Articles (Jul – Sep 2012)
The astonishing National Academy of Sciences missile defense report
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
By George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol
September 20, 2012
- Article Highlights:
- A recent National Academy of Sciences report on ballistic missile defense contains flawed assumptions, analytical oversights, and internal inconsistencies. It also contradicts basic, science-based results from other published studies.
- Because of this faulty science, the report reaches erroneous conclusions about boost-phase missile defense and the nation’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system and the European Phased Adaptive Approach.
- Given its scientific problems, the National Academy of Sciences report cannot serve as a basis for formulating national policy on ballistic missile defense. There is a clear need for a comprehensive, open, and technical review of the report.
Just a few weeks ago, on September 11, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report titled “Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense: an Assessment of Concepts and Systems for US Boost Phase Missile Defense in Comparison to Other Alternatives.” It is an astonishing document, given that it purports to be the product of a respectable scientific institution. It contains numerous flawed assumptions, analytical oversights, and internal inconsistencies. It also contradicts basic, scientific results from other published studies that have already been independently reviewed and verified. These serious problems lead to fundamental errors in many of the report’s most important findings and recommendations, ultimately undermining its credibility as science-based analysis. …
More Guantanamo Anguish
The man who died at Guantanamo is Adnan Latif
This is a memo from David Remes – Adnan Latif’s lawyer:
‘Yesterday, the press reported that a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo had died. The detainee was our client, Adnan Latif, ISN 156, whom we represented since 2004. Slightly built and gentle, he was a father and husband. He was a talented poet, and was devoutly religious. He never posed a threat to the United States, and he never should have been brought to Guantanamo.
The military has not stated a cause of death. However Adnan died, it was Guantanamo that killed him. His death is a reminder of the human cost of the government’s Guantanamo detention policy and underscores the urgency of releasing detainees the government does not intend to prosecute.’
Quoted in a post here: www.lawfareblog.com/2012/09/breaking-news-dead-guantanamo-detainee-is-adnan-latif/
Poems from Guantanamo
Adnan Latif was one of the poets featured in ‘POEMS FROM GUANTANAMO’ (Univ of Iowa Press) published in 2007.
In this YouTube video some of the poems from that book are read by Vanessa Redgrave.
See this post by Marc Falkoff, in 2007 about putting the book together, who says:
‘The Pentagon’s reaction to the publication of Poems from Guantanamo has been predictable. Last June, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, Defense Department spokesman Cmdr. J. D. Gordon commented on the collection by saying, “While a few detainees at Guantanamo Bay have made efforts to author what they claim to be poetry, given the nature of their writings they have seemingly not done so for the sake of art. They have attempted to use this medium as merely another tool in their battle of ideas against Western democracies.” Gordon had not, at the time, read the poems.’
Bear in mind here, when reading this Defense Dept statement, that out of the total of 779 prisoners who have passed through this truly evil place, a grand total of 7 (yes seven) have ever been convicted of a crime.
Dying is the only way out
Until Monday there were still 169 prisoners incarcerated there with no sign of anything changing – now there are 168.
In Glenn Greenwald’s post written before it was announced who the man was, he talks about the awful limbo of the lack of due process:
‘Although the detainee’s identity has not been disclosed, a camp spokesman acknowledged that he “had not been charged and had not been designated for prosecution”. In other words, he has been kept by the US government in a cage for many years without any opportunity to contest the accusations against him, and had no hope of leaving the camp except by death.’
Indeed, dying in due process-free captivity now appears to be the only way for many of these detainees to leave.
He says:
‘In the hierarchy of evil, consigning someone who has been convicted of nothing to a cage year after year after year, until they die, is high up on the list.’
Study Shoots Down Current U.S. Missile Defense Strategy as Costly, Impractical
NationalDefenseMagazine.org
By Eric Beidel
The United States should stop development of expensive systems to shoot down enemy missiles as soon as they launch and focus on improving weapons to intercept them in midcourse, according to a study requested by Congress and funded by the Missile Defense Agency.
In a report titled “Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense: An Assessment of Concepts and Systems for U.S. Boost-Phase Missile Defense in Comparison to Other Alternatives,” a committee from the National Research Council painted the MDA as having a hobby-shop mentality, chasing every technology available in hopes of creating an impenetrable shield.
That is an unrealistic goal, said L. David Montague, committee co-chair and retired president of the missile system division at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space.
A number of studies in recent years have come to the same conclusion. The NRC report recommends increasing midcourse defense by supplementing two current interceptor sites at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., with a third in the northeast United States. As it stands, the two-interceptor system has limited capability to defend against missiles launched by countries other than North Korea, the report stated. The third site could be located in Maine or upstate New York, said Walter B. Slocombe, former undersecretary of defense for policy and the committee’s other co-chair.
