Pentagon – praag.org

Russians hack US Joint Chiefs of Staff

Investigators say they believe the same Russian hackers that carried out attacks on the White House and State Department last year and the attempted penetration of the Pentagon last month were responsible for a major cyberattack that shut down the Joint Chiefs of Staff email for the past 11 days, The Daily Beast has learned.

In all of the attacks, hackers broke into unclassified email networks by sending legitimate-looking emails than turned out to be malware or “spear phishing” attempts. In April, President Obama’s unclassified emails were among those compromised, along with the State Department.

Ten days before the July 27 hacking of the Joint Staff system, the Pentagon sent an email warning “at least five” DOD computer users had been targeted, which was first reported by The Daily Beast. The notice linked those attacks to penetrations of unclassified networks at the White House and State Department that began last year.

The Joint Chiefs then suffered what one defense official called the “most sophisticated” attack on its unclassified network, one that has shut down communications ever since for the 4,000 employees on the Joint Staff unclassified server.

Source: Daily Beast

Carthage must be destroyed

The Pentagon has released its “National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2015,” June 2015.

The document announces a shift in focus from terrorists to “state actors” that “are challenging international norms.” It is important to understand what these words mean. Governments that challenge international norms are sovereign countries that pursue policies independently of Washington’s policies. These “revisionist states” are threats, not because they plan to attack the US, which the Pentagon admits neither Russia nor China intend, but because they are independent. In other words, the norm is dependence on Washington.

Be sure to grasp the point: The threat is the existence of sovereign states, whose independence of action makes them “revisionist states.” In other words, their independence is out of step with the neoconservative Uni-power doctrine that declares independence to be the right of Washington alone. Washington’s History-given hegemony precludes any other country being independent in its actions.

The Pentagon’s report defines the foremost “revisionist states” as Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The focus is primarily on Russia.Washington hopes to co-op China, despite the “tension to the Asia-Pacific region” that China’s defense of its sphere of influence, a defense “inconsistent with international law” (this from Washington, the great violator of international law), by turning over what remains of the American consumer market to China. It is not yet certain that Iran has escaped the fate that Washington imposed on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Ukraine, and by complicity Palestine.

The Pentagon report is sufficiently audacious in its hypocrisy, as all statements from Washington are, to declare that Washington and its vassals “support the established institutions and processes dedicated to preventing conflict, respecting sovereignty, and furthering human rights.” This from the military of a government that has invaded, bombed, and overthrown 11 governments since the Clinton regime and is currently working to overthrow governments in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina.

In the Pentagon document, Russia is under fire for not acting “in accordance with international norms,” which means Russia is not following Washington’s leadership.

In other words, this is a bullshit report written by neocons in order to foment war with Russia.

Nothing else can be said about the Pentagon report, which justifies war and more war. Without war and conquests, Americans are not safe.

Washington’s view toward Russia is the same as Cato the Elder’s view toward Carthage. Cato the Elder finished his every speech on any subject in the Roman Senate with the statement “Carthage must be destroyed.”

This report tells us that war with Russia is our future unless Russia agrees to become a vassal state like every country in Europe, and Canada, Australia, Ukraine, and Japan. Otherwise, the neoconservatives have decided that it is impossible for Americans to tolerate living with a country that makes decisions independently of Washington. If American cannot be The Uni-Power dictating to the world, better that we are all dead. At least that will show the Russians.

Pentagon war manual authorises killing of ‘beliggerent’ journalists too

The Pentagon has released a book of instructions on the “law of war,” detailing acceptable ways of killing the enemy. The manual also states that journalists can be labeled “unprivileged belligerents,” an obscure term that replaced “enemy combatant.”

The 1,176-page “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” explains that shooting, exploding, bombing, stabbing, or cutting the enemy are acceptable ways of getting the job done, but the use of poison or asphyxiating gases is not allowed.

Surprise attacks and killing retreating troops have also been given the green light.

But the lengthy manual doesn’t only talk about protocol for those on the frontline. It also has an extensive section on journalists – including the fact that they can be labeled terrorists.

“In general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerents,” the manual states.

The term “unprivileged belligerents” replaces the Bush-era term “unlawful enemy combatant.”

When asked what this means, professor of Journalism at Georgetown Chris Chambers told RT that he doesn’t know, “because the Geneva Convention, other tenets of international law, and even United States law – federal courts have spoken on this – doesn’t have this thing on ‘unprivileged belligerents’.”

