The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) has thought fit to publish a bland, even merry report on a "warfighters' symposium and expo" that opened this week at a convention center in Tacoma, Washington.[2]  --  Officially titled "the SpecOps West 2007 Expo," this event has a variety of specifically unsavory aspects, in addition to being exemplary of a privatized militarism posing a gathering danger to American democracy.  --  Not that you'd know it from reading the News Tribune.  --  Tacoma's hometown paper has long been oblivious of such things, which concern it as much as do the icecaps of Mars.  --  In a commentary, UFPPC's Mark Jensen examines the News Tribune's coverage and wonders:  Could Tacoma's paper having its own muzzle deep in the Pentagon trough possibly affect its attitude toward protesters?[1]  --  D'ya think?  --  Meanwhile, while American businesses turned their profits ("American companies are enjoying the most sumptuously profitable period in the [Fortune] 500's 53-year history," Fortune reported in April), the deaths in Iraq of two more Stryker soldiers from Fort Lewis were officially announced Monday.[3]  --  Spc. William J. Crouch, 21, of Zachary, LA, and Spc. Romel Catalan, 21, of Los Angeles, CA, were both 21 years of age.  --  They were the first deaths of Fort Lewis personnel in June; twenty soldiers from Fort Lewis died in May, making it the worst month in the long history of the Iraq war and occupation....

1.

Commentary

NEWS TRIBUNE FEIGNS AMAZEMENT AT PROTESTERS' WRATH
By Mark Jensen

** But say — isn't our local paper a war profiteer too? **

United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
June 5, 2007

TACOMA, Washington -- In an unsigned article posted on the paper's web site Monday evening, prepared for Tuesday's edition, the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) calls the "warfighters' symposium and expo" being held at the Greater Tacoma Trade and Convention Center "a trade show for trigger pullers," and feigns amazement at the notion that there is "anything sinister in vendors marketing items intended to make soldiers safer and more comfortable in difficult circumstances" ("Soldiers Visit Military Hardware Expo," June 5, 2007; see #2 below).

Longtime readers are used to such faux cluelessness in Tacoma's hometown paper.

After all, the News Tribune itself feeds at the Pentagon trough by publishing the Northwest Guardian, the "authorized newspaper of Fort Lewis, WA."

Time was when the News Tribune didn't bother to hide the fact.  The Northwest Guardian used to tell its readers to send feedback to "NWGEditor@thenewstribune.com." Of late, though, it's changed the editor's address to "NWGEditor@nwguardian.com." That looks to us like an attempt to hide the relationship.

We don't have all the facts about the News Tribune's relationship with the United States Department of Defense.

But we'd like to.

In 2005, a flyer addressed to potential advertisers announced that "The weekly Army newspaper, marketed and published by The News Tribune, is published Fridays with a circulation of 20,000 copies -- 16,300 to base housing and newsstands, and 3,700 to homes on the post. 25,000 adults read each weekly issue."

The flyer also brags about the monopoly the paper enjoys: "The Northwest Guardian is the only authorized newspaper on the Fort Lewis post. Published by The News Tribune, you're assured of quality printing, distribution, and customer service."

The flyer goes on to urge advertisers to "[t]ap into the economic power of the Fort Lewis military force" -- exactly what the participants at this week's trade show are doing, come to think of it. No wonder the News Tribune sympathizes.

"The Northwest Guardian is your avenue to the $1.2 billion in annual military payroll in Pierce County. . . . That makes The Northwest Guardian a goldmine for employee recruiting and, for many businesses, an untapped source of new customers." And so on -- you get the drift.

We are unable to imagine from what source the News Tribune thinks it derives the moral standing to challenge the principled objections of antiwar protesters, when it is so deeply immersed itself in the very system to which the protesters are calling attention. Are its editors even able to see the problem, we wonder?

As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

But we at least give our hometown paper credit for printing a protest organizer's effective rejoinder to its uncalled-for editorializing. Scott Silverstein told the News Tribune:  "We want the ultimate comfort for soldiers to come home from a war that is unwinnable. . . . These people sell death for a living. We want that to be known to everyone in Tacoma."

