On the rarest of occasions in Washington, the oft-derided “publicity stunt” tactic serves not to raise a politician’s profile or pet cause, but a worthy goal of highlighting possible wrongdoing. Such was the case yesterday when, debating the Pentagon budget bill in the House, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) introduced an amendment to cut off all funding for Pentagon information operations — a euphemism for propaganda. Johnson used the opportunity to speak on the amendment to get into the Congressional record and recount a disturbing case suggesting Defense Department contractors retaliated against investigative journalists looking into their work.

Johnson was referring to USA Today Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook and editor Ray Locker, who were smeared in a so-called “reputation attack” designed to flood the internet with information discrediting them just days after they made calls to defense contractors about possible waste and abuse. Johnson cited one of the companies they exposed — Leonie Industries — for having no military or propaganda experience. Last year, the Pentagon spent $202 million on such propaganda endeavors intended to target U.S. enemies like Al Qaeda and the Taliban — but those tactics and that money may have been used against the USA Today journalists.

Speaking during the House Armed Services Committee hearing, Johnson said:

As incompetent as this reputation attack campaign appears to have been, it raises the deeply disturbing possibility that a federal defense contractor that specializes in information operations may have targeted American journalists. It may have done so using taxpayer dollars and tactics developed to counter the influence of advresaries such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Mr. Chairman, although we don’t have compelling evidence that this money is well spent, I recognize that some of these investments may be effectively supporting our men and women in harm’s way. So I intend to withdraw this amendment. But I call upon the Department of Defense to launch an immediate investigation of this matter, to refer any evidence of criminal activity to the Attorney General, and to consider suspending all contracts with Leonie Industries until such investigation is complete.

Watch the video:

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Johnson doesn’t want to harm U.S. troops, so he ended up withdrawing the amendment. But he took the time to shed light on an important case of Pentagon waste and what he rightly calls a “deeply disturbing possibility” that Pentagon propagandists retaliated against journalists doing nothing more than their jobs. Despite the “stunt” of introducing an amendment, Johnson did the country a service by highlighting possible waste and abuse by the Pentagon and its contrators.

Reports that FBI counterterrorism training programs relied heavily on Islamophobic material has sent shockwaves through the FBI and the Department of Justice. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman has closely followed the influence of FBI trainer William Gawthrop’s presentation, “The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in Islamic Law,” and notes that the slides have been cited in Justice Department training material which portray an existential battle between Islam and the West.

Ackerman notes that in 2007, Gawthrop taught a class on “intelligence and homeland security” and the National Defense Intelligence College. A ThinkProgress investigation into Gawthrop’s background reveals he was part of a U.S. Army War College think tank, the Proteus Management Group (PMG), at which Islamophobic training material and papers were regularly produced and shared.

Pat Cohn, a contractor for the Army who works at the War College and is listed as a contact for the group, told ThinkProgress that, to the best of his knowledge, Proteus had been shut down when it lost its funding. He could not say when the funding had been cut. Portions of the project’s website have been erased but a combination of a cached version of the website and documents still hosted on U.S. military web-servers reveal a DOD operation which served as a breeding ground for the Islamophobic narratives present in Gawthrop’s presentations.

Proteus’ mission was to “consider differing values and perceptions,” and “frame complex issues holistically.” A banner on the now-erased Proteus website reflects the group’s “outside the box” mission:

Proteus, which was sponsored by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence and the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership, hosted Gawthrop as a “PMG Fellow.” A March 2007 Proteus newsletter directs readers to one of Gawthrop’s articles in which he suggests the ideas of Islam should be “countered” through “critical vulnerabilities.” He writes:

Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal; portions were ghostwritten by others; portions were lost or redacted, and it was revised and re-issued by another mortal. Similar vulnerabilities may be found in Mohammad’s character as a political and military leader, the character of other Clerics in the Modern Era, as well as the topics addressed in the Haddiths.

But Gawthrop’s portrayal of Islam as inherently violent — indeed he glosses over the history of Christian wars of aggression by declaring “the Crusades were a delayed response to Jihad” — and at odds with Western civilization was hardly outside the norm in the “future” research conducted at Proteus.