This means that embedded journalists, who are officially sanctioned by the military and attached to a unit, will be favored by an even greater degree than before. “It gives them license to attack or even murder journalists that they don’t particularly like but aren’t on the other side,” Chambers said.

Even the Obama Administration’s definition of “enemy combatant” was vague enough, basically meaning any male of a military age who “happens to be there,” Chambers added.

The manual also deals with drones, stating that there is “no prohibition in the law of war on the use of remotely piloted aircraft (also called “unmanned aerial vehicles”).” Such weapons may offer certain advantages over the weapons systems. It states that drones can be designated as military aircraft if used by a country’s military.

The book includes a foreword from the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Stephen Preston, who states that “the law of war is part of who we are.” He goes on to say that the manual will “help us remember the hard-learned lessons from the past.”

The manual is the Pentagon’s first all-in-one legal guide for the four military branches. Previously, each sector was tasked with writing their own guidelines for engagement, which presumably did not list journalists as potential traitors.

The Pentagon did not specify the exact circumstances under which a journalist might be declared an unprivileged belligerent, but Chambers says he is sure “their legal department is going over it, as is the National Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists.” – RT.COM

Pentagon’s anthrax scandal spreads

The Pentagon has learned that additional samples of live anthrax were sent to three laboratories in Canada, two Defense officials confirmed Monday evening.

That means that specimens of the deadly Bacillus anthracis have been sent to labs in 12 states, the District of Columbia and three countries. The samples came from the U.S. Army lab at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Scientists there thought they had been shipping inactive strains of the deadly spores for research purposes.

If inhaled, anthrax spores can be lethal even with treatment, sparking a high fever and other flu-like symptoms. Biosafety expert Richard Ebright at Rutgers University has branded the blunder “gross negligence.”

Thus far, nobody has been sickened by the inadvertent shipments, said a senior Defense Department official who has been briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly. Military investigators are continuing to comb through anthrax samples and records to determine if more potentially deadly vials have been shipped, the official said, adding that more labs may have received it.

Source: USA Today

ISIS takes provincial capital of Iraq

Iraqi forces have retreated from a compound they used as a command center in Ramadi, losing control of Aden’s provincial capital to Islamic State militants, despite substantial US airstrike support helping Iraqi troops and loyal militia hold the city.

“Ramadi has fallen,”said Muhannad Haimour, a spokesman for the governor of Anbar province. “The city was completely taken. … The military is fleeing.”The spokesman added that at least 500 people were killed in the jihadist offensive.

The militants claimed their full control of the city after squashing last major pocket of resistance from tribal and government forces.

“God has enabled the soldiers of the caliphate to cleanse all of Ramadi… after storming the 8th brigade. They (now) control it along with a battalion of tanks and missile launchers and in addition to the Anbar operations command,” the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) statement said. The group also said it had seized tanks and killed dozens Iraqi security forces.

The final ISIS offensive that drove out government forces and tribal militias began early Sunday. Militants focused their attack on police officers defending the Malaab district in southern Ramadi by simultaneous bombings. Another three suicide bombers stormed the gate of the military headquarters to take control of the Anbar Operation Command.

Jihadis “pushed into the Ramadi military command headquarters after a fierce fight. The whole city is under their control,” Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a tribal leader told Bloomberg via phone.

Local security officials told AP that the militants already carried out mass killings of Iraqi security forces and civilians. Sunni tribal leader, Naeem al-Gauoud, said that bodies litter the streets in Ramadi, while others are thrown in the river.

The Pentagon refused to immediately admit Ramadi had fallen, with Defense Department spokeswoman Maureen Schumann saying it was “too early to make definitive statements about the situation on the ground.” She said the United States was “continuing to monitor reports of tough fighting in Ramadi and the situation remains fluid and contested.”

The Islamic State indeed has military advantage in Ramadi, the Pentagon confirmed, warning that the city falling into the hands of jihadists would be a great propaganda boost for them. But in the worst case, official said according to Reuters, the US-led coalition would support Iraqi army in taking the city back “later.”

Putin lifts ban on S-300 missile system supplies to Iran

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to lift the ban on supplies of S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran.