So what are the protesters upset about?

The News Tribune neglected to point out the unsavory aspects of the event, which include a focus on special operations and a keynote speech by the special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, or ASD-SO/LIC.

Our present "ASD-SO/LIC" is a veteran of the PHOENIX Program in Vietnam, a "murderous covert program" which beginning in 1968 organized the torture and murder of tens of thousands of Vietcong suspects, the well-documented record of which was reviewed recently by historian Alfred W. McCoy on pages 64-71 of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (Metropolitan Books, 2006); he later became a senior manager at Raytheon after his career in Army Special Ops and the CIA.

There will also be panels at the "symposium" on subjects like "Irregular Warfare" and a speech about the "Indigenous Surveillance Program."

If this sounds like the PHOENIX Program all over again, it might be because the speaker is an employee of the Abraxas Corp., a private military firm that describes itself as "a global risk mitigation services provider offering a unique insight in the areas of competitive intelligence, . . . political, economic and security assessment, compliance monitoring, behavioral analysis, deception detection, and information elicitation[, with] the largest aggregate of counter-terrorism expertise outside the U.S. Government." Abraxas has also been called "a firm which provides cover stories for CIA contractors and agents to work worldwide [and which] has allegedly been instrumental in putting into effect illegal plans, unlawful programs, and other activities which violate the laws of war and Geneva Conventions."

Frankly, we expect hell to freeze over before we read about any of these things in the News Tribune.

Should you feel inclined to add your voice to those of the protesters, the protest demonstrations will continue on Tues., Jun. 5, at 12:00 noon, and again on Wed., Jun. 6, at noon, in front of the convention center, located at South 15th & Commerce in downtown Tacoma.

Take advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate now -- in the future, you might not be able to.

Chris Hedges wrote on Sunday in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown that triggers social unrest, or a series of environmental disasters, such paramilitary forces [as Blackwater USA], protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could ruthlessly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to corporations, and to right-wing interests such as the Christian Right, could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms, and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on the streets in New Orleans could appear on our streets" ("What If Our Mercenaries Turn on Us?" Philadelphia Inquirer, June 3, 2007).

That's just the sort of equipment that's on display this week at the Greater Tacoma Trade and Convention Center.

--Mark Jensen is a member of United for Peace of Pierce County (WA) and of the faculty of Pacific Lutheran University.

***

2.

SOLDIERS VISIT MILITARY HARDWARE EXPO

News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
June 4, 2007

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/updates/story/78579.html

Call it a trade show for trigger pullers.

At the two-and-a-half-day “SpecOps West Symposium and Warfighter Expo,” which continues today and Wednesday at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center, a fighting man or woman will find an array of gadgets and gear, some lethal, some not.

Among the products on display are .50-caliber sniper rifles, 40mm grenade launchers, and an assortment of combat knives.

There are precision sights and Kevlar helmets and body armor, lights and lubricants and water filtration systems.

There’s a secure wireless Internet hub in a rugged plastic box, cargo containers especially designed for shipping military gear, and tactical satellite communications systems.

There are anti-microbial socks soldiers who stop by the vendor’s display get a free pair and comfortable combat boots.

And Sheri Alvandian, president of Source Promotions Inc. of Los Angeles, is giving away tiny, tightly compressed cloth pellets that, with the application of a small amount of water, expand into a washcloth-sized towelette that just might beat the heck out of baby wipes.

“Give your majors the idea to contact me,” Alvandian told a cluster of impressed Fort Lewis soldiers who paused by her booth for a demonstration Monday.

That is the point of the event for most of the 80 or so vendors: face-time with the “end-user operators” who may find a need for their products when they’re deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere.

Nathan Jones of Hydration Technologies Inc. of Albany, Ore., gave two packages of his company’s water purification products to a pair of Fort Lewis helicopter pilots leaving soon for Iraq.

National Guard units used them in post-Katrina New Orleans, he said, and he hopes the aviators will be impressed enough to tell their squadron’s logistics officer.

