The episode is a glimpse into the usually hidden world of how Washington's Op-Ed pages, which are prized real estate for those with interests before the U.S. government, are shaped. It also shows how Lockheed gave an assist to a major client -- Bahrain has bought hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons from the company over the years – as it faces widespread criticism for human rights abuses against pro-democracy protesters.

As Ken Silverstein reported in Salon last month, the kingdom is stepping up its Washington lobbying efforts. Here's the latest example, as far as I can piece together from lobbying disclosures filed by Bahrain's "strategic communications" firm, D.C.-based Sanitas International.

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Wired's Spencer Ackerman reports from the Army's "Unified Quest" event, in which the Army "holds a series of wargames and symposia to help it think about its needs for the near future." Its needs generally include funding that matches or exceeds current levels.

We are, of course, currently drawing down from one of the multiple wars we're fighting, making it harder to justify maintaining such a large Army, but the Army is basically convinced that the world is heading for a disastrous post-apocalyptic hellscape scenario:

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Wired's Danger Room reports:

On no fewer than 20 occasions since 2008, Raptor pilots have reported mid-air black-outs, disorientation and other symptoms of oxygen deprivation — a.k.a., “hypoxia” — possibly related to the stealth fighter’s On-Board Oxygen Generation System, built by Honeywell.

Haha, whoops. Well, when you're only able to spend $66.7 billion on a fleet of supermaneuverable stealth fighter aircraft, these things will happen.

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Lockheed Martin, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon confirmed that the contractor's information systems had come under attack. Lt. Col. April Cunningham, speaking for the Defense Department, said the impact on the Pentagon "is minimal and we don't expect any adverse effect."

Still, the concerted attempt to breach the contractor's systems underscored the risk to the nation's critical defense data. Chris Ortman, Homeland Security spokesman, said his agency and the Pentagon were working with the company to determine the breadth of the attack and "provide recommendations to mitigate further risk."

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that it detected the May 21 attack "almost immediately" and took countermeasures. As a result, "our systems remain secure; no customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised." The company's security team is still working to restore employee access to the targeted network. Neither Lockheed Martin nor the federal agencies revealed specifics of the attack.

AP writer Jennifer Malloy contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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The dynamic is not surprising -- nations will inevitably be more willing to use warfare as a foreign policy tool if they possess instruments limiting the cost of waging war. By letting kids in Las Vegas drop remote-controlled bombs on kids in Pakistan, Yemen and now Libya, drones are one of those instruments. But they are only one of many. Indeed, while President Obama preposterously claimed this week that most Americans "know well the costs of war," it's quite the opposite: Most Americans have been insulated from those costs -- and it's no coincidence that as we've become more insulated, we've happily waged more frequent wars.

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This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.

Have you noticed that Lockheed Martin, the giant weapons corporation, is shadowing you? No? Then you haven't been paying much attention. Let me put it this way: If you have a life, Lockheed Martin is likely a part of it.

True, Lockheed Martin doesn't actually run the U.S. government, but sometimes it seems as if it might as well. After all, it received $36 billion in government contracts in 2008 alone, more than any company in history. It now does work for more than two dozen government agencies from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. It's involved in surveillance and information processing for the CIA, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon, the Census Bureau, and the Postal Service.

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Topping the list of Rangel's transgressions was the misuse of his congressional clout to raise money for a vanity academic "center" named after him at the City University of New York from private donors. Yet somehow McConnell got away with the same kind of dubious dealings at the University of Louisville -- and was allowed to reward BAE Systems, donor of $500,000 to the McConnell Center, with $17 million worth of defense earmarks.

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It was contractors with the company ArmorGroup, remember, who were accused in 2009 of maintaining a "Lord of the Flies environment" at the embassy (there was also the now famous picture of a vodka butt-shot. ArmorGroup, which is owned by UK-based private security giant G4S, is the subject of the just-released 50-page State Department IG report. 

From the report's key findings:

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Mariam Mendoza Steinbuch, who was a staff sergeant deployed as a contracting specialist in 2006, was arraigned Tuesday in federal court in Washington.

