War Is Literal Hell

Why Bankers Love War

2010-03-01T06:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Bankers-Love-War-by-Scott-Baker-100228-838.html

February 28, 2010
Why Bankers Love War
By Scott Baker

Bankers have ample money to fund wars.

War is profitable for Bankers. It's the best investment they can make.

Henry George recognized this 130 years ago (indeed, it was WWI that sapped the strength of the Georgist movement). Other writers, such as Mason Gaffney, and Stephen Zarlenga, and many, many others, recognize it today.

Think about it from the point of view of a business that exists solely to sell debt (banks). What could be better than to loan money that:
1. Is strictly to the best debtor in the land: the U.S. Government
2. Will continue to be borrowed until the war is "won" (or, better yet, in modern times, to fund an endless series of wars on terror, in different lands, needing different - and expensive - weapon systems)
3. Will be spent on things that go BOOM, and then have to be replaced, over and over and over.
4. Has virtually no limit on upward costs, due to technological advancements. Almost every major country is developing drones of its own, (see here, here, here, here) meaning we could soon be embroiled in drone wars, without all those "messy" dead and shattered young people cluttering up the airwaves and discouraging further war-making. Of course there'll continue to be dead civilians, but that's just collateral damage, you know. Then, there's the Terminator scenario, whereby the newly self-aware machines turn on their creators as they come to realize their creators are the truly violent ones...they will be right.

So, banks love war, unless it's their buildings and personnel that get hit, but maybe, just maybe, even that doesn't matter, since the Supreme Court tells us, in Citizens United, that Corporations are people too. So, why not have a war without any human involvement at all? Just faceless corporations, launching drone wars by proxy governments safely sheltered in underground bunkers, laying waste to the Earth, where the Expendables (my term for the 99% of humanity that takes no part in making wars) are just sitting there, waiting to be obliterated? Sounds like a plan.

Parallels of Conquest, Past and Present

2010-03-01T06:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=37514

2010-02-26
Parallels of Conquest, Past and Present

Like William the Conqueror who ignored the English battlefield dead, the US government has not identified – nor even made a good-faith effort to estimate – the number of Iraqis and Afghanis who have been killed. By suppressing the human toll, the war still can be sold as benefiting the Iraqi people. The reality of their intense suffering, however, is much different from the generally positive image that US propagandists seek to present, notes Douglas Valentine.

After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror’s army buried its fallen comrades, but left the corpses of the English defenders to rot in the fields.

Such is the brutal nature of war: the victor inflicts all manner of suffering and humiliation on the vanquished. Nearly a millennium later, what the United States is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is only marginally different.

William the Conqueror made no pretense about his brutal subjugation of the English. They hated him and resisted his occupation for 20 years, during which time he took their property and gave it to the Norman upper class.

Over 300,000 English people were murdered and starved (one fifth of the population) and some 300,000 French and Normans were planted in England in positions of authority.

During the repression, an English nobleman was likely blinded, castrated, and thrown into a dungeon in one of the hundreds of castles that William built across the countryside to defend Norman interests. The overall strategy was to eliminate native leadership and to terrorize the population into submission.

By the time William repented his sins on his deathbed in 1087, England had ceased being England.

While the US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are different in many details, there are disturbing parallels in the extent of the carnage and the strategy of coercion, in the innocent blood that has flowed and the number of survivors who have been terrorized.

Like William the Conqueror who ignored the English battlefield dead, the US government has not identified – nor even made a good-faith effort to estimate – the number of Iraqis and Afghanis who have been killed.

That’s because the Bush administration – and now the Obama administration – have had an official policy of not counting the number of people killed, crippled, rendered homeless, starved, or condemned to disease and possibly insanity.

US government officials have claimed that this policy has been followed to escape the “body count” mindset that became notorious during the Vietnam War. But it also has made it impossible to quantitatively measure the amount of misery that US policymakers have inflicted on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The lack of official numbers also has enabled the US government to cast doubt on unofficial estimates that put the number of Iraqi dead in the hundreds of thousands or possibly over one million. Most reports in the mainstream US news media cite much lower estimates, presumably to avoid offending the powers-that-be in Washington.

Out of the Press

As much as possible, US leaders have sought to keep the ugliness of these wars – the mangled bodies, the burned-off faces, the squalid refugee camps, the abused captives – out of the press and away from the public’s consciousness, thus to preserve the pretense of moral superiority that defines American “exceptionalism.”

But the principal advantage of having no official casualty estimates and few photos of atrocities in Iraq is that the American people aren’t reminded of the horrendous consequences of a war launched by President George W. Bush under the false claim that Iraq possessed WMD stockpiles.

By suppressing the human toll, the war still can be sold as benefiting the Iraqi people. The reality of their intense suffering, however, is much different from the generally positive image that US propagandists seek to present.

And that is one big difference between the slaughter of Englishmen by William the Conqueror and the carnage unleashed by George W. Bush, the modern-day conqueror. William’s cruelty was done in the light of day.

Yet, it is not as if the US government doesn’t keep tabs on those killed, maimed or rendered as orphans. The government simply doesn’t want the American people to know the quantity or the specifics, all the better to strip the two conflicts of their human dimensions.

In Afghanistan, for example, the CIA and military have been conducting a census of every village, town and city in the country – much like William’s infamous Doomsday (or Domesday) Book, which assessed the property of every English landowner for the purpose of levying taxes or confiscation.

As commander of the US occupation army, General Stanley McChrystal wants to know the name of every Afghan, so his analysts can decide who is a Taliban and who is not, or in the even vaguer vernacular favored by the US military, who are the “bad guys.”

McChrystal’s survey seeks to determine where each man lives, how many people are in his family, who his wife and children and relatives are, where he works and where his property is.

In places like Marjah, considered a Taliban stronghold where a US-led offensive is currently underway, McChrystal is at a bit of a loss, but he still tries to obtain actionable intelligence through networks of spies and via all manner of electronic surveillance, including satellites.

Tracking the Taliban

This biographical information and other data about Afghanis are entered into a computer in McChrystal’s office, where the material is carefully monitored by the CIA and military special operations units.

Within a separate folder for suspected Taliban, every man is identified by the same biographical criteria as every other Afghan. In addition, each Taliban is categorized by his rank and position within the organization.

Low-level fighters are left to the Marines, while “high-value targets” get their own folder and are handled by the CIA and military special operations.

These “high-value targets” are given the kind of special attention that William the Conqueror reserved for English noblemen, who were viewed as especially important to kill or otherwise neutralize in order to pacify the countryside.

“High-value targets” in Afghanistan have the property (intellectual as well as physical, such as opium fields) that McChrystal wants to deny the Taliban. So, more biographical information is gathered about them, and their movements are tracked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Through spies and sophisticated electronic surveillance, McChrystal even has a very good idea when they are leaving one safe house and traveling to another. The jets are fueled, and the drones are in the sky, waiting.

And this is how and why 27 Afghan civilians were slaughtered on Feb. 21 while traveling between remote provinces in a caravan of minibuses. The CIA and military special operations forces were alerted that some “high-value target” was traveling with his family, and McChrystal seized the opportunity to kill them all.

In a dirty war like the one in Afghanistan, killing “high-value targets” almost always involves murdering them while they are at home or while traveling with their families; otherwise they are much less accessible and thus harder targets.

Killing enemy leaders along with their entire families has a psychological-warfare impact, too, putting this secret policy under the intelligence rubric of “black propaganda.”

It is psychological warfare because these mass killings have a sobering effect on low-level Taliban who wish to rise in the ranks. It is a form of propaganda that every Afghan citizen is aware of, and it is “black” because it is not officially acknowledged, keeping the American people in the dark.

The mainstream US news media plays along by rarely citing the obvious facts of this dirty war. The killing of civilians is dismissed as an accident that is accompanied by a routine apology from General McChrystal or some other US spokesman.

Savagery, Past and Present

Though US media propagandists treat McChrystal as an honorable and hard-working warrior, the truth is that he is no less savage than William the Conqueror. Both spread terror by killing their enemies, dismembering bodies and inflicting death and cruelty on non-combatants as well.

The primary difference is that William and his army did their killing up close with battle axes and swords for everyone to see, while McChrystal and his high-tech killing machine inflict carnage from far away with 2,000-pound bombs or with missiles fired from drones – and then cloak the horror behind censorship and propaganda.

These cover-ups are essential because the American public might otherwise bolt against Washington’s imperial adventures, which often end up with working-class American soldiers dead or maimed while US corporations snake away with valuable resources from the conquered countries or otherwise use them for economic or geopolitical ends.

This strategy works because most Americans don’t know – and many may not care to know – the names and biographies of the victims.

Douglas Valentine is author of The Phoenix Program as well as The Strength of the Wolf and the new book Strength of the Pack. His Web site is DouglasValentine.com.

Plan B? US Plans for Possible Delay in Iraq Withdrawal

2010-02-26T06:13:00.000-08:00

Get real! They never planned to leave! Not until the last drop of oil has been plundered!

February 23, 2010 by The Washington Post
Plan B? US Plans for Possible Delay in Iraq Withdrawal
by Craig Whitlock

The U.S. military has prepared contingency plans to delay the planned withdrawal of all combat forces in Iraq, citing the prospects for political instability and increased violence as Iraqis hold national elections next month.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. general in Iraq, speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon, Monday, Feb. 22, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)Under a deadline set by President Obama, all combat forces are slated to withdraw from Iraq by the end of August, and there remains heavy political pressure in Washington and Baghdad to stick to that schedule. But Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Monday that he had briefed officials in Washington in the past week about possible contingency plans.

Odierno declined to describe the plans in detail and said he was optimistic they would not be necessary. But he said he was prepared to make the changes "if we run into problems" in the coming months.

Iraqis are scheduled to go to the polls March 7 for parliamentary elections that Iraqi and U.S. officials describe as a political milestone for the country.

With less than two weeks to go in the campaign, however, concern is rising over whether the results will be undermined by political boycotts, low turnout or an increase in bloodshed. Religious enmities and rivalries are already resurfacing.

Although U.S. diplomats and military officials said they are working intensely behind the scenes to hold the political process together, they are finding that their influence in Iraq is steadily on the wane.

"The Iraqi mood is very nationalistic at the moment and just not interested in extending the American presence," said Marc Lynch, a political science professor at George Washington University and an expert on Iraqi politics. "When the United States gets really involved in contentious issues now, it just turns into political dynamite."

U.S. officials said the likelihood that they would keep combat forces in Iraq past August is remote. Many of the forces are needed in Afghanistan, where Obama has approved a surge of 30,000 troops.

"We would have to see a pretty considerable deterioration of the situation in Iraq, and we don't see that, certainly, at this point," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday.

Under Obama's plan, about 50,000 troops will remain in the country through 2011 to train Iraqi forces, perform counterterrorism operations and help with civilian projects. The United States has signed a legal agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw all forces by the end of 2011, and Odierno said there has been no discussion about renegotiating that timetable.

U.S. commanders have already reduced the presence in Iraq to about 96,000 military personnel, Odierno said -- the first time since the 2003 invasion that fewer than 100,000 U.S. troops have been in the country. The U.S. military presence reached a peak of 166,000 troops in October 2007.

"Right now, our plan is to be at 50,000 by the 1st of September," he said. "And if you ask me today, I'm fully committed and I believe that's the right course of action."

With several major coalitions competing for power, U.S. officials said they are bracing for a prolonged period of political instability in Iraq after the elections. Many predicted a repeat of 2005, when it took Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki several months to form a government.

"How long this is going to take, this government formation, that is really the rub," Christopher R. Hill, U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, told the Council on Foreign Relations last week. "There's a good reason why people are worried."

But Hill said the United States needs to be mindful of its limited ability to affect the political situation in Iraq these days. "I'll tell you what our leverage is," he added. "Our leverage is not somehow threatening to withdraw troops or threatening to invade some boardroom with troops. Our leverage is to say: Iraq, if you want a good relationship with us -- a long-term relationship with us -- we need to make sure these elections are democratic."

A handful of violent incidents Monday highlighted how volatile the security situation remains just weeks before the parliamentary elections.

Near the northern city of Kirkuk, which is contested by Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, a Kurdish Iraqi army colonel was killed Monday, police said. Gunmen with automatic weapons ambushed Lt. Col Ali Ihasan east of the city, officials said.

Meanwhile, police said gunmen stormed a house in the southern outskirts of Baghdad and killed eight members of a family, including children. Some of the residents were beheaded, police said.

A spokesman for Ahmed Chalabi, the erstwhile U.S. ally and a candidate in the upcoming elections, said late Monday that the slaying targeted a man who had been active in the campaign. The spokesman, Entifadh Qanbar, also a candidate, identified the head of the family as Shahid Majeed Mayrosh and called him a "courageous activist" for the Iraqi National Alliance. Other Iraqi authorities declined to corroborate the assertion.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have reported a spike in rocket attacks targeting the Green Zone in Baghdad and American bases. U.S. officials said Shiite militia groups have stocked up on rockets and other weapons, which they say are smuggled from Iran.

American officials say it has become harder to understand the scope and dynamics of violence in Iraq now that the U.S. military has a small footprint in Iraqi cities.

"Is this the beginning of sectarian warfare, is it tribal, is it AQI?" a U.S. military official said, using the abbreviation for the Sunni insurgency group al-Qaeda in Iraq. "It's hard to know if these are localized killings for political reasons or violence to spread a blanket of fear so people don't go to the polls."

Correspondents Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londoño in Baghdad and staff writers Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2010 The Washington Post

Biden wants US warheads with worldwide reach

2010-02-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

Of course Biden wants US warheads with worldwide reach. It's the only way the patriarchal psychopathic elite can fist-f**k the world into slave obedience!!!

http://www.inteldaily.com/2010/02/biden-wants-us-warheads-with-worldwide-reach/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+inteldaily/feeds+(Inteldaily.com)&utm_content=Google+Reader

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

US vice president Joe Biden says Washington should seek an “adaptive missile defense shield” and conventional warheads with global range.

Biden, who spoke at the National Defense University on Thursday, added that development of programs such as the planned anti-missile in Europe would allow the United States to decrease its nuclear weaponry.

“Capabilities like an adaptive missile defensive shield, conventional warheads with world-wide reach and others that are developing and being developed will enable us to reduce the role of nuclear weapons as other nuclear powers begin to draw down even further,” the vice president said.

Biden was also making the case for the big jump in spending so that scientists can make certain the aging US nuclear stockpile remains ready for use, if needed, without test explosions.

The new administration budget allocates USD 7 billion for scientists and laboratories that maintain warhead readiness — an increase of about 13.5 percent and one of the largest in the next spending plan.

The 2011 budget also calls for spending an additional USD 5 billion on those projects over the next five years.

Biden comments come while US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev agreed in July to cut their respective number of nuclear warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 under a new treaty. — Press TV

Perpetual Wars & the Permanent Wartime Presidency

2010-02-20T12:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/02/15/the-makings-of-a-police-state-part-vii/

The Makings of a Police State-Part VII
Monday, 15. February 2010

With almost a decade under its belt, our multi-front war on a vaguely defined notion of terrorism targeting never-really-defined enemies across the world and here in the newly rephrased ‘homeland’ has come to define the state of our nation. Even the meager limitations on presidential powers of the last six decades have in effect been nullified and replaced with a newly declared and interpreted authority mirroring those of past emperors and kings, and of any classic authoritarian regimes’ rulers.

One look at the last decade’s successfully won legal arguments on behalf of the executive, the presidency, is enough to establish the common theme that ‘the war on terror is global and indefinite in scope, and that it effectively removes all traditional limits of wartime authority to the times and places of imminent or actual battle.’

Whether it is illegal domestic eavesdropping or unlawful detention and torture, these newly claimed and boldly practiced presidential entitlements rely on one factor, and that is the extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Here is a perfect example of the new permanent wartime presidency in action; boldly, loudly, and unfortunately thus far successfully:
On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president’s war-making powers in legal briefs as “plenary” — a term defined as “full,” “complete,” and “absolute.”

The current status of our nation’s president’s war-making powers is defined, recognized, and has been practiced as ‘plenary;’ complete and absolute. Now, let’s add to this the fact that our multi-fronted war on terror is global and indefinite, a war open-ended in time and with no national boundaries. What do we have with this equation? A permanent wartime presidency with absolute powers. The Constitution indeed granted the president the power to fight with any resources Congress makes available in wartime, and accordingly the executive is expected to do whatever it takes to protect the nation, even if it leaves some room for abuse of this power. But did our founders factor in the notion of indefinite, open-ended, perpetual wars, and with them, a permanent wartime presidency status? The Constitution gave presidents the freedom to defend the nation, but what about the nation’s need to protect itself against the abuses of this freedom, including the creation of perpetual wars accompanied with indefinite and absolute presidential powers?

The following excerpts are from the Devil’s Advocate, John Yoo:

Critics of presidential war powers exaggerate the benefits of declarations or authorizations of war, and they also fail to examine the potential costs of congressional participation: delay, inflexibility, and lack of secrecy. Legislative deliberation may breed consensus in the best of cases, but it also may inhibit speed and decisiveness. In the post-Cold War era, the United States confronts several new threats to its national security: proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the emergence of rogue nations, and the rise of international terrorism. Each of these threats may require pre-emptive action best undertaken by the president and approved by Congress only afterward.
…
The Constitution creates a presidency that can respond forcefully and independently to pre-empt serious threats to our national security. Instead of demanding a legalistic process to begin war, the framers left war to politics. Presidents can take the initiative and Congress would use their funding power to check him. As we confront terrorism, rogue nations, and WMD proliferation, now is not the time to engage in a radical change in the way our government has waged war for decades.
…
Mr. Yoo considers a thorough congressional review and authorization based on findings and careful review as tending to ‘exaggerate the benefits of declarations or authorizations of war.’ If put in an appropriate context, this exaggeration could probably have prevented a preemptive attack on Iraq based on false and made-up intelligence on nonexistent WMD, and we may have saved thousands of American soldiers’ lives, tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and would have prevented the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians’ lives. Only in John Yoo’s book of ‘cost & benefits analysis’ would this make it to the ‘exaggerated cost column.’

As for ‘Congress would use their funding power to check him,’ his pretend innocence would not get a pass from even the most naïve or ignorant. Considering where the real funding of the inhabitants of our congress comes from, taking into consideration the old adage ‘thou shall not bite the hand that feeds you,’ and understanding the power of ‘bacon sent home,’ who is Mr. Yoo kidding here; really?

Let’s look at it from the other side of the fence. What executive office wouldn’t want to possess this level of power? How many presidents would resist gravitating towards the enormous powers granted to a Commander in Chief in practice? How many of today’s ‘viable’ presidential candidate’s bread is heavily buttered by the war industry? Here is how Richard Norton Smith put it during an interview:

However you define national emergency, whether it’s a foreign war, whether it’s a civil war, whether it’s an economic depression, whether it’s a Cold War or the current war on terror, the fact is power gravitates towards the president…It’s a tug of war, Jim, that’s been going on, a constitutional tug of war between the executive and the legislative branch. And what I was picking up off what Ellen said I think the last 75 years has, if anything, distorted what the founders intended. Because of the Great Depression, because of World War II, because of the Cold War, now the war on terror, the fact is that that tug of war has actually been very one-sided. I don’t think this is the presidency that the founders really envisioned.
…
A Little Bit of History

On November 19, 1973, the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency presented Senate Report 93-549 at the first session of the 93rd Congress. The Introduction to the report, an examination of existing War and Emergency Powers Acts, states:

Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Truman in 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Nixon in1970 and 1971.

These proclamations give force to 470 provisions of Federal law. These hundreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers, ordinarily exercised by the Congress, which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. These vast ranges of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal Constitutional processes.

Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens.

With the melting of the Cold War-the developing détente, with the Soviet Union and China, the stable truce of over 20 years duration between North and South Korea, and the end of U.S. involvement in the war in Indochina-there is no present need for the United States Government to continue to function under emergency conditions.

As we all know the establishment did not let the ‘melting Cold War’ argument stand. During the Reagan era the Cold War reached new heights, with a massive military buildup in an arms race with the USSR, before it came to an end. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine the panic experienced by the real powers as the Berlin wall and with it the several-decade Cold War came crumbling down. How could the massive Military Industrial Complex, and those feeding upon it, survive this ‘ending,’ and find a way to sustain itself? How about maintaining the role and power of the Executive Intelligence Complex? The creation, existence, and practices of these agencies were based on and justified by the ‘Evil Empire,’ and with it gone, so was the justification sold to the public for the existence of many dependent upon it here in the States.

Sure there were other wars; Gulf War, Kosovo… But those were mini-wars; peanuts. What was needed, that is for the sustainability, survival, and even the fantasy of expansion, was another long-lasting war. Not a dingy little country or two, and certainly not a clear-cut enemy and pinpointable target to hit and be done with. No. In fact, learning from experience, it had to be something that could not end with some darn wall coming down, or a massive regime being taken out. An open ended war; a war with undefined enemies in many colors, with many tongues, and scattered across the world; a war that could be pointed at one place, then at another, and yet another without having to fit any military definition of target or strategy; a war with no boundaries; a war with no possible end. A war that couldn’t even be defined as a war, yet could act as the mother of all wars – a Perpetual War.

If anyone laughed at even the fantasy of such an absurd objective, they certainly weren’t the ones who had the last laugh. All that was needed to make it happen was the creation of a state of emergency. After all, it had been done for a long time, and done so very successfully. People were used to it – living under various degrees of a state of emergency for many decades. Just take it up a notch or two, then sit back and watch the panic take root and spring into full bloom. Jazz it up with a disaster-loving and panic-driving media, and the state of emergency will go into full effect. And from there – hello Perpetual War.

Here is more on the report by the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency:

A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. The problem of how a constitutional democracy reacts to great crises, however, far antedates the Great Depression. As a philosophical issue, its origins reach back to the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. And, in the United States, actions taken by the Government in times of great crises have-from, at least, the Civil War-in important ways, shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency.
…
Because Congress and the public are unaware of the extent of emergency powers, there has never been any notable congressional or public objection made to this state of affairs. Nor have the courts imposed significant limitations … the temporary states of emergency declared in 1938, 1939, 1941, 1950, 1970, and 1971 would become what are now regarded collectively as virtually permanent states of emergency (the 1939 and 1941 emergencies were terminated in 1952). Forty years can, in no way, be defined as a temporary emergency.

‘Forty years can, in no way, be defined as a temporary emergency;’ really? Obviously it can, and it was. Not only that, it actually got worse. Today they don’t even bother adding ‘temporary,’ and leave it out completely. How could you win or lose, and declare the end of the ‘war on terror’? Is it possible to capture and neutralize that one last boogie man, announce that the last of the terrorists has been terminated, and then go about dissolving Homeland Security, Motherland Security, Fatherland Agency, Intelligence Czars, Domestic Eavesdropping…? How about the entire industry, the thriving many trillion dollar industry, with the ‘war on terror’ as their sole reason for existence? Obviously this would not fit the vision put in place by the few who matter, and the many grown dependent on them.

The Mother of all perpetual wars, War on Terror, followed by unjustified and undeclared wars: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iran… Who are the enemies? Bad Taliban, Semi-bad Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda Supporters, Possible Al-Qaeda, Islamists, Fanatics, semi-fanatics, fanatic-looking dudes, Iran-ists, and with them all the civilians ‘just our collateral damage.’; babies, women, elderly…Kidnapping, torture, assassinations, black sites, black operations, black budgets…

Here at home: airport security check-points, no-fly list, semi-no-fly-list, many secret lists, tapping all phone calls, monitoring all e-mails, billions of secret documents, thousands of secret operations & plans.
For the winners in the Perpetual War, the military-intelligence-surveillance industrial complexes, the empire presidency and its advocates, and the parasitic class who lives beneath and off of them…the state of Perpetual War is a long-held dream coming true.

For the losers, we, the public majority, the mothers losing their sons and daughters to wars, the spouses left to deal with their returning amputated loved ones, many in need of medical care but with no coverage or assistance, the hard-working class dutifully parting with needed dollars and foregoing all expectations, the seekers of liberties…the realities of these made-up emergencies, and the real consequences of these vague wars are either not registering, or are being accepted and paid for silently.

This applicable quote comes to mind: “Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the laws are silent.” And, I feel like extending the line by adding”…for as long as the people wish to remain silent.”

American Blitzkrieg

2010-02-20T04:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175208/

February 18, 2010 by TomDispatch.com
Loving the German War Machine to Death
by William J. Astore

"Why do people have a fixation with the German military when they haven't won a war since 1871?" -- Tom Clancy

I've always been interested in the German military, especially the Wehrmacht of World War II. As a young boy, I recall building many models, not just German Panther and Tiger tanks, but famous Luftwaffe planes as well. True, I built American tanks and planes, Shermans and Thunderbolts and Mustangs, but the German models always seemed "cooler," a little more exotic, a little more predatory. And the German military, to my adolescent imagination, seemed admirably tough and aggressive: hard-fighting, thoroughly professional, hanging on against long odds, especially against the same hordes of "godless communists" that I knew we Americans were then facing down in the Cold War.

Later, of course, a little knowledge about the nightmare of Nazism and the Holocaust went a long way toward destroying my admiration for the Wehrmacht, but -- to be completely honest -- a residue of grudging respect still survives: I no longer have my models, but I still have many of the Ballantine illustrated war books I bought as a young boy for a buck or two, and which often celebrated the achievements of the German military, with titles like Panzer Division, or Afrika Korps, or even Waffen SS.
As the Bible says, we are meant to put aside childish things as we grow to adulthood, and an uninformed fascination with the militaria and regalia of the Third Reich was certainly one of these. But when I entered Air Force ROTC in 1981, and later on active duty in 1985, I was surprised, even pleased, to discover that so many members of the U.S. military shared my interest in the German military. To cite just one example, as a cadet at Field Training in 1983 (and later at Squadron Officer School in 1992), I participated in what was known as "Project X." As cadets, we came to know of it in whispers: "Tomorrow we're doing ‘Project X': It's really tough ..."

A problem-solving leadership exercise, Project X consisted of several scenarios and associated tasks. Working in small groups, you were expected to solve these while working against the clock. What made the project exciting and more than busy-work, like the endless marching or shining of shoes or waxing of floors, was that it was based on German methods of developing and instilling small-unit leadership, teamwork, and adaptability. If it worked for the Germans, the "finest soldiers in the world" during World War II, it was good enough for us, or so most of us concluded (including me).

Project X was just one rather routine manifestation of the American military's fascination with German methods and the German military mystique. As I began teaching military history to cadets at the Air Force Academy in 1990, I quickly became familiar with a flourishing "Cult of Clausewitz." So ubiquitous was Carl von Clausewitz and his book On War that it seemed as if we Americans had never produced our own military theorists. I grew familiar with the way Auftragstaktik (the idea of maximizing flexibility and initiative at the lowest tactical levels) was regularly extolled. So prevalent did Clausewitz and Auftragstaktik become that, in the 1980s and 1990s, American military thinking seemed reducible to the idea that "war is a continuation of politics" and a belief that victory went to the side that empowered its "strategic corporals."

War as a Creative Act

The American military's fascination with German military methods and modes of thinking raises many questions. In retrospect, what disturbs me most is that the military swallowed the Clausewitzian/German notion of war as a dialectical or creative art, one in which well-trained and highly-motivated leaders can impose their will on events.

In this notional construct, war became not destructive, but constructive. It became not the last resort of kings, but the preferred recourse of "creative" warlords who demonstrated their mastery of it by cultivating such qualities as flexibility, adaptability, and quickness. One aimed to get inside the enemy's "decision cycle," the so-called OODA loop -- the Air Force's version of Auftragstaktik -- while at the same time cultivating a "warrior ethos" within a tight-knit professional army that was to stand above, and also separate from, ordinary citizens.

This idolization of the German military was a telling manifestation of a growing militarism within an American society which remained remarkably oblivious to the slow strangulation of its citizen-soldier ideal. At the same time, the American military began to glorify a new generation of warrior-leaders by a selective reading of its past. Old "Blood and Guts" himself, the warrior-leader George S. Patton -- the commander as artist-creator-genius -- was celebrated; Omar N. Bradley -- the bespectacled GI general and reluctant soldier-citizen -- was neglected. Not coincidentally, a new vision of the battlefield emerged in which the U.S. military aimed, without the slightest sense of irony, for "total situational awareness" and "full spectrum dominance," goals that, if attained, promised commanders the almost god-like ability to master the "storm of steel," to calm the waves, to command the air.

In the process, any sense of war as thoroughly unpredictable and enormously wasteful was lost. In this infatuation with German military prowess, which the political scientist John Mearsheimer memorably described as "Wehrmacht penis envy," we celebrated our ability to Blitzkrieg our enemies -- which promised rapid, decisive victories that would be largely bloodless (at least for us). In 1991, a decisively quick victory in the Desert Storm campaign of the first Gulf War was the proof, or so it seemed then, that a successful "revolution in military affairs," or RMA in military parlance, was underway.

Forgotten, however, was this: the German Blitzkrieg of World War II ended with Germany's "third empire" thoroughly thrashed by opponents who continued to fight even when the odds seemed longest.

What a remarkable, not to say bizarre, turnabout! The army and country the U.S. had soundly beaten in two world wars (with a lot of help from allies, including, of course, those godless communists of the Soviet Union in the second one) had become a beacon for the U.S. military after Vietnam. To use a sports analogy, it was as if a Major League Baseball franchise, in seeking to win the World Series, decided to model itself not on the New York Yankees but rather on the Chicago Cubs.

The New Masters of Blitzkrieg

Busts of Clausewitz reside in places of honor today at both the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and the National War College in Washington, D.C. Clausewitz was a complex writer, and his vision of war was both dense and rich, defying easy simplification. But that hasn't stopped the U.S. military from simplifying him. Ask the average officer about Clausewitz, and he'll mention "war as the continuation of politics" and maybe something about "the fog and friction of war" -- and that's about it. What's really meant by this rendition of Clausewitz for Dummies is that, though warfare may seem extreme, it's really a perfectly sensible form of violent political discourse between nation-states.

Such an officer may grudgingly admit that, thanks to fog and friction, "no plan survives contact with the enemy." What he's secretly thinking, however, is that it won't matter at all, not given the U.S. military's "mastery" of Auftragstaktik, achieved in part through next-generation weaponry that provides both "total situational awareness" and a decisive, war-winning edge.

No wonder that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were so eager to go to war in Iraq in 2003. They saw themselves as the new masters of Blitzkrieg, the new warlords (or "Vulcans" to use a term popular back then), the inheritors of the best methods of German military efficiency.

This belief, this faith, in German-style total victory through relentless military proficiency is best captured in Max Boot's gushing tribute to the U.S. military, published soon after Bush's self-congratulatory and self-adulatory "Mission Accomplished" speech in May 2003. For Boot, America's victory in Iraq had to "rank as one of the signal achievements in military history." In his words:

"Previously, the gold standard of operational excellence had been the German blitzkrieg through the Low Countries and France in 1940. The Germans managed to conquer France, the Netherlands, and Belgium in just 44 days, at a cost of ‘only' 27,000 dead soldiers. The United States and Britain took just 26 days to conquer Iraq (a country 80 percent of the size of France), at a cost of 161 dead, making fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison."

How likely is it that future military historians will celebrate General Tommy Franks and elevate him above the "incompetent" Rommel and Guderian? Such praise, even then, was more than fatuous. It was absurd.

Throughout our history, many Americans, especially frontline combat veterans, have known the hell of real war. It's one big reason why, historically speaking, we've traditionally been reluctant to keep a large standing military. But the Cold War, containment, and our own fetishizing of the German Wehrmacht changed everything. We began to see war not as a human-made disaster but as a creative science and art. We began to seek "force multipliers" and total victory achieved through an almost Prussian mania for military excellence.

Reeling from a seemingly inexplicable and unimaginable defeat in Vietnam, the officer corps used Clausewitz to crawl out of its collective fog. By reading him selectively and reaffirming our own faith in military professionalism and precision weaponry, we tricked ourselves into believing that we had attained mastery over warfare. We believed we had tamed the dogs of war; we believed we had conquered Bellona , that we could make the goddess of war do our bidding.

We forgot that Clausewitz compared war not only to politics but to a game of cards. Call it the ultimate high-stakes poker match. Even the player with the best cards, the highest stack of chips, doesn't always win. Guile and endurance matter. So too does nerve, even luck. And having a home-table advantage doesn't hurt either.

None of that seemed to matter to a U.S. military that aped the German military, while over-hyping its abilities and successes. The result? A so-called "new American way of war" that was simply a desiccated version of the old German one, which had produced nothing but catastrophic defeat for Germany in both 1918 and 1945 -- and disaster for Europe as well.

Just Ask the Germans

Precisely because that disaster did not befall us, precisely because we emerged triumphant from two world wars, we became both too enamored with the decisiveness of war, and too dismissive of our own unique strength. For our strength was not military élan or cutting-edge weaponry or tactical finesse (these were German "strengths"), but rather the dedication, the generosity, even the occasional ineptitude, of our citizen-soldiers. Their spirit was unbreakable precisely because they -- a truly democratic citizen army -- were dedicated to defeating a repellently evil empire that reveled fanatically in its own combat vigor.

Looking back on my youthful infatuation with the German Wehrmacht, I recognize a boy's misguided enthusiasm for military hardness and toughness. I recognize as well the seductiveness of reducing the chaos of war to "shock and awe" Blitzkrieg and warrior empowerment. What amazes me, however, is how this astonishingly selective and adolescent view of war -- with its fetish for lightning results, achieved by elevating and empowering a new generation of warlords, warriors, and advanced weaponry -- came to dominate mainstream American military thinking after the frustrations of Vietnam.

Unlike a devastated and demoralized Germany after its defeats, we decided not to devalue war as an instrument of policy after our defeat, but rather to embrace it. Clasping Clausewitz to our collective breasts, we marched forward seeking new decisive victories. Yet, like our role models the Germans of World War II, we found victory to be both elusive and illusive.

So, I have a message for my younger self: put aside those menacing models of German tanks and planes. Forget those glowing accounts of Rommel and his Afrika Korps. Dismiss Blitzkrieg from your childish mind. There is no lightning war, America. There never was. And if you won't take my word for it, just ask the Germans.

Copyright 2010 William J. Astore

'Conspiracies of Rich Men' to Commit War Crimes and Aggression

2010-02-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2010/02/conspiracies-of-rich-men-to-commit-war.html

FEBRUARY 02, 2010

'Conspiracies of Rich Men' to Commit War Crimes and Aggression
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The establishment derides conspiracies and, for awhile, it was fashionable to deny the existence of 'conspiracies'. In fact, conspiracies are how things get done. Very little is accomplished by one person working alone. If what is to be accomplished is illegal, the 'conspiracy' is called a 'crime syndicate' or 'orgnized crime'.

If the 'conspiracy' in question is legal, however questionable, it is called a corporation or a business enterprise. Theorists on the high court have said corporations are people! But, should you call five idiots who have thus conspired to subvert the U.S. Constitution by the term 'conspirators', you are likely to be called a nut job! But SCOTUS believes mere words on paper is a real, living breathing person if it happens to have a seal on it supplied to you by the Delaware Secreatary of State! So --I ask you --who is nuts?

The government often cites the specter of 'organized crime' in order to rally voters to a 'right wing' cause like 'law and order', a big issue in the 1960s. In order to fully exploit this 'threat', this 'clear and present danger' to the lives of middle America who seemed to have been cowering in fear, it was necessary to promote all manner of fears --hippies, black people, rock n' rolll, and crime syndicates. Law and order' was, therefore, a big issue among the GOP hoping to exploit the fears of 'hippies' and 'black people' --both of whom were unhappy with increasing poverty, denial of rights, the seemingly endless, mindless and destructive war in Viet Nam. It was a war fought on behalf of a 'conspiracy of rich men' --ITT, Honeywell et al --all of whom hoped to make a killing with defense contracts.

George H. W. Bush, otherwise called Sr now, had hoped to achieve high office by exploiting those fears. It is no stretch to conclude that George H. W. Bush had made a Faustian bargain with the leadership of GOP. George H. W. Bush --by the time I met him --has already sold his soul to what St. Thomas More has already described as a 'conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodites'.

