Articles (Jul – Sep 2011)
Why is Obama Selling Weapons to the King of Bahrain While He’s Attacking Pro-Democracy Protestors?
AllGov
September 24, 2011
Geopolitics and economics trump human rights and democracy in Bahrain, where the oil-based kingdom, led by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has spent months cracking down on protesters and dissidents and now is being rewarded with American military hardware from Washington.
The Department of Defense officially notified Congress on September 14 that 44 armored Humvees and hundreds of missiles are being sold to Bahrain for $53 million. It is the first sale of military equipment to Bahrain since it began attacking demonstrators earlier this year, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“This is exactly the wrong move after Bahrain brutally suppressed protests and is carrying out a relentless campaign of retribution against its critics,” said Maria McFarland, deputy Washington director for HRW. “It will be hard for people to take US statements about democracy and human rights in the Middle East seriously when, rather than hold its ally Bahrain to account, it appears to reward repression with new weapons.”
Bahrainis took to the streets in large numbers beginning in February and demanded democratic reforms. What they got in return was volleys of gunfire from security forces that killed seven people and wounded hundreds of others. …
Read on: www.allgov.com/US_and_the_World/ViewNews…
The risks of relying on drones
Washington post (Letter to the Editor)
By W. Hays Parks
September 24, 2011
… It’s tough. On occasion mistakes were made, resulting in the death of an innocent. The best-trained fighter pilot with the greatest technology has the same question as a soldier or Marine on the ground: When can I shoot?
Mathematical formulas cannot cut through the fog of war to provide the clear picture the autonomous-systems industry suggests. The U.S. military has developed the most precise bombing capability in history.
Yet, for political reasons, commanders in Afghanistan constructed and operate under rules of engagement that prohibit use of precision-guided munitions if there is risk of a single civilian casualty. This results from the Taliban’s using civilians as human shields, on occasion using deception to draw an attack and cause civilian casualties. Were a multimillion-dollar autonomous system to be used in Afghanistan, a single incident (whether a result of Taliban deception or otherwise) could result in a shutdown of the system.
Technology always has been a way in which the United States has sought to achieve battlefield superiority. In some cases it has worked; in others, it has not. Let the buyer beware.
Professor visits to study military impact
Guampdn.com
Written by
Meryl Dillman
Pacific Daily News
A professor from a university in Washington, D.C., is on Guam to learn more about the ways military bases affect people’s lives and how the presence of bases affect the community.
David Vine, who is an assistant professor of anthropology at American University, plans to spend more than a week learning about the island and the military presence on it.
Vine is the author of a book titled “Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia.” He conducted research about the U.S. military base on the Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia and the expulsion of its indigenous people during the development of the base, according to information on American University’s website. …
One of those connections Vine said is the issue of democratic representation.
“The people of Diego Garcia and the people of Guam, despite being citizens of Britain and the United States, respectively, do not have full democratic representation,” he said.
Vine is now working on a second book about the impacts of U.S. military bases around the world. …
Read more: www.guampdn.com/article/20110924/NEWS01/109240311
U.S. assembling secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say
Washington Post
By Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller
September 20, 2011
The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.
One of the installations is being established in Ethiopia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.
The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.
The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by U.S. counterterrorism operations.
The U.S. government is known to have used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The negotiations that preceded the establishment of the base in the Republic of Seychelles illustrate the efforts the United States is making to broaden the range of its drone weapons.
The island nation of 85,000 people has hosted a small fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the U.S. Navy and Air Force since September 2009. U.S. and Seychellois officials have previously acknowledged the drones’ presence but have said that their primary mission was to track pirates in regional waters. But classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the unmanned aircraft have also conducted counterterrorism missions over Somalia, about 800 miles to the northwest.
The cables, obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, reveal that U.S. officials asked leaders in the Seychelles to keep the counterterrorism missions secret. …
US Plans Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Test on International Day of Peace
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
by David Krieger
August 31, 2011
In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly created an annual International Day of Peace to take place on the opening day of the regular sessions of the General Assembly. The purpose of the day is for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.”