MDA appears to have had trouble transitioning into an organization that knows what it wants and how to get it, Montague said. The agency needs to be able to navigate the acquisition process without changing requirements so frequently, he added.
“For too long, the U.S. has been committed to expansive missile defense strategies without sufficient consideration of the costs and real utility,” Montague said. …
Read on: www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=881
Why We Should Care About America’s Fading Economic Freedom
U.S. News & World Report (blog)
By Antony Davies, James R. Harrigan
September 23, 2012
The Fraser Institute’s latest Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report is out, and the news is not good for the United States. Ranked among the five freest countries in the world from 1975 through 2002, the United States has since dropped to 18th place. The Fraser Institute bases this ranking on more than 40 variables measuring the size of government, legal system, security of property rights, access to sound money, freedom of trade, and regulation of markets. The United States, long the model of economic freedom for the rest of the world, now ranks below Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, Chile…and 13 other nations. When it comes to economic freedom, America is very clearly moving in the wrong direction.
Much of America’s decline is due to the growth of the government’s footprint in our lives since 2000. The assault on American property rights has not helped matters, either. The war on terror put American travelers under the thumb of the TSA—an entity that combines the charm of the DMV, the might of a paramilitary force, and the impropriety of a fraternity hazing. The Supreme Court’s Kelo decision ushered in a rise in eminent domain abuses. And let’s not forget the bailouts of those corporations that were “too big to fail.” …
Time to ask on anniversary of 9/11: who pays and who profits from endless US wars?
Stop the War Coalition
By Johnny Barber
September 10, 2012
On average, one US soldier dies everyday. Not an enormous sum, unless it is your mother, father, son or daughter that has perished. Few Americans notice. Afghan loses are not reported.
ELEVEN YEARS LATER, we are still at war. Bullets, mortars and drones are still extracting payment. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions have paid in full. Children and even those yet to be born will continue to pay for decades to come.
On a single day in Iraq last week there were 29 bombing attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilians and wounding another 235. On Sept 9th, reports indicate 88 people were killed and another 270 injured in 30 attacks all across the country. Iraq continues in a seemingly endless death spiral into chaos. In his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President, Obama claimed he ended the war in Iraq, well… not quite.
The city of Fallujah remains under siege. Not from US troops, but from a deluge of birth defects that have plagued families since the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus by US forces in 2004. No government studies have provided a direct link to the use of these weapons because no government studies have been undertaken, and none are contemplated.
Dr. Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, told Al Jazeera,
“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine. There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we’ve never seen them until now.” The photographs are available on line if you can bear to look at what we have wrought. George W. Bush will loudly proclaim his “Pro-life” bona fides, and he’ll tell you he believes “that every child, born and unborn, ought to be protected in law and welcomed into life.” Apparently, “every child” doesn’t apply to the children of Fallujah, and the “law” doesn’t apply to George W. Bush.
Our soldiers, some physically damaged by IED’s, some mentally destroyed by PTSD, will pay for these wars for the rest of their days. Drug and alcohol abuse is out of control. Suicide among the troops is an epidemic. 2,916 Americans were lost in the towers on that fateful day, many, many more have perished in the intervening years.
Today we will be asked to honor the men and woman of our armed forces, but what does honoring the veterans entail? In its most recent report, The Veterans Administration estimates about 107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Mental illness plagues 45% of homeless vets and 70% suffer from some kind of substance abuse. So how do you honor our veterans? …
Obama vs Romney: 6 Reasons Why the Romney/Ryan Budget is Actually Isolationist
PolicyMic
By Andrew Lubin
September 6, 2012
Russia, Iran, energy independence, China, Syria, Venezuela…as former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice so eloquently told a nationwide audience last night “the world is a chaotic and dangerous place.”
Today’s world is indeed far more complicated than the Cold War; a successful American foreign and defense policy needs sophistication in order to deal with situations ranging from Russian recalcitrance in helping halt the carnage in Syria to American-born extremist mullahs living offshore inciting America’s Muslim soldiers to kill non-Muslim soldiers to a possible Iranian nuclear bomb.
The GOP platform says the Republican Party is “the party of peace through strength.” It criticizes the Obama administration for its alleged weak positions towards countries such as North Korea, China and Iran, its reductions in military spending, and using the military for social engineering. The Republican national military strategy “restores as a principal objective the deterrence using the full spectrum of our military capabilities.” To do this, Gov Romney intends to substantially increase the defense budget — which in 2012 is greater than the defense budgets of next 20 countries combined. …
About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War
Truthout.org
By David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org
September 1, 2012
“About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War,” is a book that should be stacked up on a table in every high school cafeteria, next to the vultures. Sorry, I mean the war pushers. Sorry, I mean the good recruiters for the services of the profiteers of death. Sorry, you know the people I mean. That is, unless useful books can make it into classrooms, which would be even better.