Documents hosted on DOD webservers and associated with the Proteus program lay bare a culture of hostility toward Islam and closely resemble the messages in Gawthrop’s training materials.

A “Proteus Monograph Series” on “Truth, Perception, And Consequences,” authored by Christine A. R. MacNulty, reads:

[The Enlightenment] was the time of a major paradigm shift for the West, away from the authoritarian epistemology of medieval religious doctrine and towards an empirical epistemology based on the scientific method. The Islamic world has not been through a similar shift, which could explain its current predicament. [...]

While the [Islamic] radicals permit no creativity in general, they exhibit great creativity in terms of tactics and the development of IEDs, bombs, and other weaponry. They are innovative in their uses of technology such as cellphones. But behind them are still the concepts of revenge, honor, and “face” mixed with resentment and envy of the West.

In a presentation delivered by Cynthia E. Ayers at a Proteus workshop in August 2006, she warns that the Bush administration’s offer of incentives for Iran to cease nuclear enrichment could “be interpreted by Iranian leaders as an offer to pay ‘tribute’ in submission to Islam.” The presentation concludes with the following slide:

While public attention has focused on Gawthrop’s presence at the FBI, documents from Proteus would suggest that the Islamophobic narratives in his presentations were common, if not actively encouraged, by the Department of Defense at the Army War College.

While the mention of defense spending cuts puts hawks on a war footing to justify the staggering Pentagon budget, a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Lawrence J. Korb, Sam Klug, and Alex Rothman examines bipartisan proposals for defense spending cuts. Their report concludes that any cuts in military spending, in all likelihood, will be moderate, at best, but that wide bipartisan support exists for returning spending to fiscally responsible levels.

First, it’s important to recognize that the debt ceiling deal puts caps on security spending — limiting the security budget to $684 billion in 2012 and $686 billion in 2013 — which includes funding for the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, State Department, and intelligence agencies. The authors observe:

Congress could potentially keep security spending within the caps without touching DOD spending at all, instead slashing the budgets of the other, already underfunded “security” agencies.

Doing so would continue to overstate the proper role for the military within our foreign policy. After an unprecedented streak of 13 consecutive years of rising defense budgets, the United States is now spending more on defense than at any time since World War II and almost as much as the rest of the world combined.

Watch CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence J. Korb discuss defense spending and the debt ceiling deal:

The report highlights four bipartisan plans (see chart) for defense spending reductions from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission, the Project on Government Oversight/Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the Center for American Progress.

All four plans would bring significant savings, ranging from Coburn’s proposed plan, which would save more than $1 trillion over 10 years, to the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission proposal with $100.1 billion in estimated savings by 2015. But all four plans agreed on reducing F-35 and V-22 Osprey procurement, reforming the DoD’s healthcare plan, and cutting European and Asian troop levels.

Three out of four plans agreed on reducing the carrier fleet; implementing former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s strategy for cutting costs and boosting efficiency; reducing the use of contractors; and reducing the nuclear arsenal.

Since the White House and Congress reached a debt ceiling deal this week (which included $350 billion in security spending reductions), Republicans, war hawks, and even Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have been using scare tactics in an effort to prevent further military spending cuts.

Add Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) to that list. But Thornberry — who is also on the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees and is vice chair of the Subcommittee on Emerging threats — one-upped his colleagues yesterday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday. Thornberry said DOD can live with the initial $350 billion, but if Congress cuts anything beyond that, the military goes kaput:

HEWITT: So Mac Thornberry, if you look at this budget that we just passed, this deficit reduction that we just passed, $350 billion dollars from Defense over ten years, and another $600 billion coming up. Is that how we fund facing future threats?

THORNBERRY: No, of course not. The first cuts are something that the Pentagon says they can live with, it’s going to be hard, but it’s kind of in the ballpark of what folks have been talking about for a while. The second cuts, if they were to happen, would be devastating. You simply could not operate the military with that second round of cuts. And the assumption is that they’re not going to happen, that there’ll be a way out of it. But it concerns me that they would even be taking Defense hostage in these budget negotiations.

