There is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security - diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development."

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates speaking at Kansas State University, 11/26/07

The failure of the U.S.'s unilateral military engagement in Iraq has fueled a growing understanding within the military that the U.S. needs diplomatic tools to help prevent war. But Congress has not yet invested in tools that can lead to a lasting peace.

Your representative can make an investment this year in building peace by supporting the Reconstruction and Stabilization Civilian Management Act (H.R. 1084). Instead of sending the military to countries teetering on the brink of war or emerging from conflict, the U.S. could send civilian experts who specialize in training police, running hospitals and schools, improving farm production, and other specialties. These trained civilians would help governments strengthen the public institutions that meet people's basic needs and give them confidence in their government's ability to protect and support them.

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to require the president to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within 30 days and set a goal for withdrawal of most combat troops by the end of 2008. The bill would also ban the use of torture in interrogations, direct the administration to seek regional stability in conversation with Iraq's neighbors, and prohibit the U.S. from building permanent military installations in Iraq. But the bill, which provides $50 billion in additional funding for war, will never become law because President Bush will veto it and Congress does not have enough votes to override the president's veto.

Some Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether a new Bush administration request for $88 million to fit "bunker-busting" bombs to B-2 stealth bombers was part of preparations for an attack on Iran.

A Bush administration summary said the request was needed for "development of a Massive Ordnance Penetrator for the B-2 aircraft in response to an urgent operational need from theater commanders," but gave no details. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a conventional bomb designed to destroy hardened or deeply buried targets.

"My assumption is that it is Iran, because you wouldn't use them in Iraq, and I don't know where you would use them in Afghanistan; it doesn't have any weapons facilities underground that we know of," said Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who is on the House Appropriations Committee and intends to argue against the request.

November 5 is a Global Day of Action against cluster bombs. People all over the world are taking action to urge the banning of these indiscriminate killers. The call-in day is a chance to show senators that there is strong public opposition to these inhumane weapons in the U.S. and strong support for S.594. The bill would substantially restrict both the use and export of cluster bombs by:
1) requiring that they not be used in areas where civilians are known to be present, and 2) requiring that they have a dud rate of less than 1 percent (meaning that they will leave behind fewer deadly submunitions on the ground after the combat ends).

Go to www. nationalpriorities.org to get the following:

In spite of claims that military spending creates jobs, much of the money spent on the military never makes it back to the States. NPP's findings, based on recently released federal spending data, show that 32 states pay more in taxes for the military than they receive back in military spending.

NPP also offers state rankings and breakdowns that show what each state received to fund education, food and nutrition and the Environmental Protection Agency as compared to military spending, along with a breakdown of total expenditures by state compared to taxes paid. Spending data at state and county levels for dozens of federal spending programs from 1983-2005 is also available at The NPP Database.

NOTE: November Scientific American has articles on nuclear weapons

Can you define torture? President Bush wasn't able to when he was asked this week. How reassuring is his claim that "We don't torture" if he can't say what it is that United States isn't doing?

According to the Justice Department, the U.S. is legally allowed to do things to prisoners that most people would consider torture. In a 2005 secret legal opinion that still defines government practice, the
department said that painful physical abuse -- including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures -- is not cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and isn't torture.

The U.S. needs to end the word games and secrecy. Congress needs to shine a light on what the CIA is doing to U.S. detainees by restoring the courts' power to independently review the way our government is
treating every single person it holds against their will.

Your senators can help to open a window on torture by supporting and championing the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act (S. 185). Habeas corpus is the right of all prisoners to have a court consider why they are in
prison and how they are being treated. As of mid-October, 32 senators have cosponsored this legislation, and 56 senators voted for the bill on the Senate floor in September. But in today's partisan Senate,
legislation needs 60 votes to come to a vote and avoid a filibuster:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/CCKCHTFSZY/MKSUHTFVKX/1491663841.

New NAPF Video - Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is pleased to announce the release of its newest video, Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future. Co-edited by Foundation volunteers Ryan Roberson and Ivan Van Wingerden, the video outlines the Foundation's case against nuclear weapons.

Please contact Rick Wayman at (805) 965-3443 or rwayman@napf.org to order a free copy of this DVD. We encourage you to show the video to your friends, neighbors and family.

From Council for a Livable World

Stop President Bush's latest attempt to build new nuclear weapons by calling your Senators and asking them to cosponsor Sen. Diane Feinstein's (D-CA) Nuclear Policy and Posture Review Act (S. 1914).

Senator Feinstein has had enough of the Bush administration's myopic refusal to recognize that building new nuclear weapons will severely undermine our efforts to stop Iran and North Korea from building nuclear weapons. Her bill will eliminate all funding for new nuclear weapons until a new president enters office in 2009, as well as mandate a much-needed review of U.S. nuclear policy.

Prepared by Christopher Hellman, Military Policy Fellow

www.armscontrolcenter.org
September 10, 2007

chellman@armscontrolcenter.org
(703) 945-3950 Cell

With the attention of the media and most of the country focused on the report on Iraq being delivered to Congress this week by Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker, the Senate will also be taking up the Pentagon¹s annual funding legislation. It does so with a number of competing forces at work ­ the Democrats¹ desire to continue using Iraq to make political points; the unwillingness of members of Congress to appear not to be supporting U.S. troops; and inability of the opponents of the Iraq war on Capitol Hill to round up enough bi-partisan support to force the issue with the Bush Administration.

The panic and distraction of the security crisis should not be used as cover for handing Iraq’s wealth to foreigners

Glad tidings from Baghdad at last. The Iraqi parliament has gone into summer recess without passing the oil law that Washington was pressing it to adopt. For the Bush administration this is irritating, since passage of the law was billed as a “benchmark” in its battle to get Congress not to set a timetable for US troop withdrawals. The political hoops through which the government of Nouri al-Maliki has been asked to jump were meant to be a companion piece to the US “surge”. Just as General David Petraeus, the current US commander, is due to give his report on military progress next month, George Bush is supposed to tell Congress in mid-September how the Maliki government is moving forward on reform.