Twenty years later, in 2001, the General Assembly, desiring to draw attention to the objectives of the International Day of Peace, gave the day a fixed date on which it would be held each year: September 21st. The General Assembly declared in its Resolution 55/282 that “the International Day of Peace shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honor a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day.”
The Resolution continued by inviting “all Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, regional and non-governmental organizations and individuals to commemorate, in an appropriate manner, the International Day of Peace, including through education and public awareness, and to cooperate with the United Nations in the establishment of the global ceasefire.”
The United States has announced that its next test of a Minuteman III will occur on September 21, 2011. Rather than considering how it might participate and bring awareness to the International Day of Peace, the United States will be testing one of its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles that, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, continue to be kept on high-alert in readiness to be fired on a few moments notice. …
Read on: www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=283
We have now heard that this test, which was meant to be happening on World Peace Day, is cancelled for technical reasons.
US, Australia To Strengthen Military Alliance In Asia-Pacific
RTT News
September 16, 2011
The annual Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) have approved measures designed to further strengthen the alliance’s cooperation, interoperability, and capabilities of the two nations’ military resources. …
Under the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty, the two countries decided to enhance the interoperability of their forces, especially on combat and transport aircraft, helicopters, submarine combat systems and torpedo technology. The successful TALISMAN SABER exercise, the largest and most important combined military exercise, to strengthen interoperability and combined capacity to deal with post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction, will continue.
Australia noted and will continue to consult with the United States as it develops the phased adaptive approach to Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) outlined in the U.S. BMD Review, which will allow missile defense to be adapted to the threats unique to the Asia-Pacific. …
Read in full: http://www.rttnews.com/Content/TopStories.aspx?Id=1715308
US Military Newspaper ‘Stars and Stripes’ Calls WikiLeaks ‘Critically Important Tool,’ Questions Executive Powers
Death and Taxes
By DJ Pangburn
September 16, 2011
Ann Wright, a writer for the U.S. military’s news source Stars and Stripes, has come out in support of WikiLeaks. It’s about time someone in the military spoke up.
Retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel Ann Wright has come out in support of WikiLeaks in a Stars and Stripes editorial, stating that the recent spate of leaked cables from the journalist organization “[t]aken as a whole… shows a pattern of concealing abuse by both U.S. and coalition forces.”
As noted in Stars in Stripes, Ann Wright is a 29-year veteran who later served as a U.S. diplomat in nine countries and deputy ambassador in four U.S. embassies. Wright is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the Bradley Manning Support Network.
Wright, unlike so many within the U.S. government, emphasizes that “The information revealed by WikiLeaks is thus a critically important tool for those who seek to uphold basic human-rights standards and the professional conduct of U.S. military forces.”
And though Wright does not criticize the very act of military adventurism that has led our forces into that pattern of abuse, it is a wonder that someone in the military has spoken up and taken a principled stand. …
China’s Challenge at Sea
New York Times
The opinion Pages
By Aaron L. Friedberg
September 4, 2011
AMERICA’S fiscal woes are placing the country on a path of growing strategic risk in Asia.
With Democrats eager to protect social spending and Republicans anxious to avoid tax hikes, and both saying the national debt must be brought under control, we can expect sustained efforts to slash the defense budget. Over the next 10 years, cuts in planned spending could total half a trillion dollars. Even as the Pentagon saves money by pulling back from Afghanistan and Iraq, there will be fewer dollars with which to buy weapons or develop new ones.