Purchasing power down at the unit level is relatively low-budget, but it does “give them a lot more flexibility to tailor their gear to their specific mission,” Jones said.

Pam Pugel of Chemax Corp. of Beaumont, Texas, said like most vendors she probably won’t close a single sale. But meeting the people who might use the products is a far more direct way to do business than slogging through the contracting bureaucracy.

Her company makes synthetic grease that won’t melt at high temperatures, gun lubricants, and an insulated coating for ships that she figures might have some kind of useful application for ground troops.

“I’m hoping somebody comes along with a good idea for that,” Pugel said.

Some of the country’s largest defense contractors also have booths, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, and Raytheon.

Their participation is drawing the attention of protesters from Olympia, Tacoma, and Seattle, who put out a call on the Internet for activists to demonstrate at the event. They picketed outside the main entrance to the exhibition hall and passed out leaflets branding vendors as “war profiteers.”

“These people sell death for a living. We want that to be known to everyone in Tacoma,” organizer Scott Silverstein said.

Asked if there was anything sinister in vendors marketing items intended to make soldiers safer and more comfortable in difficult circumstances, Silverstein said, “We want the ultimate comfort for soldiers to come home from a war that is unwinnable.”

The show is not open to the general public. It is geared toward the defense industry, military service members, researchers, and academics, officials said.

Presentations scheduled for today include talks about the future of special operations forces, defense against chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological weapons, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and “indigenous surveillance” in the war on terror.

The event is a production of the Lodestar Group, a Raleigh, N.C., media and marketing company that puts on defense-related trade shows. Its SpecOps East is held each November in Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg.

Jeanne Eury, executive vice president for marketing and communications, said the firm last year also put on the first non-classified industry event focusing on the threat posed by improvised explosive devices. A second is scheduled next week in Fayetteville.

It’s the group’s first show on the West Coast, she said.

3.

TWO STRYKER BRIGADE SOLDIERS KILLED IN IRAQ

Associated Press
June 4, 2007

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_060407WABfortlewisstrykerkilledTP.157b01fa.html

[PHOTO CAPTION: Spc. WIlliam J. Crouch, a Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade member, was killed Saturday by a roadside bomb in Hadid, Iraq.]

FORT LEWIS, Wash. -- Two 21-year-old Stryker brigade soldiers from Fort Lewis have been killed in Iraq, the first reported casualties in June for the post that last month lost 20 soldiers in the country.

Spc. William J. Crouch, 21, of Zachary, La., died Saturday in Al Hadid when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle, the Department of Defense said in a release Monday.

On the same day, Spc. Romel Catalan, 21, of Los Angeles, Calif., died in a separate attack in Ameriyah, the department said. He was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

Catalan enlisted in the Army on July 13, 2004. He trained at Fort Knox in Kentucky and reported to Fort Lewis on Nov. 16, 2004.

A member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Catalan left for Iraq last June on his first deployment.

Crouch was a cavalry scout with the 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment of the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma.

He joined the Army his senior year in high school. His desire to serve came from his father, James Crouch, a Baton Rouge policeman who died of natural causes when Crouch was 13, his mother, Kathy Rushing, said.

He wanted to be "in the thick of things . . . on the front lines," she said.

Rushing said casualty assistance soldiers from Fort Polk told her Saturday night that her son had been killed while on patrol.

Crouch's younger brother, John Crouch, a reservist with a maintenance company stationed in Iraq, would try to join his brother's body on the flight back to the U.S., Rushing said.

"We're hoping he'll be able to bring his brother home," she said.

The 4th Brigade has lost ten soldiers since leaving for Iraq in April on what has since been extended to a fifteen-month tour in the country.

On Tuesday, it plans a memorial service at Fort Lewis for Staff Sgts. David Kuehl and Kristopher Higdon, Pfc. Robert Worthington, and Cpl. Mathew LaForest.

The four were among 20 Fort Lewis soldiers killed in multiple attacks last month, the deadliest for the post -- as well as for troops with ties to the state -- since the war began in March 2003.