Most G.I. resistance in Vietnam, this book points out, came from those who had willingly signed up, not from draftees. It is often those who believe the hype, who are trying to benefit the world by going to war, who find the will try to benefit the world when their blinders have been removed and they’ve seen what war is and what war is used for.
“About Face” collects stories of recent resistance within the “volunteer” U.S. military. These are young people with few job options who choose military “service” but discover it isn’t a service. They all have stories, many of them highlighting particular moments of conversion. The reality is usually more complex and gradual, but the stories make the point. …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/news/item/11277-about-face-military-resisters-turn-agai
Publisher’s description of the book: Veterans of recent conflicts describe their individual journeys from raw recruit to war resister in this collection of testimonials. Although it is not well publicized, the long tradition of refusing to fight unjust wars continues today within the American military. The stories in this book provide an intimate, honest look at the personal transformation of each of these young people and at the same time constitute a powerful argument against militarization and endless war. Also included are exclusive interviews with Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg addressing the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and the role civilian and GI resistance plays in bringing the troops home. www.amazon.com/About-Face-Military-Resisters-Against/dp/1604864400
Ballistic Missile Defense: Why the Current GMD System’s Radars Can’t Discriminate
mostlymissiledefense.com
August 28, 2012
My previous missile defense post (August 24) compared the three-phase national missile defense (NMD) system plan developed by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) during the Clinton Administration with the current GMD system. One of the most striking differences in this comparison was the lack of long-range radar discrimination in the current GMD system. While the BMDO plan would have ultimately deployed eight or nine very large X-band Ground-Based Radars (GBRs), the current GMD has only one such radar, the Sea-Based X-band (SBX) radar. Moreover, the SBX, which is somewhat smaller than the GBRs envisioned under the BMDO plan, is scheduled to be semi-mothballed in FY 2013 by cutting its budget by more than 90% and putting it in a “limited test and operations” status.
This post explains why the absence of these large X-band GBR radars leaves the current GMD vulnerable to defeat by the simplest of countermeasures, even unintentional ones. The fundamental problem is that the core radar infrastructure of the GMD consists of Upgraded Early Warning Radars, which have essentially no discrimination capability. …
This is an interesting article. In a section discussing the role of the Upgraded Early Warning Radars RAF Fylingdales, near Pickering North Yorkshire is mentioned. The fundamental problem they say is that the core radar infrastructure of the GMD consisting of Upgraded Early Warning Radars have essentially no discrimination capability.
The Human Cost of War on Iran
TRUTHOUT – By Elizabeth Murray, Consortium News – August 25, 2012
As Israel threatens to bomb Iran, U.S. pundits are again pontificating about the necessity of war and opining about military tactics. Left out of their frame is the certainty of mass human suffering, a reality forgotten since the days of the Vietnam War, says former U.S. intelligence analyst Elizabeth Murray.
In late 2002, just prior to the launch of the U.S. “shock and awe” campaign against Iraq, I was invited to join a gathering of intelligence analysts… A tall, heavy-set Iraqi-American, who was present as an observer and seated beside me on the final day, remarked quietly: “All these people are talking about strategic, political and military issues; no one here is talking about the hundreds of thousands of people — my people — that are going to die.”
His words struck me as profoundly tragic, and the tears welling up behind his dark glasses made me feel suddenly ashamed to be there, aware of the complete absence of consideration for Iraqis. I struggled to find something to say that would console the man, but found myself at a loss. …
All these years later, that incident has come back to haunt me as we approach the precipice of yet another deadly war. Will we allow ourselves to be blinded again? …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11112-the-human-cost-of-war-on-iran
Human Dignity: A Casualty of War
TruthOut
By Matt Southworth, Friends Committee on National Legislation
August 4, 2012
The United States has waged war in Afghanistan for more than a decade, at a cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, with little progress toward peace. The Strategic Partnership Agreement that the U.S. and Afghanistan signed in May is unlikely to lead to positive outcomes. By design, the agreement will pit an internationally-backed Afghan National Security Force against an Afghan-born insurgency that has historically risen to resist foreign intervention.
