Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

SpaceWar.com
December 6, 2011

The Romanian parliament on Tuesday ratified an accord to host US missile interceptors on its soil, a day before a meeting of the 28 NATO members in Brussels.

The Senate unanimously adopted the draft law ratifying the Romania-US agreement signed in September that would allow the establishment and operation of a US land-based ballistic missile defence system in Romania as part of NATO’s efforts to build a continental missile shield.

“The location of some elements of the US missile shield represents a very important contribution to the security of Romania, the US and and the entire alliance,” Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi told senators, according to Mediafax news agency.

The draft law was adopted by the lower house in November and is now set to be promulgated by President Traian Basescu.

The deployment of the missile interceptors is expected to take place in 2015 at a former airbase in southern Romania. …

Read on: www.spacewar.com/reports/Romania_ratifies_US_missile_shield_agreement_999.html

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Reuters
By Jim Loney
Decemeber 11, 2011

Nearly nine years after the United States threw out Saddam Hussein and dissolved his feared security machine, Iraq’s rebuilt military is a long way from matching up with regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel.

With little air defense, marginal control of its borders and a tenuous grip on Sunni insurgents and Shi’ite militias, Iraq may depend on American military help for years to come, even as most U.S. troops leave Iraqi soil by mid-December.

But current external threats are few amid Arab Spring turmoil and the Iran nuclear confrontation, analysts say, which may buy time for Iraq’s nascent forces to rebuild and re-arm.

A regional power under Saddam with 700,000 troops and an air force of 40,000 aviators flying French Mirage and Soviet MiG combat jets, the Iraqi military was devastated and then disbanded by U.S. occupation forces in 2003.

The ongoing internal battle against a stubborn insurgency and external defense now falls to a security force the government numbers at about 900,000 largely trained by Americans but not yet fully equipped for the task.

“We are ready. But we need help,” said General Hamid al-Maliki, head of the Army Aviation Command, echoing the sentiments of many Iraqi leaders. “Very, very big help.” …

Read on: www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/11/us-iraq-withdrawal-security-idUSTRE7BA0GN20111211

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Independent Online
December 11 2011

As US forces pull out of Iraq, residents and officials in Falluja say they leave behind bullet-riddled homes, destroyed infrastructure and a worrying increase in birth defects and maladies in a city polluted by weapons and war chemicals.

Amir Hussain and Awfa Abdullah got married in Falluja in 2004 but their lives were turned upside by the birth of their two babies.

Their first child, a baby boy born in 2006, had brain damage and died last year. The second, a baby girl who was born in 2007, suffers from severe skin rashes and has one leg longer than the other.

“We’ve decided to stop having babies. We don’t want any more, because it means new suffering and a new battle against new diseases,” Hussain said. “It is our bad luck. Maybe because we got married in the wrong time and in the wrong place.”

Falluja, in the desert province of Anbar, served as a base for Iraqi fighters after the 2003 US-led invasion, and witnessed two major conflicts in 2004. US troops used overwhelming force, tanks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships to crush insurgents there. …

Read on: www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/birth-defects-rubble-scar-iraq-s-falluja-1.1194726

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The Telegraph
By Tom Whitehead
December 6, 2011

In a landmark debate, MPs unanimously passed a motion calling for a review of the extradition treaty between the UK and US, which critics argue is unfair.

It was a significant victory for campaigners and families of Britons facing extradition, particularly Janis Sharp, the mother of Gary McKinnon, the autism sufferer wanted by American authorities to answer computer hacking charges.

Mrs Sharp said her son is suffering severe depression.

“This will be his 10th Christmas since his arrest and it has destroyed his life and it has destroyed ours,” she told BBC Breakfast.

“Here the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in 2002 that Gary was looking at six months’ community service but then when the Americans took over suddenly it becomes 60 years.

“So there is a huge disparity.”

The motion also called for a review of the European Arrest Warrant amid concerns it is used to target people suspected of the most minor of offences or who are innocent.

Critics have argued the 2003 Extradition Treaty is unfairly balanced against Britain because it is harder to bring a suspect from the US than to send one from the UK. …

Read on: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8936607/Pressure-to-review-US-extradition-rules-after-Commons-speaks.html

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Global Security Newswire
December 5, 2011

The U.S. ambassador to NATO on Friday said the Obama administration initiative to establish a missile defense system across Europe would go forward “whether Russia likes it or not,” Reuters reported.

The U.S. plan calls for deploying a web of missile interceptors and associated technology in nations such as Poland, Romania and Turkey. The plan would provide the backbone of a planned NATO missile shield, and the Western alliance has spent the last year trying to persuade Russia to join the effort.

Moscow, though, says the NATO system might be aimed at countering Russia’s nuclear forces. It has threatened to deploy short-range missiles in its Baltic enclave and to withdraw from the New START nuclear arms control treaty if an agreement on missile defense cannot be reached with Washington and NATO.

However, U.S. Ambassador Ivo Daalder informed journalists the Kremlin’s problems with the planned missile shield “won’t be the driving force in what we do.”

Since the Obama administration announced its “phased adaptive approach” for European missile defense in fall 2009 — a scaled-back approach to an earlier Bush administration plan — U.S. calculations of the danger of a ballistic missile strike from Iran have only increased, Daalder said.

