Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
by Jeff Richardson
February 6, 2011

Two rival teams of defense contractors will compete for a huge contract to manage part of the U.S. missile defense system, including the interceptor site at Fort Greely.

Teams led by Lockheed Martin and the Boeing Corporation submitted proposals last week to manage the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Development and Sustainment Contract for the Department of Defense. The contract, known informally as GMD, covers high-tech workers at various missile-defense sites throughout the country.

The value of the contract is estimated at $600 million per year…

Reda on: http://newsminer.com/bookmark/11291041-Defense-contractors-compete-for-missile-work-including-site-at-Fort-Greely-

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Space.com
By Stephen Clark
February 6, 2011

A trailblazing payload for the National Reconnaissance Office successfully rocketed into orbit on a Minotaur 1 booster Sunday, beginning a secret mission testing new ways to collect intelligence from space.

The mission was codenamed NROL-66 in the agency’s rocket acquisition naming system. The payload is also called RPP, which is short for Rapid Pathfinder Program. …

An NRO spokesperson disclosed before launch the payload will demonstrate better ways for U.S. government satellites to gather intelligence. …

The Minotaur launcher blasted off at 4:26 a.m. local time (7:26 a.m. EST; 1226 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The launch was delayed from Saturday by a transmitter glitch in the Air Force’s network of tracking and communications equipment. …

The Minotaur 1’s next flight is scheduled from Wallops Island, Va., in May with a satellite for the Pentagon’s Operationally Responsive Space program. Called ORS 1, the spacecraft will carry an electro-optical and infrared sensor to supply battlefield intelligence to U.S. Central Command. …

Read in full: www.space.com/10773-secret-spy-satellite-rocket-launches.html

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Press TV
February 5, 2011

American officials suggest that tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq may extend their stay in the country well beyond the 2011withdrawal deadline.

US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey said on Friday that more US military forces may be needed to counter what he called “threats to Iraq’s stability, [and they] will remain in 2012.”

The prospects of a longer US military stay in Iraq contradict the clauses of a 2008 agreement between Baghdad and Washington.

The agreement established that US combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and that all US forces would be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011.

The Iraqi government initially intended to hold a popular vote on the agreement but later succumbed to US bully-tactics and accepted the agreement.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than 1,300,000 people have been killed in Iraq, 4.7 million displaced, 5 million children orphaned — nearly half of the country’s children — and the health status has deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1950s.

www.presstv.ir/detail/163839.html

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Reuters
By Jane Sutton
January 4, 2011

The Afghan prisoner who died at the Guantanamo detention camp this week had quit the Taliban forces because he considered them corrupt, and he was never “in any way” an enemy of the United States, the man’s lawyer said on Friday.

Awal Malim Gul, 48, collapsed and died on Tuesday after using an exercise machine at the prison camp on the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba. The U.S. military said the death appeared to have been from natural causes but results from an autopsy would not be released at this time because they are part of an ongoing investigation.

Gul’s body was flown to a U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Friday and will be turned over to the Afghan government and then to his family, a military spokeswoman said.

In an announcement of the death, the U.S. military said Gul was a Taliban commander who operated an al Qaeda guest house and admitted providing operational aid to Osama bin Laden.

Gul’s lawyer, federal public defender Matthew Dodge, called those assertions “outrageous.”

“The government has never provided any evidence at all to support this slander. Neither Mr. Gul nor any credible witness has ever said such things,” said Dodge, who represented Gul in a U.S. district court case in Washington challenging his detention. …

www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/05/idINIndia-54671620110205

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