This agreement will undermine efforts toward a long-term partnership that might otherwise help solve the underlying conflicts in the country and region. I also fear it will lead the U.S. to abandon Afghanistan as U.S. political will to support billions in spending fades in coming years. Afghans are the only ones who can solve their political problems, but the U.S. should not turn its back on viable Afghan-led processes to bring stability to the country. The best U.S. path in Afghanistan is far from clear. Even if the U.S. were to support military de-escalation and political reconciliation, it would not guarantee that a decade’s worth of conflicts would end peacefully. Those of us working for peace must continue to help a stable and prosperous Afghanistan emerge from the suffering of war.
In this effort to build a better world, it can be challenging to maintain our resolve and moral bearing. In my experience, Friends and principled people everywhere struggle with this same challenge.
I’m familiar with this struggle. As a bright-eyed nineteen-year-old soldier in Iraq in 2004, I was faced with a crisis of conscience. I thought I was going to Iraq to help free Iraqis, but instead I was a part of a mission to put them in a different kind of prison. …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10690-human-dignity-a-casualty-of-war
Possible war with Iran could be month-long affair: Israel minister
REUTERS – Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer – August 15, 2012
War with Iran would probably turn into a month-long conflict on various fronts with missile strikes on Israeli cities and some 500 dead, Israel’s civil defense minister said in an interview published on Wednesday.
“There is no room for hysteria. Israel’s home front is prepared as never before,” Matan Vilnai, a former general who is about to leave his cabinet post to become ambassador to China, told the Maariv daily.
The interview coincided with Israeli media reports over the past week suggesting that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before the U.S. presidential election in November.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday that Washington does not believe Israel has made a decision on whether to strike. …
Read on: www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/us-israel-iran-idUSBRE87E0AM20120815
General Petraeus and the Drone War
TruthOut – By Richard Sale – August 12, 2012
… Petraeus once said, “I don’t want to be the face of policy,”(2) but apparently fate has decided otherwise. Under President Barack Obama, the general today heads a massive, secret service that uses drones, cell phone monitoring and night assaults by US troops to eliminate high-value targets in the war on terror. This targeting system has drones, known as “the unblinking eye,” loitering over areas reportedly containing Afghan insurgents, while specially trained CIA Special Collection and military units convert the raw data obtained from drone surveillance and track mobile phone calls to map out an insurgent network vulnerable to attack from US raids or drone strikes.
Under Obama, the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with its constituent operating forces – Green Berets, Army Rangers, Seal Team Six – have managed to occupy the pinnacle of the US military’s prestige. …
President Obama never publicly acknowledged drones and their number of kills until last spring, and by then, the drone had become the key weapon in Obama’s way of making war – the linchpin of his administration’s counterterrorism strategy in Central Asia – a strategy increasingly being exported to places such as Yemen and the Horn of Africa. …
Read in full: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10659-general-petraeus-and-the-drone-war
U.S. model for a future war fans tensions with China and inside Pentagon
Washington Post – By Greg Jaffe – August 1, 2012
When President Obama called on the U.S. military to shift its focus to Asia earlier this year, Andrew Marshall, a 91-year-old futurist, had a vision of what to do.
Marshall’s small office in the Pentagon has spent the past two decades planning for a war against an angry, aggressive and heavily armed China.
No one had any idea how the war would start. But the American response, laid out in a concept that one of Marshall’s longtime proteges dubbed “Air-Sea Battle,” was clear.
Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country. The initial “blinding campaign” would be followed by a larger air and naval assault.
The concept, the details of which are classified, has angered the Chinese military and has been pilloried by some Army and Marine Corps officers as excessively expensive. Some Asia analysts worry that conventional strikes aimed at China could spark a nuclear war.
Air-Sea Battle drew little attention when U.S. troops were fighting and dying in large numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the military’s decade of battling insurgencies is ending, defense budgets are being cut, and top military officials, ordered to pivot toward Asia, are looking to Marshall’s office for ideas.
In recent months, the Air Force and Navy have come up with more than 200 initiatives they say they need to realize Air-Sea Battle. The list emerged, in part, from war games conducted by Marshall’s office and includes new weaponry and proposals to deepen cooperation between the Navy and the Air Force.
A former nuclear strategist, Marshall has spent the past 40 years running the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, searching for potential threats to American dominance. In the process, he has built a network of allies in Congress, in the defense industry, at think tanks and at the Pentagon that amounts to a permanent Washington bureaucracy.
While Marshall’s backers praise his office as a place where officials take the long view, ignoring passing Pentagon fads, critics see a dangerous tendency toward alarmism that is exaggerating the China threat to drive up defense spending. …
If You’re An American Taxpayer – Here Are Your Most Recent Defense Purchases
Business Insider – By Walter Hickey — July 23, 2012
It seems like the Pentagon is just like everyone else, fleeing the cities on vacation time in the middle of July. Last week the Pentagon slacked off, spending a measly $1.8 billion on 58 defense contracts.