“It’s accelerating and becoming more severe than even we thought two years ago,” Daalder said of the Iranian missile threat. …

Read on: www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20111205_9867.php

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UK Progressive Magazine
By sherwood Ross
December 3, 2011

Forecasting a future of robotic warfare in which perverted science is put at the service of its Empire, the U.S. has built 60 bases around the world for its unmanned, remotely controlled killer drone warplanes. And more bases are under construction.

“Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases…are the backbone of a new robotic way of war,” writes Nick Turse, an investigative journalist for AlterNet and TomDispatch.

The bases “are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad—in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign ‘footprint’ and little accountability,” Turse points out.

He notes that there may be even more than 60 bases since the Pentagon has dropped a “cloak of secrecy” over its operations. With the recent murder of American citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi in Yemen, the drones are now assassinating suspects in no fewer than six countries, Turse says.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post also reports the Obama Pentagon is building a constellation of secret drone bases in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen.

A number of the drone bases are located in the U.S., centered at Creech Air Force base outside Las Vegas, Nev., where “pilots” seated in front of computer screens can direct the unmanned drones and command them to launch a Hellfire missile on a suspect in Afghanistan, 7,500 miles away. …

Read on: www.ukprogressive.co.uk/us-expanding-drone-bases-to-assassinate-%E2%80%9Csuspects%E2%80%9D/article16087.html

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France 24 (AFP)
December 2, 2011

The United States on Friday handed over to Iraqi control the sprawling Victory Base Complex near Baghdad, the main base from which the US war in Iraq was run, a US military spokesman said.

“The Victory Base Complex (VBC) was officially signed over to the receivership of the Iraqi government this morning. The base is no longer under US control and is now under the full authority of the government of Iraq,” said Colonel Barry Johnson, a spokesman for United States Forces – Iraq (USF-I).

“There was no ceremony, just a signing of paperwork akin to the closing of a home sale,” Johnson said in a statement emailed to AFP.

Lieutenant Colonel Angela Funaro, a spokeswoman for USF-I, said that US troops had pulled out in advance and that just five US bases in Iraq now remain to be handed over.

“All US troops departed as of last night,” she said. “The air base which adjoined VBC has transferred to the control of the State Department, but has some troops there.”

At its peak, the Victory base housed more than 100,000 people — some 42,000 military personnel and more than 65,000 contractors…

Read on: http://www.france24.com/en/20111202-us-hands-massive-base-over-iraqi-control

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Defense Systems
November 28, 2011

The United States military has built and tested a directed-energy weapon designed to disrupt enemy electrical systems, reports Aviation Week.

Although little has been publicly revealed about the project of the Air Force Research Laboratory and Boeing at this stage, military and industry officials familiar with the Counter-electronics High-power Microwave Advanced Missile Project have said the directed-energy missile payload is designed for integration into land, sea and other air-based platforms for operational flexibility.

Concerning the warhead’s anti-electronics payload, “the whole radio frequency spectrum is viable as a target,” said Keith Coleman, Boeing’s program manager for the project.

http://defensesystems.com/articles/2011/11/28/agg-electronic-warfare-missile.aspx

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Global Security Newswire
November 28, 2011

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday claimed that the United States was largely alone driving the fielding of antimissile systems around Europe, Reuters reported.

“The construction of the European missile defense shield has been largely imposed (on Europe) by the United States,” Medvedev said to journalists.

Washington and NATO have sought for the last year to persuade Moscow to join their developing Europe-based missile shield. The sides remain at odds over the organization of such a cooperative system and on Russia’s demand for a legally binding pledge that its nuclear forces would not be targeted by the NATO elements.

Medvedev said on Wednesday that if the issue remains unresolved, Russia would field Iskander missiles and a new long-range radar system in the Kaliningrad region to nullify the advantages of the planned NATO missile shield. He also threatened to withdraw from the U.S.-Russian New START nuclear arms control agreement.

The Russian president said unidentified European leaders had griped to him that their countries were regulated to secondary status in efforts to establish the NATO antimissile system.

“My partners … have hinted to me from time to time: ‘It is the Americans who decided that, they are promoting it, and our role as NATO member states is to provide territory,'” Medvedev said. …

Read on: http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20111128_7861.php

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VP Biden: US troop departure marks new beginning with Iraq, Sadrists protest his presence

The Washington Post
November 29, 2011

Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday that his trip to Baghdad ahead of the U.S. military pullout marks a new beginning between Iraq and the United States, but protests in Iraq against his visit demonstrated the difficulties the relationship will face.

Biden arrived Tuesday in a surprise visit to Iraq at a pivotal time as the last of the American troops withdraw, and the U.S. must establish a new relationship with a country that is home to billions of barrels of oil and more closely aligned with neighboring Iran than the U.S. would like.

In comments surrounding his meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Biden stressed that the U.S. and Iraq will continue to have a relationship long after the American troops have left the country.

“Our troops are leaving Iraq, and we are working on a new path together, a new face of this partnership,” he added. “This is marking a new beginning of the relationship that will not only benefit the United States of America and Iraq. I believe it will benefit the region and will benefit the world.”

Biden said that people in both countries have had to overcome misperceptions about the relationship. He said people in the U.S. still ask whether it is worth it to spend so much energy and money in Iraq, a country where 4,485 American military personnel have died and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. …

Read on: www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/vice-president-joe-biden-arrives-in-iraq-for-talks-as-us-military-presence-winds-down/2011/11/29/gIQAtRar8N_story.html

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