“The decree cancels the ban from transit through Russia (including by air), transportation outside the territory of Russia to the Islamic Republic of Iran and also handover to the Islamic Republic of Iran outside the territory of Russia with the use of ships and aircraft flying the Russian state flag of the air defense missile systems S-300,” the Kremlin’s press-service has said.

The decree is effective immediately.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to make a statement on the decision to lift the ban soon.

It introduces amendments to the presidential decree of September 22, 2010 on measures for implementing the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1929 of June 9 2010. The sub-item concerning S-300 has been removed from it.

The implementation of the Russian-Iranian contract of 2007 for supplying the S-300 systems was suspended following the introduction of sanctions against Iran in September 2010. Tehran later protested that decision in court.

Shortly after Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu visited Iran last January the US Department of State said that supplies of Russian air defense systems to Iran would be unacceptable. In the meantime, Iran has repeatedly voiced the hope Russia would eventually agree to provide the launchers.

The head of the Rostech corporation, Sergey Chemezov, in February said that Russia had offered Tehran to buy the upgraded system Antey-2500 instead of S-300 and that Iran was still considering that option and remained undecided. The US Department of State said it had no objections to Russia’s alternative proposal to Iran.

S-300 systems (NATO reporting name SA-10 Grumble) are designed to defend major facilities from air attacks. They are considered to be some of the world’s most capable anti-aircraft missile systems.

Meanwhile the Pentagon slammed the Russian move to sell missiles to Iran.

Source: Itar-TASS

Germanwings crash supports 9/11 speculation

Advances in sensor technology, computing and artificial intelligence have made human pilots less necessary than ever in the cockpit. After the Germanwings crash some seem less worried about being branded a 9/11 conspiracy nut.

Because information collected after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has raised questions about the alleged ability and motivation of the people accused of piloting four Boeing 757 and 767 planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon building and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, speculation has since lingered regarding the covert use of technology to precisely navigate the four airliners that day without onboard pilot control.

By 1999 already, Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft contained digital flight control systems that can “automatically fly the airplanes on pre-selected routes, headings, speed or altitude maneuvers.”

On October 9, 2001, Cubic Defense Systems, Inc. applied for a U.S. patent that removes control of an aircraft from its pilot and utilizes an aircraft’s auto-pilot system to implement an uninterruptable pre-programmed autopilot flight plan in order to navigate an aircraft to a given destination during an emergency. This would be accomplished through the use of an electronic or mechanical relay or relays, that become activated by pilot operation of an aircraft hijack notification system.

Surprisingly to some, none of the four aircraft destroyed on September 11, 2001 in NY are known to have entered unique transponder hijack notification codes, suggesting either modified function or insufficient activation time.

One optional feature of the Cubic system is termination of an aircraft’s ability to communicate.

In two cases, hijacker communications aimed at passengers on-board American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 93 on September 11, 2001 were heard instead by air traffic controllers, suggesting modified communication functions.

In 2014, airlines carried 838.4 million passengers on more than 8.5 million flights. Commercial aviation is already heavily automated. Modern aircraft are generally flown by a computer autopilot that tracks its position using motion sensors and dead reckoning, corrected as necessary by GPS. Software systems are also used to land commercial aircraft.

In a recent survey of airline pilots, those operating Boeing 777s reported that they spent just seven minutes manually piloting their planes in a typical flight. Pilots operating Airbus planes spent half that time.

And commercial planes are becoming smarter all the time. “An Airbus airliner knows enough not to fly into a mountain,” said David Mindell, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology aeronautics and astronautics professor. “It has a warning system that tells a pilot. But it doesn’t take over.”

The Pentagon has just that system and has deployed automated piloting software in F-16 fighter jets. The Auto Collision Ground Avoidance System reportedly saved a plane and pilot in November during a combat mission against Islamic State forces.

The Pentagon has invested heavily in robot aircraft. As of 2013, there were more than 11,000 drones in the military arsenal. But drones are almost always remotely piloted, rather than autonomous. Indeed, more than 150 humans are involved in the average combat mission flown by a drone.

Because the Flight Data Recorders (FDRs) for American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 were not recovered, details regarding the operation of each aircraft on 9/11 are not known. The FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 were recovered and indicate pilot control of each aircraft.

However, the FDR readout file for American Airlines flight 77 was completed four hours and fifteen minutes before the said FDR was recovered, suggesting false or altered FDR information.