This is a massive dip from the week before, where the Department spent $24.5 billion over the course of five days.
Still, there were a number of controversial, important and downright odd contracts that were inked in the week of July 15th, so here they are.
America — enjoy your recent purchases:
The Army is paying $171.4 million to Rosoboronexport FGUP of Moscow, Russia for Mi-17 helicopters…
$150 million for more Aerial Defense Systems…
The new Colt sidearm pistol just got its first order for $22.5 million…
Hawker Beechcraft — which is being sold to a Chinese company — gets $7.5 million for a plane…
Missile defense initiative faces continuing challenges
GalesburgPlanet.com – By Aaron Mehta — (Center for Public Integrity) – July 25, 2012
For years, the U.S. has pursued a reliable missile defense shield. But major parts of the program need better management or the entire effort will experience serious delays, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
Cost estimates and timetables for five key missile defense programs are “either not reliable or the program is missing information that could make it more efficient,” according to the report, released Friday.
Systems analyzed by the GAO were the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA, Aegis Ashore, Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS), and the Targets and Countermeasures Extended Medium-Range Ballistic Missile. …
Read on: galesburgplanet.com/posts/16709
Read the GAO report here (660kB pdf)
The Obama Administration Torpedoes the Arms Trade Treaty
Democracy Now
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
August 2, 2012
Quick: What is more heavily regulated, global trade of bananas or battleships? In late June, activists gathered in New York’s Times Square to make the absurd point, that, unbelievably, “there are more rules governing your ability to trade a banana from one country to the next than governing your ability to trade an AK-47 or a military helicopter.” So said Amnesty International USA’s Suzanne Nossel at the protest, just before the start of the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which ran from July 2 to July 27. Thanks to a last-minute declaration by the United States that it “needed more time” to review the short, 11-page treaty text, the conference ended last week in failure.
There isn’t much that could be considered controversial in the treaty. Signatory governments agree not to export weapons to countries that are under an arms embargo, or to export weapons that would facilitate “the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes” or other violations of international humanitarian law. Exports of arms are banned if they will facilitate “gender-based violence or violence against children” or be used for “transnational organized crime.” Why does the United States need more time than the more than 90 other countries that had sufficient time to read and approve the text? The answer lies in the power of the gun lobby, the arms industry and the apparent inability of President Barack Obama to do the right thing, especially if it contradicts a cold, political calculation. …
Read on: www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/8/2/the_obama_administration_torpedoes_the_arms_trade_treaty
War Drums? U.S. Military Building Missile Defense Radar Station in Qatar
The Blaze.com – By Liz Klimas – July 17, 2012
The WSJ reports the Pentagon is building a missile-defense radar station in Qatar to address the potential for “Tehran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and its threat to shut down the oil-shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz by mining them.”
The minesweepers give the U.S. greater flexibility to counter any Iranian effort to mine the strait at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which is already routinely patrolled by Iranian and U.S. warships. Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strategic waterway, which is the transit route for about a fifth of the world’s oil supply, in retaliation for increased Western-led sanctions. …
Read on: www.theblaze.com/stories/war-drums-u-s-military-building-missile-defense-radar-station-in-qatar
Pentagon Chief Rallies Arab, Israeli Allies Against Syria, Iran
Stop NATO
By Rick Rozoff
July 30, 2012
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has begun a five-day, four-nation tour of North Africa and the Middle East to consolidate military ties with traditional allies against the backdrop of mounting Western pressure aimed at the governments of Syria and Iran.
His first two stops are to Tunisia and Egypt, long-standing American military client states and members of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue partnership program. The next two are to Israel and Jordan, also Mediterranean Dialogue members, the first the main and the second one of the largest recipients of American military aid.
The two North African countries were the bellwethers of the so-called Arab Spring, a topic Panetta dwelled on at some length during his visit to Tunisia, though in relation to following Pentagon diktat Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak might well still be in power for all the difference that now exists. Last year’s biennial joint U.S.-Egyptian Bright Star military exercise was cancelled during the early months of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, but there is no reason to believe next year’s won’t go ahead as usual.
Four months ago Washington released $1.3 billion in military assistance to the Egyptian junta, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waiving congressional conditions introduced last year and State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland stating, “These decisions reflect America’s over-arching goal: to maintain our strategic partnership with an Egypt made stronger and more stable by a successful transition to democracy.”