Unfortunately, those constraints are being imposed just as America faces a growing strategic challenge. Fueled by economic growth of nearly 10 percent a year, China has been engaged for nearly two decades in a rapid and wide-ranging military buildup. China is secretive about its intentions, and American strategists have had to focus on other concerns since 9/11. Still, the dimensions, direction and likely implications of China’s buildup have become increasingly clear. …
Read on: www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/opinion/chinas-challenge-at-sea.html
How the US gets military intelligence and where it goes
RN-T.com
by Calvin Woodward and Kimberly Dozier
U.S. intelligence in the struggle against terrorism comes in many forms, maddeningly general, improbably precise, a game of sorts with vast consequences for winner and loser.
It’s a satellite image showing tribesmen gathering in a remote area where none should be — the photograph so clear you can see the caliber of ammunition they are carrying.
It’s a snatched bit of conversation between two terrorist leaders, overheard by a trusted source the terrorists don’t realize is listening.
It’s a stolen diplomatic cable. That’s right, we steal.
Each of these sources and a multitude of others can become the tips that put an entire nation on alert, as a single tip has done from a single source just before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. …
Q: What rules do U.S. intelligence-gatherers have to play by?
A: Looser rules than for most people.
The CIA operates under the U.S. law known as Title 50 — literally a license to break laws in foreign countries, by committing espionage, persuading a local official to commit treason, or in extreme circumstances, to go into a foreign country and target an al-Qaida suspect for killing or capture. Title 50 operations are covert, meaning the U.S. never intends to acknowledge them. Other intelligence agencies, such as the eavesdropping National Security Agency and the new Cyber Command, routinely operate under Title 50 as well.
Read more questions and answers about the gathering and use of intelligence: RN-T.com
Title 50 – US Code: Download and read: http://uscode.house.gov/download/title_50.shtml
Drones could provide updated intelligence on North Korean missile sites
Stars and Stripes
By Seth Robson
September 12, 2011
The U.S. is negotiating with South Korea to fly the RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone near the Demilitarized Zone, a move that could provide an unprecedented view of goings-on in reclusive North Korea and draw the ire of China.
Flown extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past 10 years, the first Global Hawk arrived on Guam late last year and there are now three flying in the Asia Pacific theater.
South Korea is among a large group of nations in the region with whom U.S. officials are negotiating for flyover rights, according to Lt. Col. Terran Reneau, chief of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for the 13th Air Force in Hawaii.
Reneau did not give a timetable for the negotiations with the South Koreans but added: “I think we are very close” to flying in Korea. South Korean officials would not comment on the Global Hawk issue.
Lt. Col. David Gerhardt, Pacific Air Forces’ chief of command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements, added: “Global Hawk will likely fly over land in Korea as soon as agreements have been solidified to do that.”
Gerhardt did not name other nations in negotiations over Global Hawk flyover rights but said those closest to Guam with potential emergency landing sites are among the first to be approached by the U.S.
America’s Secret Libya War
The Daily Beast
By John Barry
August 30, 2011
The U.S. military has spent about $1 billion on Libya’s revolution, and secretly helped NATO with everything from munitions to surveillance aircraft. John Barry provides an exclusive look at Obama’s emerging ‘covert intervention’ strategy.
The U.S. military has spent about $1 billion so far and played a far larger role in Libya than it has acknowledged, quietly implementing an emerging “covert intervention” strategy that the Obama administration hopes will let America fight small wars with a barely detectable footprint.
Officially, President Obama handed the lead role of ousting Muammar Gaddafi to the European members of NATO. For this he was criticized by Washington war hawks who suggested that Europeans working with a ragtag team of Libyan rebels was a recipe for stalemate, not victory.
But behind the scenes, the U.S. military played an indispensable role in the Libya campaign, deploying far more forces than the administration chose to advertise. And at NATO headquarters outside Brussels, the U.S. was intimately involved in all decisions about how the Libyan rebels should be supported as they rolled up control of cities and oil refineries and marched toward the capital, Tripoli. …
The Military’s Plans for Social Unrest
Public Intelligence
August 15, 2011
Recent unrest in London has sparked media interest in the U.S. military’s plans for civil unrest, including a report from the Atlantic on a little known document called CONPLAN 3502. With economies declining around the world and social unrest spreading throughout the Middle East and even into Western democracies, many wonder what would happen if this sort of unrest and violence were to spread to the United States. Would the response be measured and calm, respecting popular movements and upholding fundamental human rights, or would the response look something more like what is happening in Syria?
