How is it that the US military can still find people willing to go be cannon fodder for George W. Bush in Iraq? One answer is contemporary debt peonage.

Take Nick Sloan, 26, an Air Force captain stationed in Colorado Springs, and $68,021.35 in debt.

“I came to the realization that I was so far over my head, I had to do something drastic to increase my cash flow,” Captain Sloan said. “Iraq did that.” He is now in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

A Defense Department survey of active-duty service members found that in 2006, 11 percent reported failing to make a minimum payment on a credit card or military credit account in the preceding year; 11 percent said they had been put under pressure to pay bills by a store, creditor or bill collector; and 7 percent had bounced two or more checks. This debt often begins with low interest loans from the military itself – in the case of Captain Sloan, a loan of $25,000 from the Air Force, and ends with “payday loans” en excess of 36% from loan sharks that descend like vultures on relatively uneducated soldiers and are part and parcel of the military debt peonage system.

Everyone around Sloan seems to have been in agreement that the only way out was for him to head to Iraq except his fiancée. “She took decision the hardest of anyone,” he said. “Initially she was against it. I think I won her over eventually. It was a matter of looking at the numbers… The numbers were very telling. Drastic measures are required.”

Story here.

From MSNBC:

China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

Really there is nothing to add to this. It is a perfect expression.

But we should note that the point, as MSNBC points out, is “to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.”

While you are laughing (or crying) over this, note that a 2005 Gallup poll found that 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in reincarnation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/

The only officer charged with a crime in the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal was acquitted today. That's it. Game Over. Only the poor people at the bottom of the heap go to jail for this.

You may want to remind yourself of just how hideous these crimes were by doing a Google search for Abu Ghraib photos, but be forewarned: the pics that made it into the press were not the worst ones.

It is instructive to compare this outcome to the trials that followed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Though no higher officers were convicted, a Lieutenant, William Calley was convicted of premeditated murder. No one of his rank was charged in Abu Ghraib.

There was ample evidence already in the public sphere to charge Rumsfeld himself but that was of course, never even considered.

One final note: one of those accused of whitewashing the My Lai massacre at the time was Colin Powell, then a 31-year-old US Army Major.