The strategic partnership is one that began with the Carter-Brzezinski administration buying off President Anwar Sadat in 1978 and in so doing switching the largest and militarily most powerful Arab nation from non-alignment (Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser was a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement) and close state-to-state relations with the Soviet Union to the U.S.’s major military client state in Africa and the Arab world. It was also initiated to break the back of Arab unity in relation to Israel and Palestine.
Because of its unique value to the Pentagon, Egypt is the only African nation not to be assigned to the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), instead remaining in Central Command. The latter, launched in 1983, grew out of the Carter administration’s Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, which had been established to counter Soviet bloc influence in Northeast Africa: Egypt, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan.
Similarly and for complementary geopolitical purposes, Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation not in Central Command’s area of responsibility, instead being assigned to that of European Command. …
Pentagon plans for pivot to Asia need work – study
Reuters
July 27, 2012
A new congressionally mandated independent study of the Obama administration’s military policy in the Asia-Pacific region has concluded that without improvements the United States may struggle to turn its planned pivot to Asia into reality.
The Defense Department commissioned the report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think thank, as required by Congress in the 2012 Defense Authorization Act, a funding bill signed last December.
Lawmakers are seeking to evaluate the Obama administration’s plans to reorient U.S. military policy toward the Asia-Pacific region in the wake of the conflicts that bogged down military resources in the Muslim world in the decade that followed the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
Many U.S. policymakers see Asia as the future focus of U.S. foreign policy, with both opportunities and threats posed by the region’s massive economic growth, China’s rapid military buildup, North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
But CSIS found more needed to be done to translate policy objectives into coherent, achievable plans, especially given the intense fiscal pressures facing the Defense Department and skepticism from funders in Congress. …
Read on: www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/27/usa-defense-asia-idUSL2E8IRBNN20120727
NATO and U.S. Missile Defense in Europe are a Serious Political Concern
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
by Steven Starr
July 20, 2012
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently published an article by Pavel Podvig, “Point of Distraction”, which categorizes the ongoing US/NATO deployment of an integrated missile defense system in Western, Eastern and Southeastern Europe as an “overblown distraction” to U.S.-Russian relations. Given that Podvig’s first reference is to recent public threats made by Russia’s most senior military commander to launch military attacks against US/NATO missile defense bases, and that these threats have also been publicly made by Russian President Medvedev, Podvig’s assertions seem very abstracted from current political realities.
What is striking about Podvig’s analysis is that he omits any reference to the fact that US missile defense is being deployed in Europe via NATO. In fact, the word NATO does not appear anywhere in the article, and thus the entire issue of NATO is avoided. This is unfortunate and misleading, because Russia has always viewed the NATO military alliance, which was set up to “keep the Russians out”, as a real threat to Russian security. BMD and its deployment by NATO are inseparable issues from any realistic political point of view. …
read on: www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=379
Three Ploys the Department of Defense Uses When Their Budget Is at Risk
ThruthOut
By Dina Rasor
July 19, 2012
I have been at this for too long. Since I first started looking at the Department of Defense (DoD) and its budget in 1979, I have seen the Pentagon, its largest contractors and its fellow travelers in the Congress predict economic crash and the end of the world as we know it when faced with large or even small budget cuts. With the possibility of the DoD cutting near $500 billion in ten years with the new budget, and near $500 billion in nine years if Congressional “sequestration” happens by the end of this year, the Pentagon is swooning and predicting doom. However, even with the sequestration cuts, the Pentagon would be going back to 2006 levels, where George Bush and Dick Cheney were fighting two wars and threatening other parts of the world while buying giant overrun weapons like the F-22 and the F-35. After all these years monitoring and exposing fraud and waste in the DoD, I am used to promises of doom whenever the DoD bureaucracy does not get exactly what it wants. However, with the unlikely sequestration cuts looming, the Pentagon and its contractors are acting apocalyptic. …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10409-defense-sequestration-means-well-lose-a
Oh, Great—Military Drones are Hackable?
Rocky Mountain Tracking
July 14, 2012
They are designed to save lives. They prevent our military leaders from putting American lives at risk. They have been used effectively in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are horrifyingly vulnerable.
A team at the University of Texas just punched a major hole in the U.S. military’s increasing dependence on UAVs, or Unmanned Military Vehicles. The team, comprised of University staff and students, successfully “hacked” a military drone, taking control of the machine. How did they accomplish this Mission: Impossible-esque feat? They spoofed its GPS. …
Read on: www.rmtracking.com/blog/2012/07/14/oh-great-military-drones-are-hackable/
U.S. Military Steps Up ‘Sustained Engagement’ With Africa
allAfrica.com
July 13, 2012
A stepped-up role for the American military, which has been the subject of widespread discussion and debate since the establishment of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) in 2008, has been getting more U.S. press attention in recent weeks.