The Senior Bush won two elections for a seat in the House of Representatives, but lost two bids for a Senate seat. It was in during one of his Senate races that I first met the Senior Bush who was not so well known when I interviewed Bush Sr with regard to this very issue. I was a very young reporter, somewhat naive, learning the ropes and had not yet made it to a major market or a network. Honestly --I did not know what to make of Bush's 'non'-answer. It consisted of slogans, buzzwords, and meaningless gobbledy gook. Little has changed. The Bush family still talks like that!

After Bush's second race for the Senate, President Nixon appointed him U.S. delegate to the United Nations. He later became Republican National Committee chairman. He headed the U.S. liaison office in Beijing. It was years later, in Houston, that the Senior Bush would regale me with a story about how he was 'duped' into eating 'dog lips' --apparently a Chinese delicacy --at a formal, diplomatic dinner in the Forbidden City.

Bush would eventually become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. At the time, many wondered what, precisely, was it that qualified Bush to head up the CIA, an agency that I have called 'World's Number One Terrorist Organization'. Despite his criticism of Reagan's “voodoo economics" , Bush became Reagan's running mate in 1980; by 1984, Bush had won acclaim for his devotion to Reagan's conservative agenda. Thus would espouse an utterly failed policy and one that he himself has opposed. Reagan's 'voodoo economics' caused a two year long recession, the deepest and most severe depression since Hoover's great depression of 1929. But that clearly did not matter to Bush Sr. He would hitch his wagon to whatever star was ascendant and, at the time, it was the ascendant Ronald Reagan who would preside over a 'conspiracy' to sell arms to Iran, which was, at the time, an officially declared enemy of the United States, a sponsor of world wide terrorism. This 'conspiracy' on behalf of rich men would then funnel the proceeds of those sales to the so-called Contras in Nicaragua. There is a word for this: high treason:

The Iran/contra investigation will not end the kind of abuse of power that it addressed any more than the Watergate investigation did. The criminality in both affairs did not arise primarily out of ordinary venality or greed, although some of those charged were driven by both. Instead, the crimes committed in Iran/contra were motivated by the desire of persons in high office to pursue controversial policies and goals even when the pursuit of those policies and goals was inhibited or restricted by executive orders, statutes or the constitutional system of checks and balances.

The tone in Iran/contra was set by President Reagan. He directed that the contras be supported, despite a ban on contra aid imposed on him by Congress. And he was willing to trade arms to Iran for the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East, even if doing so was contrary to the nation's stated policy and possibly in violation of the law.

The lesson of Iran/contra is that if our system of government is to function properly, the branches of government must deal with one another honestly and cooperatively. When disputes arise between the Executive and Legislative branches, as they surely will, the laws that emerge from such disputes must be obeyed. When a President, even with good motive and intent, chooses to skirt the laws or to circumvent them, it is incumbent upon his subordinates to resist, not join in. Their oath and fealty are to the Constitution and the rule of law, not to the man temporarily occupying the Oval Office. Congress has the duty and the power under our system of checks and balances to ensure that the President and his Cabinet officers are faithful to their oaths. --Lawrence Walsh, Special Prosecutor, Concluding Observations, FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL

FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS
No one ever called Sr a 'conspiracy theorist'. That's because he was not a theorist; he was a 'conspirator' for real!
"I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth."- Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia

Last time I checked the Cornell Univ Law Library and FINDLAW, I found hundreds if not thousands of court decisions, including SCOTUS, having to do with conspiracies large and small, of one sort or another. Someone should inform SCOTUS that conspiracies do not exist, but, I suspect, the very fact that they are recognized by the higher courts, including SCOTUS, creates them if they had not existed prior.

In his 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', William Shirer described what St. Thomas More would have called a 'conspiracy of rich men' to invade the nations of Europe, steal their resources and divide up the booty.

Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2)

The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved.

Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality . . . All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen . . . We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). "Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years."

All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3) --William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Nazification of Germany: 1933–34

We are fortunate that no one 'informed' informed Shirer that conspiracies do not exist before he bothered unearthing the mountain of Nazi documents that prove the meeting, the Nazi conspiracy to wage war and genocide for the benefit of global corporations that participated. This meeting of 'industrialists' took place just as surely as did the meeting of Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force' which carved up an 'alloted' the oil fields of Iraq long before the events of 911 would give these 'conspiractors' the pre-text they would require to attack Iraq, wage war upon that nation and, in the process, steel its resources for the likes of Dick Cheney's own Halliburton and other members of an energy consortium.

The results were published in a 'National Energy Policy' report in May 2001, several months before 911 would give them the pretext to make the report come true. This is precisely the kind of of conspiracy that had been described so accurately, precisely by St. Thomas More in his "Utopia", a classic of English literature.

I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.

They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth's sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws. But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!
Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia

Another example is Heinrich Heydrich's infamous meeting at Wansee, attended by Nazi bureaucrats, and corporate kiss ups. Over a civilized lunch, this 'conspiracy of rich men' planned the extermination of the jews of Europe.

... within a few months after the meeting, the first gas chambers were installed in some of the extermination camps in Poland. These six camps, Belzec, Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka were in operation in Poland.

Responsibility for the entire project was placed in the hands of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, and head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS.

The Wannsee Conference did not mark the beginning of the "Final Solution." The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the "final solution" was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated "extermination" camps in Poland. Not one of the men present at Wannsee objected to the announced policy. Never before had a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people--The Wannsee Conference, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

Very little is EVER accomplished by one person working alone unless you happen to be Michelangelo. Conspiracies exist! Our own Supreme Court has said so and, by law, they have defined themselves as 'infallible'. They are, themselves, of late, a conspiracy of Republicans to subvert the Constitution.

Because conspiracy --in fact --exist, wars will continue to be fought by the poor for the benefit of the rich. The mechanism by which this is accomplished is called the military-industrial complex. It's job is to divide the spoils of war among Dick Cheney's oil buddies and other 'paid thugs' like Blackwater, who conveniently hide behind the monicker --'defense contractor'.

For eons wars have been fought for booty! That's why the US fights them today. Rome invaded Dacia for the gold. The U.S. wages war in the Middle East for oil, the booty du jour! To deny one the right to oppose those wars --as Supreme Court Justice Holmes denied Eugene Debs --is a recipe for military dictatorship. In a text-book example of the false analogy, Holmes likened Debs' opposition to U.S. entry in WWI to yelling 'fire in a crowded theater'. I ask: isn't it more dangerous NOT to shout fire if the theater really is on fire?

Today --the theater is on fire. Our government has repeatedly failed us on almost every front. We are expected to die abroad in order to enrich numerous conspiracies of rich men --oil barons, arm merchants, the very minions of the Military-Industrial Complex. Corporations, we are told, are people and the conspiracy we used to dignify with the term --Supreme Court --has said so! And I ask you: if the MIC is not a 'conspiracy of rich men', then what is? If the Supreme Court has not deteriorated into a conspiracy of right wing ideologues, then why are not the dictionaries re-written and the thousands of pages of case law burned or dumped offshore so that we cannot learn the truth for ourselves. We are expected to buy the lies and die for this wicked, venal conspiracy. Well, I won't and never will!

St. Thomas More would have called the Military-Industrial complex and their shills on K-street a "conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodities in the name and title of the commonwealth!" [See: Thomas More, Utopia] This is why wars have been waged throughout the ages! If Justice Holmes were alive, I would tell him that it is wrong NOT to yell fire in a crowded theater if the theater is, indeed, on fire! At this moment in our history, the American republic is threatened, and among those threatening it is the US Supreme Court itself!

I am yelling FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

The US and NATO Wage War on the World

2010-02-11T05:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17517

Descent Into Barbarism: The US and NATO Wage War on the World
By Finian Cunningham
Global Research, February 9, 2010

The argument is won: capitalism as an effective system to organise society and provide for human needs has expired. The evidence is conclusive. Trillions of dollars to kickstart the economy in the US and Europe may have given an ephemeral lease of life to the financial class to spin the casino wheel once again, but it is more apparent by the day that the tentative “recovery” has spluttered to a standstill. Gridlocked by unprecedented levels of personal and national debts, the engine of production – the real economy – is in a state of rigor mortis.

This collapse has been a long time in the making. Decades of easy credit was up to now a way for the ruling class – government, corporations, financial institutions – to let the majority of workers subsidise the chronic loss in their livelihoods, which have been drained since the mid-1970s by the oligarchy’s self-aggrandisement from wage cutting, regressive taxation and public spending cuts. The political class – whether liberal or conservative, right or left – have facilitated this giant wealth-siphoning process.

However, the point is that the economic system is now objectively shown to be moribound. And it is impossible for so-called mainstream politicians to think of any other way of doing business. They are ideologically blind. Recall former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s arrogant assertion: “There is no alternative”. Likewise, US President Barack Obama insists on throwing billions more dollars at the banks and financiers on Wall Street. But that won’t kickstart an economy in which millions of workers are without jobs and homes or who are on crumby wages and up to their necks in debt. The profit system has hit an historic dead-end and this gridlock is a result of deep trends to do with the decline in capitalism as a mode of social production (falling wages and profits and the concomitant explosion in financial speculation and debts).

Widespread poverty and human misery is now seen on a massive scale in the so-called developed world. Some 40 million Americans, for example, are subsisting on food stamps. The distinction between “developed” and “developing” economies (always a myth anyway) is blurred. The ranks of the world’s long-suffering poor are swelled with dispossessed blue and white-collar workers and their families from across the US and Europe. Together more than ever, they stand shut out from those gated havens of obscene wealth for a global minority.

Similar historic junctures have been witnessed before when capitalism floundered from its inexorable tendency to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Disturbingly, the release valve for the system and its bankruptcy has always been war. Death and destruction is the lender of last resort to an economic system that – despite itself – inevitably polarises wealth to an unworkable degree. The First and Second World Wars – claiming more than 70 million over a period of less than 10 years lives – were effectively the ultimate, grotesque bailouts.

In our time, war, it seems, has already begun. The US oligarchy and its NATO allies are waging a veritable war on the world: killing, disappearing and incarcerating millions of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – a war that is expanding into Yemen, Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa, with the militarisation of sea lanes and oceans (see Chossudovsky, www.Globalresearch.ca) and the setting up of “forward projecting” military and missile bases in every continent (see Rozoff, ditto). On top of ordinary poverty and misery, the world is truly seeing another historic descent into barbarism. Given this war-mongering dynamic, the growing US antagonism with Iran, Russia and China is far from an idle threat. It is the logical next step for a deeply illogical economic system.

But history is not inevitable. We are not necessarily programmed to repeat its horrors. A combination of global communications among citizens and political and social consciousness may be enough to prevent a military conflagration and overthrow the misrule of the oligarchy. What is needed is a) a widening of the recognition that capitalism as a system of social production is finished; and b) the case has to be confidently made that an alternative is very possible. That alternative is socialism (the subject of a further article). To those who remain skeptical, they should bear in mind the stark choice that Rosa Luxemberg foresaw for humanity: that is, socialism or barbarism. And we already have the latter.

finian.cunningham@gmail.com

China's hawks demand cold war on the US

2010-02-08T06:53:00.001-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7017951.ece

Michael Sheridan
The Sunday Times
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:29 EST

More than half of Chinese people questioned in a poll believe China and America are heading for a new "cold war".

The finding came after battles over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, climate change, internet freedom and human rights which have poisoned relations in the three months since President Barack Obama made a fruitless visit to Beijing.

According to diplomatic sources, a rancorous postmortem examination is under way inside the US government, led by officials who think the president was badly advised and was made to appear weak.

In China's eyes, the American response - which includes a pledge by Obama to get tougher on trade - is a reaction against its rising power.

Now almost 55% of those questioned for Global Times, a state-run newspaper, agree that "a cold war will break out between the US and China".

An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America's foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama's decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.

"We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela," declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people's political consultative conference.

He added: "We have nothing to be afraid of. The North Koreans have stood up to America and has anything happened to them? No. Iran stands up to America and does disaster befall it? No."

Officially, China has reacted by threatening sanctions against American companies selling arms to Taiwan and cancelling military visits.

But Chinese analysts think the leadership, riding a wave of patriotism as the year of the tiger dawns, may go further.

"This time China must punish the US," said Major-General Yang Yi, a naval officer. "We must make them hurt." A major-general in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Luo Yuan, told a television audience that more missiles would be deployed against Taiwan. And a PLA strategist, Colonel Meng Xianging, said China would "qualitatively upgrade" its military over the next 10 years to force a showdown "when we're strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US".

Chinese indignation was compounded when the White House said Obama would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, in the next few weeks.

"When someone spits on you, you have to get back," said Huang Xiangyang, a commentator in the China Daily newspaper, usually seen as a showcase for moderate opinion.

An internal publication at the elite Qinghua University last week predicted the strains would get worse because "core interests" were at risk. It said battles over exports, technology transfer, copyright piracy and the value of China's currency, the yuan, would be fierce.

As a crescendo of strident nationalistic rhetoric swirls through the Chinese media and blogosphere, American officials seem baffled by what has gone wrong and how fast it has happened.

During Obama's visit, the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, claimed relations were "really at an all-time high in terms of the bilateral atmosphere ... a cruising altitude that is higher than any other time in recent memory", according to an official transcript.

The ambassador must have been the only person at his embassy to think so, said a diplomat close to the talks.

"The truth was that the atmosphere was cold and intransigent when the president went to Beijing yet his China team went on pretending that everything was fine," the diplomat said.

In reality, Chinese officials argued over every item of protocol, rigged a town hall meeting with a pre-selected audience, censored the only interview Obama gave to a Chinese newspaper and forbade the Americans to use their own helicopters to fly him to the Great Wall.

President Hu Jintao refused to give an inch on Obama's plea to raise the value of the Chinese currency, while his vague promises of co-operation on climate change led the Americans to blunder into a fiasco at the Copenhagen summit three weeks later.

Diplomats say they have been told that there was "frigid" personal chemistry between Obama and the Chinese president, with none of the superficial friendship struck up by previous leaders of the two nations.

Yet after their meeting Obama's China adviser, Jeff Bader, said: "It's been highly successful in setting out and accomplishing the objectives we set ourselves."

Then came Copenhagen, where Obama virtually had to force his way with his bodyguards into a conference room where the urbane Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, was trying to strike a deal behind his back.

The Americans were also livid at what they saw as deliberate Chinese attempts to humiliate the president by sending lower-level officials to deal with him.

"They thought Obama was weak and they were testing him," said a European diplomat based in China.

In Beijing, some diplomats even claim to detect a condescending attitude towards Obama, noting that Yang Jiechi, the foreign minister, prides himself on knowing the Bush dynasty and others among America's traditional white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elite.

But there are a few voices urging caution on Chinese public opinion. "China will look unreal if it behaves aggressively and competes for global leadership," wrote Wang Yusheng, a retired diplomat, in the China Daily.

He warned that China was not as rich or as powerful as America or Japan and therefore such a move could be "hazardous".

It is not clear whether anyone in Beijing is listening.

Obama's Silent War Shocks Pakistan

2010-02-03T14:49:00.001-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/03/obama-silent-war-pakistan

February 3, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
The latest Taliban bombing has uncovered America's low-profile funding of the Pakistan military
by Delcan Walsh

To many Pakistanis the most shocking aspect of the latest Taliban bombing was not the death toll, or the injuries inflicted on survivors, but the question that it raised: what was a team of American soldiers doing in a tense corner of North West Frontier province?

In a way, the attack tugged the veil from a multi-faceted military assistance programme that, while not secret, is rarely publicised – by either side.

President Obama's public aid to Pakistan is transparent: $1.5bn a year for the next five years, mainly to boost the civilian government. But behind the scenes the US is engaged in other ways. Over the past decade it has given over $12bn in cash directly to the military to subsidise the costs of fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida. The programme to train the Frontier Corps, which the killed soldiers were involved with, is estimated to be worth $400m more over several years.

Generously provisioned counter-narcotics programmes operate along the Afghan border, funding everything from wells to schools. In Islamabad military contractors – usually retired army personnel – are paid to advise the army, discreetly working out of suburban houses. All this is hugely sensitive. Public opinion in Pakistan is overwhelmingly hostile to American "interference".

Last year a media furore erupted over the role of the contractor Blackwater, which vocal right-wing commentators believed was part of a covert plot to steal the country's nuclear weapons.

The Taliban played on that fear yesterday with a spokesman describing the bomb as "revenge for the blasts carried out by Blackwater in Pakistan".

The critics are backed by public opinion. A survey last October found that 80% of Pakistanis rejected American assistance in fighting the Taliban.

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

Humanity or Nuclear Holocaust: Do We Have the Courage and the Moral Intelligence to Choose?

2010-02-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Humanity-or-Nuclear-Holoca-by-Rafe-Pilgrim-100130-407.html

February 3, 2010
By Rafe Pilgrim

The Nuclear Club now has eight official members: United States, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. There is also a secret-everyone-knows member in Israel, making nine. And there was a tenth, South Africa, who made the intelligent and humane choice to eliminate its nuclear weapons material.

Then there is or is not the aspiring candidacy of Iran, dependent upon how one views the propaganda warfare between that nation and Israel, some claiming that an "evil" Iran mitigates, perhaps justifies the militant endeavors of Israel with its occupied territories and closer Muslim neighbors.

It's not a secret that Pakistan and India view each other with itchy nuclear trigger fingers, and that North Korea will use its nuclearity as a none too subtle threat not to interfere with its arguable prerogatives. The baddest dudes in the nuclear gang, however, remain the US, China and Russia, all of whom share in the ill disguised posture: Mess with me and I'll annihilate you and all of humanity if need be!

Does any really decent and intelligent person want his country to employ the ultimate horror weapon? Do we wish to continue the threat in endeavor for diplomatic or crass economic advantage with the possibility that others may rise to the challenge of unveiling their threat and employ its reality, or simply be honestly scared into doing so?

Governments have always been loath to discard any perceived advantage no matter how gruesome its nature. They will sit and talk, perhaps negotiate away some useless surplus beyond the capability to destroy life on earth, but little more can be realistically expected of them.

This leaves us all in the position as people who must make the decision beyond our respective government's capacity of sensibility and compassion for the fate of us all -- and to what end, to what chance for our success? Unfortunately, slim chance indeed, unless there is reality in the messiah phenomenon, and such arrives and wrests the world's scepter from the clutch of presidents, congressmen, prime ministers, despots, greed giants and madmen.

Although it would be in all probability an exercise in futility, it's interesting to contemplate how a vote by the American people would address our fate in dealing with the reality of the nuclear menace.

Apparently our basic choices could be three: (1) The decent and smart way, by cooperatively but verifiably eliminating all nuclear weapon stockpiles including our own, as well the world-wide availability of all nuclear material of weapons capability, or (2) that we destroy everyone else in the world except those within the borders of the United States, or (3) that we abide the current privileged inventory status until others inevitably achieve competitive arsenals which will allow everyone to destroy each other, that is humanity.

I prefer Option 1, but admit that it requires a level of political integrity, morality and intelligence in the support of such decision that can scarcely be found today amongst our political leadership, their masters, and the fright/hate mongers now so popular.

What we're actually doing now is proceeding down the path of Option 3, but we'd be wise to consider that Option 2 has considerable support.

Admit it now: Aren't you a bit surprised, perhaps shocked by what you thought (perhaps still think) America was, and the reality of what it is?

I'd like to think that a decent regard for our fellow man would prevail atop the morality to persuade our affairs of state, but I'm afraid -- terribly -- that there is little evidence of such today in this the world's once oldest republic.

A nation mired down in perpetual war; on a destructive path to economic collapse

2010-02-03T13:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-nation-mired-down-in-per-by-michael-payne-100130-973.html

February 3, 2010
By michael payne

Our economy is in shambles, millions of Americans remain unemployed and depressed, our national infrastructure is crumbling, and poverty and homelessness are reaching alarming levels. And, yet, in spite of the catastrophic state of our nation, the annual $1 trillion dollar military budget remains sacrosanct, totally untouchable. This is a completely unsustainable condition, a formula for economic disaster and national bankruptcy.

In the face of these stark realities, the subject of potential cutbacks in our massive military spending is off the table, it is off limits, a taboo subject. As I watch discussions on cable TV about how to address our economic woes, reduce spending, and find the funds needed to create jobs, if anyone even dares to bring up the idea of reducing military spending, they are immediately looked upon as some kind of traitorous wacko.

It seems as if the majority of Congress and the American people are totally ignoring the disastrous consequences that will eventually come to pass if we continue to spend $1 trillion dollars for military purposes each and every year; more than all the industrialized nations of the world combined. Have we become so paranoid, so afraid of the "terrorist threat" constantly being trumpeted by our government and our national media that we will watch as the military establishment sucks the lifeblood out of America?

Here is an ominous observation by Chalmers Johnson, a respected author and military analyst: "the U.S. military establishment today is close to being beyond civilian control and that, despite its ability to deliver death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of retaliation, it demands more and newer equipment while the Pentagon now more or less sets its own agenda and monopolizes the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy."

The Pentagon spends more for military purposes than all U.S. state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans. Can you believe that? We have now reached the point that the vast Military-Industrial Complex has taken control of our nation; that the promotion of foreign wars has now become this nation's #1 priority, that the sustenance of our society and the welfare of the American people is taking a backseat to this gigantic war machine.

To call the total U.S. military spending a budget is a complete misnomer. While the 2009 Pentagon base budget was $513 billion and the 2010 pending request is for $534 billion, the annual spending for military purposes, including various supplemental appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, totals nearly $1 trillion.

The ironic part of this totally out of control budget is that not one penny of it is "deficit neutral", a term applied to legislative bills or proposals that must pay for themselves over some budget period. Meanwhile, the proposed health care reform legislation currently languishing in Congress has this stipulation; it must be absolutely deficit neutral or, by the very words of President Obama, he will not sign it.

What extreme hypocrisy! Our nation will spend $1 trillion annually for bullets and bombs that result in death and destruction without any serious discussion and debate in our Congress while, at the same time, health care reform legislation that is intended to save lives and vastly improve the health of millions of Americans has been subject to vociferous, mean-spirited debate, in those once hallowed, but now corrupted halls of Congress. Are we as a nation now willing to let foreign death and destruction trump the health and welfare of the people of America?

Over the decades, the U.S. has steadily developed and expanded a massive "American Empire" of military bases and installations around the world. We Americans have always placed a large emphasis on maintaining our national security, especially from our experiences during World War II. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem, however, is that we have now established a national security institution that has grown to such an extreme that it can no longer be controlled or sustained.

Based upon the massive power that the Military-Industrial Complex holds over our government and the American people, there is no conceivable way that this agenda of perpetual war can be derailed under current conditions. So here is what I foresee will happen in America to cure this pervasive addiction to war. The march to perpetual war will continue; hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars will continue to be spent on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other potential targets. This march to war will continue until, over the next decade or so, the lack of economic development and revenues, coupled with the massive military costs, will propel our nation into an economic collapse.

At that point, all monetary resources for funding our massive military empire will become exhausted and will begin to dry up. The large portion of that trillion dollar military allotment will disappear and, when it does, the vast empire of bases and military installations will have to be radically scaled back. And while the march to perpetual war will come to an abrupt halt, our nation's economic foundation will be on life support.

If we Americans continue to stand by and watch in silence as the remaining wealth of our nation is wasted on bullets, bombs and destruction, if we do not finally demand that this march to perpetual war be ended, then we will be guaranteeing the economic disaster that will follow.

America has now arrived at a fork in the road where we must accept the reality that "we can't have it both ways." We are going to have to make a momentous decision on which fork we take for America's future. The one choice is to keep on doing what we are now doing; to spend trillions into the future on war while we, at the same time, attempt to restore an economy that is bleeding profusely. That simply will not work. Or we can decide that the health, welfare and stability of our nation and its people is our #1 priority and, thereby, totally renounce the concept of wars with no end .

The choice is ours and we cannot evade making this crucial decision; it will not go away. War and peace cannot co-exist. We have to decide what kind of future we want our children and grandchildren to inherit.

World War III: U.S. vs. China?

2010-02-02T13:48:00.001-08:00

http://seekingalpha.com/article/125499-world-war-iii-u-s-vs-china

James West
Seeking Alpha
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:18 EST

It took the onset of World War II to lift the world out of the Great Depression that began in 1929.

Ignore the historical hyperbole that claim Roosevelt's "New Deal" had anything to do with it. It was war, plain and simple, that galvanized the U.S. manufacturing complex into debt-driven growth, and ended the period of stagnation following the economic contraction from 1929 to 34.

Bernanke's theory is that the depression would have been averted had the Federal Reserve acted decisively and boosted liquidity - a theory he is now testing. At that time, the Fed was limited to how much liquidity it could inject by the fact that the available money supply had to be connected (at least partially) to the available gold on hand in U.S. reserves.

But scholars (to use the term loosely) agree - the advent of war was the end of the depression. War has since been recognized as good economic policy, and many U.S. administrations have embraced it as fundamental foreign policy.

I recently had a conversation with a senior Chinese government official who assured me that the Chinese observed the regime change machinations of the Bush administration with interest. He suggested that the precedents set by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and myriad other coups overt and covert have thoroughly established the expectation among democratic citizens that forcible regime change of irresponsible governments is an acceptable tool in the democratic arsenal.

That the United States deploys this tool indiscriminately does not pass un-noticed. To the Chinese strategic thinkers, it acts to condone future regime change strategies lurking within the long range plans of expansion-minded countries whose resources may be reaching critical shortages due to excessive population.

Notice that virtually no criticism was leveled by China against Bush's contrived Weapons of Mass Destruction fallacy, and no interference with the subsequent attack on Saddam Hussein's fiefdom was seen.

An interesting tidbit in the news over the last 24 hours demonstrates just how easily the pre-text for war can be manufactured.

Five Chinese vessels maneuvered dangerously close to a U. S. Navy ship in the South China Sea on Sunday, closing within eight metres of the unarmed surveillance ship, the Pentagon said.

"This was a reckless, dangerous maneuver that was unprofessional" and violated international law, said Defence Department spokesman Bryan Whitman. The United States protested to Chinese authorities in Beijing and to the defense attaché in Washington over the incident, which occurred in the South China Sea, about 120 kilometers south of Hainan Island.

A Republican lawmaker called the standoff a critical "early test" for President Barack Obama just weeks before he meets Chinese President Hu Jintao in April.

Far from a provocative act of war, the unwillingness of both China and the U.S. to admit any sort of wrong-doing over the incident demonstrates the battle of wills that lurks just under the surface of U.S. - China relations.

According to the Pentagon, the targeting of the Impeccable came at the end of several days in which Chinese naval vessels had been stepping up their harassment in international waters.

The Pentagon insisted the Impeccable was engaged in "routine" and legal operations in international waters.

"The Chinese navy pursues peace and safeguards the security of the country," navy deputy chief of staff Major General Zhang Deshun told China Daily. On most levels, war between two of the planet's superpowers is unthinkable. Since both are armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated of weaponry, it is difficult to envision a traditional war, where one side sends troops over to physically subdue the other side.

And any idea of a nuclear exchange is clearly self-defeating for obvious reasons. Chemical warfare ditto. Biological? Not in this century.

The third world war, which is, in fact, underway, is being fought economically, as evidenced by Timothy Geithner's first verbal blunder as Treasury Secretary, where he accused the Chinese of "currency manipulation", referring to the suppression of the rise of the Yuan against the U.S. Dollar.

Considering U.S. suppression of gold over three decades to create the illusion of a strong U.S. dollar, this is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black. But that is an entirely different set of cats to skin.

The bottom line is the Chinese, who are the largest foreign holders of United States Treasury Bills, have been underwriting U.S. economic growth for decades, and now hold billions in foreign reserves of a currency being diluted into fractions of its former worth. This monetary hyper-inflation has, in theory, the net effect of devaluing the U.S. dollar denominated foreign reserve holdings in tandem of China and every other holder of Treasurys.

It's like two cowboys each holding a gun with trigger cocked at the other guy's head, both of them yelling at the other guy to "drop the gun". The likelihood of a civilized resolution to such a scenario is just about as unthinkable as a nuclear world war.

China deliberately uses manipulation to maintain an undervalued currency. The need to create jobs for the sake of "social stability" has led them to adopt "export led growth strategies" based on an undervalued currency.

This equates to subsidizing its exports and foreign direct investment, and is essentially a tax on China's imports.

The United States, on the other hand, actively manipulates the value of the United States dollar through the illegal and destructive manipulation of gold and precious metals futures markets, where there is such an accumulation of short interest, that it is inconceivable to think that those contracts will ever be covered by real gold. This amounts to an artificial premium on the United States dollar relative to other currencies, and acts ultimately as a tax on imports.

So the two largest economies are employing similar tactics to achieve identical goals. Both are failing, and the consequence is a global financial system in which confidence has been destroyed, currencies are impossible to value, and the only thing of real value (precious metals and other commodities) are twisting in the wind waiting for somebody to win the third world war.

Why Freeze Spending on Only Part of the Budget?

2010-02-02T12:54:00.001-08:00

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2718

Why Freeze Spending on Only Part of the Budget?
January 27, 2010
Ivan Eland

The results of the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy reverberated like a “shot heard ’round the world”—or at least one heard ’round Washington. All the spending lately in Washington has apparently alienated the political independents that Barack Obama won in November 2008. And the president gets the message—or at least he is making a good show of it.

His new proposal is a severely qualified three-year spending freeze, covering only about an eighth of the federal budget. The proposal covers only “discretionary spending,” programs that Congress appropriates money for each year, and leaves out the faster growing entitlement programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are ballooning on automatic pilot. Admittedly, entitlement programs are hard to cut, because . . . well . . . people feel entitled to their government handouts.

Yet Obama’s proposed spending freeze, which in fiscal year 2010 will save only a measly $10-$15 billion in a $3.5 trillion annual federal budget, doesn’t even cover all discretionary spending. Exempt are the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and foreign aid. Yet DoD spending alone, with the Cold War long over, is the greatest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II and has doubled since George W. Bush took office in 2001.

President Obama’s rationale for not including these security expenditures in his discretionary spending freeze is that he is prosecuting two wars. Aside from the obvious solution of ending the two conflicts—which are part of the “war on terror” but have had the counterproductive effect of increasing retaliatory terrorism—and cutting back the defense budget, defense spending could be reduced even if the two war efforts are sustained.

Just as Obama used the economic crisis to try to pass an unrelated and expensive health care bill, George W. Bush used the 9/11 attacks to conduct an unrelated invasion of Iraq, which he then used as an excuse to pump up the defense and non-defense budgets. Although Obama has deepened the national debt and budget deficit, most of the two are still mostly Bush’s, because his reckless spending lasted eight years and Obama’s has only been going for a year so far. Still, despite different political rhetoric, some things never change in Washington.

So why doesn’t Obama at least freeze security spending? Could it be that the “war on terror” requires Cold War-like resources to be successful? No, the intelligence, drones, and CIA and Special Forces operations to conduct a real, covert, and more effective war on terror are reasonably cheap. The real answer as to why there is no defense spending freeze: Because Democrats are always scared of being called “wimps” on national security issues—likely the same reason Obama had to support at least one overseas war and thus reluctantly escalated the Afghanistan conflict.

Even if the Afghan war is considered necessary, however, it has nothing to do with most of the defense budget. A large part of that budget is doled out to special interests, including defense industries and even uniformed service members.

So here are some suggestions of items that could be cut from the defense budget without harming national security. The Navy could cancel the CVN-79 aircraft carrier, terminate the building of littoral combat ships and LPD-26-class amphibious vessels, stop production of exorbitantly expensive DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers, and terminate production of SSN-774 Virginia-class submarines. The Navy has little relevance to the war on terror and, with existing equipment, has crushing dominance over any other fleet in the world. The Air Force should stop production of C-17 aircraft, which are expensive compared to sealift, and delay production of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter until flight tests have been satisfactory. The Marines should cancel the MV-22 Osprey aircraft; the range and speed advantages over existing helicopters are not worth the much higher cost.

The Army and Marines should end expansion of their forces. Adding more soldiers is very expensive because of added salaries, benefits, equipment, and support. If any presidential administration feels it needs to use military force against terrorists, it should be employed only sparingly after law enforcement methods have failed, and with a lighter footprint so that it doesn’t fuel the Islamist fire that it seeks to dampen. Thus, if the United States is not conducting counterproductive occupations of Muslim lands to ostensibly quell terrorism, the ground forces need not be augmented, and even can be reduced. This reduction should allow cutting the weapons and equipment that are purchased for such forces.

Finally, there are loads of pork in the foreign aid and homeland security budgets that could be extracted. At most (and even this is a stretch), Obama’s proposed limited spending freeze will result in a savings of only 3 percent of the ballooning budget deficits in the next 10 years. To avoid his predecessor’s reputation of “spending like a drunken sailor,” Obama must include massive entitlements and discretionary security spending in his budget cutting for it to be serious.

Soldiers Are Being Forced to Choose Between Their Children And the Military, And They're Paying the Price In Jailtime

2010-01-30T05:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Soldiers-Are-Being-Forced-by-Dahr-Jamail-100126-540.html

January 26, 2010
By Dahr Jamail

In January, U.S. Army officials announced four separate court-martial charges against Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother who missed her deployment to Afghanistan in early November 2009 when her childcare plans for her infant son, Kamani, fell through at the last minute. Hutchinson was jailed and threatened with a court-martial if she did not agree to deploy to Afghanistan. Kamani was placed into a county foster care system.

Hutchinson, in accordance with the family care plan of the U.S. Army, had been allowed to fly to Oakland, California to leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes. However, after a week, Hughes realized she couldn't care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister. She told Hutchinson and her commander, Captain Gassant and the Army granted a Hutchinson an extension so that she could find someone else to care for Kamani. In the meantime, the boy came back to Georgia to be with his mother.

But only a few days before Hutchinson's original deployment date, she was told by the Army she would not get the time extension after all, and would have to deploy despite the fact that her son had nowhere to go. Faced with this choice, Specialist Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.

"I think they didn't believe her that she was unable to find someone to care for her infant," Hutchinson's civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, said at the time. "They think she's just trying to get out of her deployment. But she's just trying to find someone she can trust to take care of her baby. She has never intended to get out of her deployment."

The Army put Hutchinson in the position of having to choose between caring for her infant son or deploying to Afghanistan. She chose to care for her son, and is paying the price. Currently, she remains assigned to Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, where she has been posted since February 2008.

Hutchinson is not unique in facing unthinkable choices when it comes to having to choose between family obligations and the U.S. military. While Sussman explained that she has not heard of another case identical to Hutchinson's, where the military arrested a mother and placed her child in foster care, "I've spoken with many soldiers who have told me that that was the choice they were given [to place their child in foster care and deploy, or face court martial]. I spoke with someone yesterday who knew someone who had to place their child with a distant relative to avoid having them being placed in foster care by the military." A soldier in the Florida Coast Guard had just contacted her over a similar situation addition, Sussman said.

"If We Wanted You to Have a Family, There Would Have Been One In Your Duffle Bag."

Army regulations exist to deal specifically with soldiers who have children. "If a soldier can't find adequate childcare, they are supposed to be discharged honorably, according to Army Regulation 635-200," says Sussman, "The regulation in this, Chapter 5, is separation for convenience of the government, deals with this, and 5-8 is the discharge, which is involuntary separation due to parenthood. This is considered a punishment to people in the Army, because the assumption is that people want to stay in the Army, but this is for times when it's not a fit."

"The military is aware that these things happen, and I believe the regulations anticipate child-care plans sometimes falling through, and there are sometimes no alternatives," Sussman added, "They [U.S. Military] recognize the parent does have a duty to care for their child if they can't find a backup for when they are deployed. The military doesn't want people deployed who are distraught about their children."

Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, part of the National Lawyers Guild, agrees.

"There is a pregnancy discharge, a parenthood discharge for sole-parents who can't find someone to give total care to their kids, there's a hardship discharge where an unusual family problem that requires the soldier to be with a family in financial crisis or a family member who has a severe mental health problem," Gilberd explains. "But, despite regulations existing to deal with these problems, these are typically ignored by the military. The military will typically say, 'Well, we looked at it, but we can't help you with this.'"

Gilberd says there are common phrases in the military that speak to this: "If we wanted you to have a family, there would have been one in your duffle bag." Or, "If we wanted you to have a wife, we would have issued you one."

"Family is subsidiary to military needs," she adds. "Soldiers hear this from the beginning."