And the FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 are virtually the only ones during the previous 20 years of major National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) U.S. aviation mishap investigations, for which unique inventory control serial numbers were not published.

Such serial numbers are required to facilitate FDR data readouts. In fact the NTSB possesses no records pertaining to the positive identification of the FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93.

The real Angela Merkel

The amazing career of a communist propagandist in the former German Democratic Republic

Angela Merkel was born in Hamburg in 1954 (Federal Republic of Germany). Shortly after her birth, her family made the unusual choice of moving to the East. Her father, a pastor in the Lutheran church, then founded a seminary in the German Democratic Republic and became director of a home for handicapped persons. He refrained from making any public criticism of the regime and enjoyed a privileged social status, having two cars and making frequent trips to the West.

Angela Merkel was a brilliant student, graduating as a doctor of physics. She married a physician, Ulrich Merkel, whom she soon divorced. She then moved in with Professor Joachim Sauer, divorced like herself but already the father of two children. Angela Merkel obtained a research post in quantum physics at the Academy of Sciences.

At the same time, she became politically involved in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth), the state organisation for young people. She rose within the organisation to the post of Secretary of the Agitprop department, becoming one of the main experts in political communication in the communist dictatorship. For professional and political reasons, she often travelled within the Soviet bloc, above all to Moscow, particularly since she spoke Russian fluently.

Although for many years hoped and prepared for, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 nevertheless took all governments by surprise. The CIA attempted to take over by recruiting senior individuals under the old system who were willing to serve the USA like they had previously served the USSR.

One month later, Merkel changed sides from one day to the next and joined the Demokratischer Aufbruch (Democratic Revival), a new movement inspired by the West German Christian Democrat party. She immediately took over the same functions that she had held before, except that the position was now, in West German terminology, “Press spokesperson”.

However, it soon became known that the president of Demokratischer Aufbruch, Wolfgang Schnur, had been a collaborator of the Stasi, the political police under the communist dictatorship. Merkel herself informed the press of this painful news, obliging Schnur to resign and enabling herself to be appointed in his stead as president of the movement.

Following the last parliamentary elections in the GDR, she joined the government of Lothar de Maizière, becoming the latter’s spokesperson, although Demokratischer Aufbruch only picked up 0.9% of the votes. During this period of transition, she was actively involved in the “2+4” negotiations that ended Berlin’s quadripartite status and the allied occupation, as well as in the negotiations aimed at reunifying Germany. In order, as she said, to avoid a mass exodus from the East to the West, she argued strongly in favour of getting the GDR to join the market economy and the Deutschmark zone.

Her partner, Joachim Sauer, was recruited by the US company Biosym Technology, spending a year at San Diego (California) at the laboratory of this Pentagon contractor. He then joined Accelrys, another San Diego company carrying out contracts for the Pentagon. For her part, Angela Merkel was perfecting her English, which she soon spoke fluently.

Once the GDR had been reunified with the Federal Republic and the Demokratischer Aufbruch had become part of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Angela Merkel was elected member of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, and joined Helmut Kohl’s government. Although strict in matters of morals, he selected this young childless divorcee from the East living with a partner as Minister for Family, Youth and Women.

Within 14 months, the communist Agitprop leader of the DDR youth movement had become a Christian Democrat minister of Youth in the Federal Republic. Incidentally, she achieved very little in her first period as minister.

Continuing her career within the CDU, Angela Merkel launched an unsuccessful bid to get herself elected president of the Brandenburg regional party. However, Lothar de Maizière, who had become deputy president of the national party, was convicted of having distant relationships with the East German political police and was obliged to resign, to be replaced by Merkel.

In 1994, Klaus Töpfer, the Minister of the Environment, the Protection of Nature and Nuclear Security, was appointed director of the UN environment programme, following a series of clashes with the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which accused him of underestimating economic reality. Helmut Kohl then ended the crisis by appointing his protégée Merkel as Töpfer’s replacement. Immediately after assuming office, Merkel sacked all the senior officials of her ministry who had remained loyal to her predecessor. It was during this period that she formed a friendship with her French counterpart at the time, Dominique Voynet.

In 1998, Chancellor Kohl informed the USA of his opposition to an international intervention in Kosovo, while the Social Democrats under Gerhard Schröder and the Greens under Joschka Fischer compared Slobodan Milosevic to Adolf Hitler and were calling for a humanitarian war.

