of Japanese military action on foreign soil,” William Beeman, who teaches anthropology at Brown, said. This is something America cannot permit or encourage. For America to allow Japan to again become a regional military power because it believes it is an ally is delusional. Japan will never be America’s true ally. Only a short-term self-serving one.

Japan admits to an annual defense budget of $50 billion. It successfully launched its first commercial rocket at the dawn of the 21st century – an action that does not fall into any military budget. On March 28, 2003, it launched its first spy satellite, which also is a non-military budget item.

In 2004, Japan shifted its main defense focus away from Russia and toward China in a once-a-decade military review. Henceforth, the Japanese military is to regard North Korea and China, not Russia, as the main dangers to its home islands. China reacted with outrage. The Japanese defense outline stated that China is “pushing forward its nuclear and missile capabilities and modernization of its navy and air force. It is also trying to expand its scope of naval activities.”

On December 19, 2003, Japan announced it was going to spend at least $4.2 billion for a U.S.-built missile defense network to defend itself against North Korea. The network will become operational by 2007 and be fully deployed by 2011. Japan is on a 21st-century kamikaze mission. Japan also has lifted its long-standing ban on military exports – so it can cooperate more closely with the U.S. on a missile defense program.

Is it really necessary for America to support the amendment of the Japan constitution because of its support for the missile defense shield and potential support in an attack against North Korea? Isn’t it safer and more cost-effective to have a fleet of U.S. Aegis destroyers positioned in the Sea of Japan? The Aegis can track an incoming missile in a matter of 20 seconds or so, and determine where it will hit. North Korea’s Nodong medium-range missile takes 10 minutes flying time to reach Japan from North Korea. A few Aegis destroyers are a lot safer, cost-effective and offer more protection than a missile defense shield or an amended constitution.

And if the American-imposed constitution can be amended, why isn’t the real McCoy on which it was modeled in America also amended to address the new realities of the 21st century?

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