Gilberd is currently working on a case similar to Hutchinson's, but her client is not ready to go public yet. Gilberd says, "The military isn't going to be forthcoming about the reasons soldiers refuse to deploy or go AWOL, but I certainly run into many cases of soldiers struggling with the military while they try to care for their children, or sick family members."

"Helping Children Cope"?

The U.S. Military has, via a large and ongoing propaganda effort, attempted to sell itself as being "family friendly" in an attempt to lure recruits with families to join.

On the U.S. Army's primary recruiting website, goarmy.com, a section titled "Army Families" has sections for health care, finances, family services, and even a section on relocating with a sub-section titled "Helping Children Cope." A small paragraph addresses the stress on children whose military parent(s), faced with moving on a regular basis, feel the stress. A sentence states, "If you have young children, their first move can be challenging and maybe even downright scary."

But moving is not the most frightening proposition faced by children whose parents are in the military today. Rather, it is the unwillingness by the military to accommodate the needs of their parents.

When Sergeant Heath Carter returned from the invasion of Iraq, he discovered that his daughter, Sierra, was living in an unsafe environment in Arkansas under the care of his first wife, who had full custody of the child. Heath and his new wife, Teresa, started consulting attorneys in order to secure custody of Sierra, who also suffered from a life-threatening medical condition. Precisely during this time, the military chose to keep changing Carter's duty station from Fort Polk, Louisiana, to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, then to Fort Stewart, Georgia. Not only did these constant transfers make it difficult for Carter to see his daughter, they also reduced his chances of gaining custody of Sierra. Convinced that this was a matter of life and death for his daughter, he requested compassionate reassignment to Fort Leavenworth, Missouri, about two hours from his first wife's home in Arkansas.

His appeals to the military command, the legal department, a military chaplain, and even to his congressman failed, and the military insisted that he remain in Georgia. Having run out of all available avenues, in May 2007 he went AWOL from Fort Stewart and headed home to Arkansas where he fought for and won custody of Sierra, and was able to literally save her life by obtaining for her the medical care she needed.

But on January 25, 2009, Carter was arrested at his home by military police, who flew him back to Fort Stewart where he has been awaiting charges since then. Initially, his commander told him it would take a month and a half for him to be sent home. Instead, several months later, it was decided he would receive a court-martial.

"Now I have to wait for the court martial," Carter explained in an interview last fall. "It's taken this long for them to decide. If we had known it would take this long, my family could have moved down here. Every time I ask when I'll have a trial, they say it is only going to be another two weeks. I get the feeling they are lying."

His ordeal has forced Carter to reflect on the wars. He admits that, although his original reason for going AWOL was personal and he had otherwise been proud of his missions, he sees things in Iraq differently today. "I don't think there is any reason for us to be there except for oil."

To add insult to injury, Sergeant Carter's command even offered him a deployment to Afghanistan amid his struggles.

An equally shocking story is that of Army Specialist Leo Church.

Shortly after Church completed his Basic Training, he received a call from his partner and mother of his two children, informing him that they were homeless and living in a van. Church asked his commander for permission to leave Fort Hood and go get his family, but permission was denied.

"Seeing that I had no other choice I left to pick up my children and then immediately returned to Ft. Hood, back to my company," Church wrote of his experience in a statement from September 1, 2009. "When I returned I was charged for leaving without permission and given an Article 15, and my pay was cut in half. Things only got worse from there."

Church's captain suggested that he have his children live with him, and Church could take them to work with him, except there was a six-month wait for this to be approved. "Knowing that I was not allowed to have them in my room overnight and it being inappropriate to take them to my company to work, I left to take my children to Amarillo, Texas so I could find them a safe place to live," Church wrote of the situation, "Having only my mother to turn to, but knowing that she could not keep them 24 hours a day for me to be able to return to Ft. Hood, I stayed and found myself a civilian job. I knew my obligation was to the Army and my company, but my children were my obligation long before I ever considered enlisting and they needed their father."

Church was picked up for being AWOL in 2007 and flown back to Fort Hood where he was returned to his company, and threatened with 15-20 years in prison for having gone AWOL, despite the fact that it was to take care of his children. His partner left him during this time as well.

"So, again I found myself leaving, this time not for my children, but for me," Church added, "I was scared and alone, and had no one to help me as it had been since the first day I arrived at Ft. Hood."

This time Church "started to build the foundation for my life," adding, "a beautiful home, an excellent job, a wonderful wife, Amanda, and my only son on the way, I could not have been happier. But, my desertion charge had been discovered and I was once more picked up and returned to Ft. Hood."

Church was unable to find anyone to support his wife and children, and the Army refused to assist him, so he and his wife were forced to give their newborn son, Austin, for adoption. Meanwhile, Church was court-martialed and spent several months in the brig at Fort Lewis in Washington State. Of that time he wrote: "I have lost so much because of the Army; I don't have custody of my daughters and I had to give up my son for adoption, all because of the Army. My wife is struggling to make ends meet now without me." On December 9, 2009, Church was released from the stockade, and discharged from the Army.

According to Gilberd, Church's story is not unique.

"When there's a parent dying who wants their son or daughter home with them, or there is a child with special needs who needs intensive parent support, or some other family emergency, the military is not willing to provide that support," she explained. "Military regulations say there should be assistance available to the soldiers, and superiors are supposed to help with this, but soldiers find that the opposite happens."

After remembering an incident during the first Gulf War, when "there were reservist mothers who were breastfeeding who were ordered to active duty," Gilberd shared another story.

"Jose Crespa came home from an Iraq deployment. He went home on leave and found his sister had developed schizophrenia. His mom was unable to deal with the situation, which was complicated by the fact that his sister had a child to care for. He went AWOL for a month [late 2007] to help them, then went back to Fort Carson and let the military know what was going on. They threatened him with a general court martial, and it took attorney intervention and his Article 138 Complaint (A Redress of Grievance procedure for when soldiers are wronged by their command) to get him out."

Crespa was lucky to have good attorneys, as he was discharged without any disciplinary action and with an honorable discharge. However, things usually don't turn out this way.

"I wish I could say that's a common outcome," was Gilberd's comment on Crespa's case.

The Pentagon tracks hard numbers of soldiers going AWOL, and since October 2001, more than 50,000 soldiers have done so. But the military does not keep track of the reasons why soldiers go AWOL, or get hardship discharges, including when the reasons are those like Hutchinson's, Carter's, Church's, or Crespa's, or if the soldier has PTSD, or other mitigating circumstances.

According to Gilberd, cases like Crespa's "get lost in the shuffle," and added, "To most folks, this is just one more AWOL, or one more hardship discharge. There's no way to know how many soldiers are going AWOL and are trying to apply for hardship discharges, but counselors run across these cases often."

"Looking at these reasons would not reflect well on the military, but there are lots of these," Gilberd continued, "And to me, the irony is that there are procedures that should be available to these folks to get out, but the problem is that the command is not willing to follow the procedures. And it's all part of that "there's no family in your duffle bag" mindset. So it's all about keeping the numbers up, and having enough deployable service-members, and not letting too many people go."

As the military now finds itself preparing to deploy 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan and maintains more than 120,000 in Iraq, it is under tremendous pressure to maintain personnel in the ranks, which only exacerbates these problems.

"When a division is seen as having too many discharges or disciplinary problems, pressure comes down on them to not let so many people go," said Gilberd, "So the lower command gets subtle pressure for them to stop [losing personnel], and ultimately people become disposable. And not just the soldier, but their kids, or their mother, father, sister, or infant."

The sanctity of military spending

2010-01-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/26/defense/index.html

JAN 26, 2010
The sanctity of military spending
BY GLENN GREENWALD

Salon/Reuters
(updated below - Update II)

Administration officials announced last night that the President, in tomorrow's State of the Union address, will propose a multi-year freeze on certain domestic discretionary spending programs. This is an "initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit," officials told The New York Times.

But the freeze is more notable for what it excludes than what it includes. For now, it does not include the largest domestic spending programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And all "security-related programs" are also exempted from the freeze, which means it does not apply to military spending, the intelligence budget, the Surveillance State, or foreign military aid. As always, the notion of decreasing the deficit and national debt through reductions in military spending is one of the most absolute Washington taboos. What possible rationale is there for that?

The facts about America's bloated, excessive, always-increasing military spending are now well-known. The U.S. spends almost as much on military spending as the entire rest of the world combined, and spends roughly six times more than the second-largest spender, China. Even as the U.S. sunk under increasingly crippling levels of debt over the last decade, defense spending rose steadily, sometimes precipitously. That explosion occurred even as overall military spending in the rest of the world decreased, thus expanding the already-vast gap between our expenditures and the world's. As one "defense" spending watchdog group put it: "The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six 'rogue' states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion." To get a sense for how thoroughly military spending dominates our national budget, consider this chart showing where Americans' tax revenue goes:

Since much of that overall spending is mandatory, military spending -- all of which is discretionary -- accounts for over 50% of discretionary government spending. Yet it's absolutely forbidden to even contemplate reducing it as a means of reducing our debt or deficit. To the contrary, Obama ran on a platform of increasing military spending, and that is one of the few pledges he is faithfully and enthusiastically filling (while violating his pledge not to use deceitful budgetary tricks to fund our wars):

President Barack Obama will ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned.

In sum, as we cite our debtor status to freeze funding for things such as "air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks" -- all programs included in Obama's spending freeze -- our military and other "security-related" spending habits become more bloated every year, completely shielded from any constraints or reality. This, despite the fact that it is virtually impossible for the U.S. to make meaningful progress in debt reduction without serious reductions in our military programs.

Public opinion is not a legitimate excuse for this utterly irrational conduct, as large percentages of Americans are receptive to reducing -- or at least freezing -- defense spending. A June, 2009 Pew Research poll asked Americans what they would do about defense spending, and 55% said they would either decrease it (18%) or keep it the same (37%); only 40% wanted it to increase. Even more notably, a 2007 Gallup poll found that "the public's view that the federal government is spending too much on the military has increased substantially this year, to its highest level in more than 15 years." In that poll, 58% of Democrats and 47% of Independents said that military spending "is too high" -- and the percentages who believe that increased steadily over the last decade for every group.

The clear fact is that, no matter how severe are our budgetary constraints, military spending and all so-called "security-related programs" are off-limits for any freezes, let alone decreases. Moreover, the modest spending freeze to be announced by Obama tomorrow is just the start; the Washington consensus has solidified and is clearly gearing up for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with the dirty work to be done by an independent "deficit commission." It's time for "everyone" to sacrifice and suffer some more -- as long as "everyone" excludes our vast military industry, the permanent power factions inside the Pentagon and intelligence community, our Surveillance and National Security State, and the imperial policies of perpetual war which feed them while further draining the lifeblood out of the country.

UPDATE: I just saw this scary headline on MSNBC, became very frightened, and have changed my mind, as I now realize we need to massively increase our military spending to Stay Safe!!!

The Washington Post is hyping the same report. Apparently, it's breaking news -- meriting screaming red-alert headlines -- that Al Qaeda would like to ("aims to") acquire WMDs and use them against the U.S. But we should all try to remain a little calm, at least. I'm sure if we just buy some more fighter jets, create some better underground bombs, invade a few more Muslim countries, keep more Muslims imprisoned forever with no charges, give the Pentagon, the CIA and their private contractors a lot more unaccounted-for cash and stay out of their way, expand our domestic spying networks even further through private sector telecom contracts, pour tens of billions of dollars more into the coffers of our Middle East client states, and kill a few more civilians with drones, this problem will be handled. It's just a matter of making sure we bulk up our military budget -- and Look Forward, not Backward to what was done in the past -- and we'll be able to Stay Safe from this Terrorist-WMD menace.

As for the deficit, no need to worry about that. We can just freeze programs for national parks and cut Social Security and Medicare.

UPDATE II: Thankfully, some among us will be spared the pain of these budgetary freezes and imminent cuts:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates hosted a meeting with the nation's top defense company executives Wednesday, stressing the need for a closer partnership with them and pledging to work with the White House to secure steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets over time, according to his spokesman. . . .

Gates's meeting was part of a day-long session between Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter and the Aerospace Industries Association, the top trade group for American aerospace firms. The heads of the nation's top two defense firms -- Lockheed Martin and Boeing -- attended, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

Did they mention that Al Qaeda aims to get WMDs and attack the U.S. with them?

Ellsberg: From Vietnam to Afghanistan

2010-01-27T16:32:00.000-08:00

Ellsberg says there will be no victory on Afghanistan. Just another waste of human lives and materials. Just another profit center for the war whore mongering merchants!

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/790.html

Evil Empire to deploy missiles near Russia after all

2010-01-26T12:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/21/missiles-threaten-nuclear-pact/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_more_news_carousel

Nicholas Kralev
Washington TImes
Thu, 21 Jan 2010

President Obama sent two of his top national security officials to Moscow on Wednesday to clear the last hurdles to a new nuclear pact, but a revelation that U.S. missiles will soon be deployed near Russian territory could complicate the talks.

The White House said that National Security Adviser James L. Jones and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen will meet with Russian officials "primarily to discuss the remaining issues left to conclude" a follow-on to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which the U.S. ambassador to Moscow predicted will be completed within weeks.

"It's only a question of when, and I think the finish line is approaching in the very near future," Ambassador John R. Beyrle said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio.

Washington and Moscow began negotiating a new treaty last spring but failed to work out all their differences by the time START expired on Dec. 5.

Verification has been one of the main problems. Russia has insisted on monitoring U.S. missile-defense interceptors being deployed in Europe but has refused U.S. inspectors access to its data on new missile tests.

In an attempt to "reset" their relationship after tensions during the Bush administration, Mr. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed in July to cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads on each side to between 1,500 and 1,675.

The missile defense issue is one of the most sensitive for the Russians, even after Mr. Obama decided in September to scrap plans by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to deploy a system in Eastern Europe to counter a growing threat from Iran.

In a consolation to Poland, which was to host one of the sites and was unhappy with Mr. Obama's decision, the administration agreed to deploy Patriot-type surface-to-air missiles in the country. On Dec. 11, the two NATO allies signed a prerequisite agreement on the status of U.S. troops in the former Soviet satellite ahead of the missile deployment.

However, the Patriot site was kept secret - until Wednesday, when Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said it will be about 35 miles from a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania that includes the city of Kaliningrad.

"Morag was chosen as the location long ago, but we didn't make it public," Mr. Klich was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency.

He insisted that the choice of the site had "no political or strategic meaning - its good infrastructure is the only reason." He also said the missiles could arrive as soon as late March or early April at Morag, which is home to a Polish military base.

Moscow, which is protective of Kaliningrad because it is surrounded by two NATO members, is likely to react angrily to the news about Morag. That could complicate the START negotiations, though U.S. officials said it should not threaten them seriously.

"We believe it will still be conducted in good faith, and I would not think that complication will come into it," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. "It is in the interest of Russia and the United States - and the world - to see the completion of and ratification of a follow-on START agreement."

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the Patriot missiles "should be a nonissue for Russia" because "this system poses no threat to Russian defense forces, and it is a symbolic gesture of the existing U.S. security commitment to Poland."

"Russia is not and should not be looking for excuses to blow up the new treaty," he said. "Russia's longer-term concern is all about potential future numbers and locations of the SM-3 interceptors in Eastern Europe that were outlined as the Obama administration's new missile defense approach."

Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said last week that the outstanding issues in the START negotiations included sharing of telemetry data - electronic signals sent from missile flight tests - as well as Russian demands that missile defenses be included in the new treaty.

Mr. Jones and Adm. Mullen are visiting Moscow a week after a trip by another senior U.S. official, William J. Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs. Mr. Burns represents the United States in international negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, which also was discussed in his meetings and is expected to be part of the talks this week.

Washington and its Western allies want new sanctions on Iran for rejecting a proposal that would lift suspicion that it is developing a nuclear weapon under the cover of a civilian program. Russia has not been as opposed to sanctions as it has in the past, but China is resisting them, so U.S. officials hope Moscow could influence its friends in Beijing.

The Electromagnetic Threat

2010-01-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.marzeporgohar.org/en/content/the-electromagnetic-threat

The Electromagnetic Threat
By Mani.Aryamand
Created 11/11/2009 - 22:26
Welcome To Marze Por Gohar Media Center In The Press

FrontPage Interview’s guest today is Hadi T. Ardestani, a Nuclear Waste Management Expert and a Nuclear Issues Specialist in the Marze Por Gohar Party (MPG), an Iranian opposition party seeking the establishment of a secular republic in Iran.

FP: Hadi T. Ardestani, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about the Electromagnetic (EMP) threat. Many people are not really that familiar with it. Give us the definition and tell us what it is all about.

Ardestani: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about one of the more significant but least discussed national security threats: EMP.

EMP comes from the words “Electromagnetic Pulse,” which occurs when a high-altitude nuclear detonation produces an immediate flux of gamma rays from the nuclear reactions within the device. These photons, in turn, produce high-energy free electrons by “compton scattering” at altitudes between (roughly) 20 and 40 km. These electrons are then trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field, giving rise to an oscillating electric current. This current is asymmetric in general and gives rise to a rapidly rising radiated electromagnetic field called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Because the electrons are trapped essentially simultaneously, a very large electromagnetic source radiates coherently.

There are three main types of explosions to be considered on the effects of the electromagnetic pulse. These are near-surface bursts, medium-altitude bursts, and high-altitude bursts. Near-surface bursts are those at altitudes up to 1.2 miles, medium-altitude bursts range from 1.2 miles to 19 miles, and high-altitude bursts are those above 19 miles. These altitudes are only rough guidelines.

FP: Tell us about the effects of EMP.

Ardestani: Since EMP is electromagnetic radiation traveling at the speed of light, all of the affected area could possibly be affected almost simultaneously. With such a possible threat, it is important to consider what may be affected. Because of the intense electromagnetic fields (about 10 kV/m) and wide area of coverage, the EMP can induce large voltages and currents in power lines, communication cables, radio towers, and other long conductors serving a facility.

Some other notable collectors of EMP include railroad tracks, large antennas, pipes, cables, wires in buildings, and metal fencing. Although materials underground are partially shielded by the ground, they are still collectors, and these collectors can deliver the EMP energy to a larger facility. This produces surges that can destroy the connected device, such as power generators or long distance telephone systems. An EMP could destroy many services needed to survive a war.

It is also important to realize how vulnerable the military is to EMP. “Military systems often use the most sophisticated and therefore most vulnerable, electronics available, and many of the systems that must operate during a nuclear war cannot tolerate the temporary disturbances that EMP may induce.” Furthermore, many military duties require information to be communicated over long distances. This type of communication requires external antennas, which are extremely susceptible to EMP. Also, some military duties require information-gathering techniques. Many of these techniques use electronic devices connected directly to antennas or radar. Although the devices may be inside shielded buildings, the antennas bring the EMP inside, to the electronics.

In conclusion, the immediate effects of EMP are disruption of, and damage to, electronic systems and electrical infrastructure. EMP is not reported in scientific literature to have direct effect on people in the parameter range of present interest. But its volatile state, a small amount of nuclear weaponry – potentially just one weapon – can produce a catastrophic impact on our society. This makes EMP a candidate to be used in a massive terrorist attack.

Here is a possible scenario according to Mr. T. Kennedy:

“Let us say the freighter ship launches a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile off the coast of the U.S. and the missile explodes 300 miles over Chicago. The nuclear detonation in space creates an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Gamma rays from the explosion, through the ‘Compton Effect,’ generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans”.

You can easily imagine what this will do to aircraft in flight and the damage to all modes of transportation as well.

FP: As the Nuclear Committee Chairman of MPG, to what extent do you think Iran is capable of launching an EMP attack?

Ardestani: First, as I have made clear in many of my statements, I totally do not believe the idea that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program is or could be and/or may change into a “peaceful and civilian” program.

They certainly will use any tools they can possibly use to extend and establish the Islamic Republic throughout the world. This is their goal as indicated in their constitution which has clearly assigned the duty of global Jihad to the Revolutionary guards and the military. This is also what they constantly declare all the time in their local media.

I confirm that scientifically they have enough power to make an EMP attack. There is no guarantee that they will stop at that and won’t attempt conventional nuclear attacks. This Islamic government has not displayed any moral or ethic discipline towards anyone and has shown zero interest in engaging anybody on any level.

The proof is here: look at the recent massacre on the streets of Iran after the presidential election. This Islamic government shows no reservations about torture and remorselessly murders its own people and even more their own colleagues. When given a rope, the regime has used it to hang Iranians; when given stones they have stoned people; when given guns, they have executed dissidents. What do you think the Islamic Regime will do were it to acquire nuclear weapons?

The Islamic Republic of Iran has developed a modern missile program and has tested their missiles in the Caspian Sea twice in the last eight years, launching ballistic missiles in a way to set off an EMP.

FP: What does the latest evidence tell us about Iran’s capabilities?

Ardestani: According to the latest figures on Iran’s nuclear progress released by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium continues to grow, as does the capacity of the Natanz enrichment plant, where 8,000 gas centrifuges are currently installed.

Just a few weeks ago, a new enrichment plant near the city of Qum was announced as it had become clear that its existence had been discovered and was about to be exposed. New plants and facilities are being discovered in Iran every few months. Based on the IAEA’s figures, I would say that Iran’s stockpile should be sufficient to fuel two nuclear weapons by the end of this year if the material were further processed to weapons-grade.

Furthermore, the Obama administration announced recently that it will scrap plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe put forward by former President George W. Bush. Iran’s missile capability appears to be a major factor in this shift. According to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Iran’s short and medium range missiles are “developing more rapidly than previously projected,” requiring a missile shield that relies on existing technology and can be put in place quickly.

In this context, it is crucial to understand both the current status of Iran’s missile arsenal, and how easily Iran could improve the range and accuracy of this arsenal. As a result, I believe that Iran could easily carry out an EMP attack.

FP: Which country is most threatened if Iran acquires nuclear weapons capability and perpetrates an EMP attack?

Ardestani: The first country to be put into clear and present danger by the acquisition of nuclear weapons and an EMP attack by the Islamic Theocracy in Iran is Israel – and by default the United States – in addition to all the other countries in the region.

FP: Have any actions been taken in this regard around the world?

Ardestani: Certainly. In September 2009 we had a national conference on the EMP threat in Niagra Falls, New York held by the EMPACT America organization.

FP: What is EMPACT?

Ardestani: EMPACT stands for “EMP-Act.” EMPACT America is a bipartisan, non-profit organization for citizens concerned about protecting the American People from a nuclear or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP) catastrophe. Their web site is www.empactamerica.net [2]

FP: Who were some of the speakers?

Ardestani: There were a whole range of highly qualified technical experts, scientists, political leaders and military authorities covering the issue from various angles. Notably I could name: former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas Governor Mike Hukabee, William Forstchen, Frank Gaffney, Larry Greenfield, Brigitte Gabriel, Clifford May, Roozbeh Farahanipour, Dr. V. Pry president of EMPACT America, Avi Schnurr and many others.

FP: What was the MPG’s role in that conference?

Ardestani: Roozbeh Farahanipour, on behalf of the MPG Party, presented the Islamic Republic’s angle of this threat by discussing the nature, goals and capabilities of the regime. As an opposition party consisting mainly of younger generation Iranians, we have not only experienced first hand the nature of the regime, but have many concerned sources within Iranian institutions that convey their fears and concerns to us regularly.

FP: How can people educate themselves about EMP?

Ardestani: There is a lot of material on EMP on the internet which anybody can access and get familiar with. There are, of course, numerous academic and scientific sources which more technically educated people can use for research.

FP: What can concerned citizens do?

Ardestani: First of all, people should be aware of the concept of the threat and the fact that in today’s world numerous enemies with EMP capabilities exist and more are relentlessly pursuing the technology.

Second, people should learn to relate major political, ideological and strategic developments in the world with the major technological and military capabilities at the disposal of forces and governments seeking the destruction of Western civilization and culture of freedom. Active and aggressive entities such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, North Korea and many others are prime candidates who have either acquired the EMP technology, are close to acquiring it or can be equipped with it by their more powerful patrons in short order.

People should also follow up with the activities of EMPACT through EmpactAmerica.net and keep themselves up to date.

FP: Hadi T. Ardestani, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

©2008 Marze Por Gohar | 1351 Westwood Blvd # 111 | Los Angeles CA90024 | Tel: 310-473-4763 | Fax: 310-477-8484

Johann Hari: The age of the killer robot is no longer a sci-fi fantasy

2010-01-23T16:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-age-of-the-killer-robot-is-no-longer-a-scifi-fantasy-1875220.html

January 22, 2010

Johann Hari: The age of the killer robot is no longer a sci-fi fantasy

You can't appeal to robots for mercy or empathy - or punish them afterwards
Friday, 22 January 2010

In the dark, in the silence, in a blink, the age of the autonomous killer robot has arrived. It is happening. They are deployed. And - at their current rate of acceleration - they will become the dominant method of war for rich countries in the 21st century. These facts sound, at first, preposterous. The idea of machines that are designed to whirr out into the world and make their own decisions to kill is an old sci-fi fantasy: picture a mechanical Arnold Schwarzenegger blasting a truck and muttering: "Hasta la vista, baby." But we live in a world of such whooshing technological transformation that the concept has leaped in just five years from the cinema screen to the battlefield - with barely anyone back home noticing.

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, they had no robots as part of their force. By the end of 2005, they had 2,400. Today, they have 12,000, carrying out 33,000 missions a year. A report by the US Joint Forces Command says autonomous robots will be the norm on the battlefield within 20 years.

The Nato forces now depend on a range of killer robots, largely designed by the British Ministry of Defence labs privatised by Tony Blair in 2001. Every time you hear about a "drone attack" against Afghanistan or Pakistan, that's an unmanned robot dropping bombs on human beings. Push a button and it flies away, kills, and comes home. Its robot-cousin on the battlefields below is called SWORDS: a human-sized robot that can see 360 degrees around it and fire its machine-guns at any target it "chooses". Fox News proudly calls it "the GI of the 21st century." And billions are being spent on the next generation of warbots, which will leave these models looking like the bulky box on which you used to play Pong.

At the moment, most are controlled by a soldier - often 7,500 miles away - with a control panel. But insurgents are always inventing new ways to block the signal from the control centre, which causes the robot to shut down and "die". So the military is building "autonomy" into the robots: if they lose contact, they start to make their own decisions, in line with a pre-determined code.

This is "one of the most fundamental changes in the history of human warfare," according to PW Singer, a former analyst for the Pentagon and the CIA, in his must-read book, Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Defence in the Twenty-First Century. Humans have been developing weapons that enabled us to kill at ever-greater distances and in ever-greater numbers for millennia, from the longbow to the cannon to the machine-gun to the nuclear bomb. But these robots mark a different stage.

The earlier technologies made it possible for humans to decide to kill in more "sophisticated" ways - but once you programme and unleash an autonomous robot, the war isn't fought by you any more: it's fought by the machine. The subject of warfare shifts.

The military claim this is a safer model of combat. Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command says of the warbots: "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes." Why take a risk with your soldier's life, if he can stay in Arlington and kill in Kandahar? Think of it as War 4.0.

But the evidence punctures this techno-optimism. We know the programming of robots will regularly go wrong - because all technological programming regularly goes wrong. Look at the place where robots are used most frequently today: factories. Some 4 per cent of US factories have "major robotics accidents" every year - a man having molten aluminium poured over him, or a woman picked up and placed on a conveyor belt to be smashed into the shape of a car. The former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was nearly killed a few years ago after a robot attacked him on a tour of a factory. And remember: these are robots that aren't designed to kill.

Think about how maddening it is to deal with a robot on the telephone when you want to pay your phone bill. Now imagine that robot had a machine-gun pointed at your chest.

Robots find it almost impossible to distinguish an apple from a tomato: how will they distinguish a combatant from a civilian? You can't appeal to a robot for mercy; you can't activate its empathy. And afterwards, who do you punish? Marc Garlasco, of Human Rights Watch, says: "War crimes need a violation and an intent. A machine has no capacity to want to kill civilians.... If they are incapable of intent, are they incapable of war crimes?"

Robots do make war much easier - for the aggressor. You are taking much less physical risk with your people, even as you kill more of theirs. One US report recently claimed they will turn war into "an essentially frictionless engineering exercise". As Larry Korb, Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of defence, put it: "It will make people think, 'Gee, warfare is easy.'"

If virtually no American forces had died in Vietnam, would the war have stopped when it did - or would the systematic slaughter of the Vietnamese people have continued for many more years? If "we" weren't losing anyone in Afghanistan or Iraq, would the call for an end to the killing be as loud? I'd like to think we are motivated primarily by compassion for civilians on the other side, but I doubt it. Take "us" safely out of the picture and we will be more willing to kill "them".

There is some evidence that warbots will also make us less inhibited in our killing. When another human being is standing in front of you, when you can stare into their eyes, it's hard to kill them. When they are half the world away and little more than an avatar, it's easy. A young air force lieutenant who fought through a warbot told Singer: "It's like a video game [with] the ability to kill. It's like ... freaking cool."

When the US First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq was asked in 2006 what kind of robotic support it needed, they said they had an "urgent operational need" for a laser mounted on to an unmanned drone that could cause "instantaneous burst-combustion of insurgent clothing, a rapid death through violent trauma, and more probably a morbid combination of both". The request said it should be like "long-range blow torches or precision flame-throwers". They wanted to do with robots things they would find almost unthinkable face-to-face.

While "we" will lose fewer people at first by fighting with warbots, this way of fighting may well catalyse greater attacks on us in the long run. US army staff sergeant Scott Smith boasts warbots create "an almost helpless feeling.... It's total shock and awe." But while terror makes some people shut up, it makes many more furious and determined to strike back.

Imagine if the beaches at Dover and the skies over Westminster were filled with robots controlled from Torah Borah, or Beijing, and could shoot us at any time. Some would scuttle away - and many would be determined to kill "their" people in revenge. The Lebanese editor Rami Khouri says that when Lebanon was bombarded by largely unmanned Israeli drones in 2006, it only "enhanced the spirit of defiance" and made more people back Hezbollah.

Is this a rational way to harness our genius for science and spend tens of billions of pounds? The scientists who were essential to developing the nuclear bomb - including Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and Andrei Sakharov - turned on their own creations in horror and begged for them to be outlawed. Some distinguished robotics scientists, like Illah Nourbakhsh, are getting in early, and saying the development of autonomous military robots should be outlawed now.

There are some technologies that are so abhorrent to human beings that we forbid them outright. We have banned war-lasers that permanently blind people along with poison gas. The conveyor belt dragging us ever closer to a world of robot wars can be stopped - if we choose to.

All this money and all this effort can be directed towards saving life, not ever-madder ways of taking it. But we have to decide to do it. We have to make the choice to look the warbot in the eye and say, firmly and forever, "Hasta la vista, baby."

* On Saturday 30 January Johann Hari will be be speaking alongside Ken Livingstone and Harriet Harman at the Progressive London conference. For details and to get tickets, click here [http://www.progressivelondon.org.uk/conference/progressive-london-conference-2010.html] .

j.hari@independent.co.uk

The True Enemy of Man Is War Itself

2010-01-22T15:23:00.002-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-True-Enemy-of-Man-Is-W-by-Sandy-Shanks-100116-839.html

January 22, 2010
By Sandy Shanks

Born during World War Two, my generation has seen a lot. We were born during war. We currently are living during a period of two endless wars. In the interim we have seen enormous tragedy, events that stagger the imagination, some knocking us to our knees and praying with a strident cry, why, oh Lord, why? Unfortunately, there is no answer. We were given free will, and we are making the best, or worst, of that Divine privilege.

This is not an autobiography, which would bore everyone, including this writer, to tears, but a story about a generation that has now become old and weary. A generation wise in what it has seen and offers advice to which no one listens. It is intended to be a storymy generation can read and try to put things into perspective. It is a story younger generations can read and try to gain some introspection. It is a story that the older generation, the Greatest Generation, what is left of them, will read with a smile and an understanding wink while thinking, "Brother, you ain't seen nothing." Meaning, my generation has never seen the worst of what humanity can do to its fellow man. That dubious honor belongs to the Greatest Generation.

The Greatest Generation. They were our mothers and fathers. They endured the worst economic world depression in the history of mankind, then fought a two-ocean, two-front war, the worst war in the history of mankind, and won it despite the efforts of the two most heinous and aggressive regimes in man's history, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The following concept may be a little difficult for younger generations to accept. Because our parents lived through the most difficult times in human history, my generation sought answers. We wanted to know what our fathers and mothers went through. We wanted to know why some of our generation did not have fathers to cling to, or mothers in some cases, because they were dead, killed in some far off land, maybeon some island in the Pacific we cannot pronounce let alone knowwhere the hell it is. So, we found out what happened. To this day our generation lives vicariously with the events of World War Two and its total horror. The toll of the dead is so monstrous, it is almost meaningless. The point being, we became so enraptured by what happened during man's worst assault on man, many of us have to remind ourselves that we were born during WWII. We were infants and not a part of the carnage.

My generation and the generation that precedes us have serious questions regarding war being a solution to man's problems.

In addition, in the opinion of my generation and the Greatest Generation, we will never again see the leadership abilities on our nation's stage as illustrated by men like Roosevelt, Truman,Eisenhower, and Kennedy. These leaders emerged from the crucible of the Great Depression and World War Two. Such leadership qualities are gone forever.The last President molded from these twin catastrophes was George H.W. Bush. He was keenly aware of the destruction wrought by war, having survived as a World War Two fighter pilot. When many in the nation, Pentagon, and even Presidential advisors were clamoring for a march on Baghdad to remove Saddam Hussein from power at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, Bush wisely demurred. At the time, Bush's decision was unpopular. Due to the actions of his son, Americans now are fully aware of the sagacity of that decision.

Before continuing,I ask the reader to please allow a brief description of myself. Having attained a degree in history and a former educator, I am a self-described student of history. In addition, I served during the Vietnam War as a Marine Corps officer.Offering a viewpoint as a member of the academia on war and a participant in war, hopefully, the reader will consider that I have some credentials on the subject.

My generation is beset with remorse. Our lives, our memories, construct a monument to disillusionment. Any reasonable person could easily conclude that following the enormous monstrosities of World War Two, humanity should have learned the dire lessons of war. Unfortunately, that is not the case. As I speak, my beloved country is enmeshed in two endless wars, one beginning in Oct. 2001, the other in March 2003, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel for either one. Were that all? Sadly, the answer isno.

For whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee, John Donne. Within less than five years after American nuclear bombs descended on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug. 1945, obliterating the two huge cities in Japan and ending World War Two, North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, plunging the United Nations and the U.S. into still another war.In October of that year, Communist China entered the war in support of the faltering N.K. troops, bringing civilization to the brink of extinction. We learned all this while we were in grade school. During the entire decade of the 1950's, the fear of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was palpable. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, April 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct. 1962 - the latter also bringing humanity to the brink of extinction - President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, while we were in college or honestly employed. Within months his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, plunged the U.S. into still another war, this one, in of all places, South Vietnam. The war lasted another 12 years and involved over 550,000 American troops; result: over 58,000 dead American soldiers and a resounding defeat for the U.S. At home war protests mingled with civil rights protests and many grew violent and our cities were torched. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated. Two months later on June 6th, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, the brother of John Kennedy, was assassinated. The ugly war in Vietnam droned on. Many of the Baby Boomers, the generation that followed ours, dropped out, creating the hippy movement and joining the drug culture. Who could blame them. However, nearly all recovered from their malaise and supplanted my generation as the nation's business, political, and military leaders. On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed college students at Kent State, killing four students and wounding nine others. In August 1974, the House was poised to impeach an American President, Richard M. Nixon. On August 8th, Nixon resigned, becoming the only President in U.S. history to resign from office. The seventies decade ended with the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The 1980's was consumed with the Iran/Iraq War (1980-1988) and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and that war lasted from 1979 to 1989 and contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union, Christmas Day, 1991. During the Soviet/Afghan War, U.S. leaders deemed it in America's interests to provide the Soviet Union with its "Vietnam." Consequently, we armed along with other groups in Afghanistan a group Arab fighters under the command of a little-known Saudi named Osama bin Laden. Later, during the '90's he and his band became known as Al-Qa'ida.In the late 1990's, unbeknownst to Americans and their media, Al-Qa'ida declared war on the United States.