To understand just what would happen in the event of widespread unrest in the United States, you must first familiarize yourself with CONPLAN 3502, the classified military plan for civil disturbances. A slide from a U.S. Northern Command presentation previously published by this site indicates that CONPLAN 3502 is one of several Contingency Plans (CONPLANs) for domestic U.S. military operations in the event of a disaster, terrorist attack or national security special event (NSSE). Several of the plans deal with Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA) in times of disaster or crisis, including pandemic influenza outbreaks, nuclear and radiological events, as well as chemical weapons attacks. Though, CONPLAN 3502 is unique in that it deals exclusively with support operations conducted with local authorities during times of “civil disturbance”. Because CONPLAN 3502 is classified “Secret”, it has not been released to the public and little is known of its contents. However, through bits of information found in a number of relevant documents, a fairly coherent picture of military civil disturbance planning may be ascertained.
Read on: http://publicintelligence.info/the-militarys-plans-for-social-unrest/
Marshall Islanders Uneasy after Missile Accidents
Missile destroyed, hypersonic glider disappears nearby
By Giff Johnson
Aug. 23, 2011
MAJURO, Marshall Islands (Marianas Variety, Aug. 23, 2011) – Leaders of islands in the fight path of American missile tests are expressing worry about the safety of their atoll and nearby inhabited islands following a missile re-entry vehicle being blown up “northeast” of Kwajalein and a hypersonic glider disappearing on its way to a target near Kwajalein last week.
“It ditched — but where?” asked Kwajalein Sen. Tony deBrum of the Falcon hypersonic glider that is so fast it can reach any point on the globe in one hour.
“We are concerned that with all these ditched and aborted flights our constituencies down range face increasingly significant risk of equipment failure or of tests simply gone awry,” said deBrum, who represents the population in parliament that lives next to the U.S. Army’s Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll.
Another Kwajalein senator, Michael Kabua, said that he has received no information directly from the U.S. Army regarding the aborted Minuteman missile test on July 27 or the August 11 Falcon HTV-2 hypersonic glider failure.
“I hope the Marshall Islands government brings this up at the Joint Committee Meeting later this month,” deBrum said. The JCM is an annual defense consultation between U.S. and Marshall Islands officials. “What hazard do these shots pose to people down range?” deBrum asked.
Since the mid-1960s, the Pentagon has used Kwajalein’s boomerang-shaped necklace of coral islands as a target for dummy warheads launched on intercontinental ballistic missiles from California. Kwajalein has been at the center of U.S. missile defense programs. About a dozen islands in the atoll are dotted with radar and other missile tracking equipment or missile intercept launch sites.
In a statement released after the July 27 Minuteman missile re-entry vehicle was destroyed in flight after problems developed, the U.S. Air Force said the dummy warhead was destroyed “northeast of Roi-Namur” — an island at the northern tip of Kwajalein Atoll.
“Inhabited islands that are ‘northeast’ of Kwajalein include Likiep, Ailuk, Mejit and Wotje,” Kabua said.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency reported that the August 11 Falcon test stopped communicating with mission control 20 minutes into the planned 30-minute flight test to Kwajalein Atoll. This hypersonic glider, an unmanned vehicle designed to deliver a weapons payload to any point on the globe in less than an hour, was reportedly traveling at about 13,000 miles per hour — 20 times the speed of sound. It was the second of two planned flights, both of which stopped communicating and crashed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
From: http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2011/August/08-23-06.htm
Marianas Variety: www.mvariety.com
Copyright © 2011 Marianas Variety. All Rights Reserved
US Air Force chief eyes deeper ties with PAF
Inquirer.net
By Tonette Orejas
August 19, 2011
CLARK FREEPORT, Philippines—The chief of staff of the United States Air Force visited this former American military air base on Thursday for what he called “deepening of partnership” with the Philippine Air Force.