The pro-US press then thundered against the Chancellor, accusing him of the economic difficulties that the country was suffering from as a result of reunification. In the September 1998 elections, the Christian Democrats were swept out of power by a wave of red and green, Schröder becoming Chancellor and appointing Fischer his Foreign Minister.

However, Helmut Kohl and his closest associates had apparently accepted money from obscure sources for the CDU, but refused to reveal the names of the donors, arguing that they had given their word. Angela Merkel then published a courageous article in the Foreign Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in which she distanced herself from her mentor. In this way, she forced him to withdraw from the party, with Wolfgang Schäuble, CDU party president, resigning shortly afterwards. Thus, in the name of public morality she grabbed the presidency of the party.

From then on, Angela Merkel was publicly supported by two press groups. Firstly, she was able to count on the support of Friede Springer, who had inherited the Axel Springer group (180 newspapers and magazines, including Bild and Die Welt). The group’s journalists are required to sign an editorial agreement laying down that they must work towards developing transatlantic links and defending the state of Israel.

Angela Merkel can also rely on her friend Liz Mohn, director of the Bertelsmann group, the number 1 in the European media world (RTL group, Prisma group, Random House group, etc.). Ms. Mohn is also vice-president of the Bertelsmann Foundation, an intellectual pillar of Europe-American relationships.

Angela Merkel relies on the advice of Jeffrey Gedmin, specially dispatched to Berlin to assist her by the Bush clan. This lobbyist first worked at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) under Richard Perle and Mrs. Dick Cheney. He enthusiastically encouraged the creation of a Euro with Dollar parity exchange rate. Within the AEI, he led the New Atlantic Initiative (NAI), which brought together all the America-friendly generals and politicians in Europe. He was then involved in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and wrote the chapter on Europe in the neocon programme. He argued that the European Union should remain under NATO authority and that this would only be possible by “discouraging European calls for emancipation.” Finally he became the administrator of the Council of the Community of Democracies (CCD), which argues in favour of a two-speed UN, and became director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin. Subsequently he turned down the offer from his friend John Bolton of the post of deputy US ambassador to the UN so as to be able to devote himself exclusively to Angela Merkel.

In 2003, the State Department entrusted Jeffrey Gedmin and Craig Kennedy with a huge programme of “public diplomacy”, in other words propaganda, including the clandestine funding of journalist and opinion formers in Western Europe.

In 2003, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder opposed the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq. Angela Merkel then published a courageous article in the Washington Post in which she rejected the Chirac-Schröder doctrine of European independence, affirmed her gratitude and friendship for “America” and supported the war.

In May 2004, she established a new situation by pushing through the election as President of the Federal Republic of the banker Horst Köhler, main author of the Maastricht Treaty and creator of the Euro, later president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and director of the IMF. She then began a “patriotic” campaign against radical Islamism.

Throughout the 2005 electoral campaign she criticised the increase in unemployment figures and the Social Democrats inability to deal with it, gaining for the CDU a lead of 21 percentage points in public opinion polls. It was then that her mysterious adviser, Jeffrey Gedmin, published an open letter to her in Die Welt. After criticising the German economic model, he wrote: “Before advancing the country, you need to defeat intellectually those nostalgic individuals who are dragging their feet. If Sarkozy succeeds Chirac, France might experience an upswing. It would be regrettable if Germany continued to decline.” In reply to this invitation, Merkel finally revealed her solutions. She promoted one of her advisers, the former Constitutional Court judge Paul Kirchhof, and entrusted him with the Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (Initiative for the New Social Market Economy). She announced the abolition of graduated income tax, proposing that the rate should be the same for those who only just have what is necessary and those who live in luxury. The outgoing Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, severely criticised this proposal in a televised debate. The CDU’s lead was decimated, and in the actual election, the CDU polled 35% of the votes and the SPD 34%, the remainder being spread amongst a number of small parties. The Germans didn’t want Schröder any longer, but nor did they want Merkel. Following long and laborious negotiations, a Grand Coalition was agreed, with Merkel, although Chancellor, obliged to surrender half of the minister posts to her opponents.

She pushed through the participation of a German contingent in the multinational force under US command in Afghanistan. Then, when Israel intervened in Lebanon, she successfully achieved the involvement of the German navy in the FINUL, arguing that “if Germany’s raison d’être is to guarantee Israel’s right to exist, we cannot say, now that this existence is threatened, that we will do nothing.”