The 1980's exited with the American attack on Panama in 1989.As we entered the decade of the '90's my generation now nearly or exceeding a half century of existence, a half century ofintense turmoil,considered thatthis decade just has to be different. We had seen the very worst of what humanity can do to its fellow man. Seriously, collectively how dumbare we to allownations to use war as an instrument of policy. Surely, we have learned something. We were wrong. Man has not learned a damn thing. The '90's were merely a prelude to the devastating events of the following decade.

The decade began well enough. Saddam's Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, and, once again, the U.S. was plunged into war. But this was a short war, perhaps, a good war, if there is such a thing. It not only resulted in an American victory, but the Gulf War is considered the most efficient victory in military history. Yellow ribbons blossomed all over America, and the U.S. was once again standing tall in the face of naked aggression. Potential aggressors were given a moment of pause, bowing to American military might. In late 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War that lasted for decades was finally over. The U.S., once again, was poised to assume leadership of the free world with freedom, democracy, and human rights as its goals for the world. Then the cycle of violence, almost on cue, began again. Man's journey to self-destruction via war resumed, onward and upward, as they say.Two themes became apparent. First, there are certain elements on this planet that abhor American ideals. Second, America's leaders committed political suicide, almost as if we could not tolerate the success the early accomplishments of this decade promised. In the meantime America's leaders ignored a looming threat, a threat spawned in a far-off land time forgot.

In terms of sheer numbers the American policy of war did not subside in the 1990's as many hoped.In actuality wars increased in number during that decade. In addition to Iraq in the Gulf War, American troops were on the ground in wars involving Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. On Feb. 26, 1993, a little known terrorist organization attacked the World Trade Center in New York. That same organization then attacked American embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya on Aug. 7, 1998. By now, Americans became familiar with the name of that organization - Al-Qa'ida, led by a wealthy Muslim fanatic Saudi entrepreneur named Osama bin Laden. While enmeshed in the Monica Lewinsky scanda land the House ready to lower the gavel on his impeachment, President Clinton's response was to indiscriminately fire off 75 to 100 Cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and mud and wooden shacks in southeastern Afghanistan.This was a clear violation of international law inasmuch as neither Sudan nor Afghanistan attacked the embassies. Al-Qa'ida, clearly a criminal terrorist organization, did.During the last year of the Clinton administration,on Oct. 12, 2000,Al-Qa'ida elements attacked the U.S. destroyer, Cole,while harbored at the Yemeni port of Aden. Despite all of this, there is only scant evidence that Americans and America's leaders took the threat of Al-Qa'ida seriously in the 1990's and in 2000.

As a new millennium dawned, as a fresh, young, new President named George W. Bush was about to take the mantel of leadership of the United States from an aged and exhausted Clinton, a new hope also dawned. Easily, a member of my generation could be heard shouting to a world of deaf ears, "I have had it. Read my lips, I have had it up to here. War is not the answer. We can't keep doing this. This is madness." By all appearances to many who hoped, Bush was a perfect fit. Born in Connecticut, but raised in Texas, Bush was a cowboy, or so we wanted to believe, and he had the mantra of the American frontier, a cherished view of Americans shared from coast to coast. So, he lacked the ability to be coherent. Don't we all. Who cares.Hope springs eternal, or so my generation wanted to believe at the time. The 2000 election debacle was quickly forgotten mostly because we couldn't do anything about it. If nothing else, my generation consists of pragmatists, not dreamers.

Instead, our world came crashing down upon us. It began on 9/11, and then got worse as America descended into hell via not one, but two needless wars. Those wars began in the early part of the decade and continue on to this day. In the first war, Afghanistan, Bush and Sec Def Rumsfeld sent in too few troops to actually captured bin Laden, other Al-Qa'ida leaders, and the Taliban leadership. With that struggle continuing, mostly with failure after failure, in 2002 Bush began stripping even those meager military resources from Afghanistan for a build-up of forces in invade Iraq, a nation that had nothing whatsoeverto do with 9/11 orAl-Qa'ida. Bush repeated his mistake in Afghanistan. Once again he failed to send in sufficient resources to secure Iraq. A product of manipulated intelligence, not false intelligence, the U.S. invasion of Iraqviolated both international law and the U.N. Charter. Throughout most of the "Double-ought Decade," because of his aggression in Iraq, the American President became the No. 1 terrorist in the world in the eyes of some, including many in the Western democracies, with some justification, depending upon your outlook.Our once proud nation, built on a structure ofthe proud ideals of democracy and freedom, became the scourge of the planet. The decade ended in sheer frustration. On Jan. 20, 2009, in the White House, a new sheriff was in town. He brought with him hope and change. However, Obama faced many virulent challenges, hubris left over from the previous administration. Consequently, as this morbid decade ended, very little hope and change has manifested itself.The decade ended with two more terrorist attacks in the American heartland. OnNov. 6, an Islamic terrorist, a U.S. Army major - can you believe it - killed 13 American soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood, Texas. On Christmas Day an Islamic terrorist tried and failed to kill 300 people aboard a commercial airliner bound for Detroit. As the decade mercilessly ended,deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan now including Pakistanwas on the rise. One writer put it this way.

As the first decade of this millennium ends, so ends a decade of death. It started with the death of 3000 people and ends in sorrow for 5,289 American families that have lost loved ones in wars the current administration calls an "overseas contingency operation."

Sigh!

There is one thing I would like to make perfectly clear. I am no pacifist, not by a long shot. If our nation is attacked, we must not respond in kind. We must respond with overwhelming vigor and firepower with an abundant use of target intelligence to avoid collateral damage as much as humanly possible. Those conditions were not met in the case of our two current wars.

As for my generation, in terms of promoting peace and prosperity in the world through our wisdom and guidance, one can only describe our results as mission failure. We can only hope that future generations will do better, much better, for we accomplished nothing. Unfortunately, it is the generations that came after uswho are responsible of lateforthe massive devastation, misery, and the continued use of war as an instrument of foreign policy. America must change or the world and circumstances will change us ... and it won't be good.

TV Networks Give Public "Sanitized" War Coverage

2010-01-22T15:23:00.001-08:00

Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/TV-Networks-Give-Public-S-by-Sherwood-Ross-100119-423.html

January 21, 2010
TV Networks Give Public "Sanitized" War Coverage
By Sherwood Ross

U.S. television networks have given the public a sanitized, largely bloodless view of the war in Iraq, an academic authority on communications writes.

"The contrast between what Americans saw on the news and what European and pan-Arab audiences saw is striking. Foreign news bureaus showed far more blood and gore than American stations showed. The foreign media were delivering audiences the true face of the war," writes Michelle Pulaski, an assistant professor at Pace University, New York.

"BBC Television (British Broadcasting Co.) and American stations often covered the same stories but with stark contrasts," Pulaski wrote, using the example of a "friendly fire" episode on an Iraq battlefield. "Immediately following the event, BBC television broadcast live from the scene with a detailed report of the horror including the blood-stained road, mangled vehicles, and the number of casualties. Several hours later CNN had very little to report on the event and only mentioned that a friendly fire incident had occurred, and there was no word on U.S. casualties. This example represents a trend of sanitized, relatively gore-free broadcasting that was seen throughout U.S. war coverage."

"The American people did not see the bodies of dead American soldiers, and few Iraqi casualties were aired," Pulaski added.

In an article in "The Long Term View," a publication of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, Pulaski said that CNN dominated broadcast TV coverage of the First Persian Gulf War, and that the current war coverage has been led by FOX News. FOX News was the top-rated news network prior to the war and maintained lead as its viewership rose by 239% to 3.3 million viewers, Pulaski wrote. However, Pulaski faulted FOX for abandoning its slogan "Real journalism, fair and balanced" for that of "a war cheerleader demeanor that many viewers seemed to like."

Pulaski wrote the networks engaged in frequent "personalization and individualization" "to gain a wide audience" during their Operation Iraqi Freedom coverage. "Similar to guests on a talk show, biographies of soldiers were detailed along with shots of family farewells and reunions all in an effort to identify with the audience and of course in turn boost ratings."

What Pulaski refers to as the networks' "infotainment style of coverage" is characterized by "lack of anti-war commentary, sanitization of news and lack of reporter objectivity." She points out that Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting(FAIR), a media watchdog organization, reported that in the critical three weeks following March 20th, 2003, opponents of the Iraq War were greatly underrepresented on TV.

After monitoring ABC World News Tonight, Fox's Special Report with Brit Hume, and PBS's News Hour With Jim Lehrer, among others, FAIR found that only 10% of news sources interviewed were opposed to the war and that criticism of military planning was rare, Pulaski wrote.

Pulaski goes on to note the U.S. government "heavily censored" some 600 "embedded" reporters traveling with the military and that the reporters "were not allowed to go far from their units, thus possibly missing out on many noteworthy causes." She noted that Norman Solomon, director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, has said embedded reporters "may as well be getting a P.R. retainer from the Pentagon."

Loss of objectivity could also be seen in the wave of patriotism that swept through media coverage, Pulaski wrote, including reporters with flags on their lapels and stars and stripes waving in the background. MSNBC, she noted, displayed a wall of heroes entitled "America's Bravest" which contained photos of loved ones overseas sent by viewers. "This wave of patriotism, apparent after the September 11th attacks, led to a sanitized and biased version of the war coverage."

Pulaski warned "It is up to the individual media consumer to be critical in gathering news information on the war from a variety of sources---ideally entertainment free sources." She concluded: "After Operation Iraqi Freedom, there will be no going back to the days of war correspondence without the embedded reporter and the subsequent movie deals conflicts bring. TV viewers should have no worries; we will continue to be entertained."

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is a non-profit law school purposefully dedicated to the education of students from minority, immigrant, and low-income households who would otherwise not have the opportunity to obtain a legal education.
#
(Further Information: Sherwood Ross is a media consultant to Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Reach him at

Sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

Torture’s Loopholes

2010-01-22T14:35:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/opinion/21alexander.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

January 21, 2010
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Torture’s Loopholes
By MATTHEW ALEXANDER

TOMORROW will be one year since President Obama signed an executive order outlawing torture, yet our debate about interrogation methods continues. Though the president deserves praise for improving matters, the changes were not as drastic as most Americans think, and elements of our interrogation policy continue to be both inhumane and counterproductive.

Americans can now boast that they no longer “torture” detainees, but they cannot say that detainees are not abused, or even that their treatment meets the minimum standards of humane treatment mandated by the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (the so-called McCain amendment), United States and international law, or even Mr. Obama’s executive order.

If I were to return to one of the war zones today — as an Air Force officer, I was sent to Iraq to head an interrogation team in 2006 — I would still be allowed to abuse prisoners. This is true even though in my experience, torture or even harsh but legal treatment never got us useful information. Instead, such tactics invariably did just the opposite, convincing detainees to clam up.

The adoption last year of the Army Field Manual as the standard for interrogations across the government, including the C.I.A., was a considerable improvement. But we missed a unique opportunity for progress last August when the president’s task force on interrogations recommended no changes to the manual, which was hastily revised in 2006 in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

For example, an appendix to the manual allows the military to keep a detainee in “separation” — solitary confinement — indefinitely. It requires only that a general approve any extension after 30 days. Rest assured, there will be numerous waivers to even that minuscule requirement.

Yes, there are legitimate reasons to isolate detainees. Domestic law enforcement agencies do it to prevent suspects from colluding on alibis and allow investigators the leverage to use non-coercive interrogation techniques like confronting one detainee with the other’s statements.

But military interrogators do not operate in a vacuum. The consequences of their actions have far-reaching effects — like Al Qaeda’s exploitation of American abuse of prisoners as a recruiting tool. And, in any case, extended solitary confinement is torture, as confirmed by many scientific studies. Even the initial 30 days of isolation could be considered abuse.

If we truly wanted to come up with a humane limit on solitary confinement, we would look at the Golden Rule: what would we consider inhumane treatment if one of our own soldiers were captured by the enemy? My answer: Given the youth of our men and women in uniform, that number is probably around two weeks. This limit, however, should be determined by medical professionals, not soldiers or politicians.

The Army Field Manual also does not explicitly prohibit stress positions, putting detainees into close confinement or environmental manipulation (other than hypothermia and “heat injury”). These omissions open a window of opportunity for abuse.

The manual also allows limiting detainees to just four hours of sleep in 24 hours. Let’s face it: extended captivity with only four hours of sleep a night (consider detainees at Guantánamo Bay who have been held for seven years) does not meet the minimum standard of humane treatment, either in terms of American law or simple human decency.

And if this weren’t enough, some interrogators feel the manual’s language gives them a loophole that allows them to give a detainee four hours of sleep and then conduct a 20-hour interrogation, after which they can “reset” the clock and begin another 20-hour interrogation followed by four hours of sleep. This is inconsistent with the spirit of the reforms, which was to prevent “monstering” — extended interrogation sessions lasting more than 20 hours. American interrogators are more than capable of doing their jobs without the loopholes.

The Field Manual, to its credit, calls for “all captured and detained personnel, regardless of status” to be “treated humanely.” But when it comes to the specifics the manual contradicts itself, allowing actions that no right-thinking person could consider humane.

The greatest shame of the last year, perhaps, is that the argument over interrogations has shifted from debating what is legal to considering what is just “better than before.” The best way to change things is to update the field manual again to bring our treatment of detainees up to the minimum standard of humane treatment.

The next version of the manual should prohibit solitary confinement for more than, say, two weeks, all stress positions and forms of environmental manipulation, imprisonment in tight spaces and sleep deprivation. Unless we rewrite the book, we will only continue to give Al Qaeda a recruiting tool, to earn the contempt of our allies and to debase our most cherished ideals.

F.B.I. Charges Arms Sellers With Foreign Bribes

2010-01-22T14:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/21sting.html?th&emc=th

January 21, 2010
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Sometimes the proposition was delivered in a quiet corner of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami. Sometimes the setting was the elegant Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a few blocks from the White House.

The topic might be grenade launchers, rifles, handguns, ammunition or bulletproof vests — components of the basic Warlord Starter Kit.

But the question put to a succession of arms industry executives last May was always the same: Would you pay bribes to get a piece of a $15 million contract to equip the presidential guard of an African country?

According to the Justice Department, almost two dozen executives said yes, put it in writing and wrote checks — without realizing that the African officials getting the bribes were actually undercover F.B.I. agents.

The play-acting ended on Tuesday, when 22 top-level executives, including a senior sales executive at Smith & Wesson, were arrested in what Justice Department officials called the first undercover sting ever aimed at violations of the federal ban on corporate bribes paid to get foreign business.

Even in its relatively quiet disclosure of the cases on Tuesday, the Justice Department was careful to withhold any details that might identify or endanger the undercover team, saying that the investigation was continuing.

The case is the biggest prosecution of individuals for foreign corporate bribery ever pursued by the Justice Department. The 16 indictments in the case are also the early fruits of a new initiative for the Justice Department, Lanny A. Breuer, assistant attorney general for the criminal division, said in an interview on Wednesday.

“This is the first time we’ve used the technique of an undercover operation in a case involving foreign corporate bribery,” Mr. Breuer said. “The message is that we are going to bring all the innovations of our organized crime and drug war cases to the fight against white-collar criminals.”

All of the defendants work at, or run, small companies that supply the staples of military and law enforcement life everywhere — small arms, uniforms, bullets — and that jockey for deals at a level well below military industry giants like Lockheed or Boeing.

The arrests seemed orchestrated to deliver the Justice Department’s message directly to others in the business. All but one of the defendants were arrested on Tuesday in Las Vegas, where they were attending the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Conference, known as the SHOT Show, which is billed as “the world’s premier exposition of combined firearms, ammunition, archery, cutlery, outdoor apparel, optics, camping and related products and services.”

The drama began to unfold last spring in the sleek beachfront glamour of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami. There, on May 13, the curtain went up on a two-city sting worthy of a George Clooney caper.

After a closely guarded investigation that had taken more than two years, the cast was in place.

There was a mystery figure identified in the indictments as “Individual 1,” a former executive in the law enforcement and military equipment industry who clearly lent credibility to the business deal offered to the defendants, all described as business associates of his.

There was “Undercover Agent 1,” an F.B.I. agent posing as a representative of the defense minister of an unidentified African nation, Country A. And there was “Undercover Agent 2,” another agent posing as a procurement officer who reported directly to the defense minister.

Over two days in Miami, a number of executives sat down in separate meetings with the undercover team to discuss a sales opportunity. A week later, the undercover team moved to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, where more executives sat down to talk.

The script varied only in the products on the shopping list.

In each case, the former sales executive said that a friend of his, a self-employed sales agent, was “tasked by Country A’s minister of defense with obtaining various defense articles for outfitting Country A’s presidential guard.”

The two people with the shopping list were actually the undercover agents. The goods would be shipped, not to Africa, but to a warehouse in Virginia. The “bribes” would be paid into a government bank account.

According to the Justice Department, all the defendants agreed to pay a 20 percent “commission” to the sales agent, even after being clearly told that half would go into the defense minister’s pocket, and they sent e-mail messages that confirmed their decisions.

In each case, the indictments said, the defendants completed a small “test” deal to reassure the fictional defense minister that he would personally get half of the 20 percent commission — as a bribe.

According to one indictment, a Florida executive later showed the deal to his company’s outside law firm and sent the undercover team an e-mail message rejecting the corrupt proposal. The same day, he called and negotiated a way to do the deal anyway, the indictment said.

Another of the defendants is Amaro Goncalves, who is vice president for sales at Smith & Wesson in Springfield, Mass. The company confirmed on Wednesday that Mr. Goncalves was an employee and said it was “prepared to cooperate fully” with the investigation. Mr. Goncalves, free on bail, could not be reached for comment.

The individuals are being prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That law, which dates to 1977, prohibits American citizens and companies — and, since 1998, foreign citizens and companies acting in the United States — from bribing foreign government officials to get or keep business.

For many years, some Foreign Corrupt Practices Act experts say, the United States waged a lonely battle against such transactions. But Mr. Breuer of the Justice Department said on Wednesday that “international cooperation is growing every day and getting better and better.” He particularly cited the help of British law enforcement agents, who served related search warrants in London on Tuesday.

The work of the F.B.I. was the core of the case. Besides the undercover team, more than 150 agents were involved in serving arrest and search warrants on Tuesday, according to Kevin Perkins, the assistant director of the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division.

The investigation was led by an F.B.I. squad in Washington that specializes in foreign bribery investigations. New investigations are under way in other parts of the country, as well — one law enforcement source said that prosecutors in Brooklyn now have nearly a half-dozen in the works, compared with none three years ago.

The latest defendants, none of whom have yet been formally arraigned, are all accused of conspiring to violate the act; conspiring to engage in money laundering; and violating the act. The maximum term for the conspiracy and act violations is five years, while the money laundering conspiracy charge carries a prison term of 20 years.

The defendants are scheduled to make their first appearances in United States District Court in Washington on Feb. 3, a Justice Department spokeswoman said. However, the department said in its announcement that all were presumed innocent unless they had confessed or had been convicted.

Mr. Breuer said the real success of the sting would come in the months and years ahead. “From now on,” he said, “would-be F.C.P.A. violators should stop and ponder whether the person they are trying to bribe might really be a federal agent.”

Media and Political Hysteria Over Yemen Hides a Deeper Strategic Matrix of Long-Term Importance

2010-01-20T15:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.oilprice.com/article-media-and-political-hysteria-over-yemen-hides-broader-deeper-strategic-matrix-of-long-term-importance.html

Graham Summers
19th Jan 2010

US and Western European political leaders have begun to focus on Yemen as a source of projected instability and as a haven for jihadist terrorism against the West.

This simplistic and overly narrow view has largely been a reaction to media reporting of the links of alleged (and unsuccessful) Nigerian-born terrorist bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to a radical Yemeni group, and to intense ongoing fighting between insurgents and Yemeni and Saudi government forces on the Yemen-Saudi border.

The reality is far more complex and far-reaching.

The situation has a long history which has been ignored — or which has lacked priority — as far as Western intelligence services have been concerned. The current reaction has been one in which the US and UK leaderships, in particular, have merely elected to follow the media outrage over the alleged links between Abdulmutallab and “al-Qaida” training camps in Yemen. However, there is a contextual and vitally-linked pattern of activities and competition which engages, among others, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, Russia, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Somaliland, Yemen, Djibouti, Libya, and others.

Western states and the great Asian trading states are essentially unable, or unwilling, to enter comprehensively into the matrix, and have elected, almost as a distraction, to focus on current, specific factors, such as the “presence of al-Qaida” in Yemen. And even in that regard, there is a clear inability of the US, or UK, for example, to surgically deal even with the narrow problem which they have identified as being “terrorist training” in Yemen.

This overall complex is, moreover, intrinsically linked to the longer-term security and control of the Red Sea/Suez Canal sea lanes which are critical to global trade.

Within just the Yemen Republic context, to a significant extent, the challenges now facing Pres. ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Saleh are a culmination of issues, which center around:

(i) Pres. Saleh’s longstanding corruption, and in particular his links with Somalian and Puntland leaders to the significant detriment of long-term Red Sea security and Western (and other) interests;

(ii) Iran’s active engagement in financing Shi’a and Sunni jihadist and rebel activities in Yemen and along its border inside Saudi Arabia; and

(iii) The shared decision by Yemeni, Saudi, and Egyptian leaders (supported by Libya) to isolate the Republic of Somaliland. This situation has favored the ongoing corrupt business activities of Pres. Saleh and his Puntland Somalian friend, Col. Abdullahi Yussuf Ahmed, former President of both the self-proclaimed Puntland region (which he “founded” as a quasi-independent state within Somalia) and of Somalia itself.

Linked with all of this is the question of the chronic instability in the recently-created state of Eritrea. Eritrea is supported by Egypt, Israel, and some Arab states, for different motives, including Egypt’s desire to use Eritrea to constrain and contain Ethiopia, which Egypt sees as a potential regional threat (because of Ethiopia’s control of the headwaters of the Blue Nile, which is Egypt’s lifeline). Eritrean Pres. Isayas Afewerke, already locked into a power struggle with Ethiopia and particularly with Ethiopian Prime Minister (and Isayas’ former ally) Meles Zenawi, has been happy to work with Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi to fund a range of terrorist activities against Ethiopia, potentially leading to a renewal in 2010 of conventional war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The forthcoming and pivotal May 2010 Ethiopian Parliamentary elections may be a trigger point for revived Eritrean conflict with Ethiopia, and Eritrea has already — in January 2010 — begun brief military incursions into Ethiopia and has been transporting clandestine supplies of weapons and explosives into the heart of Ethiopia, even into the capital, Addis Ababa, for use by anti-government forces sponsored by Eritrea.

That is part of the current context to be borne in mind when looking at Yemen itself, and the position of Yemen Pres. Saleh.

The Western media gained a hint of Pres. Saleh’s longstanding linkage with Puntland when, during Yussuf’s Presidency of Somalia in November 2008, a Yemeni ship captured by pirates was suddenly freed without ransom being paid. Significantly, most of the pirates operating off the Horn of Africa are from Puntland, and, following the collapse of Somalia into civil war, the Somalian fishing fleet fled the Somalia coast for safe-haven in Yemen. There, however, it was impounded by Pres. Saleh. Pres. Saleh’s son, and the son of former Somalian/Puntland Pres. Yussuf, now jointly own and run that fleet of fishing vessels, among their other joint enterprises.

Former Pres. Yussuf — who, as “President” of Puntland, conducted frequent raids and terrorist operations against the neighboring Republic of Somaliland — is now a guest of Pres. Saleh, living in exile in Yemen. Not surprisingly, Yemen has shown considerable solidarity with Egypt in maintaining both an Arab League and African Union boycott on trade with Somaliland, ending millennia of cross-Red Sea trade in hides and other materials, and in the recognition of Somaliland as the sovereign entity which historical and legal precedence shows it to be.

But in the overall situation, at its heart, Egypt, Saudi Arabia (and the Persian Gulf emirates, and Iran are engaged in an attempt to dominate the Red Sea, which is vital in various ways and in varying degrees to their national survival. Much of the trade viability of the Persian Gulf is linked with the ability to utilize the Red Sea/Suez SLOC.

Within the context of this competition between the Arabian Peninsula states and Iran over the Red Sea is the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia (and now Yemen) for control of much of the Arabian Peninsula itself, as outlined in the November 17, 2009, report by Yossef Bodansky on Iranian involvement in the declaration by Saudi Shi’a clerics of the “Republic of Eastern Arabia”. And also engaged in this competition is Israel, itself a Red Sea and Indian Ocean state by virtue of its sea frontage on the Gulf of Aqaba and its projection of naval power into the Indian Ocean.

Iran has long been a major sponsor of Islamist insurgent and tribal groups in Somalia, regardless of whether these groups have been Sunni or Shi’a Muslims. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has attempted to compete for regional influence in the Horn by funding a massive proselytization of Ethiopians, to increase the numbers of Muslims over the historically Orthodox Christians there, in stark disavowal of the Prophet Mohammed’s strict injunction that Ethiopians should not be attacked or forced to convert to Islam because of the refuge and respect which an Ethiopian king — the King of Axum — had given in 614 CE to some of Mohammed’s followers and to one of his wives when they were being pursued by Mohammed’s enemies.

Significantly, and to varying degrees, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have allowed and even encouraged instability and division to occur along the Red Sea littoral — with regard to Eritrea, Yemen, and Sudan — in order to gain strategic leverage. Libya, long a Red Sea power aspirant (in order to gain leverage at Egypt’s rear, and over its Red Sea/Suez Canal seaway), has also pumped money and weapons into the Red Sea disputes, particularly in support of Eritrea and Somali elements opposed to Ethiopia. Libya, of course, demonstrated its ability to disrupt Red Sea/Suez sea traffic — to the massive detriment of Egypt and the trading states — when it used the mine-laying ship, Ghat, to drop floating mines in the Red Sea in 1984.

In the midst of all of this, Ethiopia is moving toward parliamentary elections in May 2010, and Eritrea and its allies (Egypt, Libya, and others) have been stepping up military pressure on the Ethiopian border, and even shipping weapons and explosives clandestinely into Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. It is not inconceivable that a significant military clash could occur between Ethiopia and Eritrea before the May 2010 Ethiopian elections.

Thus, it is not just Yemen, or even the Arabian Peninsula, which is under severe pressure from unrest and insurgency, but also the entire Horn of Africa, including Somalia, Somaliland (which has been able to hold the line thus far), Eritrea, and Sudan. And with this, the entire security of the Red Sea/Suez sea lines of communications (SLOCs), so vital to Asian, European, and Australasian trade, is also under threat.

What is also of significance in this is the fact that the Republic of Somaliland — one of the few areas of stability in the region — is not yet recognized by the international community even though it meets all of the legitimate criteria of sovereignty as determined by the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN). This situation is very much in the hands of Egypt, which — because of its fears over Ethiopia and the fact that Somaliland is a key transit access for Ethiopian trade — has refused to allow the AU or the Arab League to recognize Somaliland’s sovereignty, and the UN will not recognize a state until the regional body (in this case the AU) first recognizes it.

Eritrea’s historical source of revenue has been as a trading and entrepôt for Ethiopian imports and exports, and this was a natural rôle for it when it was a province of Ethiopia [for years Eritrea was known within the Ethiopian Empire as the Bar Negus: the Kingdom of the Sea. When Eritrea, independent from Ethiopia after the collapse of the Dergue in 1991, attempted to blackmail Ethiopia into accepting the new Eritrean currency, the nakfa (introduced November 1997), which was not internationally tradable, as payment for Ethiopian coffee for onward export — Eritrea, as a trader, was the fourth biggest coffee exporter in the world, based on through shipment of Ethiopian coffee — Ethiopia ceased trading through Eritrea.

Eritrean leader Isayas had not bargained on Ethiopia, landlocked following the loss of Eritrea, being able to trade through routes other than the Eritrean Red Sea port of Massawa and other lesser ports, and found Eritrea bankrupt when Ethiopia began trade through Djibouti, and subsequently Somaliland. Eritrea, almost overnight, became bankrupt, and Isayas faced the need to distract an increasingly hostile population.

This led to significant control of the Eritrean population (which continues today), and to the 1998-99 Eritrea-Ethiopia war, which, when concluded, failed to bring about a resumption of Ethiopian trade through Eritrean ports, leading to the continuing situation of desperation in Eritrea, and the likelihood of yet another conflict.

The situation is ultimately detrimental to Egypt, given that the isolation of Ethiopia (and Somaliland) actually contributes to the insolvency of Eritrea, which Egypt (and others) have been using as a buffer to keep Ethiopia landlocked. The potential threat to Egypt’s Nile waters from Ethiopia is, in fact, not addressed by keeping Ethiopia landlocked, and nor is Egypt’s absolute strategic need for a stable Red Sea SLOC (leading to and from the Suez Canal) better guarded by having Ethiopia kept landlocked.

Within all of this, the US, and many other NATO states, along with Japan, Australia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and others, have committed major naval forces to the Red Sea/Horn of Africa region of the Indian Ocean in an attempt to suppress regional piracy, all of which (virtually) comes from Puntland and is supported by former Puntland/Somalia Pres. Yussuf, who is now a guest of Yemen Pres. Saleh. At no point have the NATO powers thought of addressing the piracy issue by tackling Yussuf and Saleh head-on, or through direct punitive attacks on the Puntland piracy havens.

Moreover, the US and the NATO states — as well as the other maritime powers now projecting naval force into the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa — have neither the resources nor will to deal decisively with the pirates in their land havens, the villages of Puntland, or with the Iranian- and salafist-backed insurgencies now underway on the Arabian Peninsula. Only France, with a significant history of sustaining forces in the region (particularly Djibouti) has shown some real independence of action.

Thus, the advantage, strategically, remains with Iran, which is destabilizing the area through proxy forces. Much is being made of the so-called “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” (AQAP), which claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on December 25, 2009, of US Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Certainly, there is a link between Yemen — now the modern state encompassing the ancestral home of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden’s family — and the global al-Qaida phenomenon. The reality, however, is that al-Qaida, and bin Laden, although ostensibly salafist Sunnis, have long had distinct Iranian connections. Moreover, there is more than one group in Yemen and Saudi Arabia claiming to be part of al-Qaida. The Western fixation with categorizing and naming amorphous and transitory groups as though they were permanent and organized fixtures, based on their claims, leads to attempts to see the regional situation in black and white terms.

Within the Yemeni context, as well, is the continued rivalry between north and south, between the factions which once gravitated toward the control of Sana’a (and the former Yemen Arab Republic), and those which once gravitated toward the control of Aden and the old Arabian Sea (Gulf of Aden) sultanates. There were, in fact, nine sultanates which signed protectorate agreements with the United Kingdom in the early 20th Century to form the British Aden Protectorate, and, after several geopolitical transitions, and with the departure of the British from Aden, the area became the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY: South Yemen). The PDRY became a major Soviet proxy state, and attempted to project power against Saudi Arabia, and the Sultanate of Oman.

Then, the unified group under PDRY and Soviet control was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arab Gulf (PFLOAG), which conducted a major insurgency across the Omani border, into the Dhofar region, against the old Sultan of Muscat & Oman, Sultan Sa’id. This led to a major Cold War confrontation, with the British backing of Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id al-Said, who had overthrown his father. This was a protracted insurgency which Oman won. Significantly, Oman largely embraces a distinct form of Islam, the Khariji sect, which rejected both Sunni and Shi’ite formulas; the Ibadi branch of the Kharijites became (in the Prophet Mohammed’s lifetime) Oman’s official religion, making it the only Kharijite country in Islam.

The geopolitical importance of Oman should not be overlooked, despite the fact that the country and the Sultan have been quiet during the current crises: Oman controls the southern shore of the Strait of Hormuz and a vital part of the Arabian Sea coastline.

It is not insignificant that the new — and cautious — Iranian-Russian alliance is jointly and severally interested in projecting power deep into the Indian Ocean and through the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Russia’s historical involvement (as the USSR) in the PDRY (and to a lesser extent the YAR), and in Somalia have not been forgotten. Neither has Iran’s military involvement during the 1970s in support of Oman against the PDRY — the Shah and Sultan Qaboos cooperated closely — been forgotten in Tehran. Further, the historical links across the Strait of Hormuz are profound: Baluchistan, now divided between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, was once Omani territory.

These are all links which are of profound significance, and yet they are unrecognized by current analysts who insist on dividing consideration of conflict and political phenomena along the lines of modern nation-state boundaries.

Iran’s determination to proceed with its proxy drive into the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, and the Red Sea has been compounded by the declining ability and will of the US to sustain its position in the region, and by the strength and cooperation of the new alliance with Russia. Clearly, Russia and Iran remain cautious of each other, but have mutual objectives at this point, and a history of seeking influence over the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea/Horn.

As Holy Roman Emperor Charles V said of the French King, Francis I, in the 16th Century: “My cousin and I are in complete agreement: we both want Milan.”

Clearly, the Yemen/Red Sea/Horn of Africa/Arabian Peninsula situation cannot be divorced from the Northern Tier — the area including Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so on. Attempts by Western media and policymakers to treat the Yemen situation as separate, and a “new theater”, once again ignore the complex integration and internally competitive dynamic of the entire region. Bearing in mind the Iranian southward projection, and Pakistan’s rôle as a key littoral maritime player in the Arabian Sea (and key partner in the US-dominated Combined Naval Task Forces (CTF) 151, the joint statement issued by the Iranian, Afghanistan, and Pakistan governments on January 16, 2010, was instructive. It said that, as the Xinhua news agency report of that date noted, “Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan affirm that the three countries bear a shared and common responsibility for security and stability in the region, and reaffirmed the commitment to playing their due rôle in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.”

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on January 16, 2010, that Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan were the most important neighbors for establishing peace and stability in Afghanistan, adding that peace in Afghanistan meant peace in the region. Minister Qureshi said that the Islamabad trilateral meeting decided to move forward in line with the tripartite summit in Tehran in 2009 to adopt regional approach to find out solution to problems in the region. He said that intelligence chiefs of the three countries will also meet in Tehran soon to discuss cooperation in intelligence sharing.

All of this is reflective of the changing fortunes of the great powers in the region. Power vacuums, or perceived vacuums, lead to surges by other aspirant powers. That is what is now happening in what this writer has termed “the North-West Quadrant of the Indian Ocean”, which includes the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea/Gulf of Aqaba/Suez. Additionally, all the action in this neighborhood has a hugely important global impact on the transportation of oil and gas and the VLCC tankers that carry the assets.

There is a great deal of shuffling which is reminiscent of the beginning of the 1960s, and the British withdrawal orchestrated by socialist Prime Minister Harold Wilson, a process which led to the Soviet surge into South Yemen and the Horn of Africa. The local players have no option but to try to rebuild their security in the knowledge that their superpower allies — in this case, the US — may not offer security support into the future.

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS.
Extract from Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis
© 2009 Global Information System, ISSA

Accepting various truths

2010-01-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=890123&category=opinion

By HELEN THOMAS
January 18, 2010

No one in the Obama administration is going to acknowledge that our foreign policy in the Middle East has alienated many Arabs.

The U.S. pro-Israel policy and our shocking neglect of the beleaguered Palestinians underlie almost every initiative or tactical tilt that comes out of Washington.

President Obama and his predecessors in the White House have scored domestic political points by embracing this world view. This is one vantage point that is truly bipartisan, to the point where no one discusses it.

Michael Scheuer, a former CIA specialist on the al-Qaida terrorists, complained on C-SPAN recently that any debate about American support for Israel is "normally squelched."

"For anyone to say our support for Israel doesn't hurt us is to just defy reality," he added.

Another former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, says the 9/11 Commission report noted that Khalid Sheikh -- the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- cited his violent disagreement with U.S. support for Israel as the motivating dynamic behind the attacks.

Obama knows enough about the Middle East that tightening airport security is not the whole answer to fighting terrorism. He should try a more even-handed policy in the region.

Grievances of the Arab man on the street include bitter criticism of the U.S. for supporting harsh authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and the failure of those U.S.-backed regimes to help the Palestinians in Gaza.

Surely after several years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can dispense with the obfuscation and evasion that flood forth from official U.S. megaphones.

Terrorism spawned in the Middle East is not the only threat we face.

As the American economy digs out from the debris of the Great Recession triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble, we should think about what could happen about another bubble that invisibly chugs through the American economy.

I refer to our bloated defense spending.

The United States spends more for its arsenal than any other 10 countries combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the world's total military spending. China is in second place, at a relatively puny 5.8 percent.

If the U.S. defense spending bubble were ever to deflate, domestic job losses would be catastrophic, a stunning fact that raises the question of whether we can ever afford peace.