“The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa,” the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock reported last month in the first of a series of ground-breaking articles. Whitlock described “a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project.” Some State Department officials have “reservations about the militarisation of U.S. foreign policy on the continent,” Craig reported, fearing the “potential for creating a popular backlash.”
“Keep your eye on Africa” journalist Nick Turse writes in an investigative examination called America’s Shadow Wars in Africa posted this week on the blog TomDispatch.com and cross-posted on Huffington Post. “The U.S. military is going to make news there for years to come.”
A 43-page report last year by the Congressional Research Service concluded that Africom’s rising profile and large budget could lead Congress to “exert its oversight authority to monitor the command’s operations to ensure that they support, rather than guide, U.S. political, economic, and social objectives for the continent.” …
Read on: http://allafrica.com/stories/201207131248.html
Auditors say billions likely wasted in Iraq work
USnews.com – By Robert Burns (Associated Press) – July 13, 2012
In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds on Friday spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put “billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation” in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history.
“The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known,” the report said. …
With dry understatement, the inspector general said that while he couldn’t pinpoint the amount wasted, it “could be substantial.” …
In full: www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2012/07/13/auditors-say-billions-likely-wasted-in-iraq-work
DoD Report Reveals Some Detainees Interrogated While Drugged, Others “Chemically Restrained”
Truthout – By Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold – July 11, 2012
In addition, detainees were subjected to “chemical restraints,” hydrated with intravenous (IV) fluids while they were being interrogated and, in what appears to be a form of psychological manipulation, the inspector general’s probe confirmed at least one detainee – convicted terrorist supporter Jose Padilla – was the subject of a “deliberate ruse” in which his interrogator led him to believe he was given an injection of “truth serum.” …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10248-exclusive-department-of-defense-declass
NYPD Overstated Its Counterterrorism Record
Truthout – By Justin Elliott, ProPublica – July 11, 2012
The NYPD is regularly held up as one of the most sophisticated and significant counterterrorism operations in the country. As evidence of the NYPD’s excellence, the department, its allies and the media have repeatedly said the department has thwarted or helped thwart 14 terrorist plots against New York since Sept 11.
In a glowing profile of Commissioner Ray Kelly published in Newsweek last month, for example, journalist Christopher Dickey wrote of the commissioner’s tenure since taking office in 2002: The record “is hard to argue with: at least 14 full-blown terrorist attacks have been prevented or failed on Kelly’s watch.
The figure has been cited repeatedly in the media, by New York congressmen, and by Kelly himself. The NYPD itself has published the full list, saying terrorists have “attempted to kill New Yorkers in 14 different plots.”
As Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in March: “We have the best police department in the world and I think they show that every single day and we have stopped 14 attacks since 9/11 fortunately without anybody dying.”
Is it true?
In a word, no. …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10279-nypd-overstated-its-counterterrorism-re
DoD Report Confirms Interrogators Pulled “Deliberate Ruse” on Jose Padilla; Convinced Him Flu Shot Was “Truth Serum”
Truthout – By Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye – July 11, 2012
In 2006, a lawyer for Jose Padilla, the accused dirty-bomb plotter, made an explosive claim in a federal court filing: the “enemy combatant” was “given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.”
But what Seymour failed to disclose, reported here for the first time, was that Padilla was given the flu shot during an interrogation session and told by his interrogators the injection was “truth serum,” according to a declassified Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general’s report that probed the use of “mind-altering drugs” during the interrogation of war on terror detainees.
Sanford Seymour, the technical director of the US Naval brig in South Carolina where Padilla was held, however, vehemently denied the charge during a 2006 hearing to determine whether Padilla, a US citizen, was competent to stand trial. Seymour asserted Padilla was injected with an influenza vaccine.
The inspector general’s investigation determined that although Padilla was not administered mind-altering drugs (such as LSD), “the incorporation of a routine flu shot into an interrogation session … was a deliberate ruse by the interrogation team, intended to convince [redacted] he had been administered a mind-altering drug.”
Read on: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10268-exclusive-dod-report-confirms-interroga
US Adds Forces in Persian Gulf,
a Signal to Iran
Truthout – By Thom Shanker, David E Sanger and Eric Schmitt – July 3, 2012
The deployments are part of a long-planned effort to bolster the American military presence in the gulf region, in part to reassure Israel that in dealing with Iran, as one senior administration official put it last week, “When the president says there are other options on the table beyond negotiations, he means it.”