General Norton Schwartz was the first USAF chief of staff to visit Clark after American forces left their military bases in the Philippines 20 years ago.
Clark, the Subic Bay Naval Base and several other US military facilities in the Philippines were closed down after the Senate’s rejection of the extension of the 1947 Philippine-US Military Bases Agreement on September 16, 1991.
on the first day of Schwartz’s three-day official visit to the Philippines, he held meetings and dialogues with officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and met with Lieutenant General Oscar Ravena, PAF chief, at the Villamor Air Base, the US Embassy said without giving details of what was discussed.
The PAF gave no details either.
On Thursday, Schwartz met with Major General Ricardo Banayat, head of the PAF’s First Air Division here for “military capability demonstrations and briefings.” …
Read on: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/9619/us-air-force-chief-eyes-deeper-ties-with-paf
U.S. should cut military spending
The Daily Iowan
By Shay O’Reilly
August 19, 2011
On the campaign trail in Decorah Monday, President Obama gently chastised Democrats.
“Sometimes there are those in my party who will defend everything, even if it’s not working,” the president said, standing in front of a pastoral red barn. “Well, we do have to make some cuts on things that we don’t need, and that allows us to invest in the things that we do.”
Obama failed to elaborate on what he thinks America needs. But from his actions in the past, it’s fairly easy to extrapolate his priorities: In July, Obama offered to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67; throughout the debt-ceiling negotiations, he’s stated a willingness to put everything — including entitlements — on the table.
Meanwhile, the debt-ceiling deal cut less from defense than expected, thanks to a sneaky redefinition, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested budget cuts would compromise the country’s ability to accomplish its (abstract at best) military and security goals. It’s unlikely that a significant military disinvestment is in America’s immediate future.
It’s time to re-evaluate our priorities. If politicians and the public they supposedly serve are caught in this austerity zeitgeist, we should use our limited government funding to make America stronger — not by boosting our military might but by fostering the services that support and encourage our democracy.
In fiscal 2010, the U.S. military budget was $693 billion. Our country alone spends almost as much on military and defense as every other country combined. While it’s important to keep our nation safe, this expenditure is unjustifiable; even if we believe that we must maintain our status as a superpower, the outlandish sums of money we spend on defense have no grounding in real-life needs.
To pick an easy example, our nuclear arsenal could destroy the world. In February, climate scientists released a study showing that even a regional exchange of nukes would trigger massive environmental consequences that would result in a global famine.
Massive overkill aside, our expenditures aren’t making us any safer. A Washington Post investigation found that our security state is so bloated that efficiency was impossible to measure, and threats just fall through the cracks. Instead of making advances in the “war on terror,” our forays overseas have given terrorists more converts: Every civilian massacre is both tragic and counterproductive. …
Read on: www.dailyiowan.com/2011/08/19/Opinions/24421.html
The Pentagon’s new China war plan
Despite budget woes, the military is preparing for a conflict with our biggest rival
— and we should be worried
Salon.com
By Stephen Glain
August 13, 2011
This summer, despite America’s continuing financial crisis, the Pentagon is effectively considering trading two military quagmires for the possibility of a third. Reducing its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan as it refocuses on Asia, Washington is not so much withdrawing forces from the Persian Gulf as it is redeploying them for a prospective war with its largest creditor, China.
According to the defense trade press, Pentagon officials are seeking ways to adapt a concept known as AirSea Battle specifically for China, debunking rote claims from Washington that it has no plans to thwart its emerging Asian rival. A recent article in Inside the Pentagon reported that a small group of U.S. Navy officers known as the China Integration Team “is hard at work applying the lessons of [AirSea Battle] to a potential conflict with China. …
Read on: www.salon.com/news/china/index.html?story=/news/feature/2011/08/13/sino_us_stephen_glain
See also (below) the article “Air Sea Battle” from August last year …
AirSea Battle
A new operational concept looks to prepare the US and its allies
to deter or defeat Chinese power.