The American people have long shown they can handle the truth. When it comes to the Middle East and to threats to our economy, so should our leaders.

Helen Thomas' e-mail address is hthomas@hearstdc.com.

Afghanistan: NATO Intensifies Its First Asian War

2010-01-19T16:11:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Afghanistan-NATO-Intensif-by-Rick-Rozoff-100116-15.html

January 18, 2010
By Rick Rozoff

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With former Joint Special Operations Command chief General Stanley McChrystal in charge of what will soon be over 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, Washington will conduct its largest counterinsurgency operations since those in Indochina in the 1960s and early 1970s.

NATO, established in 1949 supposedly to confront the Soviet Union and its allies in Central Europe, is waging its first land war almost 3,000 miles east of its former border with the Warsaw Pact.

The world's sole military superpower...is extending its troop deployments, bases, missile shield components, warplanes and warships to all six inhabited continents, over the past decade to Afghanistan, Australia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, the Philippines, Poland, Romania and Seychelles.
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On January 8 the Washington Post provided North Atlantic Treaty Organization secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt a column in which the two, while deferring to their big brother in Washington - "The United States has played a central role in defending the values and the security of the Euro-Atlantic community" - nevertheless asserted that "Europe can deliver and can be a real partner for the United States. That is what is happening now in the global mission in Afghanistan." [1]

Unquestioned loyalty to the trans-Atlantic partnership with the United States is synonymous with subordination to NATO, and currently the touchstone for fealty to the military bloc is blind willingness to follow the U.S. further and yet deeper into the increasingly bloody imbroglio in Afghanistan.

In addressing the ongoing and by all appearances interminable colonial war in South Asia, one which cost the U.S. and its NATO allies more lives last year than in any of the seven full years preceding it, the joint propaganda puff piece by Bildt and Rasmussen included the boast that "U.S. allies and partners in the NATO-led military operation have responded clearly to President Obama's decision to significantly increase American troop levels in the mission. In early December, the other members of the mission pledged an additional 7,000 troops, on top of the almost 40,000 non-U.S. troops already on the ground. Non-U.S. forces will eventually be about 40 percent of the total; they already endure about 40 percent of the casualties. There should be no more doubt in the United States on whether America can count on its allies; we are proving that in blood and treasure every day in Afghanistan." [2]

Their arithmetic matches that of U.S. permanent representative to NATO, Netherlands-born Ivo Daalder, who four months ago quantified what it means to be a dependable member of the bloc: "Over 40 percent of the bodybags that leave Afghanistan do not go to the U.S. They go to other countries...." [3] Daalder has long been an advocate of NATO not so much supplementing as replacing the United Nations as arbiter of international conflicts and indeed of all important world issues. [4]

It is uncertain whether leading Western governments have formally determined what the optimal distribution and division of blood and currency, deaths and dollars/euros between the United States and its NATO partners should be in order to preserve solidarity between members of the "military alliance of democratic states in Europe and North America." Perhaps someone in Brussels and Washington computes that lethal calculus.

Bildt, whose country is not yet a full member of NATO notwithstanding the efforts of himself and co-conspirators to surreptitiously pull Sweden into full integration with the world's only military bloc [5], presumably spoke on behalf of the European Union - though his nation does not currently hold the EU presidency. Spain does.

However, Swedish troops serve under NATO command in Afghanistan and in recent months have been involved in several firefights in the north of the nation, where with fellow former (officially) neutral Finland it is in charge of four provinces for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Bildt's nation has lost two soldiers in the Alliance's Asian war, the first it has sacrificed in an armed conflict since the Norwegian-Swedish War of 1814.

On February 4 and 5 the defense chiefs of all 28 full NATO member states and no doubt counterparts from many of the more than twenty partner nations - from Australia to the United Arab Emirates, Mongolia to Colombia, Bosnia to Singapore, Georgia to South Korea - that have provided or pledged troops to the bloc for its first Asian war will meet in Istanbul, Turkey to plan the next phase of the escalation of the the Afghan campaign. "The situation in Afghanistan and sending military reinforcements to join the International Security Assistance Force are expected to be the key matters of the meetings." [6]

5,000 NATO Casualties Predicted For New Year

What reinforcements from NATO member and partner states will encounter was indicated by retired U.S. general Barry McCaffrey, who earlier this month projected that "US forces in Afghanistan should brace themselves for up to 500 casualties a month this year." The Times of London added "The anticipated increase would produce around 3,000 American casualties this year, and a total for Western forces in Afghanistan of around 5,000 killed and wounded - the equivalent of seven infantry battalions." [7]

By way of comparison, in 2009 there were 512 U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO International Security Assistance Force deaths in Afghanistan, more than a third of the 1,500 Western fatalities since the war began in October of 2001. McCaffrey's numbers allow for some multiple of last year's combined U.S. and other NATO member and partner combat deaths to occur later this year.

Such is the test - and the price - of the "Euro-Atlantic" partnership touted by Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Recent developments substantiate predictions of heightened NATO casualties this year, even before planned spring and summer offensives commence.

The New Year has begun with NATO announcing the deaths of over a dozen soldiers, including six in attacks on January 11. The pace of combat deaths this year already promises a total exceeding the previous high in 2009.

The main victims of the expansion of the war in South Asia by the U.S. and NATO will remain Afghan civilians and their opposite numbers in Pakistan [8], but Western military occupation forces will not fare much better.

As deployments increase so will casualties, and both are growing steadily.

NATO Recruits Middle East Partners For Afghan War

On December 30 the Jordanian Army announced that one of its officers became the nation's first fatality in Afghanistan. Before that the United Arab Emirates was thought to be the only Arab country to supply troops to NATO for that war theater, but on the day of the loss a German news agency revealed that "NATO's website listed 90 Jordanian soldiers alongside other contributions to the multinational force." [9] It was later reported that the captain killed in Afghanistan lost his life along with seven Americans in an attack on a CIA forward operating base and was the alleged handler for what has been described as a double agent, a physician from Jordan.

Nine days after its first military loss, Jordan in the person of its foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, asserted "our presence in Afghanistan will be enhanced and increased in the coming phase. This is something that is ongoing. Jordan was one of the first countries there." [10] U.S. Secretary of State Hillary was in the nation's capital on January 8 "to discuss strategic cooperation." [11]

Jordan is a member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue partnership along with Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The United Arab Emirates is a carefully cultivated NATO, American and French military ally in the Persian Gulf and a mainstay of the Alliance's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. [12]

NATO chief Rasmussen recently gave an interview to a Danish newspaper in which he "urged Muslim nations to contribute troops for service in Afghanistan." The likely recruits are the six Arab members of the Mediterranean Dialogue and the six Gulf Cooperation Council states targeted by the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.)

Afghan War Used To Train Caucasus Armies For Local Wars

The bloc has also secured troop commitments from all three former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Azerbaijan, bordering both Iran and Russia, has doubled its contingent under pressure from NATO's Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia Robert Simmons [13] and recently the vice speaker of its parliament said "At the recent meeting of NATO foreign ministers a proposal was made to increase the number of servicemen in Afghanistan. If we receive an appeal, the issue on increasing the number of Azerbaijani servicemen in Afghanistan may be considered." [14] Azerbaijani officials, including President Ilham Aliyev, routinely threaten war with neighboring Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Georgia hosted U.S. Marines late last year to train the first new installment of troops from that nation to be deployed to Afghanistan. [15] Georgian troop strength is projected to reach 1,000 within months, thereby rendering the state the largest per capita contributor to NATO's war in Afghanistan. "By March, the Georgian contingent will become about 1,000 strong, according to the Defense Ministry." [16]

The nation's mercurial and bellicose head of state, U.S.-educated Mikheil Saakashvili, said of the Afghan deployment: "This is a unique chance for our soldiers to receive a real combat baptism. We do not need the army only for showing off at military parades." [17] Saakashvili meant that crack Georgian military forces trained by the U.S. Marine Corps and serving under NATO in Afghanistan will be better prepared for the next war with Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia when they return home.

On January 10 the first Afghanistan-bound Armenian troops "depart[ed] for Germany for training before joining the ISAF mission in Afghanistan" and "will be in Afghanistan in mid-February." [18]

Unlike its neighbors Azerbaijan and Georgia, Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), seen by many observers as a bulwark against further NATO expansion into former Soviet space. Although Armenia sent a small contingent of troops to Iraq earlier, they were deployed under a bilateral arrangement with the U.S. and did not serve under NATO command as they will in Afghanistan. Armenian troops will be the first from the CSTO to do so.

Another former Soviet republic, Estonia, a full member of NATO since 2004, announced this month that in keeping with other Alliance members and partners from five continents it was prepared to increase its Afghan war contingent. "150 soldiers from the Baltic country are involved in the conflict and it's likely that more troops are going to be sent." [19]

NATO's War Trajectory: From Southeastern Europe To South Asia

The North Atlantic military bloc, the only one in the world since the formal dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, effected its transition from an alleged defensive organization to an active out of area perpetrator of armed aggression with the 78-day Operation Allied Force air war against Yugoslavia in 1999. Slightly over two years after that conflict ended NATO invoked its Article 5 mutual military assistance provision to join the U.S. in Afghanistan and in the general global war on terror announced by the American administration.

Currently all six former Yugoslav federal republics except for Serbia, which is also marked for further NATO integration and will in turn be pressured for troops, have committed forces to serve under NATO in the Afghan war zone.

Late last month Defense Minister Selmo Cikotic confirmed that "Bosnia is planning to send troops next year to join the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan." [20]

A Croatian soldier was injured in Afghanistan on December 30 in an attack of an undisclosed nature.

Macedonia is a perennial candidate for full NATO membership that has attempted to prove its bona fides to the Alliance by sending troops to, first, Iraq and now Afghanistan. It will not be accepted until it changes its name under foreign pressure and effectively cedes its northwest region to Kosovo, an artificial political entity violently forged by NATO.

On January 8 the country dispatched 150 troops for a new rotation. The forces will join a British military unit. Earlier the Macedonian Defense Ministry announced that it was increasing troop strength to over 243, a fifty percent boost.

In neighboring Bulgaria a news source recently divulged that the nation was adding deployments to Afghanistan which will bring the country's troops there to over 300.

Poland: NATO Uses Afghan War To Train Army For Combat, Warfare

Late in December Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made a tour of inspection to the NATO Joint Force Training Center in Bydgoszcz and said, "I think that slowly but consistently we are implementing our strategy in Afghanistan. We have completed our missions in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Chad and strengthened the one in Afghanistan. I think that, as a result, the Polish Army is getting an experience there and entering NATO's first league...." [21]

Poland has pledged an additional 600 troops for the war this year and the total number will reach 2,600, the largest overseas military deployment in the nation's history, 100 more than it had deployed in Iraq where it lost 22 soldiers.

For Poland, as with fellows neighbors of Russia like Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania [22], NATO is supplying military training and combat experience for future action nearer home. Toward the end of last year a Polish officer, speaking of his country's National Forces Reserve, said that "in the event of war, the reserve units could be mobilised" and that they will "train on a regular basis to keep up their combat skills in the event of warfare." [23] The application of such training is not for Afghanistan.

The major, older NATO nations are also stepping up their roles in the Afghan conflict.

Even before the January 28 conference on Afghanistan to be held in London, at and after which it is expected that NATO troop contributions will expand even beyond the additional 7,000 pledged since U.S. President Obama's troops surge announcement last December 1, the host nation Britain has assigned several hundred more troops. The country's death toll reached 246 early this year.

France: Back In NATO Military Command, In Afghanistan For The Duration

On January 8 French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has already sent 2,600 soldiers to Afghanistan, "defended his country's military force in Afghanistan, saying...that now is not the time to pull out."

He also "insisted on the importance of France's participation in NATO. France rejoined NATO's integrated military command in 2009, more than 40 years after quitting it and kicking American military bases off French soil." [24]

On January 4 Der Spiegel reported that the U.S. "has decided to send 2,500 soldiers to Kunduz," where German forces called in a NATO air strike in early September of last year that killed 150 civilians [25], "the region under German command in the northern part of the country. The move is sure to increase the pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin." Pressure, that is, to dispense with the limit of 4,500 troops imposed by the parliament, the Bundestag, and "intensify the debate in Germany about sending more troops. Internally, the government in Berlin has already decided to increase German troop numbers by up to 2,000 soldiers...." [26] American troops would serve under German command for the first time in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

German Troops "Trained To Kill"

The following day the new Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, in recent years German ambassador to the United States and to Britain, was quoted as saying that "Germany must confront the reality that its soldiers are trained to kill" and that "certain military facts had to be confronted."

Ischinger stated in his own words: "Soldiers are trained to kill others, or at least to threaten people in a way that they consider it plausible that they will be killed if they don't do what is expected of them."

He urged a troop increase in Afghanistan and added, "If we send too many, it can't get so bad. If we send too few, it could be that the whole thing doesn't work...We are building fewer wells, and unfortunately have to shoot more." [27]

The war in Afghanistan, like that against Yugoslavia in 1999, is providing Germany the opportunity of reemerging on the world military stage. [28]

Scandinavia, Spain: Killing And Dying In South Asia

The Norwegian press this year has reported on the heightened combat role of its nation's troops. On New Year's Eve a "Norwegian patrol came under fire from several directions. The fighting lasted for seven hours." [29] The country's Defense Ministry claimed that several Afghan insurgents were killed. Norwegian troops are also not constructing wells; neither are their Finnish and Swedish counterparts who have been in regular firefights in northern Afghanistan.

"The Christmas period has seen troops from Norway involved in several battles across northern Afghanistan," one of which "led to NATO being called on to provide assistance from the air."

"On Christmas Day a mission with drone and helicopter support was deployed to an under siege Afghan border post by Norwegian and Afghan troops." [30]

At the beginning of January "it was announced that Norwegian forces, which number around 500 in Afghanistan, were involved in fighting every third day on average." [31]

On January 8 a Danish soldier was killed and five were injured in Helmand province. Denmark, which has 700 troops assigned to NATO, has lost 29 military personnel in the Afghan war.

On January 8 the Spanish contingent in Afghanistan - "Spain currently has about 800 troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and plans to deploy an additional 220 soldiers to that nation" [32] - lost a soldier, an Ecuadorian national, to a non-combat injury, bringing Spain's toll to 90 Afghan war-related deaths. Another 150 soldiers have been seriously injured.

The Spanish government refuses to name a withdrawal date and "[J]udging by the amazing Spanish base being built close to the airport of the capital of the Province of Badghis, the withdrawal will not come soon.

"This base will have a capacity to accommodate around 300,000 soldiers and its cost will exceed 44 million euros. The base will have an extension of around 173 acres and a perimeter of 3 miles." [33]

Spanish troops killed one Afghan civilian and wounded another in late December in Herat province.

During the same period "The Dutch television channel RTL news...obtained evidence that, it claims, shows that Dutch troops in Afghanistan have been responsible for more than 100 civilian deaths." [34]

On December 30 four more Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, bringing Canada's death tally to 138, the third largest of any NATO state and the largest per capita.

Two Italian troops were among those wounded on December 28 when an Afghan National Army soldier fired on NATO troops. Italy has lost 22 soldiers in the war and will add 1,000 more troops this year to the 3,200 already in Afghanistan.

....

With former Joint Special Operations Command chief General Stanley McChrystal in charge of what will soon be over 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, Washington will conduct its largest counterinsurgency operations since those in Indochina in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The New York Times reported in late December that "Secretive branches of the militarys Special Operations forces have increased counterterrorism missions...in Afghanistan and, because of their success, plan an even bigger expansion next year, according to American commanders."

"Senior military officials say it is not surprising that the commandos are playing such an important role in the fight, particularly because Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior American and NATO officer in Afghanistan, led the Joint Special Operations Command for five years.

"In addition to the classified American commando missions, military officials say that other NATO special operations forces have teamed up...." [35]

NATO, established in 1949 supposedly to confront the Soviet Union and its allies in Central Europe, is waging its first land war almost 3,000 miles east of its former border with the Warsaw Pact.

Associated Press reported on January 12 that the Obama White House is to request a record $708 billion for the Pentagon for next year and the first of what will become regular emergency requests for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, overwhelmingly for the first: $33 billion.

The integration of U.S. armed forces and those of the other fifty nations providing troops for NATO in Afghanistan, a global NATO in embryo [36], is not limited to the war in Afghanistan.

Last week it was reported that the chief of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, Marine Corps General James Mattis, who was also NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation [ACT] until last September, "pitched to Defense Secretary Robert Gates a proposal to rename the Norfolk, Va.-based organization, aiming to reflect how much it works with non-American entities and officials.

"34 senior officers from both NATO and 'Partnership for Peace member nations, as well as Asia Pacific, African and Middle Eastern nations,' are hosted by the command. Nearly 90 officials from 48 nations 'routinely collaborate' with the joint organization," according to Mattis. [37]

His memo to Pentagon chief Gates contained this core recommendation:

"In alignment with our mission and consistent with the continued importance of partnership with multinational partners, request your approval to immediately pursue the renaming of U.S. Joint Forces Command to U.S. Joint and Coalition Forces Command. This [proposed] name will better reflect the day-to-day reality of this non-geographically-oriented command and signify a command focused on more than internal U.S. priorities." [38]

The world's sole military superpower, as President Barack Obama referred to the nation whose commander-in-chief he is on the occasion of receiving the now even further tarnished Nobel Peace Prize, is extending its troop deployments, bases, missile shield components, warplanes and warships to all six inhabited continents, over the past decade to Afghanistan, Australia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, the Philippines, Poland, Romania and Seychelles.

The U.S. has the mightiest and most lethal military arsenal in human history at its disposal and the world's second-largest standing army (only China's having more troops). It intends to spend over $700 billion next year on its defense budget and will continue to add on special appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

It also is in charge of the world's first global military bloc, NATO, which is participating with the U.S. in an expanding war in Asia with forces from over a quarter of the world's nations under its command.

1) Washington Post, January 8, 2010
2) Ibid
3) Reuters, September 14, 2009
4) West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO
Stop NATO, May 27, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/154
5) Stop The Stealthy Accession To NATO!
http://www.stoppanato.se
English: http://www.stoppanato.se/english/guides.htm
6) Aysor, January 11, 2010
7) The Times, January 7, 2010
8) West's Afghan War: From Conquest To Bloodbath
Stop NATO, January 5, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/wests-afghan-war-from-conquest-to-bloodbath
9) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 30, 2009
10) Agence France-Presse, January 8, 2010
11) Trend News Agency, January 10, 2010
12) NATO In Persian Gulf: From Third World War To Istanbul
Stop NATO, February 6, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/nato-in-persian-gulf-from-third-world-war-to-istanbul
13) Mr. Simmons' Mission: NATO Bases From Balkans To Chinese Border
Stop NATO, March 4, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/mr-simmons-mission-nato-bases-from-balkans-to-chinese-border
Eurasian Crossroads: The Caucasus In U.S.-NATO War Plans
Stop NATO, April 7, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/118
Azerbaijan And The Caspian: NATO's War For The World's Heartland
Stop NATO, June 10, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/azerbaijan-and-the-caspian-natos-war-for-the-worlds-heartland
14) Azeri Press Agency, December 24, 2009
15) U.S. Marines In The Caucasus As West Widens Afghan War
Stop NATO, September 3, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/u-s-marines-in-the-caucasus-as-west-widens-afghan-war
16) Interfax, January 13, 2010
17) The Telegraph, December 8, 2009
18) PanArmenian.net, January 9, 2010
19) Estonian Free Press, January 8, 2010
20) Reuters, December 28, 2009
21) Polish Radio, December 31, 2009
22) Afghan War: NATO Trains Finland, Sweden For Conflict With Russia
Stop NATO, July 26, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/afghan-war-nato-trains-finland-sweden-for-conflict-with-russia
23) Polish Radio, December 28, 2009
24) Associated Press, January 8, 2010
25) Following Afghan Election, NATO Intensifies Deployments, Carnage
Stop NATO, September 6, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/following-afghan-election-nato-intensifies-deployments-carnage
26) Der Spiegel, January 4, 2010
27) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 5, 2010
28) New NATO: Germany Returns To World Military Stage
Stop NATO, July 12, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/new-nato-germany-returns-to-world-military-stage
29) Norway Post, January 3, 2010
30) IceNews, January 3, 2010
31) Ibid
32) EFE, January 8, 2010
33) Prensa Latina, December 28, 2009
34) Radio Netherlands, December 24, 2009
35) New York Times, December 27, 2009
36) Afghan War: NATO Builds History's First Global Army
Stop NATO, August 9, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/afghan-war-nato-builds-historys-first-global-army
37) Defense News, January 6, 2009
38) Ibid

Secret letter reveals Lord Goldsmith's fury over legal approval for war

2010-01-19T16:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6993409.ece

January 19, 2010
David Brown

The Attorney-General sent a furious letter to the Defence Secretary a year before the invasion of Iraq warning that he saw “considerable difficulties” in giving legal approval for war, it emerged this morning.

Lord Goldsmith complained to Geoff Hoon that he had put in a “difficult position” by the Defence Secretary’s public claim that Britain would be entitled to use force without a specific United Nations resolution.

In a previously secret letter released by the Iraq Inquiry this morning, Lord Goldsmith said that he had given no opinion on the legality of military action.

“I think you should know that I see considerable difficulties in being satisfied that military action would be justified on the basis of self-defence,” he wrote.

“In particular I am not aware of the existence of material indicating the existence of an imminent threat from Iraq of the sort which would justify military action without support of a [UN]Security Council Chapter VII authorisation.”

Lord Goldsmith criticised Mr Hoon for giving a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in March 2002 in which he appeared to say that Britain was entitled to take military action without a new UN resolution.

“The clarity of your statement and the apparently authoritative way it was produced puts me, however, in a difficult position,” he wrote.

Mr Hoon replied that a transcript of the interview made clear that “in principle” military action could be taken if it was shown that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction capable of a threat to the UK.

“My subsequent statements about the need to go back to the UN for a specific resolution need to be seen against that background,” he wrote.

“I do not think that my statements curtail your ability to offer an opinion on the legal position in due course. As you say, we will need to satisfy ourselves that this threat exists should we want to justify legal action on the basis of self-defence.”

Mr Hoon will be questioned this morning about the build-up to the invasion of Iraq and is also expected to face scrutiny over claims that troops were inadequately equipped for the conflict.

Mr Hoon, defence secretary from 1999 to 2005, will be the first former minister to appear before the inquiry, following a string of military leaders, advisers and officials.

The inquiry has already heard from senior military figures that preparations for the invasion were hampered by ministers’ fears that developments would leak.

Admiral Lord Boyce, who was the chief of the defence staff at the time, said he was allowed by ministers to start full-scale planning only four months before the invasion.

Ministers had been concerned that news of their planning would undermine efforts to get a new UN resolution requiring Saddam to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

The issue was considered so sensitive, Lord Boyce said, that he was ordered by Mr Hoon not to discuss it with the chief of defence logistics.

As a result, the military chiefs were unable to take any practical steps to prepare for military action, such as buying in the extra equipment they would need for the operation.

There are also expectations that Mr Hoon, who jointly organised the recent plot to oust Gordon Brown, might use his appearance to increase pressure on the Prime Minister.

Leaked ministerial letters have apparently shown that Mr Brown vetoed the purchase of military helicopters for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Elite US troops ready to combat Pakistani nuclear hijacks

2010-01-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6991056.ece

January 17, 2010
Christina Lamb in Washington

The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country’s security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one.

The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them.

The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan’s military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight.

“What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department’s intelligence unit. “There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities.”

Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan security research unit at Bradford University, has tracked a number of attempted security breaches since 2007. “The terrorists are at the gates,” he warned.

In a counterterrorism journal, published by America’s West Point military academy, he documented three incidents. The first was an attack in November 2007 at Sargodha in Punjab, where nuclearcapable F-16 jet aircraft are thought to be stationed. The following month a suicide bomber struck at Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra in Attock district. In August 2008 a group of suicide bombers blew up the gates to a weapons complex at the Wah cantonment in Punjab, believed to be one of Pakistan’s nuclear warhead assembly plants. The attack left 63 people dead.

A further attack followed at Kamra last October. Pakistan denies that the base still has a nuclear role, but Gregory believes it does. A six-man suicide team was arrested in Sargodha last August.

Fears that militants could penetrate a nuclear facility intensified after a brazen attack on army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October when 10 gunmen wearing army uniforms got inside and laid siege for 22 hours. Last month there was an attack on the naval command centre in Islamabad.

Pakistani police said five Americans from Washington who were arrested in Pakistan last month after trying to join the Taliban were carrying a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex in Punjab that includes a nuclear power facility.

The Al-Qaeda leadership has made no secret of its desire to get its hands on weapons for a “nuclear 9/11”.

“I have no doubt they are hell-bent on acquiring this,” said Mowatt-Larssen. “These guys are thinking of nuclear at the highest level and are approaching it in increasingly professional ways.”

Nuclear experts and US officials say the biggest fear is of an inside job amid growing anti-American feeling in Pakistan. Last year 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks, more than in Afghanistan, yet polls suggest Pakistanis consider the United States to be a greater threat than the Taliban.

“You have 8,000-12,000 [people] in Pakistan with some type of role in nuclear missiles — whether as part of an assembly team or security,” said Gregory. “It’s a very large number and there is a real possibility that among those people are sympathisers of terrorist or jihadist groups who may facilitate some kind of attack.”

Pakistan is thought to possess about 80 nuclear warheads. Although the weapons are well guarded, the fear is that materials or processes to enrich uranium could fall into the wrong hands.

“All it needs is someone in Pakistan within the nuclear establishment and in a position of key access to become radicalised,” said MowattLarssen. “This is not just theoretical. It did happen — Pakistan has had inside problems before.”

Bashir Mahmood, the former head of Pakistan’s plutonium reactor, formed the Islamic charity Ummah Tameer-e-Nau in March 2000 after resigning from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He was arrested in Islamabad on October 23, 2001, with his associate Abdul Majeed for alleged links to Osama Bin Laden.

Pakistan’s military leadership, which controls the nuclear programme, has always bristled at the suggestion that its nuclear facilities are at risk. The generals insist that storing components in different sites keeps them secure.

US officials refused to speak on the record about American safety plans, well aware of how this would be seen in Islamabad. However, one official admitted that the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s storage sites are located. “Don’t assume the US knows everything,” he said.

Although Washington has provided $100m worth of technical assistance to Islamabad under its nuclear protection programme, US personnel have been denied access to most Pakistani nuclear sites.

In the past fortnight the US has made unprecedented formal protests to Pakistan’s national security apparatus, warning it about fanning virulent anti-American sentiment in the media.

Concerns about hostility towards America within elements of the Pakistani armed forces first surfaced in 2007. At a meeting of military commanders staged at Kurram, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Pakistani major drew his pistol and shot an American. The incident was hushed up as a gunfight.

Personal Firearms of Jesus Christ - Rifles for Jesus - Pentagon Is Fighting A Religious Crusade

2010-01-19T13:58:00.000-08:00

Jihad for Jesus: More Evidence The Pentagon Is Fighting A Religious Crusade

Yemen is America's Next Battleground

2010-01-18T12:16:00.000-08:00

http://watchingamerica.com/News/42938/yemen-is-america’s-next-battleground/

Watching America
Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:00 EST

The unprecedented presence of Western reporters and media representatives in Sana'a in the past few days has fueled rumors that America's military will soon interfere in Yemen and that the U.S. is formulating an operational plan. The hotels and inns of Sana'a are packed with foreign reporters and journalists.

According to reports and the Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, international analysts are concerned because of the wide scale presence of foreign media in this country in addition to the rising security concerns, especially considering that the foreign media are not allowed to operate in the northern and southern parts of Yemen due to security reasons.

International observers believe the heavy presence of American and British reporters could be a sign that Yemen is going to be America's next war zone in the region.

Some political analysts believe that, considering the recent events and America's claim of fighting Al Qaeda, the threat in Yemen is not enough to justify this media rush to Sana'a.

Fighting Terrorism: Reality or Just a Claim?

The Global Research website has issued a report revealing America's intention to control the Bab-el-Mandeb area to support its efforts to fight Al-Qaeda. The report says: "After the September 11 attacks at the beginning of this decade, America sent its troops to Afghanistan with the excuse of fighting terrorism, and now it is using a failed plot to blow up a Northwest airlines flight as the new excuse for fighting terrorism."

Global Research adds:

The arrest of a Nigerian man named Abdulmutalleb, accused of trying to blow up a passenger aircraft, and the efforts made by CNN and The New York Times to connect him with Al Qaeda in Yemen, raises concerns that this country is going to be America's next battleground. However, looking closely, you can see that this country has vast unexplored oil resources and geopolitical importance that reveals the secret plans of the Pentagon and the CIA behind fighting Al Qaeda in Yemen.

The world has witnessed America's increasing military interference in Yemen, which is bound to Saudi Arabia in the North, the Red Sea in the West, and the Gulf of Aden in the South. This country also has access to Somalia, which has been highlighted in the news recently. On top of the vast unexplored oil reserves, the Pentagon and the CIA are intending to militarize the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, which is one of the most strategic oil shipping routes in the world.

The Bab-el-Mandeb strait is the waterway between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East and is the route connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. Closing down this route would cut the access of oil tankers from the Persian Gulf to the Suez Canal and the oil terminals in the Mediterranean, forcing them to change their routes.

According to an assessment done by the American Ministry of Energy in 2006, 3.3 million barrels of oil per day passes through this strait heading toward Europe, America, and Asia.

'US exaggerating al-Qaeda threat in Yemen' Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:41:01 GMT Font size : The US exaggerates the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen as the group'

2010-01-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116348§ionid=351020206

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:41:01 GMT

The US exaggerates the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen as the group's members are too few to turn it into a global threat, a report says.

The report in Le Figaro says that US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's remark regarding al-Qaeda being a threat to world security is an exaggeration.

According to the report, there are an estimated 200 to 300 alleged al-Qaeda members in southern Yemen.

The Yemeni president is seemingly playing up the threat to receive the utmost financial aid from an upcoming London meeting, according to Le Figaro.

Unlike the US and Britain, Le Figaro says France, Italy and Spain have been reluctant to join in the media hype.

The report has also criticized Saudi raids against Houthi fighters over the past months. It says the attacks have only worsened the war in northern Yemen.

Civilians have been the main victims of the all-out war which has been fueled by foreign military intervention in the poor Arab country.

The conflict in North Yemen began in 2004 between Sana'a and Houthi fighters. Relative peace had returned to the region until August 11, 2009 when the Yemeni army launched a major offensive, dubbed 'Operation Scorched Earth', against Sa'ada Province.

The government claims that the fighters, who are named after their leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi, seek to restore the Shia imamate system, which was overthrown in a 1962 military coup.

The Houthis, however, say they are defending their people's civil rights, which the government has undermined because of pressure from Saudi-backed Wahhabi extremists.

Shia citizens of Yemen form a clear majority in the north and make up approximately half of the overall population.

The United Nations, which according to its charter is set up "to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace," has failed to adopt any concrete measures to help end the bloody war.

Yemen: Terrorist Haven, or Chess Piece?

2010-01-18T07:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.portside.org/?q=showpost&i=7164

Posted on Sat, 16 Jan 2010
Dispatches From The Edge
By Conn Hallinan

"The instability in Yemen is a threat to regional stability and even global stability"
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"Yemen is a regional and global threat"
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

"Yemen could be the ground of America's next overseas war if Washington does not take preemptive action to root out al-Qaeda there"
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn)

A few facts:
Yemen-a country slightly smaller than France with a population of 22 million-perches on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. It is the poorest country in the region, with one of the most explosive birthrates in the world. Unemployment hovers above 40 percent and projections are that its oil-which makes up 70 percent of its GDP-will run out in 2017, as will water for the capital, Sana, in 2015.

It is a bit of a patchwork nation. It was formerly two countries-North Yemen and the Democratic People's Republic of Yemen (south), which merged in 1990 and fought a nasty civil war in 1994.

The current government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is corrupt, despotic, and presently fighting a two- front war against northern Shiites, called "Houthis," and separatist-minded southerners. Based in the north, Saleh's government has limited influence outside of the capital. Whoever runs the place, according to The Independent's Middle East reporter Patrick Cockburn, has to contend with "tribal confederations, tribes, clans, and powerful families. Almost everybody has a gun, usually at least an AK-47 assault rifle, but tribesmen often own heavier armament."

To make things even more complex, Yemen's northern neighbor, Saudi Arabia, has sent troops and warplanes to back up Saleh. According to Reuters, "The conflict in Yemen's northern mountains has killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands." Aid groups put the number of refugees at 150,000. The Saleh government and the Saudis claim the Shiia uprising is being directed by Iran- there is no evidence to back up the charge-thus escalating a local civil war to a regional face off between Riyadh and Teheran.

And this is a place that Hillary, Gordon and Joe think we need to intervene?

In a sense, of course, the U.S. is already in Yemen, and was so even before the attempted bombing Christmas Day of a Northwest Airlines flight by a young Nigerian. For most Americans, Yemen first appeared on their radar screens when the USS Cole was attacked in the port of Aden by al-Qaeda in 1990, killing 17 sailors. It reappeared this past November when a U.S. Army officer linked to a Muslim cleric in Yemen killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Colorado. The Christmas Day attacker said he was trained by al-Qaeda, and the group took credit for the failed operation.

But U.S. involvement in Yemen goes back almost 40 years. In 1979, the Carter Administration blew a minor border incident between north and south Yemen into a full-blown East- West crisis, accusing the Soviets of aggression. The White House dispatched an aircraft carrier and several warships to the Arabian Sea, and sent tanks, armored personal carriers and warplanes to the North Yemen government.

The tension between the two Yemens was hardly accidental. According to UPI, the CIA funneled $4 million a year to Jordan's King Hussein to help brew up a civil war between the conservative North and the wealthier and socialist south.

The merger between the two countries never quite took. Southern Yemenis complain that the north plunders its oil and wealth and discriminates against southerners. Demonstrations and general strikes by the Southern Movement demanding independence have increased over the past year. The Saleh government has generally responded with clubs, tear gas and guns.

When Yemen refused to back the 1991 Gulf War to expel Iraq from Kuwait, the U.S. cancelled $70 million in foreign aid to Sana and supported a decision by Saudi Arabia to expel 850,000 Yemeni workers. Both moves had a catastrophic impact on the Yemeni economy that played a major role in initiating the current instability gripping the country.

In 2002 the Bush administration used armed drones to assassinate several Yemenis it accused of being al- Qaeda members. The New York Times reported that the Obama administration launched a cruise missile attack Dec. 17 at suspected al-Qaeda members that, according to Agence France Presse, killed 49 civilians, including 23 children and 17 women. The attack has sparked widespread anger throughout Yemen that al-Qaeda organizers have heavily exploited.

So is the current uproar over Yemen a case of a U.S. administration overreacting and stumbling into yet another quagmire in the Middle East? Or is this talk about a "global danger" just a smokescreen to allow the Americans to prop up the increasingly isolated and unpopular regime in Saudi Arabia?

Maybe both, but at least one respected analyst suggests that the game in play is considerably larger than the Arabian Peninsula and may have more to do with the control of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea than with hunting down al-Qaeda in the Yemeni wilderness.

The Asia Times' M.K. Bhadrakumar, a career Indian diplomat who served in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Turkey, argues that the current U.S. concern with Yemen is actually about the strategic port of Aden. "Control of Aden and the Malacca Straits will put the U.S. in an unassailable position in the `great game' of the Indian Ocean," he writes.

Aden controls the strait of Bab el-Mandab, the entrance to the Red Sea though which passes 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. The Malacca Straits, between the southern Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, is one of the key passages that link the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

Bhadrakumar says the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Straits are "literally the jugular veins of the Chinese economy." Indeed, a quarter of the world's sea-borne trade passes through the area, including 80 percent of China's oil and gas.

In 2005 the Bush Administration pressed India to counter the rise of China by joining an alliance with South Korea, Japan, and Australia. As a quid pro quo for coming aboard, Washington agreed to sell uranium to India, in spite of New Delhi's refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. Only countries that sign the Treaty can purchase uranium in the international market. The Bush administration also agreed to sell India the latest in military technology. The Obama administration has continued the same policies.

China and India have indeed beefed up their naval forces in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Beijing is also developing a "string of pearls"- ports that will run from East Africa to Southeast Asia. India has just established a formal naval presence in Oman at the entrance to the strategic Persian Gulf.