Frightening. But in reality, under the deal, security spending is capped at $684 billion in 2012. And according the Center on Budget on Policy Priorities, defense spending will be reduced by $55 billion per year for ten years starting in 2014 if the trigger takes effect:

A defense sequestration of $55 billion would be imposed in a similar manner. … For 2014-2021, the cuts would occur through reductions in the statutory caps on total defense funding, with the Appropriation Committees deciding how best to allocate the allowed funding. … A defense sequestration of $55 billion also would represent a cut of roughly 9 percent in defense programs if military personnel funding is exempt from sequestration, and about a 7 percent cut if it is not.

So defense will have to deal with 7 to 9 percent cuts per year for a decade if the trigger takes effect, which amounts to around $850 billion in total defense spending reductions in ten years under that scenario. Various estimates have calculated that defense can withstand further cuts beyond that and still maintain military superiority and address the country’s security threats. So yes, despite Thornberry’s fearmongering, the military will still be able to operate.

The White House and leaders in Congress have reportedly reached a deal to raise the country’s debt limit. Both parties agreed to cut $1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years and an additional $1.2 trillion to be determined by a special committee with “triggers” instituted to split that $1.2 trillion equally between defense and domestic spending if a future deal isn’t reached.

Of course the pro-military industrial complex wing of the GOP is incensed and reliable war-hawk John Bolton is leading the charge. On Fox News this morning, he said military spending should actually be increased. “We have been under spending on defense,” he said. Bolton then embarrassed himself when the host asked him to explain why then, is military spending currently at the highest level since World War II. Bolton deflected the question, saying simply that it’s “complicated”:

HOST: I was struck by something that the Hill newspaper reported yesterday. They said that President Obama’s defense budget for 2012 is $671 billion, the highest since WWII.

BOLTON: They have mixed their numbers up in ways that are too complicated to explain in the next 15 seconds. Let me just say, if you look at the trajectory of budget expenditures in the past three years non-discretionary, discretionary non-defense is way up. Defense spending is down. So treating them as equivalent is comparing apples and oranges. Defense spending is not just another wasteful government program.

Watch it:

No, defense spending — which makes up 50 percent of discretionary spending — is not “down” (see this chart for the illustration) and no, the Hill doesn’t have its numbers mixed up. The numbers show that the Pentagon’s budget “has increased so much over the past decade that it has reached levels not seen since World War II.” CAP’s Larry Korb and Laura Conley note:

Total defense spending in real terms is now higher than at any time since the end of World War II, more than throughout the entire Cold War, and even 10 percent higher than the peak of the Reagan defense buildup. The baseline defense budget has been growing in real terms for 13 straight years—the longest-ever period of sustained real growth in U.S. defense spending.

Perhaps if Bolton had more time to explain those way “too complicated” numbers, he would’ve pointed to meaningless defense spending indicators cooked up by his war-hawk colleagues to hide the truth about out of control military spending.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reported this weekend on a program used to train military doctors for the fast-paced and bloody environment found in war zone hospitals — namely, America’s inner cities.

Starr follows a rotation of military doctors who are preparing for their deployment at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. The program director told Starr that the hospital is the closest to a war zone hospital he has seen:

COL. DAVID POWERS: The injuries that I’ve treated here and that I see here at this hospital are the closest thing to the injuries I saw in Iraq that I’ve experienced in the continental United States.

Watch a clip:

While the program is no doubt useful for preparing doctors for the high-intensity environments overseas and likewise giving doctors broad sets of skills they can use at home, that doctors can train for war zones through the crush of patients with, among other injuries, stabbing and gunshot wounds serve as a powerful reminder that as the wars overseas wind down, problems at home remain.

The total spending on the U.S.’ wars now exceeds $1.2 trillion. The Pentagon budget passed by the House earlier this month allocated nearly $200 billion this year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Baltimore ranks as the eighth most dangerous city, second in its reported HIV/AIDS rate, and is the heroin capital of the country.