A top lobbying group for the arms industry has announced its intentions to lobby the new Congressional Supercommittee against defense spending cuts.   According to the Aerospace Industries Association, the Pentagon's  budget  has already been “cut to the bone.” Supercommittee member Sen.  Jon Kyl  (R-AZ) isn't waiting for the military-industrial-complex's  pitch. Kyl  has started his own internal protest,   demanding that no one on the committee ever mention military spending   reduction. He even is threatening to resign if any such cuts are   proposed.

Currently,  US defense spending represents  the largest military budget the world  has ever seen and is only  expected to grow with the expansion of a U.S.  military presence in Africa.  In the last week alone, Washington DC has  spent close to $3.3 'B'illion  dollars on operations in Iraq and  Afghanistan.

Weary  about the potential for a similar  financial commitment to Libya, NATO's  top military brass are opposed to  long-term intervention in North  Africa and are eager to end the war in  Libya, a senior military officer  told the Associated Press on condition  of anonymity.

“We  must end this Libyan business  quickly,” the NATO official said. “We  just cannot afford this  proliferation of missions which just drag on  and on. One needs to  finally end.”

The top  levels of America's  trans-Atlantic military alliance are apparently in  agreement (even NATO  Secretary-General and pro-interventionist Anders  Fogh Rasmussen) that  the prospect of nation building in Libya is an  unacceptable one. Not  only is the NATO war-machine increasingly at risk  of budget cuts in  light of the fiscal insolvency of its parent  governments, officials are  assured that trying to get Europeans to  support a Libyan reconstruction  mission after a decade-plus commitment  to similar and ongoing endeavors  in the Balkans and the Middle East  will be an impossible task. Rasmussen  is supporting the call for a United Nations peacekeeping force to take over NATO's role in Libya now that Gadhafi has been overthrown.

By  contrast, American military officials  are constantly reaffirming their  willingness to play the role of nation  builder. The latest example came  this week when Army Gen. Carter Ham,  commander of U.S. Africa Command,  requested more special operations  forces in order to fight “terrorism”  and build more pro-American  militaries on the African continent. Ham  told reporters in Washington on  Wednesday that he would like more  special ops forces now, but he said  he expects to get his wish in the  coming years as troop levels wane in  Afghanistan. Ham is one of several  top military officials who are  warning Congress not to cut the budgets  of special ops forces. To do so would threaten national security, they say.

In 2007, the US increased its military presence in Africa much to the chagrin of critics who accused the Executive branch of   positioning itself to set up permanent US bases there. Ham's request and   his assessment of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti as a “very, very   interesting and important hub” that requires expansion, only work to   further support such a theory.

According to Ham, African leaders are widely supportive of U.S. militarization in their countries:

“We  keep getting asked to do more  and more and more, and go to more  places,” said Ham. “More exercises,  more military-to-military  engagement, more and more requests for  interchanges, and I don’t recall  anybody saying, ‘We don’t want you to  come here anymore.'”

In the Middle East, Syrian activists are claiming that government troops have killed a number of people in attacks on villages close to the Turkish border. At least 10 towns   have been invaded in the far north of the country, with lines of   communication completely severed from the region. The influx of refugees   into Turkey from Syria's northern border has prompted the former to demand an end to crackdowns on protestors by the Assad government. The situation has deteriorated enough to have   some Turkish officials contemplating an invasion of northern Syria to establish a “buffer zone” to shield Turks from the tumult. This latest offensive might be an attempt by Syria to test Turkey's resolve.

Elsewhere, Yemenis rallied by the thousands in the eastern province of Hudeidah on Wednesday to protest the  Saleh   government's practice of “collective punishment” against areas of the   country that have reformed their local leadership away from regime   control. Protesters accuse President Ali Abdullah Saleh of cutting off   electricity supplies to populations who have demanded his ousting for   the past seven months. In another sign that Yemen is teetering on the   brink of collapse, a massive anti-government protest also took place on   Wednesday in Taiz, Yemen's second-largest city. Some commentators are   calling the Taiz rally a “flashpoint” for an uprising that will   undoubtedly take down Saleh.

Finally, the cost for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars crossed the $1.25 trillion mark.  And according to icasualties.org, 6,244 US soldiers have died, and over 45,000 US soldiers have been wounded so far in the two war theaters.