Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

NPR (Blog)
Eyder Peralta

USA Today reports today that even though the Army has boosted its psychiatric staff and services at the largest military base in the United States, it still hasn’t been able to curb the number of suicides:

The Army says 22 soldiers have either killed themselves or are suspected of doing so last year at its post at Fort Hood in Texas, twice the number from 2009.

That is a rate of 47 deaths per 100,000, compared with a 20-per-100,000 rate among civilians in the same age group and a 22-per-100,000 rate Army-wide.

“We are at a loss to explain the high numbers,” says Maj. Gen. William Grimsley, acting commander. “It’s personally frustrating.”

Last September, alone, four soldiers at Ft. Hood committed suicide in the course of one week. But suicide is, of course, not just a Ft. Hood problem. NPR’s Jamie Tarabay has been following the issue off an on over the past year. In June of 2010, she reported, the number of suicides in the military rivaled that of deaths on the battlefield.

USA Today reports that even though numbers have yet to be finalized, 2010 is bound to be a “record year for Army suicides.”

www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/01/06/132714736/number-of-suicides-doubled-at-largest-military-base-in-2010

Christian Science Monitor
By Donald Kirk
January 5, 2011

US envoy Stephen Bosworth arrives in Tokyo Thursday after visiting Seoul and Beijing. Implicit in his talks is a push for Japan and South Korea to cooperate for mutual defense against North Korea.

US envoy Stephen Bosworth is carrying a message to Asian capitals this week that looks far beyond the obvious desire to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

Implicit in his talks in Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo is a push for Japan and South Korea to get over the legacy of 35 years of Japanese colonial rule and decades of animosity and suspicion – and cooperate for mutual defense against the North Korea threat and concerns about China as the rising regional power.

Japanese and Korean officials deny any consideration of an alliance, citing it as politically impossible. But Mr. Bosworth, who arrives in Tokyo from Beijing and Seoul on Thursday, faces mounting questions about cooperation engineered by the United States. Washington has longstanding but separate alliances with both countries, although US officials for years have stressed the need for “trilateral cooperation” that conjures the image of a three-sided alliance in case of hostilities.

Bosworth has been saying that North Korea to go beyond its stated desire to return to six-party talks and begin to live up to agreements reached in 2007 to forgo its nuclear weapons program in return for massive aid for its dilapidated economy. As a South Korean official put it Wednesday after Bosworth’s meetings in Seoul, “The South and the US shared an understanding that future six-party talks should not be talks for talks’ sake” – a view that Bosworth has frequently expressed.

While attempting to judge North Korea’s seriousness about wanting to return to the table and “end confrontation” with the South, as North Korea’s media stated in a New Year’s editorial, Japanese officials are spreading the word about Japan-Korea cooperation.

How could Japan and South Korea cooperate?

Japan will outline terms of an agreement with South Korea for exchanging equipment, information, fuel, medicine, even food and water, if a war were to break out, according to official briefings given to the Japanese media. Japan’s defense minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, will be discussing the deal with Korea’s defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin, next week.

Japan’s biggest selling newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, followed up that revelation with a report Wednesday that Japan and South Korea may sign an agreement in several months calling for military cooperation in peacetime despite “lingering disputes concerning Japan’s colonial rule.”

The newspaper cited “growing uncertainty in East Asia,” notably “increased aggression by China and North Korea,” as behind the view that “enhanced bilateral defense ties are indispensable.”

US officials, in view of the sensitivities, are reluctant to comment on the chances of greater Japan-Korea military cooperation, much less an alliance.

www.csmonitor.com/World/2011/0105/North-Korea-tests-limits-of-South-Korea-Japan-cooperation

Press TV
January 3, 2011

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government has strongly rejected the notion of establishing permanent US military bases in Afghanistan.

Chief presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said during a press conference in Kabul on Monday that the issue has never been discussed in meetings between officials of the two countries.

“We have announced earlier that we are in touch with United States on the issue of long-term strategic partnership but not on the possible establishment of a permanent US base in Afghanistan,” he said.

The remarks come after a senior congressman called for permanent US military bases in the war-ravaged country.

Senator Lindsay Graham said on Sunday that American air bases in the war-torn country would benefit the US and its Western allies, if maintained by the US military.

“We have had air bases all over the world and a couple of air bases in Afghanistan would allow the Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban in perpetuity,” Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

“It would be a signal to Pakistan that the Taliban are never going to come back. In Afghanistan they could change their behavior. It would be a signal to the whole region that Afghanistan is going to be a different place.”

About 150,000 NATO troops are currently fighting in Afghanistan with plans to stay in the country beyond 2014.

This is while US President Barack Obama had pledged a major drawdown from Afghanistan by July 2011. Experts have described the new transition dates as a devastating truth for Americans. …

www.presstv.ir/detail/158511.html

Associated Press
January 2, 2011

A leading GOP lawmaker on U.S. military policy says he wants American officials to consider establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan.

Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina says that having a few U.S. air bases in Afghanistan would be a benefit to the region and would give Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban.

Graham tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he wants to see the U.S. have “an enduring relationship” with Afghanistan to ensure that it never falls back into the hands of terrorists.

President Barack Obama plans to begin drawing down American forces in Afghanistan next year and hand over security to Afghan forces in 2014.

Obama has talked about an enduring presence in Afghanistan but not exactly what that would entail. …

www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFZIGlR7kMiiDL7-4oUyJcofOoNg?docId=cea6b988bdbd46b9b0a7e03a8cc3d4a5

Asahi.com
By Kuniichi Tanida
January 3, 2011

A joint U.S.-Japan research program to develop software for a ship-borne ballistic missile defense system has collapsed after the two sides failed to agree on conditions for exporting the technology, sources said.