But at a moment that the United States and its allies are beginning to enforce a much broader embargo on Iran’s oil exports, meant to force the country to take seriously the negotiations over sharply limiting its nuclear program, the buildup carries significant risks, including that Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps could decide to lash out against the increased presence. …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10142-us-adds-forces-in-persian-gulf-a-signal
A Primer on the Colonialism of Israel’s Settlers
Truthout.org
By Jimmy Johnson
July 9, 2012
The Alternative Information Center on 12 June published a seventy-word notice that five dunams of land belonging to Rana Talbieh were being confiscated in al-Khader, a village west of Bethlehem. It was something of a banal announcement expressing some expected difficulties for a few nearby farmers, but it is exemplary of the fundamental process beneath what is often misnomered the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict.” We can identify this process by distinguishing between two of the many ways that people relocate: immigration and settlement.
We discuss the arrival of Zionists to Palestine with the Hebrew term aliyah (ascend; plural: aliyot). Aliyot are nearly always described as “waves of immigration.” This mischaracterizes things. When you immigrate someplace, you join or articulate to the sovereignty (the organized society: nation, tribe, kingdom etc.) you find upon arrival. Settlers do not. Settlers carry their own sovereignty with them, which challenges the indigenous sovereignty. Successful settler colonies displace or exterminate the indigenous sovereignty. Alternately put, when the British built colonies on Turtle Island*, they “brought Britain with them,” creating settler colonies and displacing the Powhatan sovereignty and Powhatan people they encountered in what the settler society calls Virginia. This simultaneous increase of British – later American – and decrease of indigenous sovereignty is how Turtle Island is transformed into “North America” through the past 500 years. The processes of establishing, perpetuating and extending settler colonies is called settler colonialism.
Zionists did things differently than Britain, but still established a settler colony. Unique among settler colonies, Israel did not have a primary nation-state from which it drew settler population and logistical support (this relatively minor detail is the traditional explanation for why Zionism is supposedly not colonial). Instead, Zionists brought European capital and class privilege with them and established settler sovereignty on site, displacing the indigenous Palestinian sovereignty they encountered. …
Read on: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10193-five-dunams-confiscated-in-al-khader-a
The United States Is Profoundly Uncomfortable With Peace
The Buzzflash Blog
By Mark Karlin, Editor of Buzzflash at Truthout
July 9, 2012
“We have always been at war with Eastasia,” George Orwell wrote in “1984.” That’s the spartan message a women named Emily Othus e-mailed me in January, and it has been sitting there in my inbox like a chicken bone caught in my throat.
From time to time I would open the e-mail with fascination thinking of the bluntly eloquent analogy to the United States. After all, just replace “We” in the quotation with the US, and then fill in the blank for your replacement with Eastasia.
Let’s try a few just as examples:
The United States has been at war with Native-Americans.
The United States has been at war with Britain (the Revolution and the War of 1812).
The United States has been at war with Mexico (the battle for Texas and the Southwest, including California).
The United States has been at war with itself (Civil War).
The United States has been at war with Spain (over colonies).
The United States has been at war with axis powers twice.
The United States has been at war with North Korea and China.
The United States has been at war with the Soviet-Union (call it a cold war if you will).
The United States has been at war with Vietnam.
The United States has been at war with various nations in the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
The United States has been at war with leftist guerilla groups and leaders in Latin America (covertly and overtly.)
The United States has even been at war with small countries that are perceived threats to American hegemony including Grenada and Panama (and Cuba via the Bay of Pigs and decades-long embargo).
Of course, there are countless nations with which the US has been at war with on a clandestine basis, overthrowing Democratically elected governments around the world (including Iran and Guatemala) – while leaving in place tyrannical dictatorships that are pro-Western business. …
Read more: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13591
Gulf sabers rattle as Iran sanctions bite
Chicago Tribune (Reuters) – By Peter Apps – July 6, 2012
Iran and the United States might be talking up their readiness for war in the Gulf but beneath the rhetoric, all sides appear keen to avoid conflict and prevent accidental escalation – at least for now.
This week, a string of hawkish Iranian statements – including a renewed threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and destroy U.S. bases “within minutes” of an attack – helped push benchmark Brent crude oil prices above $100 for the first time since June.
Western military officials and analysts say Tehran does have the capability to wreak regional havoc. But the current saber-rattling, they believe, is more about moving markets and trying to give the West second thoughts over the ever-tightening oil sanctions aimed at cutting back Tehran’s nuclear program.
A European Union ban on trading Iranian oil announced earlier in the year entered force on July 1, while the United States is also tightening financial restrictions. Even Asian buyers such as China that had hoped to keep taking Iranian crude appear to be scaling back purchases, struggling to find shipping insurance or banking – leaving Iran increasingly isolated. …
Read on: www.chicagotribune.com