Court documents say that after Mendoza returned to the United States in February 2007, she flew from San Diego to Houston Hobby Airport and picked up $25,000 cash from an official with a Houston-based affiliate of the company.

Court filings do not disclose the name of the company or the value of the contracts it was awarded in the scheme.

The documents say Mendoza must turn over two all-terrain vehicles she bought with the bribe money.

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The explosion at Kilgore Flares Co. was reported just before noon, said Cris Hill, a dispatcher at the Hardeman County sheriff's office.

A Memphis hospital reported that three people were brought there in critical condition and a smaller hospital in Bolivar reported that three people there were in good condition.

County Mayor Willie Spencer, who was at the scene, said the fire apparently was contained to one building, which was heavily damaged.

"It could have been a lot worse," he said. "Any time you have an explosion ... you never know how many people are around."

As for the cause, Spencer said, "I don't think they have a clue."

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Gen. Ray Odierno said Iraq's military has "stepped up" to the challenge even as Iraqi politicians continue to squabble over the formation of a new government and new incidents of extremist violence are reported.

"We do believe they are ready to assume full operations in Iraq," Odierno said on ABC's "This Week." He praised the Iraqi security forces for their professionalism and neutrality during the months of political uncertainty that followed elections earlier this year.

Odierno added, however, that it is critical for Iraq to form a government after five months of delay, warning that insurgents will try to take advantage of the political vacuum.

"The Iraqis have to understand the importance of forming the government," he said.

Violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq since 2008, but insurgent attacks remain a daily occurrence, especially in the capital Baghdad, preventing the city from regaining a semblance of normalcy seven years after the insurgency broke out.

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"You can rest assured that there is a new sheriff in town," she told union members at a gathering in Miami Beach shortly after her confirmation in February.

Ten months later, Solis' Labor Department has failed to crack down on one of the agency's fastest growing and most expensive programs, a system designed to ensure medical care for civilian workers injured in war zones.

The department is responsible for overseeing a workers' compensation system in which insurance carriers provide coverage to civilians working on overseas federal contracts -- a group estimated to grow rapidly as the Obama administration deepens U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Such policies are funded by taxpayers.

But the department has failed to pursue sanctions against corporations accused of ignoring federal requirements to purchase such insurance, according to a ProPublica review of court cases, federal records and interviews with worker advocates.

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But those monies are hardly Tenet's entire income. While the swirl of publicity around his book has focused on his long debated role in allowing flawed intelligence to launch the war in Iraq, nobody is talking about his lucrative connection to that conflict ever since he resigned from the CIA in June 2004. In fact, Tenet has been earning substantial income by working for corporations that provide the U.S. government with technology, equipment and personnel used for the war in Iraq as well as the broader war on terror.

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The Army investigated the circumstances behind the photograph, found "probable cause" that a crime had been committed, and referred the case to the Justice Department for prosecution. (Salon obtained the photo from someone who spent time at Abu Ghraib as a uniformed member of the military and is familiar with the Army investigation there.) But in early 2005, a Department of Justice attorney told the Army that the evidence in the case did not justify prosecution.

This failure to act by the Justice Department, which has sole jurisdiction over crimes committed by civilian contractors in Iraq, has prompted a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and human-rights organizations to question the seriousness with which the Bush administration is pursuing prisoner-abuse cases. At his January 2005 confirmation hearing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declared, "Abuse will not be tolerated by this administration. If confirmed, I will ensure that the Department of Justice aggressively pursues those responsible for such abhorrent actions."

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"Big Steve," whose real name is Steven Anthony Stefanowicz, worked as an interrogator for military intelligence at Abu Ghraib. But he was no ordinary soldier. Stefanowicz was one of dozens of civilian employees from Virginia contractor CACI International hired by the Pentagon to work at the prison.

According to a military policeman who testified at the court-martial, Stefanowicz directed the abuse in one of the most infamous incidents captured on camera at Abu Ghraib: A prisoner in an orange jumpsuit being menaced with an unmuzzled dog.

"I was told by his interrogator, Big Steve, that he was al-Qaida," testified Pvt. Ivan Frederick II. "He said, 'Any chance you get, put the dogs on.'"

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