Tokyo’s insistence that the United States obtain prior consent from the Japanese government before selling the software to a third country caused the breakdown, the sources said. The United States has decided to continue with the project alone.

The software on which the two countries were working is meant to improve the ship-board Aegis guided missile system, which is supposed to intercept ballistic missiles, by improving onboard computer displays and providing a backup system in case of system failure.

It was being developed jointly by the governments and private sectors of the two countries under the Ballistic Missile Defense Open Architecture Research (BMDOAR) program.

While cooperation on the system was just the second in a series of planned joint ballistic missile defense projects between the two countries, its collapse could have implications for other programs. …

www.asahi.com/english/TKY201101020016.html

Space News
By Turner Brinton
December 30, 2010

The U.S. defense policy bill passed by Congress Dec. 22 is generally supportive of the nation’s missile defense programs, but it would prevent the Pentagon from spending money in 2011 on a European missile shield until certain requirements are met, including firm agreements by European countries to host the necessary assets.

Numerous congressional hearings were held over the past year to analyze the overhauled plan to deploy a European missile defense system that was announced by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama in September 2009. The 2011 Defense Authorization Bill supports the White House’s vision for the shield, calling it an “appropriate response to the existing ballistic missile threat from Iran to the European territory of [NATO] countries, and to potential future ballistic missile capabilities of Iran.”

The House of Representatives and Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent on the same day and it now awaits the president’s signature into law.

The United States in 2006 first announced plans to field a system to protect European allies and deployed forces from ballistic missile attacks. The original plan would have placed 10 fixed-site interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic. The Obama administration’s revamped plan, called Phased Adaptive Approach, calls for the deployment of interceptor-equipped Aegis ships to European waters and a radar system in southern Europe in 2011. Land-based derivatives of the Standard Missile 3 interceptor, which today is fired exclusively from ships at sea, would be deployed in Romania and Poland starting in 2015 and 2018, respectively. …

www.spacenews.com/policy/101230-bill-sets-spending-missile-shield.html

SpaceDaily.com
Washington (AFP)
December 18, 2010

President Barack Obama vowed Saturday to pursue the deployment of US missile defense systems and rejected Russia’s claim that doing so would justify withdrawing from a new nuclear arms control treaty.

“Regardless of Russia’s actions in this regard, as long as I am president, and as long as the Congress provides the necessary funding, the United States will continue to develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect the United States, our deployed forces, and our allies and partners,” he said.

Obama’s strong message on an issue that has at times deeply angered Moscow came in a letter to top senators as his Republican foes called for killing the new Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START) over missile defense concerns.

Republicans have rallied behind an amendment by Republican Senator John McCain to strip out language in START’s preamble tying offensive nuclear weapons to defensive systems.

The preamble is non-binding but, because it resulted from talks between Washington and Moscow, passing the amendment would have forced the accord back to the negotiating table, effectively killing the agreement. …

www.spacedaily.com/reports/Obama_vows_to_pursue_US_missile_defense_plans_999.html

Washington Post
Associated Press
December 15, 2010

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — An interceptor missile launched from California on Wednesday failed to hit a target fired from a Pacific atoll 4,000 miles away during a test of an anti-ballistic missile defense system, the Air Force announced.

The missile, called a ground-based interceptor, lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base at 12:03 a.m. and released a device called an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, or EKV, that was to plow into a target missile fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The interceptor’s sensors worked and the EKV was deployed, but it missed, according to a statement from Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

The cause of the failure will be investigated before another test is scheduled, Lehner said. …

Read on:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/15/AR2010121505427.html

UPI.com
December 9, 2010

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE …

Demonstration satellites built by U.S. companies Northrop Grumman and Raytheon successfully detected and tracked an ICBM test launch.

The U.S. Air Force said the Space Tracking and Surveillance System Demonstration program satellites tracked the Minuteman III through the boost and post-boost phases for the first time.

The single re-entry test vehicle from the missile traveled about 5,300 miles to a pre-determined point about 200 miles southwest of Guam.

The missile defense satellites transmitted tracking data to the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., where the information is being analyzed. …

“This test demonstrated the ability of STSS to track cold-body objects post-boost, an important capability needed by the Missile Defense Agency for the Ballistic Missile Defense System.”

Read in full here: www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/12/09/Demo-satellites-detect-track-missile/UPI-36501291905355/

The Washington Post
By Mary Beth Sheridan
December 13, 2010

With only days left in the lame-duck Congress, President Obama is pushing hard to accomplish something never before done by a Democratic president: successfully get a nuclear-arms-reduction treaty through the ratification process.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday that “the support is there” to pass the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) if it comes to the floor. The White House said Friday that Obama is willing to postpone his vacation until the U.S.-Russia pact is ratified.

But it has become clear that Obama is facing a fight over the same issue that derailed President Bill Clinton’s quest for a similar accord – missile defense, a cherished Republican goal dating back to Ronald Reagan’s presidency. When Republican senators now say they need a fuller debate on the treaty, this is an important part of what they want to discuss.

“Missile defense remains a major point of disagreement between the United States and Russia, and this treaty only makes the situation worse,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) wrote recently on National Review Online.

Some Republicans say they want to tweak the Senate resolution of ratification with the goal of then supporting it. Others argue the treaty itself needs amendments , which could kill it.

Treaty supporters say the outcry over missile defense is unfounded – and suspect it is a tactic to score political points. They note that there is almost nothing on missile defense in the treaty, which runs more than 300 pages with annexes, and Obama has continued many of George W. Bush’s missile-defense policies.

“One of the great ironies is, he made sure there was no way to attack the treaty as being tough on missile defense,” Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, said of Obama. “And yet that’s exactly one of the main rationales used by treaty critics.” …

Read on: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121204151_pf.html