AirForce-Magazine.com
By Richard Halloran
August 2010
After three Air Force C-130 pilots and crews from Yokota Air Base in Japan finished an exercise called Cope West 10 in Indonesia in April, they wrote up evaluations of Halim Air Base and other airfields from which they had operated, assessing the condition of runways, reliability of electrical supply, safety of fuel storage, and adequacy of parking ramps.
Until now, that would have been a routine report to prepare for the next time American airmen might use Indonesian air bases. With the emergence of a joint Air Force-Navy operational concept called AirSea Battle, however, intelligence on airfields has taken on new significance.
A critical element in the concept is to identify alternate airfields all over Asia that Air Force and Navy aircraft might operate from one day. US aircraft can be dispersed there, making life hard for a potential enemy such as China to select targets. Dispersed bases simultaneously would make it easier for an American pilot needing an emergency landing site to find one if his home base had been bombed.
AirSea Battle looks to prepare the US and its allies to deter or defeat China’s rising military power. It envisions operations of USAF fighters, bombers, and missiles coordinated with Navy aircraft flown from carriers and land bases—plus missiles launched from submarines and surface ships. Nuclear war plans will also be folded into the AirSea Battle operation. …
Read on: www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2010/August%202010/0810battle.aspx
Missile Defense Has Cost the US More than the Entire Apollo Program
From GIZMODO
The Apollo program was long, arduous, tense, and very, very expensive. America’s missile defense ambitions have been all of these things too. The Apollo program put humans on the moon. Missile defense has been a colossal failure. The cost? Equal.
Despite federal belt-tightening (or cutting off the belt entirely with a chainsaw), Congress has found a spare $8.6 billion to fund work on the US missile “shield”—a 1.2% increase from last year’s budget.
This, despite the fact that the Pentagon has yet to find an effective way of shooting missiles out of the sky. Lasers, satellites, other missiles—nothing’s worked well, and they’ve been trying for decades. All that trying (and failing) has racked up quite the bill: Bloomberg reports that failed missile defense has cost the US around $150 billion—the same amount we spent putting a man on the moon. …
The US military’s secret military
Special US commandos are deployed in about 75 countries around the world – and that number is expected to grow.
Aljazeera, Opinion, by Nick Turse, August 8, 2011
Somewhere on this planet a US commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done … for the day. Without the knowledge of much of the general American public, a secret force within the US military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, and deserves further attention.
After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the US military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has often remained out of the public scrutiny.
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of travelling – a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence – in about 60 per cent of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged – is evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.
The rise of the military’s secret military
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.
Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialised helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialised and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes US citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine”. …
Read on: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/20118485414768821.html
HIROSHIMA DAY 2003
Secret Meeting on the Privatization of Nuclear War
Behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters
GlobalResearch.ca
by Michel Chossudovsky
August 7, 2011
On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day, commemorating when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance. This mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima. The meeting was intended to set the stage for the development of a new generation of “smaller”, “safer” and “more usable” nuclear weapons, to be used in the “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century.
In a cruel irony, the participants to this secret meeting, which excluded members of Congress, arrived on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and departed on the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki. More than 150 military contractors, scientists from the weapons labs, and other government officials gathered at the headquarters of the US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska to plot and plan for the possibility of “full-scale nuclear war”, calling for the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons – more “usable” so-called “mini-nukes” and earth penetrating “bunker busters” armed with atomic warheads. …
The Privatization of Nuclear War: US Military Contractors Set the Stage
The post 9/11 nuclear weapons doctrine was in the making, with America’s major defense contractors directly involved in the decision-making process.