As of 1 January 2007, Angela Merkel is the president of the European Union. She has never made any secret of her intention to force France and the Netherlands to accept the equivalent of the Constitutional Treaty project that they both rejected in referendums, nor of her intention to relaunch the proposed merger of the North American Free Trade Area and the European Free Trade Area, thereby creating a “great transatlantic market” to use the words once pronounced by Sir Leon Brittan.

Source: Voltairenet

Fresh war in Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was fired amidst significant foreign-policy leaks on Saturday morning.

The New York Times reported that the United States will expand its mission in Afghanistan in 2015, with US troops participating in direct combat with the Taliban.

This flies in the face of Obama’s very public announcement six months ago in the Rose Garden that US troops in Afghanistan would be shifting into a “training and advisory” role next year.

American airpower will furthermore support Afghan forces. This bombshell was strategically leaked ahead of a holiday week in which Americans will be shopping for bargains in a very bleak economy.

The Afghanistan reversal is a new hawkish posture and Hagel’s departure after he helped to manage a withdrawal from Afghanistan and shrink the Pentagon budget, will be regarded as a logical step.

Obama’s decision, made during a furious White House debate in recent weeks with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban when Al Qaeda is actually rising in Iraq.

But the military pushed back and curiously Hagel’s departure directly coincides with the new aggressive attack plan for Afghanistan.

ISIS’s rapid emergence, it’s unhindered oil sales and other foreign-policy crises possibly contributed to Hagel’s ouster.

The United States is changing course toward a more aggressive foreign policy: it is recommitting to the war in Afghanistan, which is by far the country’s longest, spanning two two-term presidencies.

The number of troops in Iraq has doubled, and the administration will soon seek an authorization from a Congress that is extremely unlikely to include a provision that outlaws direct combat by US troops, in a distinctly interventionist climate.

America promises endless war

Surprisingly, despite the apparent failure of Iraq and Afghanistan and “strong fiscal constraints,” Washington is still expanding its war plans

The US should get ready for a new era of endless wars, stated Pentagon’s chief Chuck Hagel, noting that “tyranny,” “terrorism,” national security challenges and climate change pose a substantial threat to the US and its allies.

Although the Pentagon’s chief urges to prepare for an endless war, the question remains open if ordinary Americans will support the new doctrine.

More than half of American respondents said that the US had not achieved its goals in both Iraq and Afghanistan, expressing their discontent with US foreign policy, according to the Pew Research poll conducted in the beginning of the 2014. Although 57 percent of US citizens approved the US campaign against Islamic State according to the October poll, 55 percent strongly oppose sending US ground troops to Iraq and Syria.

“I think we are living through one of these historic, defining times. We are seeing a new world order—post-World War II, post-Soviet Union implosion—being built. There are many questions, foremost among the American people: What’s the role of America in this new world that is evolving? Should we have a role? What is appropriate?” said Chuck Hagel, as cited by the Atlantic.

The US Secretary of Defense claims that as the global leader, the US will “continue to grapple with overseas threat for the foreseeable future,” containing international terrorism and tyrannical regimes. “Hagel didn’t seem especially sanguine that it would end anytime soon. In other words: Get used to endless war,” stressed the Atlantic, characterizing the Pentagon’s new doctrine.

Remarkably, practically none of the previous US overseas military campaigns has proved effective. “US soldiers have been laboring under sad paradox: even though the United States enjoys unprecedented global military dominance that should cow enemies mightily, it has found itself in constant combat for longer than ever before in its history, and without much to show for it,” writes Richard K. Betts, the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, in his article “Ending America’s Era of Permanent War” published in Foreign Affairs. The professor points out that of the US military actions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, “only the first can be counted a success.”

Surprisingly, despite the apparent failure of the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and “strong fiscal constraints,” Washington is still expanding its war plans. According to the expert, the White House should not cut back its overseas military operations, but prepare for “more action.”

“Frightening challenges in three critical regions are demanding yet more action: Islamic extremists have seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, Russia has intervened in Ukraine, and China is flexing its muscles in East Asia,” stressed Richard K. Betts.

The idea of the US “moral obligation” to meddle into domestic affairs of other countries in order “to set them right” is a “mythological concept,” aimed at justification of American interventionism, contended Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute.

