Ted Kennedy: One person making a difference
by Susan Shaer, WAND Executive Director | WAND Blog

WAND believes that one person can make a difference. Today, as we honor the life of Ted Kennedy, I must note that he makes this maxim true. The difference he made is nothing short of phenomenal. (For more...)

Join in WAND’s campaign
Congress Meets the Community
In the next year, Congress will play an essential role in setting the agenda for vital security and budget priority issues.

Let them know how you feel! We can help. Find out more about how to set up a meeting.

FEDERAL BUDGET WATCH

Boeing Launches PR Campaign To Save C-17 Cargo Plane
By W.J. Hennigan | August 21, 2009 | LA Times

...The plane has been in production since the early 1990s but has relied on congressional funding since 2006. It's been able to garner widespread congressional support because the parts come from more than 650 suppliers in 43 states.

"The C-17 is a classic congressional welfare case," said Laura Peterson, national security analyst for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group.

Your Federal Budget, in Pictures
By Catherine Rampell | New York Times | August 25, 2009

[WAND always cites the fact that the military budget eats up over HALF of the DISCRETIONARY budget. Now we can say simply...]

"The biggest chunk of federal spending goes to defense."

NUCLEAR NOTES

Obama facing hurdles to nuclear disarmament goals
By DESMOND BUTLER (AP) – September 3, 2009

Five months after President Barack Obama, with great fanfare, called for a world free of nuclear weapons, a crucial step toward that goal is running into resistance.

There is little indication Obama will have the votes he needs for a cornerstone of his nonproliferation efforts: Senate ratification of a nuclear test ban treaty. If Obama can't get the treaty approved, he probably will have a hard time persuading the rest of the world to rein in nuclear weapon programs.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group based in Washington, said the Obama administration needs to "work faster and harder" to build support in the Senate.

Nuclear Posture Review: How will it look?
More Nukes?
Sep 3 2009 | by Marc Ambinder | The Atlantic

Tensions between hawks, doves and deterrencers have proliferated for decades, but in the administration of a president who has vowed to take concrete measures to change U.S. nuclear strategy and reduce American nuclear arsenals, they are especially acute. The White House's message to its allies has been low-key: trust Obama, they say, to make the right decisions in the end. But there are divisions at the top. Vice President Biden is fighting an effort, led by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, to modernize nuclear weapons, fearing that in doing so, the weapons' capabilities will be enhanced. The National Security Council has taken a largely passive role in interagency discussions -- so far. Even at the State Department, the talk is of compromise and vote-trading, with elements of the strategy review being used as bait to secure 67 vote majorities on major arms reduction treaties.

IRAQ -- and now! Afghanistan as well!

Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
New York Times | By JAMES GLANZ
| September 1, 2009

Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.

Contractor to Continue Work in Iraq Temporarily
New York Times | By MARK LANDLER | September 2, 2009

Underscoring its reliance on outside contractors, the State Department said Wednesday that it had extended a contract in Iraq with a subsidiary of the company formerly known as Blackwater, even though the business was denied an Iraqi government license to operate in the country...

In a letter to Mrs. Clinton last month, Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged her to undertake a sweeping review of the department’s contracts with Xe Services. He noted reports that the company played a role in a Central Intelligence Agency program of targeted killings of leaders of Al Qaeda.

“These reports raise anew serious questions about the wisdom of outsourcing the most sensitive government responsibilities to private companies,” Mr. Kerry wrote.

Iraq’s Ambivalence About the American Military
New York Times | By ROD NORDLAND | August 29, 2009

...Americans find this hard to understand about the Iraq war, that their trillion-dollar enterprise in Iraq has made Iraqis and particularly the Iraqi military not only deeply dependent on America, but also deeply conflicted, even resentful about that dependency. After all, we saved them from defeat at the hands of a ruthless insurgency that a few years ago indeed could have destroyed them, and we spent 4,000 lives doing it, left probably 10 times that many young Americans crippled for life, and they’re not grateful?

That is not, at bottom, how the Iraqis see it. They are grateful, many of them, but gratitude is a drink with a bitter aftertaste. They also chafe at the thousands of daily humiliations they endure from a mostly well-meaning but often clueless American military...

National Events

International Peace Day is September 21.
Check out the new UN web site that covers disarmament issues.

IDEAS, VISIONS, RESOURCES FOR A BETTER WORLD

• Click here for amazon.com. (You won't even see it happen.)
• Click here for iGive.com. (You'll need to specify WAND Education Fund as your cause.)
• Click here for GoodShop. (You'll need to specify WAND Education Fund as your cause.)

And it's not just books! Oh, no. It's toys, groceries, DVDs, magazines, and even gift certificates! It's all good.

LOOKING FOR JOBS?