“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Will super-rich war-industry CEOs be able to keep bilking taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars? That’s the question everyone should be asking after today’s announcement of the new strategic guidelines for the Pentagon. With the new guidance promising only to slow — not reverse — the growth of the bloated military budget, there’s a real chance that these members of the richest 0.01 percent will be able to keep ripping us off.

The war profiteers’ shady lobbying campaign took another hit to its credibility today, as an accounting firm on which they relied to support their bogus “military spending = jobs” argument was cited for severe audit deficiencies.

Media lapdogs are marked by stenographic tendencies, sympathetic frames and a reliance on industry jargon. Politico's latest report about Congressional Republicans working to undo looming defense cuts meets all three criteria.

Nothing about the Iraq fiasco should be called a success, despite President Obama’s attempt to provide closure to the troops misused and abused since the launch of that war. We must remember the truth about this catastrophic, unpopular, vicious war, and we must fight the strong national impulse to salvage our self-image in platitudes.

It’s was like a meaningless coda, as the war contractors at Blackwater USA changed its name again, two weeks after delivering Katy Helvenston-Wettengel with another insult.