“The idea that the United States must exercise “global leadership” is rationalized by our interventionists as a necessary prerequisite for maintaining some type of “world order,” Mr. Raimondo underscores in his article “Putin’s Complaint: Is Washington a Revisionist Power?”
However, the Pentagon’s “endless war,” cannot last forever, as it is the American taxpayers who pay for the extortionately expensive military operations. For instance, the Afghanistan campaign cost the US “roughly $45 billion a year from 2001 to 2013,” while Iraq cost “about $100 billion a year from 2003 to 2011,” Kenneth M. Pollack, a Senior Fellow at the Brooking Institution and former CIA analyst, noted in his article “An Army to Defeat Assad.”

It should be also noted that the December poll in 2013 carried out by the Pew Research indicated that 52 percent thought the United States “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.” The researchers underscore that the tendency demonstrated by the poll reflects a gradual and longstanding decline. According to the October 2014 poll, most Americans consider inequality more dangerous than nuclear weapons, or sectarian religious threats.

Pentagon accused of fueling Ferguson confrontation

The Pentagon might not have boots on the ground in Ferguson, Mo., where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by police on Saturday, but it does have wheels on the street.

Michelle McCaskill, media relations chief at the Defense Logistics Agency, confirms that the Ferguson Police Department is part of a federal program called 1033 that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars of surplus military equipment to civilian police forces across the United States. The materials range from small items, such as pistols and automatic rifles, to heavy armored vehicles such as the MRAPs used in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“In 2013 alone, $449,309,003.71 worth of property was transferred to law enforcement,” the agency’s website states.

According to McCaskill, the most recent transfer of military equipment from the Department of Defense to small Ferguson was in November and included two vehicles as well as a trailer and a generator. Details on the vehicles and their intended uses have not been released by the Pentagon. Information on any prior transfers is also unavailable.

A state public safety official told USA TODAY that the Pentagon does not allow detailed information on “tactical” equipment to be released at a police force level, only at a county level. According to a document provided by the official, police forces in the same county as Ferguson received advanced rifle sights and night vision equipment between 2012 and 2014.

There is no evidence that any such equipment has yet been used in the Brown case and its aftermath. But such “police militarization” is just one element of an often toxic relationship between minority communities and local police.

Since the creation of the 1033 program by Congress in the early 1990s, the program has distributed $4.3 billion of excess equipment, ranging from innocuous office supplies to bomb-disposing robots and other advanced technology. The flood of military supplies — along with the continuing drug war and grant programs from other federal agencies that provide military-style equipment — has pushed the culture of police forces far from its law-enforcement roots.

Indeed, the motto of the 1033 program is “From Warfighter to Crimefighter.”

So it is not a surprise that police officers often seem prepared for war. In Ferguson, that change is most dramatically revealed in the images of camouflage-wearing police officers with assault rifles, body armor and multiple extra magazines facing unarmed protesters with their hands preemptively raised in the air.

The disturbing trend of police militarization permits law enforcement agencies to view people in their communities as threats, rather than as citizens with rights, reports TheWashington Post’s Radley Balko, who has covered the militarization of the police extensively.

Elsewhere in Missouri, agencies participating in the 1033 program have acquired “aircraft (both fixed wing and rotary) and four-wheel drive vehicles (such as pickup trucks, blazers, ambulances and armored personnel carriers),” according to the state’s Department of Public Safety.

If there’s one thing a community in turmoil does not need is for anyone to turn up the heat as protesters and police face off and tempers simmer. But before a local police officer fired his first shot at the unarmed teen, the U.S. military helped make sure there was plenty of fuel to bring things to a boil.

Source: USA TODAY

Pentagon probes massive recruiting fraud

When a retired Army colonel and an enlisted soldier from Albuquerque, N.M. were charged last year with defrauding the National Guard Bureau out of about $12,000 the case drew little public attention. But it’s now become clear that the two men are among the roughly 800 soldiers accused of bilking American taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars in what a U.S. senator is calling “one of the biggest fraud investigations in Army history.”

The wide-ranging criminal probe centers around an Army recruiting program that had been designed to help the Pentagon find new soldiers during some of the bloodiest days of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The program went off the rails, investigators believe, after hundreds of soldiers engaged in a kickback scheme that allowed them to potentially embezzle huge quantities of money without anyone in the government noticing. In one case, a single soldier may have collected as much as $275,000 for making “referrals” to help the Army meet its recruiting goals, according to USA Today, which first reported the story Monday.

