Gonna lay down my sword and shield

Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key to Pentagon Plan
By Ann Scott Tyson The Washington Post
Saturday 04 February 2006
Conventional tactics de-emphasized.

The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions US troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite US troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.
China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.
The latest top-level reassessment of strategy, or Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), is the first to fully take stock of the starkly expanded missions of the US military - both in fighting wars abroad and defending the homeland - since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The review, the third since Congress required the exercise in the 1990s, has been widely anticipated because Donald H. Rumsfeld is the first defense secretary to conduct one with the benefit of four years' experience in office. Rumsfeld issued the previous QDR in a hastily redrafted form days after the 2001 strikes.
The new strategy, summarized in a 92-page report, is a road map for allocating defense resources. It draws heavily on the lessons learned by the US military since 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations. The strategy significantly refines the formula - known as the "force planning construct" - for the types of major contingencies the US military must be ready to handle.
(for full article clink on my post title or copy and paste:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406Z.shtml)
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...down by the riverside
down by the riverside
down by riverside
gonna lay down my sword and shield
down by the riverside
aint gonna study war no more

If this is "compassion abroad," welcome back to the Cold War.
Our press is "free" and our country has amnesia. I wonder what kind of peace, security and democracy our freedom crusades will bring this time?