According to Bhadrakumar, the growing U.S. rapprochement with Myanmar and Sri Lanka is aimed at checkmating China's influence in both nations, and cutting off efforts by Beijing to reduce its reliance on ocean-borne energy transportation by constructing land-based pipelines. China just opened such a pipeline to Central Asia.

"The U.S., on the contrary, is determined that China remain vulnerable to the choke points between Indonesia and Malaysia," writes the former Indian diplomat.
Checkmating China would also explain some of the pressure that the Obama administration is exerting on Pakistan.

"The U.S. is unhappy with China's efforts to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan. Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose around the neck of the Pakistani elites-civilian and military-and forcing them to make a strategic choice between the U.S. and China," writes Bhadrakumar.

This would help explain the increasing tension between China and India over a Himalayan border region that has sparked a military buildup in Chinese-occupied Tibet and India's Arunachai Pradesh state. Former Indian Air Marshall Fali Homi told the Hindustan Times that China was now a bigger threat than Pakistan, and former Indian National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra predicts an India-China war within five years.

"Energy security" has been at the heart of U.S. foreign policy for decades. The 1980's "Carter Doctrine" made it explicit that the U.S. would use military if its energy supplies were ever threatened. Whether the administration was Republican or Democratic made little difference when it came to controlling gas and oil supplies, and the greatest concentration of U.S. military forces is in the Middle East, where 60 percent of the world's energy supplies lie.

Except for using Special Forces and supplying weapons, it is unlikely that the U.S. will intervene in a major way in Yemen. But through military aid it can exert a good deal of influence over the Sana government, including extracting basing rights.
The White House has elevated the 200 or so "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" members in Yemen into what the President calls a "serious problem," and there are dark hints that the country is on its way to becoming a "failed state," the green light for a more robust intervention.

However, as Jon Alterman, Middle East Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues, "The problems in Yemen are not fundamentally problems that military operations can solve."

But then the "problems" of Yemen may be simply a prelude for a much wider and potentially dangerous strategy focused on China.

"The U.S. cannot give up on its global dominance without putting up a real fight," says Bhadrakumar. "And the reality of all such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought piecemeal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen."

Obama Spreading War Flames Across Middle East

2010-01-17T10:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-Spreading-War-Flames-by-Sherwood-Ross-100116-738.html

January 16, 2010
Obama Spreading War Flames Across Middle East
By Sherwood Ross

As President Obama steps up the war that is inflaming ever wider sectors of the Middle East, USA continues its rapid slide toward Third World status. The two developments are not unrelated. Spending on war does not boost an economy as does domestic spending---and the Pentagon has been spending trillions on war.

At the start of the last decade, the U.S. was producing 32 percent of the world's gross domestic product. At decade's end, it was just 24 percent, conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan observed. "No nation in modern history, save for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative power in a single decade," he writes.

Buchanan cites the George W. Bush Republicans for turning a budget surplus into a huge deficit with tax cuts and social spending. He also faults GWB's two wars, adding, "the huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq serves as (al-Qaeda's) recruiting poster."

This is the desperate situation President Obama is compounding by dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, building up U.S. and NATO forces there to nearly 140,000. To this figure add 100,000 U.S. contractors, making the actual number of military-related personnel about a quarter million. All at the expense of the American taxpayers!

"The war---once mostly limited to Pakistan border---has spread to nearly every corner of the country" and "penetrated" the capital Kabul "with car bombings and spectacular attacks," the AP reported January 10th. Its headline: "Afghans Losing Hope After 8 Years of War."

The AP quotes 19-year-old carpet-seller Hamid Hashimi stating, "The more soldiers they send here, the worse it gets." And the more misguided air attacks that kill civilians, the angrier Afghan civilians get. The raids "have previously killed civilians and inflamed anti-American sentiment among Afghans," Joshua Partlow reported in the Washington Post.

"The use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles to fire missiles, while not as frequent as in Pakistan, is increasingly common in Afghanistan," Partlow wrote. And based on a study by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., President Obama has increased those strikes dramatically.

According to the AP of Jan. 15, there have been more than 70 U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan over the last two years. "At least 700 people are reported to have been killed, many of them militants, including several foreign al Qaeda leaders, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials."

The wire service continues, "In public, Pakistani government officials criticize the strikes and say the United States, which is deeply unpopular in Pakistan, is acting unilaterally." The CIA-directed program began in earnest two years ago, AP says. "The surge signals the Obama administration's reliance on the tactic despite official protest from Islamabad."

(Note that the U.S. is "deeply unpopular" in Pakistan. Imagine its unpopularity across the Moslem world, Asia, and even much of Europe. As one Middle East businessman cracked after being wrongly tossed into an American jail, "I've bought my last Cadillac.")

By pouring in hundreds of thousands of troops to go after a few hundred al Qaeda militants, the U.S. is spreading the war to wider and wider areas, and by using aerial assassination tactics, it is turning civilian populations into America haters.

These tactics raise the question of whether the U.S. will launch air strikes anywhere it believes al Qaeda forces are. Senator Carl Levin, Armed Services Committee chairman, January 13th asked whether the war will widen to include Yemen, known to have al Qaeda forces there. Will Yemen become the fourth country in which the U.S. is fighting? And, if you credit a report by Seymour Hersh that the U.S. already has "boots on the ground" in Iran, will there soon be all-out fighting in five Middle East countries?

According to liberal columnist Jim Hightower (Dec. 2nd), the government's "rationales for escalation are hardly confidence boosters. The goal, we're told, is to defeat the al-Qaida terrorist network that threatens our national security. Yes, but al-Qaida is not in Afghanistan! Nor is it one network. It has metastasized, with strongholds now in Pakistan, Indonesia, Morocco, Yemen and Somalia, plus even having enclaves in England and France." Exactly, and why Buchanan used the phrase "recruiting poster."

Hightower claims, "Obama has been taken over by the military industrial hawks and national security theorists who play war games with other people's lives and money." As this writer noted earlier, the Pentagon's yearly budget now exceeds the annual expenditures of all 50 states for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308-million Americans. What do you call that if not a warfare state?

Whoever is calling the shots, the cost to Americans and to the people of the Middle East is sobering. As Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and financial analyst Linda Bilmes wrote in "The Three Trillion Dollar War"(Norton): "Miserable though Saddam Hussein's regime was, life is actually worse for the Iraqi people now. The country's roads, schools, hospitals, homes and museums have been destroyed and its citizens have less access to electricity and water than before the war." They add, "Apart from America's oil and defense industries, it is hard to find any real winners." Life is also worse for the American people, too, and not just from higher gasoline prices.

Millions of Americans have been sliding into poverty since 2001, losing their homes and jobs, and are unable to afford to educate their children. Stiglitz writes the true cost of the Iraq conflict is $3 trillion and points out for one-third that sum USA could have built, for example, eight million new housing units (and created an immense number of new jobs in the process) or educated 43 million college students---giving a terrific boost to the economy.

But instead of seeking diplomatic solutions, President Obama is continuing the blind wars of aggression launched by his predecessor. Terrorist missile strikes kill just like IEDs. Those who wage war are terrorists, period. When will Americans catch on? #

(Sherwood Ross has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and as a columnist for wire services. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

Iraq Invasion in 2003 Was Illegitimate: Dutch Probe

2010-01-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/print/51511

January 12, 2010 by Agence France Presse
by Agence France Presse

THE HAGUE - The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq lacked legitimacy under international law, an independent commission probing Dutch political support for the still controversial action said Tuesday.

"There was insufficient legitimacy" for the invasion for which the Netherlands gave political but no military backing, commission chairman Willibrord Davids told journalists in The Hague.

The commission's report said the wording of UN resolution 1441 "cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the Dutch government did) as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's resolutions."

The resolution, passed in 2002, had offered Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations".

The Dutch commission, which started its work in March last year, was set up by the government following pressure from opposition politicians and the public for a probe of claims that crucial data had been withheld from Dutch decision-makers who opted to support the US-led action.

The Netherlands had sent about 1,100 troops to Iraq in July 2003 to take part in a post-invasion, UN-mandated Iraqi stabilisation force. They left Iraq in 2005.

The probe found that Dutch policy on the issue had been defined by the foreign ministry under then minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who later became NATO secretary-general.

"The Prime Minister (Jan Peter Balkenende, still premier today) took little or no lead in debates on the Iraq question; he left the matter of Iraq entirely to the minister of foreign affairs," the report said.

The commission also found that Dutch intelligence services did not have "any significant amount of independently sourced information" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destructions -- the main justification used by the United States and Britain for the war. None were ever found.

Balkenende has repeatedly stated that Dutch backing for the invasion was based on then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's refusal to respect UN Security Council resolutions.

The commission report said the Dutch government did not disclose to parliament the full content of a 2002 US request for support.

But there was "no evidence", it added, to support rumours that the Netherlands had made a clandestine military contribution to the invasion.

Last month, a former UN weapons inspector said former US president George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair shared a conviction that Hussein was a threat, blinding them to the lack of evidence justifying war and causing them to mislead the public.

An official inquiry has started in Britain, with Blair set to testify in the coming weeks on the intelligence used to make a case for war.

Controlling Yemen Is Just Part of Obama's Power Game with China

2010-01-15T15:02:00.000-08:00

By M.K. Bhadrakumar, Asia Times
Posted on January 11, 2010, Printed on January 15, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145072/

A year ago, Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh made the startling revelation that his country's security forces apprehended a group of Islamists linked to the Israeli intelligence forces. "A terrorist cell was apprehended and will be referred to the courts for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," he promised.

Saleh added, "You will hear about the trial proceedings." Nothing was ever heard and the trail went cold. Welcome to the magical land of Yemen, where in the womb of time the Arabian Nights were played out.

Combine Yemen with the mystique of Islam, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Israeli intelligence and you get a heady mix. The head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, dropped in at the capital, Sana'a, on Saturday and vowed to Saleh increased American aid to fight al-Qaeda. United States President Barack Obama promptly echoed Petraeus' promise, assuring that the US would step up intelligence-sharing and training of Yemeni forces and perhaps carry out joint attacks against militants in the region.

Another Afghanistan?
Many accounts say that Obama, who is widely regarded as a gifted and intelligent politician, is blundering into a catastrophic mistake by starting another war that could turn out to be as bloody and chaotic and unwinnable as Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, on the face of it, Obama does seem erratic. The parallels with Afghanistan are striking. There has been an attempt to destroy a US plane by a Nigerian student who says he received training in Yemen. And America wants to go to war.

Yemen, too, is a land of wonderfully beautiful rugged mountains that could be a guerilla paradise. Yemenis are a hospitable lot, like Afghan tribesmen, but as Irish journalist Patrick Cockurn recollects, while they are generous to passing strangers, they "deem the laws of hospitality to lapse when the stranger leaves their tribal territory, at which time he becomes 'a good back to shoot at'." Surely, there is romance in the air - almost like in the Hindu Kush. Fiercely nationalistic, almost every Yemeni has a gun. Yemen is also, like Afghanistan, a land of conflicting authorities, and with foreign intervention, a little civil war is waiting to flare up.

Is Obama so incredibly forgetful of his own December 1 speech outlining his Afghan strategy that he violated his own canons? Certainly not. Obama is a smart man. The intervention in Yemen will go down as one of the smartest moves that he ever made for perpetuating the US's global hegemony. It is America's answer to China's surge.

A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is "marking territory" - like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.

The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn't end with Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that, the US establishes its military presence in an entire unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian Ocean's western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The US has now foreclosed China's options. The only country with a coastline that is available for China to set up a naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries have a Western military presence.

The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he doesn't receive any body bags of American servicemen serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special forces and "focus on providing intelligence and training to help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants", according to the US military. Obama's main core objective will be to establish an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many purposes.

A new great game begins
First, the US move has to be viewed against the historic backdrop of the Shi'ite awakening in the region. The Shi'ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi'ite uprisings have been a recurring theme in Yemen's history. There has been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of Shi'ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.

More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate Sunni Arab states - and Israel - is that the Believing Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in Lebanon in all respects - politically, economically, socially and culturally.

Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The Yemeni Shi'ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which is a key American base, is predominantly Shi'ite. Even more sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of Shi'ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia's highly restive Shi'ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country's fabulous oil wealth.

Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of political transition as a new generation is set to take over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and fault lines within the royal family are likely to get exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of institutionalized Shi'ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by the Wahhabi establishment, Shi'ite empowerment is a veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against the north Yemeni Shi'ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia testifies.

The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies - as he did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But democratization in the Yemeni context - ironically, in the Arab context - would involve Shi'ite empowerment. After the searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil rich-region in which it has profound interests.

Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn't want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only "democratic" system operating in that entire region.

Iran's shadow over the Yemeni Shi'ite consciousness worries the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he isn't finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be believed, there could be times when the vague recollections of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the White House corridors.

Israel moves in
But Obama is first and foremost a realist. Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty considerations for Obama.

The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen - just as it did in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.

Islamism doesn't deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn't have been far off the mark when he alleged last year that Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.

Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf region. The overarching US military presence helps Islamism doesn't deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn't have been far off the mark when he alleged last year that Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.

Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel (and Britain). But the "pro-West" Arab states with their rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute spectators on the sidelines.

Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli security presence in the region as a safer bet than the spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi'ite empowerment emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn't done that already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.

It's all about China
Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait will put the US in an unassailable position in the "great game" of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China's economy. By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an extravagant indulgence in fantasy.

In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the primary intent of eroding China's influence with the military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to open a new transportation route towards the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting traditional Western economic dominance.

China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US, on the contrary, is determined that China remains vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and Malaysia.

An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy with China's efforts to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan. Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose around the neck of the Pakistani elites - civilian and military - and forcing them to make a strategic choice between the US and China. This will put those elites in an unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they are inherently "pro-Western" (even when they are "anti-American") and if the Chinese connection is important for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances perceived Indian hegemony.

The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will have to learn to live?

US-India-Israel axis
On the other hand, the Indian elites are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama's political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the broad contours of the US's global strategy - of which containment of China is a core template.

The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers as well as successive administrations. And all this is happening at a time when the India-Israel security relationship is gaining greater momentum.

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude toward India's longstanding quest for "dual-use" technology from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military cooperation is about to open between the two countries, which will make India a serious challenger to China's growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business for American companies.

Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on. It will have significance for the security of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.

All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be "change", has careened away and increasingly defaults to the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the "revisionism" in his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia and towards China and Russia.

Arguably, this sort of "return of the native" by Obama was inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama's presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a train cannot be "steered", the driver can at best set its speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.

Besides, history has no instances of a declining world power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

666 to 1: The U.S. Military, al-Qaeda, and a War of Futility

2010-01-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175191/tomgram%3A_turse_and_engelhardt%2C_shooting_gnats_with_a_machine_gun/

Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
Thu, 14 Jan 2010

In his book on World War II in the Pacific, War Without Mercy, John Dower tells an extraordinary tale about the changing American image of the Japanese fighting man. In the period before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, it was well accepted in military and political circles that the Japanese were inferior fighters on the land, in the air, and at sea -- "little men," in the phrase of the moment. It was a commonplace of "expert" opinion, for instance, that the Japanese had supposedly congenital nearsightedness and certain inner-ear defects, while lacking individualism, making it hard to show initiative. In battle, the result was poor pilots in Japanese-made (and so inferior) planes, who could not fly effectively at night or launch successful attacks.

In the wake of their precision assault on Pearl Harbor, their wiping out of U.S. air power in the Philippines in the first moments of the war, and a sweeping set of other victories, the Japanese suddenly went from "little men" to supermen in the American imagination (without ever passing through a human phase). They became "invincible" -- natural-born jungle- and night-fighters, as well as "utterly ruthless, utterly cruel and utterly blind to any of the values which make up our civilization."

Sound familiar? It should. Following September 11, 2001, news headlines screamed "A NEW DAY OF INFAMY," and the attacks were instantly labeled "the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century." Soon enough, al-Qaeda, like the Japanese in 1941, went from a distant threat -- the Bush administration, on coming into office, paid next to no attention to al-Qaeda's possible plans -- to a team of arch-villains with little short of superpowers. After all, they had already destroyed some of the mightiest buildings on the planet, were known to be on the verge of seizing weapons of mass destruction, and, if nothing was done, might soon enough turn the Muslim world into their "caliphate."

Al-Qaeda was suddenly an organization against which you wouldn't launch anything less than the full strength of the armed forces of the world's "sole superpower." To a surprising extent, they are still dealt with this way. You can feel it, for instance, in the recent 24/7 panic over the thoroughly inept underwear bomber and the sudden threat of a few hundred self-proclaimed al-Qaeda members in Yemen. You can feel it in the ramping up of the Af-Pak War. You can hear it in the "debate" over moving al-Qaeda detainees from Guantanamo to U.S. maximum security prisons. The way some politicians talk, you might think those detainees were all Lex Luthors and Magnetos, super-villains incapable of being held by any prison, just like the almost magically impossible-to-find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in the wild borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Because most Americans have never dealt with or thought of al-Qaeda as a group made up of actual human beings or accepted that, for every televisually striking success, they have an operation (or several) that go bust, the U.S. can't begin to imagine what it's actually up against. The current president, like the last one, claims that we are "at war." If so, it's a war of one, since al-Qaeda and the U.S. military are essentially not in the same war-fighting universe, which helps explain why repeatedly knocking off significant punortions of al-Qaeda's leadership (even if never finding bin Laden and Zawahiri) doesn't seem to end the threat.

But let's stop here and try, for a moment, to imagine these two enemies side by side in the same universe of war. What, in that case, would the line-up of forces look like?

Assessing al-Qaeda's "Troops"

According to U.S. intelligence estimates, there are currently about 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, as well as "several hundred" in Pakistan and, so the latest reports tell us, a similar number in Yemen. Members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania) and those based in Somalia undoubtedly fall into the same category at several hundred each. According to authorities from the Iraq Study Group to the U.S. State Department, even at the height of the insurgency and civil war in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia never had more than 1,300-4,000 active fighters. Today, it is believed to consist only of "small, roving cells."

Combined, these groups -- think of them as al-Qaeda's shock troops -- add up to perhaps 2,100 fighters, about one-fifth the number of U.S. troops now based in Italy. As the 9/11 attacks, the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and the failure to disrupt the underwear-bomber's plot indicate, U.S. intelligence has long been flying blind, but even if al-Qaeda turned out to have sleeper cells with 300 additional committed members in every nation on Earth, its clandestine operatives would only moderately exceed the number of U.S. forces now based in Germany.

Al-Qaeda does, of course, have some "training camps" in the backlands of countries like Yemen, and it has civilian supporters, financiers, and other scattered allies. Over the years, and sometimes with good reason, Washington has lumped Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan with al-Qaeda and counted various militant groups, including Somalia's al-Shabab Islamic rebels, as al-Qaeda affiliates. Add such fighters in and you would swell these numbers by many thousands.

Additionally, al-Qaeda has an arsenal of weaponry. Members have access to rocket-propelled grenades, small arms of various sorts, the materials for making deadly roadside bombs, car bombs, and of course underwear bombs.

Assessing America's Troops

U.S. efforts to crush al-Qaeda have certainly not failed for lack of resources. The U.S. military has spent about one trillion dollars on its post-9/11 wars so far. It has an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, and a Marine Corps which, like the Navy, has its very own air force. It possesses trillions of dollars in weapons, materiel, and other assets. It can mobilize spy satellites, advanced fighter planes and bombers, high-tech drones and helicopters, fleets of trucks, tanks, and other armored vehicles. It has advanced missiles and smart bombs, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and state-of-the-art ships in all shapes and sizes.

It also has incredibly well-trained special operations forces -- almost 56,000 elite troops, including Army Rangers and Special Forces, Navy SEALs and Special Boat Teams, Air Force Special Tactics Teams, and Marine Corps Special Operations Battalions, armed with incredibly advanced weaponry. It has military academies that churn out highly-educated officers and specialized training camps, schools, and universities. It has more than half-a-million buildings and structures on more than 800 bases sitting on millions of acres of prime real estate scattered around the world, including in or near lands where various branches of al-Qaeda operate.

In addition, the U.S. military has manpower -- lots of it. All told, the United States has approximately 1.4 million active duty men and women under arms and another 1.3 million reserve personnel. It employs more than 700,000 civilians in support roles -- from stocking shelves and serving food at stateside bases to assisting in intelligence analysis in war zones -- and utilizes untold tens of thousands of private security hired-guns and various other kinds of private contractors all around the globe. These numbers would be further swelled by intelligence agents who aid military efforts, including 100,000 members of the civilian intelligence community. And then there are the allies the U.S. can draw on ranging, in Afghanistan alone, from the Afghan army and police to tens of thousands of NATO and other foreign allied troops from more than 40 countries.

Comparing the Sides: The Mark of the Beast or the Mark of Futility?

Even excluding from the U.S. side of the equation all those U.S. reserves, Defense Department civilians, intelligence operatives and analysts, private contractors and allies of various sorts, if you compare the two enemies in the current "war," you still end up with either the Mark of the Beast or a marker for futility.

The active duty U.S. military alone enjoys a 666:1 advantage over the estimated number of al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Somalia. Adding in the reserves, the ratio jumps to an embarrassingly-high 1,286:1. Even if you were to factor in those hordes of nonexistent al-Qaeda sleeper agents, 300 each for 195 countries from Australia to Vatican City, the U.S. military would still enjoy a 23:1 advantage (or 45:1 if you included the reserves, now regularly sent into war zones on multiple tours of duty).

In sum, after the better part of a decade of conflict, the United States has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on bullets and bombs, soldiers and drones. It has waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have yet to end, launched strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, dispatched Special Ops troops to those nations and others, like the Philippines, and built or expanded hundreds of new bases all over the world. Yet Osama bin Laden remains at large and al-Qaeda continues to target and kill Americans.

Open-Source al-Qaeda

Founded in 1988, bin Laden's al-Qaeda formally issued a "declaration of war" on the United States in 1996, primarily over the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. While Washington has been hunting bin Laden and al-Qaeda since the mid-1990s, a post-9/11 Congressional resolution authorized the president to use force against that group and the Taliban. Ever since, the Pentagon has been waging one of the most ineffective campaigns of modern times in an effort to destroy it.

During these years, President George W. Bush declared himself a "war president" heading a country "at war" and living in "wartime." In a milder way, President Obama has repeatedly declared the U.S. to be "at war" and, as in his surge speech at West Point in December, has identified the main enemy in that war as al-Qaeda. In the process, the U.S. military has unleashed tremendous destructive power on parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia causing the deaths of al-Qaeda fighters, non-Qaeda militants, and innocent civilians. Thousands of its own troops have died and tens of thousands have been wounded in the process, not to mention the losses to allied forces.

In these years, new al-Qaeda "affiliates" like al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia have nonetheless sprung to life regularly and, as in Yemen, have even been officially crushed, only to be reborn. These groups have often made up their own "al-Qaeda" membership requirements, and focused on their own chosen targets. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda wannabes and look-alikes have proliferated and the organization (or those sympathetic to it or praising it) has reportedly spurred further attacks in the U.S. and encouraged men from New York to California, Nigeria to Jordan, to join the movement, and then work, fight, kill, and die for it, sometimes in attacks on Americans.

Al-Qaeda has no tanks, Humvees, nuclear submarines, or aircraft carriers, no fleets of attack helicopters or fighter jets. Al-Qaeda has never launched a spy satellite and isn't developing advanced drone technology (although it may be hacking into U.S. video feeds). Al-Qaeda specializes in low-budget operations ranging from the incredibly deadly to the incredibly ineffectual -- from murderous car bombs and airplanes-used-as-missiles to faulty shoe- and underwear-explosives.

Of course, comparisons of the strengths of the U.S. military and al-Qaeda "at war" would be absurd, if it weren't for the fact that the United States actually went to war against such a group. It was a decision about as effective as firing a machine gun at a swarm of gnats. Some may die, but the process is visibly self-defeating.

In the present War on Terror, called by whatever name (or, as at present, by no name at all), the two "sides" might as well be in different worlds. After all, al-Qaeda today isn't even an organization in the normal sense of the term, no less a fighting bureaucracy. It is a loose collection of ideas and a looser collection of individuals waging open-source warfare.

You don't sign up for al-Qaeda the way you would for the U.S. Army. If you and two friends are sitting around a table in some country and you're angry, alienated, and dissatisfied with the state of the world, you can simply claim to adhere to the basic ideas of Osama bin Laden and declare yourself al-Qaeda in [fill in the blank]. Who then gets into your organization and how you link up, if at all, with other "al-Qaedas" is up to you.

That's why groups like al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia are always referred to in the press as "homegrown." What you have, then, in this post-War-on-Terror war is a massive global military force aided and abetted by allied troops, "native" forces, and all sorts of corporate contractors facing off against something fluid and "homegrown," fierce but strangely undefined, constantly morphing and shape-shifting. Every one of its "members" could be destroyed without the "enemy" being destroyed, because the enemy is a set of ideas, however extreme or strange to most Americans.

The Pentagon, with its giant bureaucracy and its miles of offices and corridors, is the headquarters of the U.S. war effort, but there is no central al-Qaeda headquarters, not in Afghanistan or Pakistan -- not anywhere. There is probably no longer even an "al-Qaeda central." Osama bin Laden has vanished or, for all we know, may be dead. Think of it, at best, as an open-source organization that is remarkably capable of replicating by a process of self-franchising.

Isn't it time, then, to stop imagining al-Qaeda as a complex organization of terrorist supermen capable of committing super-deeds, or as an organization that bears any resemblance to a traditional enemy military force? With al-Qaeda, the path of war has undoubtedly been the road to perdition -- as we should have discovered by now, more than one trillion dollars later.

When this "war" began, George W. Bush and his followers, like Osama bin Laden and his followers, were eager to proclaim future "victory" and to say with bravado to the other side: "Bring 'em on!" The word "victory" has long since fled Washington's lips, along with boasts that the U.S. is a new Rome.

So far, no matter how many of its operatives may be dead, "victory" remains on the lips of those calling themselves al-Qaeda-in-anywhere. After all, they did get Washington to "bring 'em on" and the results have been disastrous and draining for the United States. The U.S. military has killed many al-Qaeda operatives, but it cannot annihilate its appeal by "surging" in Afghanistan and making war, with all the civilian destruction involved, in Muslim lands.

It's time to put al-Qaeda back in perspective -- a human perspective, which would include its stunning successes, its dismal failures, and its monumental goof-ups, as well as its unrealizable dreams. (No, Virginia, there will never be an al-Qaeda caliphate in or across the Greater Middle East.) The fact is: al-Qaeda is not an apocalyptic threat. Its partisans can cause damage, but only Americans can bring down this country.

Yemen: Deja Vu All Over Again

2010-01-15T14:06:00.001-08:00

http://www.fpif.org/articles/yemen_dj_vu_all_over_again

January 14, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)
by Phyllis Bennis

Barack Obama is not the first US president to find Yemen a challenge. And the current $70 million package of military and security assistance is not the first $70 million US aid program to Yemen.

Two decades ago, in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush was preparing for his looming invasion of Iraq - what would become Operation Desert Storm. Like his son in 2002, Bush was eager to force a unanimous vote in the United Nations Security Council endorsing his war. But unlike George Junior who abandoned the UN when the Council stood defiant against his illegal war, the first President Bush was willing to pay - in expensive bribes and political concessions - to win what the great Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad called "a multilateral fig-leaf for a unilateral war."

For poor and weak countries on the Council, the United States offered new economic assistance, access to cheap Saudi oil, and crucially, military aid packages to governments long denied such support because of civil wars and/or widespread corruption and repression in their countries. So the governments of Colombia, Ethiopia, and Zaire all took their kickbacks and voted yes. For China, which had threatened to veto the war-backing resolution, the Bush administration offered diplomatic rehabilitation and the resumption of long-term development aid, both of which had been cut in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre the year before. China abstained.

Two countries were left. One was Cuba, which refused on principle to endorse the US-led invasion, although Cuba had joined in the Council's unanimous condemnation of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as illegal. The other "no" vote came from Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. Yemen was serving as a Security Council member largely in recognition of its reunification after 10 years of a brutal civil war. With the Arab world divided down the middle by the threat of a U.S. attack and only one Arab country on the Council, there was no way Yemen could endorse an invasion of its region.

Yemen voted no. And no sooner had the Yemeni ambassador, Abdullah al-Ashtal, put down his hand, then a U.S. diplomat moved to his side, telling him "that will be the most expensive ‘no' vote you ever cast." The remark was picked up on an open UN microphone and immediately broadcast throughout UN headquarters and soon throughout the world. Journalists and analysts excoriated the U.S. diplomat for not knowing the mike was on and being caught in such an embarrassing situation. But I always thought he knew exactly what he was doing - because the message was not really aimed at Yemen. No one in Washington knew or cared at that time about what Yemen or Yemenis did or thought. The message aimed much broader, at every country in the UN that might consider defying U.S. power. The message was clear: if you cross us on an issue important to us, you will pay a price.

The people of Yemen paid a huge price. Three days later Washington made good on its threat and cut its entire aid budget to Yemen, an already measly $70 million. And today, 20 years later, diplomats and staff around UN headquarters still refer uneasily to the "Yemen Precedent."

This week the Obama administration announced plans to send $70 million in aid to Yemen. But it won't be for medicine, building homes, or job training. And the accompanying U.S. experts won't be hydrologists or doctors or midwife instructors. The $70 million will be for "counter-terrorism" and "security" purposes - and the U.S. experts will be military trainers and various kinds of Special Forces.

But a strengthened Yemeni military will not reverse Yemen's legacy of anti-Americanism and the support for anti-U.S. violence that sometimes accompanies it.

What if - just imagine - the United States had not used Yemen to broadcast the price of defiance to other wavering governments? What if the United States had not reprimanded the Yemeni government by punishing the entire Yemeni population and then largely ignoring the impoverished people for most of two decades? What if, instead of cutting its entire aid budget, the United States had flooded Yemen and its people with agricultural assistance, training for midwives and doctors, access to the latest hydrology technology to recover scarce water, and lots and lots of money for Yemenis themselves to use to build up their own country's social and physical infrastructure as they chose, not as US "experts" imposed?

Today, twenty years later, things might just be a whole lot different..

U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean

2010-01-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16854

By Rick Rozoff
Global Research, January 8, 2010
Stop NATO

In parallel with the escalation of the war in South Asia - counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and drone missile attacks in Pakistan - the United States and its NATO allies have laid the groundwork for increased naval, air and ground operations in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden.

During the past month the U.S. has carried out deadly military strikes in Yemen: Bombing raids in the north and cruise missile attacks in the south of the nation. Washington has been accused of killing scores of civilians in the attacks in both parts of the country, executed before the December 25 Northwest Airlines incident that has been used to justify the earlier U.S. actions ex post facto. And, ominously, that has been exploited to pound a steady drumbeat of demands for expanded and even more direct military intervention.

The Pentagon's publicly disclosed military and security program for Yemen grew from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million last year. "That figure does not include covert, classified assistance that the United States has provided." [1]

In addition, "Under a new classified cooperation agreement, the U.S. would be able to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in the country, but would remain publicly silent on its role in the airstrikes." [2]

On January 1 General David Petraeus, the chief of the Pentagon's Central Command, in charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as operations in Yemen and Pakistan, was in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and said of deepening military involvement in Yemen, "We have, it's well known, about $70 million in security assistance last year. That will more than double this coming year." [3]

The following day Petraeus was in the capital of Yemen where he met with the country's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to discuss "continued U.S. support in rooting out the terrorist cells." [4]

White House counterterrorism adviser (Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism) John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama on Petraeus' visit to Washington's new war theater and afterward stated "We have made Yemen a priority over the course of this year, and this is the latest in that effort." [5]

The alleged terrorist cells in question are identified by U.S. and other Western governments as being affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). However, on January 4 CNN reported that "A senior U.S. official cited a rebellion by Huti [Houthi] tribes in the north, and secessionist activity in the southern tribal areas" as of concern to Washington. [6]

The Houthis' confessional background is Shi'a and not Sunni Islam and the opposition forces in the south are led by the Yemeni Socialist Party, so attempts to link either with al-Qaeda are inaccurate, self-serving and dishonest.

In both the north and south the United States, its NATO allies - Britain and France closed their embassies in Yemen earlier this week in unison with the U.S. - and Saudi Arabia are working in tandem to support the Saleh government in what over the past month has become a state of warfare against opposition forces in the country. Saudi Arabia has launched regular bombing raids and infantry and armored attacks in the north of the country and, according to Houthi rebel sources, been aided by U.S. warplanes in deadly attacks on villages. Houthi spokesmen have accused Riyadh of firing over a thousand missiles inside Yemen, and in late December the Saudi Defense Ministry acknowledged that its military casualties over the preceding month included 73 dead, 26 missing and 470 wounded. In short, a cross-border war on the Arabian peninsula.

The West, though, has even larger plans for Yemen, ones which include integrating military operations from Northeast Africa to the Chinese border. Typical of recent statements by U.S. officials and their Western allies, last weekend British Prime Minister Gordon Brown disingenuously claimed that "The weakness of al Qaeda in Pakistan has forced them out of Pakistan and into Yemen and Somalia." [7]

Brown told the BBC on January 3 "Yemen has been recognized, like Somalia, to be one of the areas we have got to not only keep an eye on, but we've got to do more. So it's strengthening counter-terrorism cooperation, it's working harder on intelligence efforts." [8] It is up to Mr. Brown to explain why, if al-Qaeda has been "forced out" of Pakistan, he is adding soldiers to the U.S. and NATO surge that will soon bring combined Western troop numbers to over 150,000 in Afghanistan while intensifying deadly attacks inside Pakistan itself.

The British prime minister has also called for an international meeting on Yemen for later this month and announced that "The UK and the US have agreed to fund a counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen...." [9]

In Western news reports, or rather rumor peddling, Yemeni rebels are accused of supplying weapons to Somali opposite numbers and the second are reported to have offered fighters to the former.

In short the officially discarded but in fact revived and expanded "global war on terrorism" is now to be fought in a single theater of war that extends from the Red Sea to Pakistan. A joint endeavor by the Pentagon's Central and Africa Commands and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to build upon the consolidation of almost the entire European continent under NATO and Pentagon control and the ceding of the African continent to the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). (Except for Egypt, an individual Pentagon asset and NATO Mediterranean Dialogue partner.)

In fact the Central Command was inaugurated by the Ronald Reagan administration in 1983 on the foundations of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) that his predecessor Jimmy Carter activated three years before. [10] The latter developed out of the Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF) launched directly to counter developments in Afghanistan and Somalia in 1979 (an integral component of the Carter Doctrine) and was deliberately designed to establish military control of the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Sea and the Western Indian Ocean.

Administrations may depart - George W. Bush and Tony Blair have left public office - and names may change - the global war on terror has been rechristened overseas contingency operations - but Washington's global geopolitical ambitions, limitless since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1991, have only grown more universal and the military means employed for their realization more aggressive.

The White House and its European allies have of late resuscitated and inflated the al-Qaeda specter to a degree not witnessed since the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001.

Under the guise of protecting the American homeland from this shadowy and ubiquitous entity, the Pentagon is involved in military operations from West Africa to East Asia against among other decidedly non-Osama bin Laden-linked forces left-wing groups in Colombia, the Philippines and Yemen; Shi'a militias in Lebanon and Yemen; ethnic rebels in Mali and Niger; a Christian extremist rebellion in Uganda.

Like the infamous 19th century grave robbers William Burke and William Hare, paid so well to provide cadavers to the Edinburgh Medical College that, running out of corpses to sell, created them, al-Qaeda is a dependable villain to be evoked as needed.

Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia can be conflated with pirates in the Gulf of Aden to provide the pretext for a permanent NATO and allied European Union naval presence in a nexus that includes the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea leading into the Persian Gulf and most of the eastern coast of Africa.

The American component of the Greater Afghan War is Operation Enduring Freedom, which takes in Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Djibouti, which hosts some 2,500 U.S. military personnel in the Pentagon's first permanent base in Africa, is also the headquarters of the U.S.'s Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), set up in 2001 several months before Operation Enduring Freedom and overlapping with it in many respects. The CJTF-HOA, based in the French military base of Camp Lemonier, was transferred from the Pentagon's Central Command to its Africa Command on October 1, 2008 when AFRICOM was formally activated.