The Hiroshima Day 2003 meetings had set the stage for the “privatization of nuclear war”. Corporations not only reap multibillion-dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons industry, which includes the production of nuclear devices as well as the missile delivery systems, etc., is controlled by a handful of defense contractors with Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grunman, Raytheon and Boeing in the lead. It is worth noting that barely a week prior to the historic August 6, 2003 meeting, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) disbanded its advisory committee which provided an “independent oversight” on the US nuclear arsenal …
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25920
Where and When Should the U.S. Military Use Drones?
From PolicyMic
By Jake Horowitz
July 8, 2011
The strike last week underscores the new Washington consensus: As American troops begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan, the battle against Al-Qaeda will be fought with flying killing machines, not boots on the ground, in countries across the world – even those with which the U.S. lacks a formal declaration of war. …
To some extent, drones can be seen as a modified form of air strikes from U.S. military jets or a more visible form of special operations tactics which the CIA has been using for decades. But law scholars are divided on whether the strikes are legal. …
Read more: www.policymic.com/article/show?id=963
George Bush’s lone foreign policy win
CBS News
By Tom Engelhardt
July 12, 2011
George W. who? I mean, the guy is so over. He turned the big six-five the other day and it was barely a footnote in the news. And Dick Cheney, tick-tick-tick. Condoleezza Rice? She’s already onto her next memoir, and yet it’s as if she’s been wiped from history, too? As for Donald Rumsfeld, he published his memoir in February and it hit the bestseller lists, but a few months later, where is he?
And can anyone be surprised? They were wrong about Afghanistan. They were wrong about Iraq. They were wrong about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. They were wrong about what the U.S. military was capable of doing. …
They may have disappeared from our lives, but the post-9/11 world they had such a mad hand in creating hasn’t. …
… it’s scores of Bush policies and positions that will clearly be with us until hell freezes over. Among them all, consider the Obama administration’s updated version of that signature Bush invention, the Global War on Terror. …
Only recently, the Obama administration leaked news that it was intensifying its military-run war against al-Qaeda in Yemen by bringing the CIA into the action. The Agency is now to build a base for its drone air wing somewhere in the Middle East to hunt Yemeni terrorists (and assumedly those elsewhere in the region as well). Yemen functionally has no government to cooperate with, but in pure Bushian fashion, who cares?
Similarly, as June ended, unnamed American officials leaked the news that, for the first time, a U.S. military drone had conducted a strike against al-Shabab militants in Somalia, with the implication that this was a “war” that would also be intensifying. At about the same time, curious reports emerged from Pakistan, where the CIA has been conducting an escalating drone war since 2004 (strikes viewed “negatively” by 97% of Pakistanis, according to a recent Pew poll). Top Pakistani officials were threatening to shut down the Agency’s drone operations at Shamsi air base in Baluchistan. Shamsi is the biggest of the three borrowed Pakistani bases from which the CIA secretly launches its drones. The Obama administration responded bluntly. White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan insisted that, whatever happened, the U.S. would continue to “deliver precise and overwhelming force against al-Qaida” in the Pakistani tribal areas. …
Read in full: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/12/opinion/main20078794.shtml
U.S.A.F. Space & Missile Systems Center… Infrared Is On (Satellite)
Satnews Daily
July 11, 2011
The infrared sensor payload on the first U.S. Air Force Space Based Infrared System geosynchronous satellite was recently activated. Tests are now underway to calibrate and characterize the GEO-1 payload for certification and operations.
The SBIRS GEO payload design consists of both a scanning sensor and a separate, independently steerable staring sensor. These high sensitivity sensors collect and downlink infrared events in several wavelengths in order to simultaneously support multiple mission areas. GEO-1 was launched May 7, 2011, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The spacecraft has been fully deployed and is functioning normally in geosynchronous orbit. …
GEO-1 will provide timely, highly accurate missile warning, missile defense, battlespace awareness and technical intelligence data to deployed warfighters, national leadership, and U.S. allies. …
Read more: www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=968293001
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