Its area of responsibility includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. Its areas of interest are Comoros, Mauritius, and Madagascar. The last three are, like Seychelles, island nations in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. expanded Camp Lemonier to five times its original size in 2006 and troops from all branches of the U.S. armed services "use the base when not working 'downrange' in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen." [11]

In announcing recently that "Yemen has received military equipment from the United States to aid the government's fight against the al-Qaeda network in the south of the country," a German news agency added this background information: "Yemen, in the 1990s, welcomed back Arab fighters who left Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union." [12]

As with Afghanistan itself and other locations where the American military is fighting insurgent groups - the Philippines, Somalia and Yemen - the Pentagon is frequently confronting fighters funded, armed and trained by its own government in Pakistan from 1978-1992 under Operation Cyclone, the largest-ever CIA covert undertaking.

A 2008 edition of U.S. News & World Report, a magazine that can hardly be accused of being unfriendly to the White House and the Pentagon, wrote of the war in Afghanistan that "two of the most dangerous players are violent Afghan Islamists named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, according to U.S. officials." [13]

An assessment repeated in the August 30, 2009 Commander's Initial Assessment of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The report, the basis for the White House increasing troop strength in the war theater to over 100,000, stated that "The major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)."

The U.S. News & World Report feature provided this background information:

"[T]hese two warlords — currently at the top of America's list of most wanted men in Afghanistan — were once among America's most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army....Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985."

"U.S. officials had an even higher opinion of Haqqani, who was considered the most effective rebel warlord....Haqqani was also one of the leading advocates of the so-called Arab Afghans, deftly organizing Arab volunteer fighters who came to wage jihad against the Soviet Union and helping to protect future al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden." [14]

In the name of combating the very same bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the U.S. and its NATO allies are now, in addition to increasing combined military forces waging a war in Afghanistan now in its ninth year to over 150,000, more than the Soviet Union ever deployed to that nation:

Intensifying deadly drone missile, helicopter gunship and commando attacks inside neighboring Pakistan. A recent government report in that nation tabulated that 708 people had been killed last year in CIA drone attacks alone. Only five of those were identified as al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects. [14] On January 6 at least thirteen more were killed in a missile attack in the Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan.

Last month an American military newspaper reported that "A 1,000-strong Marine combat task force capable of rapidly deploying to hot spots could soon be at the disposal of the new U.S. Africa Command," which announcement came "just a few months after U.S. Special Forces staged a daring daylight raid deep inside southern Somalia" and after another Marine force "had already deployed in support of training missions in Uganda and Mali." [15]

In late October of last year NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in the United Arab Emirates [UAE] to rally NATO's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partners for a future confrontation with Iran. Addressing a conference on NATO-UAE Relations and Future Prospects of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, he expanded his mission to recruit the Persian Gulf monarchies for the ever-expanding Greater Afghan War. "We have a shared interest in helping countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to stand on their feet again, fostering stability in the Middle East...and preventing countries like Somalia and Sudan from slipping deeper into chaos." [16]

Two months earlier it was reported that "About 75 U.S. military personnel and civilians will be headed to the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to set up...Reaper operations, which could start in October or November. U.S. Africa Command is calling the Navy-led mission Ocean Look.

"The U.S. will base the Reapers - to be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance - at Seychelles' Mahe regional airport...." [17] The Reaper is the Pentagon's newest "hunter-killer" unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) which is equipped with fifteen times the firepower and travels at three times the speed of its Predator forerunner, used to devastating effect in Pakistan and Somalia. Last October Somali rebels claimed to have shot down an American drone and local "residents routinely report suspected US drones flying over [their city]. The drones are believed to be launched from warships in the Indian Ocean." [18]

The permanent stationing of U.S. military forces in Seychelles is part of a pattern in recent years of basing American troops to man missile batteries, interceptor missile radar sites, air bases, counterinsurgency forward bases and other installations in countries where their presence would have been inconceivable even a few years ago: Afghanistan, Colombia, Bulgaria, Djibouti, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Poland and Romania. A report of January 7 claims that the U.S. plans to establish an air base in Yemen in the Socotra archipelago in the Indian Ocean. [19]

Later it was revealed that "In addition to the Reaper UAVs, the U.S. military is also considering basing Navy P-3 Orion patrol aircraft in the Seychelles for a limited time. Like the Reaper, the Orion can survey a large region...." [20]

A Middle Eastern news source reported on this development as follows:

"The United States is taking its military venture in Africa to new levels amid suspicions that Washington could be advancing yet another hidden agenda.

"American operatives are expected to fly pilot-less surveillance aircraft over the Seychellois [Seychelles] territory from US ships off its coast, in what Washington claims are [deployments] meant to spy on Somali pirates....[S]imilar pretexts were used to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan, the missile attacks in Pakistan, and its waning military operations in Iraq....Washington has also started to equip Mali with USD 4.5 million worth of military vehicles and communications equipment, in what is reported to be an increasing US involvement in Africa." [21]

It did not take long for the U.S. to put the Reapers into operation. In late October Associated Press reported "U.S. military surveillance drones are patrolling off Somalia's coast for the first time....U.S. military officials say unmanned drones called Reapers, stationed in the island nation of Seychelles, are patrolling the Indian Ocean. [22]

"The developments come as the White House seeks grounds to establish a major military presence in Africa.

"The US military says it has deployed its drones ['the size of a jet fighter'], capable of carrying missiles to patrol waters off Somalia...." [23]

Washington's attempt to establish an Afghanistan-Pakistan-Somalia-Yemen connection is intimately connected with its plans for Africa as a whole. [24]

On January 4 a U.S. military website published this update:

"U.S. Africa Command has bolstered its anti-piracy forces with the recent addition of maritime patrol aircraft and more personnel in the Seychelles islands.

"The Navy last month deployed three P-3 Orion aircraft from the Maine-based VP-26 Tridents, along with 112 sailors, to the Seychelles to patrol the waters off East Africa....Patrol Squadron 26's insignia, a skull over a compass and two bombs or torpedoes that form an X, resembles the Jolly Roger flag, which symbolizes piracy." [25]

What sort of pirates the Pentagon is using as the pretext for its military buildup in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa as a whole was demonstrated last September when "Foreign troops in helicopters strafed a car...in a Somali town...killing two men and capturing two others who were wounded, witnesses said. U.S. military officials said American forces were involved in the raid."

"Two U.S. military officials said forces from the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command were involved." [26] The Joint Special Operations Command was headed up by Stanley McChrystal from 2003 to 2008. He has moved on from overseeing counterinsurgency operations in Iraq during those years to assuming control over all U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.

A witness also reported that "the helicopters took off from a warship flying a French flag" [27] and a rebel source said "We are getting information that French army gunships attacked a car, destroying it completely and taking some of the passengers." [28]

French military forces remain in the former colony of Djibouti where they train for operations not only in Afghanistan but in several former African possessions. Troops, warplanes and armored vehicles from NATO nations - under the flags of NATO itself, the European Union, France and the United States - have intervened in civil and cross-border conflicts across the entire width of Africa over the past few years: Somalia, Djibouti-Eritrea, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Darfur region of Sudan and the Ivory Coast; from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.

A report from last month provides some indication of the French role on the continent. Radio France Internationale described "French soldiers in Djibouti train[ing] for Afghanistan and keep[ing] an eye on Africa" with the following details:

"Twelve special forces commandos arrived first" and "the army...storm[ed] the beach....The exercise, seen as crucial for battle preparedness in a region infamous for its fractious politics, included all the country's military sectors - sea, land and air.

"As desert tanks zoomed onto the shore Mirage jets criss-crossed the open sky. Meanwhile, land troops were dispatched from the mouths of armoured personnel carriers and helicopters airlifted artillery guns onto the ground.

"'It's a show of force. It shows what France is able to do militarily,' said one army officer.

"In recent years French troops in Djibouti have been involved in a number of...military missions in Africa. They helped reinforce the UN brigade patrolling Cote d'Ivoire and last year provided logistical and tactical help to Djiboutian soldiers warding off an attack from neighbouring Eritrea.

"For the time being, the first theatre of combat these troops will see is Afghanistan, where France is part of the Nato contingent. The mountainous, arid countryside closely resembles Djibouti's own undulating moonscape.

"The troops taking part are a contingent of a 2,500-strong force based in Djibouti." [29]

In addition to intermittent armed clashes between troops from Djibouti and Eritrea, in the past weeks reports have surfaced of deadly fighting within Eritrea and between that nation and neighboring Ethiopia. Djibouti and Ethiopia are the West's client regimes and military proxies in the Horn of Africa and, as is demonstrated above, the integration of the South Asian and Northeast African war fronts is proceeding rapidly.

Starting in the autumn of 2008 NATO began what it calls counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and further into the Gulf of Aden, often in league with comparable deployments by the European Union, with which it shares warships, commanders and "common strategic interests" under the Berlin Plus and other arrangements. [30]

The NATO naval surveillance and interdiction operation in and near the Horn of Africa is an extension of its effective takeover of the entire Mediterranean Sea with Operation Active Endeavor [31] initiated in 2001 under the Alliance's Article 5 mutual military assistance clause and augmented by the blockade of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast by NATO nations' warships under UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) auspices that began after Israel's assault on the country in 2006. The latter's Maritime Task Force (MTF) "has hailed some 27,000 ships and referred nearly 400 suspicious vessels to Lebanese authorities for further inspection.

"Thirteen countries – Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Turkey – have contributed naval units to the MTF." [32]

The NATO and EU deployments in the Gulf of Aden are the first such naval operations in the region in both organizations' history and the EU's first in African coastal waters.

The expansion of military presence into the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea gives NATO nations control of waterways ranging from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz.

As veteran Indian diplomat and analyst M K Bhadrakumar described it in 2008, "By acting with lightning speed and without publicity, NATO surely created a fait accompli.

"NATO's naval deployment in the Indian Ocean region is a historic move and a milestone in the alliance's transformation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the alliance didn't have a presence in the Indian Ocean. Such deployments almost always tend to be open-ended.

"In 2007, a NATO naval force visited Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and Somalia and conducted exercises in the Indian Ocean and then re-entered the Mediterranean via the Red Sea in end-September." [33]

He added: "US officials are on record that Africom and NATO envisage an institutional linkup in the downstream.

"The overall US strategy is to incrementally bring NATO into Africa so that its future role in the Indian Ocean (and Middle East) region as the instrument of US global security agenda becomes optimal." [34]

Last August the chief of AFRICOM, General William Ward, said that Somalia was "a central focus of the U.S. military on the continent."

To indicate the scope of Pentagon plans in not only Somalia but the region, "General William Ward has pledged continued support to Somalia's transitional federal government....He made his remarks during a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, which is a key U.S. ally in the region.

"When asked about U.S. warnings to Eritrea against its alleged support of al-Shabab, the U.S. general condemned any outside support for the Somali rebels." [35]

U.S., British and other Western officials have been straining to establish (the most) tenuous connection between the so-called AfPak war front and the need for direct military intervention in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, as was seen earlier with the British prime minister's risible claim that NATO has been so successful in expelling alleged al-Qaeda elements from Pakistan that they have sought refuge in Somalia and Yemen. Rather than, more logically, in locations like Kashmir, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Similarly, Western governments are sparing no effort to fabricate or exaggerate links between the numerous armed conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Somali rebels are accused of supporting the government of Eritrea in its border conflict with Djibouti; they are also accused of offering fighters for the internal conflict in southern Yemen.

In return, Yemeni rebels are accused of providing arms for Somalia's al-Shabaab fighters and hovering over it all is the implication that Iran is sponsoring Arab Shi'a forces in Yemen's north.

There is a plethora of evidence, however, documenting genuine foreign intervention in the region: U.S. missile, bombing, helicopter and special forces attacks in Somalia and Yemen and coordination with the armies of Djibouti and Ethiopia in conflicts inside Somalia and with Eritrea. Saudi air and land assaults in Yemen with the resultant deaths of hundreds and displacement of thousands of civilians. French commando operations in Somalia and combat training in Djibouti for warfare in the area and beyond.

The true outside forces engaged in military actions are ignored in the West in favor of unsubstantiated contentions that the region is being inflamed by the same adversaries the U.S. and NATO are waging war against on the Indian subcontinent and that the villains in and near the Horn of Africa are, in addition to being the local al-Qaeda franchise, inextricably linked and moreover somehow tied with piracy operations. Such are the tortured logic and far-fetched subterfuges used to prepare Western publics for an escalation of military intervention over 3,000 kilometers across the Indian Ocean from the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater.

NATO warships are bridging the two extremes. Last August the military bloc launched its second naval operation off the coast of Somalia the name of which, Ocean Shield, alone indicates the scope of the Alliance's objectives in the Africa-Asia-Middle East triangle. The mission includes military ships from Britain, Greece, Italy, Turkey and the U.S. and according to NATO "other countries are thinking of coming to reinforce the operation which could evolve at any moment." A NATO spokesman said at the time, "No timeframe has been set for this long-term operation, which will last as long as it's deemed necessary." [36]

The European Union is conducting a complementary mission, Operation Atalanta, "which has six frigates and works with fleets from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S.-led coalition" and "operates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean...from Somali territorial waters east to 60 degrees longitude, which runs south from the eastern tip of Oman and 250 miles east of the Seychelles." [37] Rear Admiral Peter Hudson at the fleet's command center in Britain announced last month that the operation may expand its range even further, taking in most of the western Indian Ocean.

Last September the commander of NATO's Maritime Group 2 in the Gulf of Aden met with officials of Somalia's Puntland autonomous region to plan operations.

In mid-December NATO made a direct link between its South Asian war and its expansion into the Indian Ocean by announcing it was considering dispatching AWACS surveillance aircraft to the second location. "Commanders are seeking to back up a five-ship counterpiracy task force with one of the airborne warning and control system surveillance planes, possibly sharing it with the allied International Security Assistance Force fighting in Afghanistan." [38]

On the first day of this year a Canadian news agency, in a feature titled "Canada to help defend Yemen from al-Qaida reinforcements," revealed that "A NATO spokeswoman said warships patrolling international shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden, which separates Somalia from Yemen, were aware al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-inspired armed group based in Somalia, had announced plans to send fighters to Yemen" and as a result "A Canadian warship involved in NATO-led counter-piracy operations off Somalia's coast now has an additional task...." [39]

Somalia and Yemen lie across from each other on either end of the Gulf of Aden where the Red Sea meets the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean is connected with the Indian Ocean. An arc that effects the conjunction of three of the world's five most important continents. Territory too important for the United States, whose head of state last month proclaimed himself commander-in-chief of the world's sole military superpower, and what for the past decade has declared itself expeditionary and global NATO to leave untouched.

Notes

1) Reuters, January 1, 2010
2) Russian Information Agency Novosti, December 30, 2009
3) Reuters, January 1, 2010
4) CNN, January 4, 2010
5) CNN, January 2, 2010
6) CNN, January 4, 2010
7) Agence France-Presse, January 4, 2010
8) Xinhua News Agency, January 4, 2010
9) Press TV, January 3, 2010
10) Cold War Origins Of The Somalia Crisis And Control Of The
Indian Ocean
Stop NATO, May 3, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/cold-war-origins-of-the-somalia-crisis-and-control-of-the-indian-ocean/
11) Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, April 17, 2009
12) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 1, 2010
13) U.S. News & World Report, July 11, 2008
14) Ibid
15) Stars And Stripes, December 16, 2009
16) Al Arabiya, November 1, 2009
17) Stars and Stripes, August 29, 2009
18) Press TV, October 19, 2009
19) Press TV, January 7, 2010
20) Voice of America News, September 2, 2009
21) Press TV, October 21, 2009
22) Associated Press, October 23, 2009
23) Press TV, October 25, 2009
24) AFRICOM: Pentagon Prepares Direct Military Intervention In Africa
Stop NATO, August 24, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/africom-pentagons-prepares-direct-military-intervention-in-africa
AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World
Stop NATO, October 22, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-of-the-entire-world
25) Stars and Stripes, January 4, 2010
26) Associated Press, September 14, 2009
27) Ibid
28) Agence France-Presse, September 14, 2009
29) Radio France Internationale, December 11, 2009
30) NATO
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49217.htm
31) NATO http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_7932.htm
32) UN News Centre, August 31, 2009
33) Asian Times, October 20, 2008
34) Ibid
35) Voice of America News, August 21, 2009
36) Agence France-Presse, August 17, 2009
37) Bloomberg News, December 11, 2009
38) Bloomberg News, December 21, 2009
39) Canwest News Service, January 1, 2010

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America's Wars: Demons Inventing Demons

2010-01-12T17:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.counterpunch.org/golub03212003.html

Philip S. Golub
CounterPunch.org
Fri, 21 Mar 2003 13:45 EST

There is a coalition of the radical right in the United States, including the odd Democrat, that has long held that patriotic mobilisation is important in holding American society together. When detente broke out in the 1970s, these hawks worried about any reduction in international tension, however slight. Since 11 September 2001 they have had no more worries.

The neo-conservative right has been attempting, with varying success, to establish itself as the dominant ideological force in the United States for more than 25 years, especially in the definition of foreign policy. Long thwarted by democratic process and public resistance to the national security state, it is now on the brink of success, thanks to George Bush's disputed electoral victory in 2000, and to 11 September 2001, which transformed an accidental president into an American Caesar. President Bush has become the neocon vehicle for a policy that is based on unilateralism, permanent mobilisation and "preventive war".

War and militarisation would have been impossible without 11 September, which tipped the institutional balance in favour of the new right. There were other possible responses that would have had a less destabilising effect on the world. One would have been to strengthen multilateral cooperation to contain the stateless trans-national terrorist threat, and seek to reduce tensions and resolve conflicts in areas at risk, notably the Middle East. Another would have been Keynesian-style regional development on Marshall Plan lines. This would have encouraged local forces for democracy, and would undoubtedly have been more effective than war in stimulating the US and global economies.

As we know, neither course was followed. Instead, the Bush administration has allowed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to fester, mobilised massively, and opted for "preventive war" as a means of policing the planet. Apart from such opportunist motives as seizing the strategic chance to redraw the map of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf (1), this choice reflects much more far-reaching imperial ambitions. In the words of Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, "the basic and generally agreed plan is unilateral world domination through absolute superiority, and this has been consistently advocated and worked on by the group of intellectuals close to Dick Cheney and Richard Perle since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s" (2).

This authoritarian project became feasible in the unipolar world after 1991, when the US got a monopoly on the use of force in interstate relations. But it was conceived in the 1970s, when the extremist coalition now in control was first formed. The aim is to unite the nation and secure US strategic supremacy worldwide. The instruments are war and permanent mobilisation, both requiring the constant identification of new enemies and the establishment of a strong national security state, which is independent of society.

This project is now obvious, but it was already apparent in the mid-1970s, when the radical right sabotaged the new East-West detente. It took shape during the 1980s, when the same players ordered the biggest peacetime mobilisation ever, and in the early 1990s, when the neo-conservatives worked out the doctrine of US primacy (3). The demolition of East-West detente in the mid-1970s was a crucial moment in this process. In response to the broad popular revolt against the national security state and widespread cultural changes in US society, the radical right wing of the Republican party, led by Ronald Reagan, joined forces with elements in the national security apparatus bent on revenge for the humiliating defeat in Vietnam, and neo- conservative Democrats from the hardline anti-communist wing of the party. This coalition was determined to restore the state's authority and the national cold-war consensus, and to re-establish US strategic supremacy, and it conducted a political and ideological campaign to bury detente.

The campaign was directed at the realistic balance of power policy that was being pursued by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, which in the coalition's view represented a dangerous weakening of the collective US will. Rather than detente, the radical right coalition advocated massive mobilisation and a strategic offensive to roll back the Soviet regime. Containment and armed coexistence, the two pillars of George Kennan's cold war strategy, were to be abandoned in favour of active measures designed to induce a collapse of the Soviet system. As Kissinger once said, "whereas the early cold warriors had been content to rely on containment to bring this change about in the fullness of time, their successors were promising significant changes in the Soviet system as the result of direct American pressure" (4).

Richard Perle, one of the most influential neoconservatives in the current administration and an early critic of detente, is quite open about it: "We had to show that detente could not work and re-establish objectives of victory" (5). Helped by Nixon's ignominious downfall and the accession of Gerald Ford, who became a weak and un impressive president, the radical right rapidly consolidated its position.

To revive America's will to win and neutralise the advocates of armed coexistence (who were hardly doves themselves), they rigged data, exaggerated the threat, and abused individuals or institutions that dared to contradict them. The State Department and the CIA were favourite targets. In 1974 Albert Wohlstetter of the Rand Corporation, father-in-law of Richard Perle and guiding spirit of the neo-conservative movement, fired the first shot. "He accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, and conservatives began a concerted attack", led by the then defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, his protégé Richard Cheney, Ford's chief of staff at the time, and by the president's foreign intelligence advisory board (PFIAB).

One key result was the establishment, on 26 May 1976, of Team B, a group of outside experts commissioned by the new director of central intelligence, George Bush Senior, to produce competitive assessments of the Soviet threat. (6) This move to force the CIA to compete with its denigrators (on the right - nobody on the left was asked) was all the more surprising in that Bush's predecessor at the CIA, William Colby, had rejected a similar initiative in 1975. It was, Colby said, hard "to envisage how an ad hoc independent group of analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities than could the intelligence community".

Team B was headed by Richard Pipes, an "expert" on Soviet affairs and father of neo-conservative publicist Daniel Pipes, and its members included Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy defence secretary, and other eminent cold warriors drawn from PFIAB and the committee on the present danger (CPD). As Anne Hessing Cahn has shown, Team B produced a series of ideological reports with no basis in fact that inflated the Soviet threat. The Pipes team was sharply critical of CIA analysts and the whole policy of detente. Its report stated that "the national intelligence estimates [of the CIA] are filled with unsupported and questionable judgments about what it is that the Soviet government wants and intends. It is this practice that has caused recurrent under-estimations of the intensity, scope and implicit threat of the Soviet strategic build-up."

Team B prided itself on knowing the real truth about Soviet intentions: "Russian, and especially Soviet political and military theories are distinctly offensive in character. Their ideal is the science of conquest formulated by the 18th century Russian commander, Field Marshal AV Suvorov". The Soviet leadership, armed with intercontinental nuclear missiles and filled with Clausewitzian ideas about the merits of adopting an offensive strategy, was not only capable of launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US but was culturally predisposed to do so.

These absurd generalisations, punctuated with outright lies - Soviet military expenditure had passed its peak by 1975, with an estimated annual growth rate of 1.3% between 1975 and 1985 (7) - were simply invented to tip the institutional balance in the US.

According to Howard Stoertz, the CIA official responsible for USSR analyses, Bush's Team B exercise "was an absolute disaster for the CIA" (8). But it was an important success for the radical right and was crucial to the decision to abandon detente in 1976, when the term was banished from official use. Reagan himself adopted Team B-style terminology during the 1976 presidential elections (in which the outgoing president, Ford, defeated him by a narrow margin in the Republican primaries): "This nation has become number two in a world where it is dangerous, if not fatal, to be second best." As we know, a few years later Reagan, the man who coined the phrase "evil empire" (or at least his speechwriters did), took up where Ford left off. His team included key figures from the Ford era, headed by Perle and Wolfowitz. He embarked on a vast defence mobilisation programme and resumed, notably in Afghanistan and Central America, the wide-ranging clandestine operations that had ended after the defeat in Vietnam.

In March 1983 President Reagan called into question the global nuclear architecture established by the Nixon administration and embodied in the 1971 anti-ballistic missile treaty by launching the strategic defence initiative ["Star Wars"], a research and development programme designed to create a terrestrial and space-based anti-ballistic shield over the US landmass. At the same time, the White House ordered a series of offensive intelligence operations within the Soviet Union and across Soviet airspace. These "major political provocations", to quote a CIA analyst, were designed to show up any weaknesses in the Soviet early warning defence systems (9).

The end of the cold war in 1991 confirmed US strategic supremacy and gave Washington a de facto monopoly on the use of force in international relations. But the collapse of the Soviet Union simultaneously removed the only justification for the national security state: a mortal enemy. As two North American observers put it: "One would think that neo-conservatives are happy about the death of their old enemy."

Not so. Haunted by the spectre of national demobilisation, the neo-conservatives "worry about the cultural and political legitimacy of the American regime more than anything else", and search for a new "demon which can unite and inspire the American people - an enemy to fight, so that they can be reminded of the meaningfulness and precariousness of their culture and polity" (10).

The 1991 Gulf war and the discovery of a new global strategic adversary, "rogue states", to replace the Soviet Union, were reasons enough to remobilise, and to maintain and extend the global military archipelago of the US. For Cheney, then defence secretary, that war presaged "very much the type of conflict we are most likely to confront again in this new era. In addition to southwest Asia, we have important interests in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Central and Latin America. We must configure our policies and our forces to effectively deter, or quickly defeat, such future regional threats" (11).

A few months later, Paul Wolfowitz and I Lewis Libby, now deputy defence secretary and security adviser to Richard Cheney respectively, drafted the Pentagon paper, Defense Policy Guidance 1992-1994 (DPG), which recommended "preventing a hostile power from dominating regions whose resources would allow it to attain great power status, discouraging attempts by the advanced industrial nations to challenge US leadership or upset the established political and economic order, and precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor" (12).

In the aftermath of 11 September, the Bush administration turned the campaign against terrorist networks into a war against the "axis of evil". In so doing, it was simply pursuing a stra tegic and political policy defined in the 1970s and revised in the early 1990s to meet the needs of the post-cold war era. The doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, officially adopted in September 2002, certainly breaks with the policy of containment and deterrence the US had consistently pursued. But it is in line with the unwavering determination of the radical, nationalist and neo-conservative American right to wage war to establish its authority.

As William Kristol, neo-conservative theoretician, and founder of the Project for the New American Century, once said: "It is a positive sign when the American people are prepared to go to war" (13).

Philip Golub is a journalist and lecturer at the University of Paris-VIII. This article originally appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique.
For an account of the neo-conservative strategic fantasy map of the Middle East, see Joe Klein, "How Israel is wrapped up in Iraq", Time magazine, 10 February 2003.

Anatol Lieven, "The Push for War", London Review of Books, vol 24 n° 19, 3 October 2002.

Defined in "Defence Policy Guidance 1992-1994", Defence Department, Washington, 1992.

Quoted in Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994.

Interview with Richard Perle, 13 March 97

Quotations and references to Team B are taken from Anne H Cahn, "Team B: The Trillion Dollar Experiment", and John Prados, "Team B: The Trillion Dollar Experiment, Part II", Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 49, n° 3 (1993).

See Frances Fitzgerald, Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000.

J Prados, op cit.

See Benjamin B Fischer, "A Cold War Conundrum", an analysis published by the Centre for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, Washington DC, 1997. According to Fischer, these US moves were actually interpreted in Moscow as preparations for war.

See Grant Havers and Mark Wexler, "Is US Neo-Conservatism Dead?", The Quarterly Journal of Ideology, vol 24 (2001), n° 3-4, Louisiana State University, 2001.

Second bullet item.

Quoted in the New York Times, 8 March 1992. The words concerned are almost identical with the key phrases from Defence Policy Guidance 1992-1994, as used in National Security Strategy , published by the White House in September 2002.

Paraphrased by Grant Havers and Mark Wexler, op. cit.

Will Globalists Trigger Yet Another World War?

2010-01-11T06:08:00.000-08:00

http://neithercorp.us/npress/

By Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp Press - Jan. 8, 2010

World War III is the most iconic event in American culture that never happened. Since the early 1950’s, generations have been preparing for it, writing books about it, producing films and fictional accounts on it, and even playing video games based on it. The concept of another world war is so ingrained into our popular consciousness that it has become almost mythological. It is a legend, a fantasy story of something far away and incomprehensible, often associated with Tim Lahaye novels and action adventure narratives of religious prophecy and Armageddon. World War III has become “entertainment.”

The cartoon-ization of a “last great global conflict” is due to a natural tendency of human beings to cope with terrifying ideas, often by intellectually trivializing them, and thereby making them easily digestible, much like the proverbial public speaking tactic of imagining the audience with their clothes off.

The problem with this development in our society is that it causes us to become cynical to the point of idiocy when confronted with very real threats. By convincing ourselves that such an event is an impossibility we leave ourselves unguarded and without a conceptual point of reference, because we have not thought about the scenario in a practical levelheaded manner. This is akin to a man who has never even considered the likelihood of being mugged on the street, versus a man who has trained in self defense for just such a situation. When the event occurs, the two men will have totally different psychological reactions; the first man utterly surprised and out of his element with little to no constructive response, and the latter man far less mentally phased and thus more likely to survive.

With this fact in mind, we will endeavor to explore recent world events, along with international agreements and tensions, and how they could be used by Global Elites to trigger a war reaching around the planet.

Most Wars Happen To The Benefit Of Globalists

Elites often attempt to paint a pretty picture, a glossy flower filled love-fest, when it comes to the creation of World Government. The truth however has been and always will be that the road to globalization is paved with the death of innocents and civilizations. Every movement towards the formation of centralized global government has been preceded by unthinkable destruction. This may seem futile and horribly regressive to us, but to Globalists, war is a highly effective and useful tool.

Conflict on a massive scale creates an atmosphere of tension and terror, giving the average man, even men who are nowhere near danger, a sort of perpetual tunnel vision. World War has the ability to trigger the “fight or flight” psychological response and sustain it in an entire society over long periods of time. Maintaining such a mental state in a human being can cause severe exhaustion and emotional imbalance. Imagine the process of interrogation and torture used on a prisoner in places such as Guantanamo Bay, then, apply that to an entire nation of people. War breaks down our psychological defenses as a society, and makes us vulnerable to suggestion.

By creating war, Globalists change not only the political landscape of nations, but also the emotional and rational checks and balances of every individual who has not prepared himself to handle the pressures of fear. In this way, people can be made to forget how things were before, and accept a new world, a world designed around the corrupt appetites of elite minorities, if only to make the fear stop.

I often hear arguments that war is simply a product of temporary mass insanity. That it is often a “blunder,” an “oversight.” Make no mistake, governments and the power brokers behind them WANT war. Indeed, they have often set out to design wars that never would have happened without their help. Here are only a few of the many examples:

The Spanish American War:

The Spanish American war was one of the first to be a wholly media driven event, created out of thin air and forced on the American public. Elites in Washington, including Theodore Roosevelt, wanted to move the U.S. into an expansionist policy and the realm of empire building. Most American citizen wanted nothing to do with expansionism. Our country had been built in opposition to empires after all. Enter William Randolph Hearst; newspaper mogul and elitist. Hearst papers across the country went on a tabloid spree, reporting on battles between the Spanish government and Cuban guerrilla fighters that were not actually happening, along with exaggerated dramatizations of Spanish government mistreatment of civilians. Of course, the Spanish were certainly not treating the Cuban people well, but the fact that Hearst made stories up in order to paint a grave picture with which to manipulate Americans at home is what is important here.

Upon his arrival in Cuba, Hearst correspondent Fredrick Remington cabled to Hearst: “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst reportedly replied: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

Hearst’s propaganda though was not quite enough to make the people want to forcefully overtake another country or adopt expansionism. So, on February 15, 1898, an explosion was set on the USS Maine off the coast of Havana, Cuba. 260 out of 355 sailors lost their lives, though strangely, only two ranked as officers were killed. Hearst papers went into overdrive claiming the Spanish had sunk her with a mine or torpedo, and the pretext for war in Cuba was established. Ever since, the U.S. has held an ever more prominent policy of expansionism and empire building.

Interestingly, recent studies, including those of National Geographic, show that the debris from the Maine explosion pointed outward, indicating an explosion from INSIDE the ship, not outside. The government still maintains that this must have been “accidental”:

http://loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf

World War I:

The beginning of WW I is often blamed on a “mindlessly mechanical series of events,” but this is simply nonsense. The embroilment of America in the affairs of Europe was carefully orchestrated and far from accidental.

Norman Dodd, former director of the Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations of the U.S. House of Representatives, testified that the Committee was invited to study the minutes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the Committee’s investigation. The Committee stated: “The trustees of the Foundation brought up a single question. If it is desirable to alter the life of an entire people, is there any means more efficient than war…. They discussed this question… for a year and came up with an answer: There are no known means more efficient than war, assuming the objective is altering the life of an entire people. That leads them to a question: How do we involve the United States in a war. This is in 1909.”

http://www.threeworldwars.com/world-war-1/ww1.htm

Once again, Americans had no interest in expansionism or fighting wars along side Monarchies that we with good reason despised. The key to how we were fooled once again into going against our better instincts lay in the sinking of yet another ship; the Lusitania.

The Lusitania was attacked by a German U-boat and sunk on May 7, 1915, killing 1198 passengers and was later used as a pretext for drawing the U.S. into WWI; this is the commonly held view taught in every high school history class. The problem is that it is only half the story. What it does not mention is the fact that the British goaded the Germans into the attack.

In that era, there still existed “rules of war,” one of which was the expectation that German U-boats should surface before destroying any merchant vessel and allow the passengers to flee the ship. The Germans adhered to this standard until the British began arming merchant ships and ordering them to fly the colors of neutral countries. They were then to sink any U-boat that surfaced to deliver a warning. The good faith of the understanding was ruined, and the Germans decided it was safer to sink the ships without warning and be done with it.

The British also began smuggling arms and explosives using regular merchant ships as cover, making them participants in the war, and therefore targets. The Lusitania was no exception.

When the Lusitania was hit by a German torpedo, the initial explosion was certainly destructive, but not as destructive as the massive secondary explosion passengers witnessed as they were fleeing the scene, which ripped the ship apart. For decades the U.S. and British governments denied that the Lusitania was carrying arms, until divers exploring the wreckage discovered cases of nearly 4 million rounds of ammo! Meaning according to the articles of war, the Lusitania was in fact classified as a combatant, not a non-threatening ocean liner:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1098904/Secret-Lusitania-Arms-challenges-Allied-claims-solely-passenger-ship.html

The most shocking element to this engineered disaster however was the fact the U.S. and British governments were well aware that the ship would be attacked, and ALLOWED it to occur.

The German Embassy took out ads in 50 U.S. newspapers warning that the Lusitania could be made a target. The U.S. State Department in turn contacted each of the newspapers and in a threatening fashion suggested that they refrain from printing the ad. A small portion of the newspapers ignored the State Department and printed anyway, but most of the passengers of the Lusitania never saw it.

Finally, and most importantly, is a fascinating discussion from the book “The Intimate Papers of Colonel House,” between House; an advisor (some would say puppeteer) to Woodrow Wilson, and Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary of England before the attack on the Lusitania occurred. The coldness of the exchange is haunting:

Grey: “What will America do if the Germans sink an ocean liner with American passengers on board?”

House: “I believe that a flame of indignation would sweep the United States and that by itself would be sufficient to carry us into the war.”

World War II:

World War II was perhaps the first war in which Globalists created an enemy completely from scratch. That’s right; the Nazis were organized and funded by Elites from across the world, including those here in America.

Hitler himself was considered a joke among Germans when he first began his tirades for an “Aryan Empire,” and was shrugged off by the mainstream as a lunatic. But Germany was also in the middle of the worst economic collapse in recent memory, and when Hitler gained support from the Thule Society, a Freemason-like secret society in Europe, and also began receiving investment from Wall Street interests, including the Rockefeller family, the German people started taking notice. Hitler’s new aristocratic friends could bring to Germany what the people desperately wanted; jobs and cold hard cash.

The collusion between the Rockefellers and the Nazis is well documented, and was first exposed by the discovery of the Von Knieriem Documents during the Nuremberg Trials. The documents outline how the Rockefellers, through their company Standard Oil, supplied investment, as well as secret fuel technology, without which Nazi warplanes would have been inoperable:

http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=22

http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/07/NMT07-C001.htm

The Rockefellers also started the first eugenics population control program here in the U.S. in 1909, forcefully sterilizing over 60,000 “genetically inferior” Americans long before Hitler put the idea into practice in Germany:

http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

And how about the exposure of George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, as a Nazi collaborator and launderer of Nazi funds:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

This is only a small portion of the evidence which proves that the Nazi’s were an elitist creation, and World War II deliberately engineered.

Iraq / Afghanistan War:

I won’t go into the long and sordid background of the 9/11 attacks and how they were used to foment a never-ending war in the Middle East. To do so would take an entirely separate article. What I will say is, the “official story” of that event has been shown on numerous occasions by thousands of researchers, many of whom are architects and engineers, to be riddled with holes and completely unsatisfactory by any measure of logic. The collapses themselves have been left scientifically unexplained by NIST, the government agency tasked with constructing “answers” for the many oddities surrounding the structural failure of WTC 1, 2 and 7. NIST continues to refuse to release the source data for their computer models they claim prove that the towers fell naturally due to burning jet fuel. Without this source data, none of their conclusions hold any validity. They are simply opinions backed by nothing.

Dr. Steven Jones along with eight other scientists around the world have published a peer review paper in the Open Chemical Physics Journal proving beyond a doubt that military grade nanothermite (demolitions) is present in large quantities in the rubble of the WTC:

http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

This means that demolitions were placed in the buildings most likely by someone with easy access and were used to aid in their collapse. The suspects for such an operation I leave for you to decide, though I find it highly improbable that “Muslim Extremists” were involved.

After each of these wars was concocted, governments and Globalists around the planet pushed for even greater centralization of authority and consolidation of power. After the Spanish American War, Americans were herded towards accepting the idea of U.S. expansionism. After World War I, we were convinced to hurtle ourselves into European affairs and squander money and resources on unnecessary conflicts. We also witnessed the formation of the League of Nations, a pre-UN global body meant as a beginning foundation for world government. After World War II, Europe was nearly wiped off the map, its people downtrodden and psychologically ripe for centralization. Without WWII, the European Union would have never been possible. The U.S. also joined the United Nations, the body which is now being pushed along with the IMF for oversight of global financial regulation, as well as unified trade law and “harmonization.” After the Iraq / Afghan war began, a new threat was fabricated in the guise of “terrorism,” a faceless enemy with no real nation or border, no identifiable army, and an elusive and sloppily defined ideology. Anyone can be labeled a terrorist, even an American citizen, thus, a war on terrorism can be sustained indefinitely.

This sets the stage for the next possible global conflict which could be used as the final motivator to pressure the masses into an oppressive New World Order.

World War III: A Realistic Assessment

On Christmas Day 2009 a young Nigerian man by the name of Umar Abdulmutallab was lead into an airport in Amsterdam by what witnesses describe as a “well dressed Indian man” who lied about Umar’s status as a Sudanese refugee. Although Umar was already on a terrorist watch list, he was not flagged, and was allowed to board the plane without a passport and without difficulty:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/12/witness_alleged_bomber_possibl.html

Also according to witnesses, another man on the plane reportedly (and rather oddly) filmed the would-be terrorist during the entire flight. As the plane approached landing in Detroit, Umar proceeded to ignite an explosive substance hidden in his underpants. Only days after, Al-Qaeda agents allegedly based in Yemen took responsibility. Why anyone would take responsibility for a botched underwear bomb attack I leave to your imagination.

The U.S. Government’s response to this? An Air strike on Yemen killing 63 civilians including 28 children:

But lets set aside the obvious false flag attack used to move into Yemen and ask the larger question: why?

Why Yemen? There are a few solid explanations, including the rather suspicious financial dealings of Umar Abdulmutallab’s father, who has been involved heavily with Yemen Government debt:

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/billions-in-recent-yememi-investments-and-the-underwear-bombers-daddy-its-a-small-world-aint-it/

But this seemingly small affair in this very small country I believe is part of a much larger design.

Yemen Rebels Labeled “Al Qaeda:”

There are most likely little to no “Al Qaeda” fighters in Yemen, but the Yemeni government has been fighting Houthi rebels in its mountain regions for years, and it seems, not doing very well. In response, Saudi Arabia insinuated itself into the fight, perhaps fearing what a revolution might do to their interests in the region. Only days before the Christmas false flag, U.S. officials were leaking their “concerns” over possible Yemeni rebel “connections” to Al Qaeda in the press:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2009/1221/Saudi-air-strike-kills-Yemen-rebels-as-US-drawn-into-fight

What we are seeing is yet another instance in which our government labels any insurgency group not as rebels with their own particular cause, but as “Al Qaeda,” a global James Bond-ian terrorist conspiracy. Its simple really; if someone stands in the way of your interests, label them as Al Qaeda and a decent sized portion of the American public will look the other way while you bomb their children.

Russia Expanding In the Middle East:

Now we get to the heart of the matter. Many of us have already forgotten the brief war between Russia and Georgia, started when U.S. backed Georgia invaded South Ossetia unprovoked, randomly shooting and bombing civilians, causing Russia to intercede. Not long after this event, Russia began announcing openly plans to expand its navy into the Middle East, including the construction of Navy Bases in Yemen, and Libya, as well as the modernization of a navy base the Russians already control on the coast of Syria:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/16/2468180.htm

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020643.html

Yemen’s dealings with Russia also include major arms sales:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/world/africa/27iht-27yemen.20489549.html?_r=2

Yemen recently announced plans to work closely with Iran in defending its coast from pirates:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=99165§ionid=351020101

What does the U.S. presence in Yemen mean? It means a lot of ruffled feathers (or at least the appearance of such) and the increase of Middle Eastern tension to whole new level, conceivably putting us in a position of clashing with Russian interests.

Enter Israel.

The Israeli Government has said openly and often that it deems Iran a target if they continue to build nuclear power facilities, even going so far as to draw up plans to use low-yield nuclear weapons against them:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1290331.ece

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/30/opinion/oe-zenko30

This leads us to what may end up being the most important news of last year besides the “Great Recession”; a defense pact signed between Iran and Syria:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260447419513&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

So, what elements are we dealing with here?

We have a nuclear armed Israel itching to attack Iran. We have Iran engaged in a defense pact with Syria against Israel. We have Syria with Russian navy bases and weapons on its soil, and we have the U.S. rampaging through the Middle East encroaching on the borders of Pakistan and Yemen, essentially pissing off everyone. What we have is a Globalist made recipe for disaster, using the same ingredients they have used for the last several major wars.

The Trigger:

An Israeli attack on Iran could draw in the U.S., especially if Russia were to intervene through Syria. The likelihood of a large scale false flag attack is also very high over the next couple years, designed to frighten the American people into support for police state conditions at home, as well as greater complicity in an expanded war overseas. The war would not even necessarily have to become a nuclear event as is commonly expected (the elites would rather keep the planet in good condition for themselves), or even develop far beyond the Middle East. Its effects would still be felt everywhere.

The Advantages Of World War (For Globalists):

As we have covered in previous articles, Russia and other BRIC nations are moving to shore up wealth, buying gold and diversifying their currency holdings away from Treasuries and U.S. Dollars. This indicates the probability that they will soon drop the dollar as the world reserve currency if not entirely. Russia has in several instances stated its desire for a “world currency” and even world government, just as political elements of the U.S. and Europe have in the past. I believe what we see unfolding is a scenario much like that of WWII, except this time, the U.S. sits in the position of the Weimar Republic, its currency ready to hyperinflate, it treasury on the edge of insolvency, its debt holders becoming its enemies, and its government looking for any excuse to dilute personal liberties for the “greater good”.

Russia and other eastern nations appear to be forming an opposing economic (and perhaps political) block, yet the ultimate goal of the elites there is the same as it is for elites here. If war were to occur, it would once again be puppet governments set loose upon each other in an illusory conflict in which the real targets are the masses themselves.

The goal is to force the people to take sides, to divide them against each other and make them forget the true enemy; the elites who cultivated the problem in the first place. Under the threat of world conflict or rampant terrorism, the average American could be made to feel “disruptive,” or even “traitorous” for speaking out against the war, while those who point out the dangers of the police state could simply be labeled terrorists themselves. Such an atmosphere could also distract our attentions away from the eminent economic breakdown. It is difficult to imagine this happening here, but think of how many Germans laughed at Hitler in his early days, as opposed to how many eventually followed him when they were faced with absolute desperation.

In the midst of all this of course would stand the EU and the UN. I believe whether a war is triggered or the economy is simply left to disintegrate, it will be the UN and European interests that “dash to the rescue” with a new stabilized currency and unified government when all seems lost. Just as in the past, Globalists want to erase history, rewrite it, and play the part of the hero. With an extra century or more of constant propaganda, who would know to argue otherwise?

The Solution

What we have just covered is a possible state of affairs based on the circumstances of the moment. It is by no means our fate. What this examination is meant to convey is the gravity of the task before us, and the reality that it is we who must halt the machine in its tracks. We cannot leave it to future generations; to our children or theirs. It must stop right here. This is our fight, and if we do not succeed then there may not be a second chance for humanity. By continuing to educate our neighbors on the threats confronting us, and by preparing for the worst, mentally as well as physically, no future is set in stone.

I sometimes hear words like “impossible,” “pointless,” “futile,” in regards to our situation, and the obstacles with which we are faced. “Impossibility” is an empty term driven by doubt, not by concrete reality. There is no “impossibility,” only destiny, and destiny is something we make, not follow. As far as I have seen men fall, I have never in the whole of my life believed there was anything we could not do. As long as we hold by what is true, there is no such thing as the insurmountable.

Regardless of where we are headed, be it moderately troubling times, or the worst of all possible worlds, our job here now is to at once walk through fire and yet stand immovable. This is what we are here to do.

Never Mind the Facts, let’s have a war…

2010-01-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16834

By Finian Cunningham
Global Research, January 8, 2010
Gulf Daily News - 2009-12-23

A missile test-fired by Iran last week was reported on the BBC World Service as being “capable of striking Israel”.

The choice of words was not unusual. On previous occasions when Iran has test-fired a long-range rocket, the BBC and other western news media dutifully inform us that the said device is “capable of striking Israel”. The well-worn phrase is so reliably heard in these news bulletins that its use betrays a coded script. The not-too subliminal implications are that Iran is: a) a hostile state; b) doing something illegal in test-firing a long-range missile; and c) gearing up to deliver on its alleged threat to wipe out the state of Israel.

Within hours of these reports last week, the US government weighed in with the pious accusation that the test-firing “undermines Iran’s claims of peaceful intentions”.

This is a propaganda system at work: the choice of words and framework of logic designed to condition people into accepting certain options. In this case, the pre-determined option is a unilateral military strike on Iran either by the US or Israel. In that event, it will of course be reported by the BBC and other western media as a “pre-emptive” military measure to “prevent” Iran from attacking western interests in the region. Reported too, no doubt, will be the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties – unfortunate victims in an otherwise “just cause” to bring a “hardline regime” to abide by “international norms”. This is classic thought engineering that British political essayist George Orwell exposed so brilliantly – the official use of sanitised words to cover the sordid truth.

So let’s rewind and play back the news with some pertinent facts and context that are routinely omitted in western media reporting.

Iran has test-fired a long-range missile – within its sovereign borders. The US and its western allies carry out such weapons testing all the time, as is their sovereign right. One of the US’ allies, Israel, has a stockpile of nuclear weapons in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This same ally has previously committed acts of aggression (war crimes) by launching air attacks on neighbouring countries. Israel, with overt approval from Washington, has repeatedly said that it is prepared to militarily strike Iran “soon”, The US itself has warned several times that it reserves the right to use a military option in its relations with Iran. The US is waging illegal wars in three of Iran’s neighbours: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. A dynamic of fear and distrust between Gulf countries is fuelling a regional arms race. This dynamic is being pushed by the US with, what should be, obvious self-serving interests (massive arms sales, geopolitical influence) that are instead disguised by its bogeyman illusion of Iran, which, unfortunately, Gulf states appear to buy into. All told, these facts actually do “undermine US claims of peaceful intentions”.

Here are some other facts that the western media curiously underplay. Iran is not at war with any country, although it is routinely accused in the western media, without supporting evidence, of covert subversion across the region. Iran is conducting a nuclear energy programme, which it has repeatedly said is for civilian power supply. After a decade of close monitoring by UN inspectors, which would never be permitted in its territory by the US or its western allies, the inspectors have reiterated that there is no evidence of Iran building a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless, this conclusion does not restrain Washington and London in their dogged assertion that Tehran is building nuclear weapons (cue more arms sales).

Given these facts, the test-firing by Iran of a long-range missile is far from being a quasi-criminal act laden with hostile intentions. It is the action of a country that needs to show it can defend itself amid relentless provocations from proven and much more greatly armed aggressors, whose arsenal also includes a propaganda system that Nazi spinmeister Joseph Goebbels would have marvelled at.

Danish Prime Minister Announces Invasion of Somalia

2010-01-07T14:20:00.000-08:00

Call it what you want but invading another country is an Act of War!

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/07

Thursday, January 7, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Danish Prime Minister Announces Invasion of Somalia
by Tom Gallagher

In a move that caught the world by surprise, Denmark's Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen today announced his country's deployment of 5,000 troops to Somalia in an effort to restructure the government of that troubled African nation and dry up a wellspring of terrorism. The stunning move comes in response to a 28-year-old Somali man's attempted assassination of 74-year-old Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard had angered many in the Muslim world with his 2005 depiction of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse.

Rasmussen denounced the assassination attempt as "not only an attack on Kurt Westergaard but also an attack on our open society and our democracy." Jakob Scharf, head of the nation's intelligence service, PET, said the assailant, whose name has not yet been released, had "close relations to the Somali terror organization Al Shabab and leaders of Al Qaeda in East Africa," was "part of a terror-related network with connection to Denmark," and was "also suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities" during a recent stay in East Africa. Al Shabab denied any link to the attack, but the group's spokesman, Sheik Ali Mohamoud Raghe, said that "we welcome his act."

While Denmark has heretofore been a largely unknown player in the anti-terrorist arena, it has actually contributed troops to current and recent western anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Iraq. Since the small Scandinavian nation's Ministry of Defence currently has only 33,000 personnel at its disposal, it is expected that some of the 55,000 member volunteer Danish Home Guard may also be called into action. Potential sources of additional military back-up include Xe Services LLC, formerly known as Blackwater, the private security contractor that figured prominently in the Iraq War, as well as other contractors based in the newer eastern member states of the European Union and the former Soviet Union.

Informed sources say that Denmark will also seek an arrangement with the US to utilize CIA drone missile strikes against terror bases in the vast regions of Somalia that currently lie outside of government control.

In a clear effort to situate the surprise invasion within the mainstream of the worldwide war on terror directed by Washington, Rasmussen at times appeared to be directly quoting Barack Obama, at one point stating that "our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies," words the American President himself has used in justifying military activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some observers saw this as an attempt to innoculate the Danish government from charges of failure that domestic sceptics may see as inevitable in an effort to combat terrorist acts with military operations.

Likewise, in a separate statement, Denmark's highest ranking military leader Lt. Gen. Knud Bartels said while the attempted assassination of Westergaard "ended in failure, we know with absolute certainty that Al Qaeda and those who support its ideology continue to refine their methods to test our defenses and pursue an attack on the homeland" - words identical to those of a U.S. government official commenting on the failed December 25 attempt to detonate explosives on an American airliner.

Somalia has long been considered the prototype of a "failed state," as its central government exerts little control beyond the confines of the capital city of Mogadishu. Pirates operate with impunity off its coast and the United Nations World Food Program recently announced suspension of food deliveries to one third of the nation's population in response to what it characterized as "unacceptable demands and conditions set by armed groups," primarily branches of the Shabab, a group of Islamist militants who control much of the southern part of the nation. Observers also noted that the country is one of only two in the world to have failed to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Although the White House has yet to formally comment on the Danish invasion, aides who would only speak off the record, seemed confident that the Danes would eventually win President Obama's support for their military campaign, citing his December 1 speech announcing the latest Afghanistan troop build-up in which he declared, "Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold - whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere - they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships."

The Danish invasion of Somalia described above has, of course, not actually occurred. The quotes are all real, though, but only in their initial attributions, which is to say that the Prime Minister, the General, and the unnamed White House aides did not actually repeat the statements of President Obama and the unnamed U.S. government official.

This little historical fantasia is intended as an exercise in absurdity. The intended absurdity, however, does not lie in "The Mouse that Roared" scenario of a nation of 5.47 million people and 16,639 square miles invading one of 9.12 million people and 396,221 square miles - greater discrepancies have been overcome by technologically more advanced nations in the past. The real absurdity lies in embarking upon military campaigns in response to acts of terrorism, something which many Americans have come to see as the norm, perhaps blinded to its inappropriateness by the belief that in military matters the U.S. is simply "too big to fail." Meanwhile, as our armed forces are extended to nation after nation, Osama bin Laden's dream of drawing the U.S. into war on "a large scale front which it cannot control" gains reality by the day.

And, oh yes, the other country that has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child is the United States.

Tom Gallagher is a San Francisco antiwar activist who initiated last November's successful Proposition U calling upon the city's congressional representatives to vote no further funding for the Iraq War. He is a past member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Contact him at TGTGTGTGTG@aol.com

Iraq War Veteran Exposes the Unspoken Truth: "The Real Terrorism is This Occupation"

2010-01-07T12:15:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=104370

West's Afghan War: From Conquest To Bloodbath

2010-01-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/West-s-Afghan-War-From-Co-by-Rick-Rozoff-100107-30.html

January 7, 2010
By Rick Rozoff

---------

"When the commander in Kabul asked Obama for the extra troops, he knew the USA would end up with one achievement, and that is more civilian casualties."

"Every time an American soldier gets killed, they bomb an entire village."

"This thing is going to be $5 billion to $10 billion a month and 300 to 500 killed and wounded a month by next summer. That's what we probably should expect. And that's light casualties."

---------

On December 29 the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released figures demonstrating that Afghan civilian deaths had risen by 10 percent in the first ten months of 2009, from 1,838 during the same period a year earlier to 2,038. The majority of the killings were attributed to insurgent attacks, including those directed against U.S., NATO and government targets, but almost 500 civilians were killed by American and NATO forces.

Matters only grew worse last November and December, culminating in several massacres of Afghan civilians by Western forces at the end of the year.

In early December a NATO air strike killed thirteen civilians in Laghman province. One account also documents a deadly raid by American special forces there. "According to witnesses, US troops entered a number of houses near the provincial capital, Mehtar Lam, in an overnight operation. The victims included Mohammed Ismail, whose 10-year-old son, Rafiullah, described what happened: 'When the soldiers came to our house, my father asked them, "Who are you?" Then they shot him in the head and told us, "Be quiet and tell us where the weapons are."'" [1]

The chairman of the Laghman provincial council presciently commented on the killings that "When the commander in Kabul asked Obama for the extra troops, he knew the USA would end up with one achievement, and that is more civilian casualties." [2]

On the same day that the above-cited UN report was made public an air attack by U.S.-led warplanes killed four Afghans in the northern province of Baghlan. According to one report "A father and his three sons were reportedly among the [fatalities]. The raid also wounded eight others." [3]

A member of parliament from a neighboring province, Haji Farid, said after the aerial onslaught that "Every time an American soldier gets killed, they bomb an entire village." [4]

The following day a NATO missile strike killed seven Afghan civilians in Helmand province. According to the New York Times, "Neither NATO forces nor the Helmand governor's office gave a definitive number of dead, but reports from local people said that five to seven civilians had been killed, including three children." [5] Later a spokesman for the governor of the province confirmed that seven civilians had been slain and another wounded.

Far more atrocious news broke the same day, December 30, when, according to the next day's edition of The Times of London, "American-led troops were accused...of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead" in Kunar province near the Pakistani border. [6]

U.S.-installed and -supported President Hamid Karzai dispatched an investigative team headed by former governor of Helmand province Assadullah Wafa to the scene of the massacre, dubbed by at least one news source as an Afghan My Lai.

A statement was later issued on the official website of the Afghan president that said in part: "The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead."

The delegation's head, Wafa, added that "US soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, suggesting that they were part of a special forces unit," and was quoted as saying "I spoke to the local headmaster. It's impossible they were al-Qaeda. They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent. I condemn this attack." [7]

The investigation he led established that eight of the victims were between the ages of 11 and 17. The slain students' headmaster, Rahman Jan Ehsas, described the details of Barack Obama's and top U.S. and NATO military commander Stanley McChrystal's new special operations-led counterinsurgency approach as it was applied to his pupils:

"Seven students were in one room. A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building.

"First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That's why his wife wasn't killed." [8]

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) attempted to both widen and evade responsibility for the murders by claiming "the raid was a joint operation and it was still under investigation," a ploy quickly exposed when "Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy said Afghan troops had not taken part." [9]

Demonstrators, particularly university students and their instructors, took to the streets in the provinces of Kabul and Nangarhar denouncing the rapidly escalating and by now routine slaughter of civilians, including children, by U.S. and NATO troops and warplanes. Their chants included "Obama! Obama! Take your soldiers out of Afghanistan!" and "Stop killing us!"

Professors and students at Kabul University passed a resolution demanding that NATO troops leave Afghanistan. [10]

Referring to the first of December's massacres, a Middle Eastern newspaper wrote, "The raid in the eastern province of Laghman this month followed a pattern that has become sadly familiar in Afghanistan over recent years. As is often the case, international forces insisted militants were killed, but local officials and villagers claimed the dead were civilians." [11]

With the increase of U.S. and other NATO nations' and partners' troops to over 150,000 in the near future and the announced shift from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency operations, the killing of Afghan civilians will grow exponentially.

On the other side of the border, Washington's and NATO's proclaimed AfPak war is no less murderous.

On January 2 Dawn News, Pakistan's first 24-hour English news channel, reported on its website that 44 CIA-directed Predator drone missile attacks last year had killed 708 people, only five of them alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban targets. "According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

"For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities....On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day." [12]

There has been no diminution of such attacks. In the waning days of 2009 they were intensified. On December 27 "At least 13 people were killed in a suspected United States drone attack" in North Waziristan. "Following the strike, a U.S. B-52 jet plane, along with other spy planes, continued their flights over the tribal areas...." [13]

The preceding day another U.S. missile attack in North Waziristan killed three and wounded two people. "A statement from the [Pakistani] military Saturday said that a targeted airstrike at a compound in Orakzai had killed some civilians along with eight suspected militants." [14]

The U.S. launched deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan's North Waziristan on both ends of the New Year. On December 31 "Five people were killed and at least two more injured" and on January 1 "A US pilotless aircraft fired a missile into Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district" and "the attack destroyed [a] car and killed three people." [15]

In the second case a regional security official was quoted by Reuters as stating "The bodies were burned beyond recognition. We are trying to determine their identity." [16]

On January 3 five more people were killed in the same part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by American drone attacks. However much the U.S., NATO and the Western media attempt to sanitize these killings, the Pakistani government figure - that over 99 percent of the victims are civilians - is a damning indictment of what can only be characterized as wanton war crimes.

A yearender feature in the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes reflected on 2009 and looked forward to this year.

"When President Barack Obama took office in January, he inherited a drifting and under-resourced war in Afghanistan, being fought with roughly 35,000 U.S. troops.

"Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops in March and then 30,000 more in December.

"In a little over a year, he will have nearly tripled their numbers, taking ownership of what he calls 'the war we must win.'

"[E]very step the president has taken represents an escalation of the war, now in its ninth year." [17]

Afghan and Pakistani civilians deaths have climbed correspondingly. They will rise even more in 2010 as the war, in its tenth calendar year, is broadened further and intensified in earnest.

For all the carnage wreaked on innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, a senior NATO intelligence officer told Western media representatives at a briefing on December 27 that "The Afghan Taliban have expanded their influence across Afghanistan and are now running a "full-fledged insurgency' with their own "governors' in all but one of the country's provinces." [18]

"In 33 out of 34 provinces, the Taliban has a shadow government...has a government-in-waiting, with ministers chosen" for the day the government falls in the unnamed official's words. [19]

Over eight years of bombing villages, conducting deadly raids against civilian households, multiplying projected American and NATO troops strength by a factor of fifteen since 2003 and extending the war into Pakistan have produced this result.

NATO's first ground war and its first armed conflict outside Europe has also cost the citizens of its own member states both blood and treasure.

Jeff Loftin, press officer of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, was recently quoted as confirming that last year 512 Western troops were killed in Afghanistan, the highest total for any year in the over eight-year war.

That number is over a third of the 1,481 ISAF fatalities (excluding American troops assigned to Operation Enduring Freedom) since the war began on October 7, 2001. The deaths include those of soldiers from NATO partner states Finland, Sweden and South Korea.

Germany, engaged under NATO command in its first combat operations since World War II, lost five soldiers last year, its highest number to date, and "Some 13,900 German soldiers served in Afghanistan this year [2009], up 1,700 from in 2008." [20]

"At least 70 Western soldiers died each month from July through October, virtually double the rate of the previous summer. In the past year, nearly 500 foreign troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan, including more than 300 Americans." [21]

On December 27 NATO announced the death of an American service member in a bomb attack in Afghanistan and the icasualties.org website calculated it to be the U.S.'s 310th of the year, double the 155 figure for 2008.

That number was also twice that of U.S. military deaths in Iraq in 2009, 148, the first time since 2003 that deaths in the first theater have been higher than in the second, and "Afghanistan is likely to become an even deadlier place for American forces as reinforcements are rushed there to battle insurgents." [22]

How much deadlier was first revealed on January 3 when four U.S. soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in southern Afghanistan.

Former U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, now an adjunct professor of international affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, recently "traveled to the war zone...as an academic from West Point at the invitation of theater commander Gen. David Petraeus, commander of Central Command, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the operational commander in Afghanistan" and upon returning was cited by an armed forces news source as asserting that "Americans should prepare to accept hundreds of U.S. casualties each month in Afghanistan during spring offensives with enemy forces."

Regarding the New Year's surge, which will push U.S. troop strength to over 100,000 and combined U.S. and NATO numbers to over 150,000, he predicted that "this thing is going to be $5 billion to $10 billion a month and 300 to 500 killed and wounded a month by next summer. That's what we probably should expect. And that's light casualties." [23]

As many 500 American soldiers killed and injured monthly is in McCaffrey's estimate light casualties.

Another milestone in U.S. losses was marked on December 30 when a reported suicide bombing at the Forward Operating Base Chapman killed seven CIA agents, including the agency's station chief. The Wall Street Journal quoted a former American intelligence official describing the event as "Pearl Harbor for the agency," the second-largest loss in one day in the CIA's history, only the 1983 attack on the U.S.'s embassy in Lebanon, which resulted in eight agency deaths, exceeding it. "The base played a critical role in the CIA's significant operations in the country, including helping with drone attacks and informant networks in Pakistan." [24]

According to a former agency official interviewed by the newspaper, "That was one of the bases where they were paying people and running people and sending them into Pakistan." [25]

The White House of last year's Nobel Peace Prize recipient and the Pentagon of former CIA director Robert Gates, who in the past boasted of funding and arming the founders of two of the three groups he is now waging war against in Afghanistan and Pakistan [26], have promised to increase the bloodshed in South Asia this year to an unprecedented level. In this instance if in no other the government can be trusted to faithfully fulfill its pledge.

1) The National (United Arab Emirates), December 28, 2009
2) Ibid
3) Press TV, December 29, 2009
4) Ibid
5) New York Times, December 31, 2009
6) The Times, December 31, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6971638.ece
7) Ibid
8) Ibid
9) Reuters, December 30, 2009
10) Pakistan Observer, January 4, 2010
11) The National, December 28, 2009
12) Dawn News, January 2, 2010
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/18-over-700-killed-in-44-drone-strikes-in-2009-am-01
13) Xinhua News Agency, December 27, 2009
14) Associated Press, December 26, 2009
15) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 1, 2010
16) Press TV, January 1, 2010
17) Stars and Stripes, December 31, 2009
18) Reuters, December 27, 2009
19) Agence France-Presse, December 28, 2009
20) Brunei News, Agencies, January 1, 2010
21) Stars and Stripes, December 31, 2009
22) USA Today, December 31, 2009
23) Army Times, January 4, 2010
24) Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2010
25) Ibid
26) Afghan Warlords, Formerly Backed By the CIA, Now Turn Their Guns
On U.S. Troops
U.S. News & World Report, July 11, 2008
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/07/11/afghan-warlords-formerly-backed-by-the-cia-now-turn-their-guns-on-us-troops.html?PageNr=2

Suicide Bombing Puts a Rare Face on C.I.A.’s Work

2010-01-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/asia/07intel.html

January 7, 2010
Suicide Bombing Puts a Rare Face on C.I.A.’s Work

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — In the fall of 2001, as an anguished nation came to grips with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a slender, soft-spoken economics major named Elizabeth Hanson set out to write her senior thesis at Colby College in Maine. Her question was a timely one: How do the world’s three major faith traditions apply economic principles?

Ms. Hanson’s report, “Faithless Heathens: Scriptural Economics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” carried a title far more provocative than its contents, said the professor who advised her. But it may have given a hint of her career to come, as an officer for the Central Intelligence Agency specializing in hunting down Islamic extremists.

That career was cut short last week: Ms. Hanson was one of seven Americans killed in a suicide bombing at a C.I.A. base in the remote mountains of Afghanistan.

In the days since the attack, details of the lives of the victims — five men and two women, including two C.I.A. contractors from the firm formerly known as Blackwater — have begun to trickle out, despite the secretive nature of their work. What emerges is a rare public glimpse of a closed society, a peek into one sliver of the spy agency as it operates more than eight years after the C.I.A. was pushed to the front lines of war.

Their deaths were a significant blow to the agency, crippling a team responsible for collecting information about militant networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plotting missions to kill the networks’ top leaders. And in one sign of how the once male-dominated bastion of the C.I.A. has changed in recent years, the suicide bombing revealed that a woman had been in charge of the base that was attacked, Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost Province.

On Wednesday, the operational leader of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan issued a statement praising the work of the suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, and said that the Khost bombing, which also killed a Jordanian intelligence operative, was revenge for the killings of a number of top militant leaders in C.I.A. drone attacks.

“He detonated his fine, astonishing and well-designed explosive device, which was unseen by the eyes of those who do not believe in the hereafter,” said the statement from the Qaeda leader, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, which was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Those who died came from all corners of the United States but were thrown together in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Several had military backgrounds. One of the fallen C.I.A. employees, a security officer named Scott Roberson, had worked undercover as a narcotics detective in the Atlanta Police Department, according to an obituary, and spent time in Kosovo for the United Nations. Postings on an online memorial site describe a hard-charging motorcyclist with a remarkable recall of episodes of “The Benny Hill Show.”

Another, Harold Brown Jr., was a former Army reservist and father of three who had traveled home from Afghanistan briefly in July to help his family move into a new home in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

Mr. Brown’s mother, Barbara, said in an interview that her son — she had believed he worked for the State Department — had intended to spend a year in Afghanistan, returning home in April. He did not relish the work, she said, and talked little about it.

“The people there just want to live their lives. They’re normal people,” she recalled him saying, adding that he had told her parts of Afghanistan were “just like back in biblical times.”

The base chief, an agency veteran, had traveled to Afghanistan last year as part of the C.I.A.’s effort to augment its ranks in the war zone. After consulting with the C.I.A., The New York Times is withholding some identifying information about the woman. The agency declined to comment about the identities of any of the employees. Some of the names were disclosed by family members. Ms. Hanson’s name was first reported in The Daily Beast, an online magazine.

In a telephone interview, her father, Duane Hanson Jr., said an agency official called several days ago to let him know that his daughter, who he said would have turned 31 next month, had been killed. He knew little of her work, other than that she had been in Afghanistan. “I begged her not to go,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Do you know how dangerous that is? That’s for soldiers.’ ”

The other woman killed, the chief of the Khost base, was, before the Sept. 11 attacks, part of a small cadre of counterterrorism officers focused on the growth of Al Qaeda and charged with finding Osama bin Laden.

Working from a small office near C.I.A. headquarters, the group, known inside the agency as Alec Station, became increasingly alarmed in the summer of 2001 that a major strike was coming. One former officer recalls that the woman had a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of Al Qaeda’s top leadership and was so familiar with the different permutations of the leaders’ names that she could take fragments of intelligence and build them into a mosaic of Al Qaeda’s operations.

“She was one of the first people in the agency to tackle Al Qaeda in a serious way,” said the former officer, who, like some others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the victims’ identities remain classified.

Two of the dead, Jeremy Wise, 35, a former member of the Navy Seals from Virginia Beach, Va., and Dane Clark Paresi, 46, of Dupont, Wash., were security officers for Xe Services, the firm formerly known as Blackwater.

The company did not respond to a request for comment about the deaths, but they have been widely reported in local newspapers. The Jeremy Wise Memorial on Facebook had 3,189 fans on Tuesday, filled with recollections of Mr. Wise’s childhood as the son of a doctor in Arkansas; his parents currently live in Hope, Bill Clinton’s hometown.

“RIP, Jeremy Wise, American hero,” one wrote.

The suicide bomber has been identified as a Jordanian double agent who was taken onto the base to meet with American officials who thought he was an informant.

In a message to the C.I.A. work force after the attack, President Obama told agency employees that “your triumphs and even your names may be unknown to your fellow Americans.” And indeed, some relatives and friends of the dead did not seem to know of their agency connections.

Ms. Hanson’s economics professor, Michael Donihue, said he was shocked to discover her career path. At Colby, from which she graduated in 2002, she paired her economics major with a minor in Russian language and literature.

“She was a thoughtful person; she had an intellectual curiosity that I really liked,” Professor Donihue said.

Officials in Afghanistan and Washington said the C.I.A. group in Khost had been particularly aggressive in recent months against the Haqqani network, a militant group that has claimed responsibility for dozens of American deaths in Afghanistan. One NATO official in Afghanistan spoke in stark terms about the attack, saying it had “effectively shut down a key station.”

“These were not people who wrote things down in the computer or in notebooks. It was all in their heads,” he said. The C.I.A. is “pulling in new people from all over the world, but how long will it take to rebuild the networks, to get up to speed? Lots of it is irrecoverable. Lots of it.”

Cancer – The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq

2010-01-06T17:03:00.001-08:00

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=80e260b3839daf2084fdeb0965ad31ab

January 6, 2010 by New America Media
by Jalal Ghazi

Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.

The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English.

In Basra there were 1885 diagnosed cases of cancer in 2005. According to Dr. Jawad al Ali, director of the Oncology Center, the number increased to 2,302 in 2006 and 3,071 in 2007. Dr. Ali told Al Jazeera English that about 1,250-1,500 patients visit the Oncology Center every month now.

Not everyone is ready to draw a direct correlation between allied bombing of these areas and tumors, and the Pentagon has been skeptical of any attempts to link the two. But Iraqi doctors and some Western scholars say the massive quantities of depleted uranium used in U.S. and British bombs, and the sharp increase in cancer rates are not unconnected.

Dr Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, says that there is scientific evidence linking depleted uranium to cancer and birth defects. He told Al Jazeera English, "Children with congenital anomalies are subjected to karyotyping and chromosomal studies with complete genetic back-grounding and clinical assessment. Family and obstetrical histories are taken too. These international studies have produced ample evidence to show that depleted uranium has disastrous consequences."

Iraqi doctors say cancer cases increased after both the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion. Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of "Uranium in Iraq" told Al Jazeera English that the incubation period for depleted uranium is five to six years, which is consistent with the spike in cancer rates in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.

There are also similar patterns of birth defects among Iraqi and Afghan infants who were also born in areas that were subjected to depleted uranium bombardment.

Dr. Daud Miraki, director of the Afghan Depleted Uranium and Recovery Fund, told Al Jazeera English he found evidence of the effect of depleted uranium in infants in eastern and south- eastern Afghanistan. "Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes," said Dr. Miraki.

It's not just Iraqis and Afghans. Babies born to American soldiers deployed in Iraq during the 1991 war are also showing similar defects. In 2000, Iraqi biologist Huda saleh Mahadi pointed out that the hands of deformed American infants were directly linked to their shoulders, a deformity seen in Iraqi infants.

Many US soldiers are now referring to Gulf War Syndrome #2 and alleging they have developed cancer because of exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq.

But soldiers can end their exposure to depleted uranium when their service in Iraq ends. Iraqi civilians have nowhere else to go. The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the U.S. Army's Depleted Uranium Project during the first Gulf War, was in charge of a project of decontaminating American tanks. He told Al Jazeera English that "it took the U.S. Department of Defense in a multi-million dollar facility with trained physicists and engineers, three years to decontaminate the 24 tanks that I sent back to the U.S." And he added, "What can the average Iraqi do with thousands and thousands of trash and destroyed vehicles spread across the desert and other areas?"

According to Al Jazeera, the Pentagon used more than 300 tons of depleted uranium in 1991. In 2003, the United States used more than 1,000 tons.