The military’s failure to spot, or stop, the wrongdoing will be the focus of what is expected to be a highly contentious hearing Tuesday before the Senate’s Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight. The committee’s chairwoman, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has summoned several of the National Guard officials who were in power at the time the alleged wrongdoing was taking place.

The numbers of soldiers and money involved are staggering.

An Army internal audit has discovered that 1,200 recruiters had received payments that were potentially fraudulent. Another 2,000 recruiting assistants had received payments that were suspicious. More than 200 officers remain under investigation, according to McCaskill’s office. There are currently 555 active investigations involving 840 people.

Trouble in the recruiting program has been acknowledged previously, but the full scope and the results of the service’s own internal investigation of the program have not previously been disclosed. In the past, Army officials overseeing the program and a contractor who worked with the service on it, Docupak, insisted that accounts of potential fraud in it were greatly exaggerated, congressional officials said in a memo distributed to the media Monday. About 200 agents with the service’s Criminal Investigative Command are now examining the program’s records, and will review the actions of more than 106,000 people who received money through the program. That work will likely take until 2016, officials said.

A Defense Department official acknowledged that a lack of proper military oversight contributed to the problems.

“I think it was human greed, and I think it’s the cascading effects of contractors’ lack of supervision, as well as the Defense Department’s lack of supervision,” the official told Foreign Policy, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the probe.

Source: Foreign Policy

Retired US General alarmed at PC purge of senoir officers

A retired Army general is alarmed by the high number of senior officers in the U.S. military who have been fired under the Obama administration, and he is calling for the “forced resignations” of President Obama, other administration officials and the leadership of Congress for the direction they’re taking the nation.

The systematic political purge of hundreds of senior military officers in the U.S. military is now in full swing.

Vallely says the number of senior officers in the U.S. military who have been fired under the Obama administration, is now estimated at one officer per week. Indeed, Vallely has been very outspoken to what he calls a “purge” of the U.S. military by the Obama administration — with a stunning nine generals and flag officers relieved of duty this year alone.

“He [Obama] is intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”

J.D. Gordon, a retired Navy commander and a former Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, says the Obama administration is rushing to unload senior officers whom he believes have become “political pawns” dismissed for questionable reasons.

WND has been reporting on the surge of firings, suspensions and dismissals, for which Vallely has assigned a good portion of the blame to Obama’s close adviser, Valerie Jarrett. Rampant “political correctness” due to her influence, Vallely tells WND, is now permeating the military and negatively affecting everyone from top generals to the ranks of the enlisted.

According to Vallely, Obama is “intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing the U.S. as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”

Vallely equated the current treatment of U.S. senior military officers watching over what is said and done among mid-level officers and enlisted ranks to that of the “political commissars from the Communist era.”

He also told WND that the White House won’t investigate its own officials, but finds it easy to fire military commanders “who have given their lives for their country.”

In his capacity as chairman of the organization Stand Up America, Vallely issued what he termed a “National Call to Action” to force the resignations of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Vallely, formerly the deputy commanding general of Pacific Command, said the current crop of leaders must be forced to resign by the “demand resignation” process, which he explained requires massive grass-roots protests and social networking. As an example, he cited the public and media pressure that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Impeachment, Vallely said, is not a viable option because of “partisan politics.”

“Our federal government continues down the path of destroying America,” he said. “Americans must now stand up and put America back on the right track.”

In issuing his national call to action, Vallely said the federal government has not subsided in “sucking the oxygen” out of America.

“And we call to action all branches of government to do your constitutional duties and not be led astray in the cultural and moral decay of America. We have witnessed far too many lies,” he said, as well as “deception and the corruption of the republic.”

Vallely reminds Americans that the Declaration of Independence itself states that whenever “any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem more likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”

Vallely said the nation he long defended is self-destructing “before our very eyes,” because of “our inept and incompetent leadership in Washington.”

“The battle is on,” he added, “and we shall not retreat.”

Vallely, who has also served as a Fox News military analyst, claimed the Obama administration and leadership of Congress have been leading the nation down a road of “progressive socialism.”

He said conditions today are approaching those of the time of the inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln, who said at the time that people have a “right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one.”

“Shake off,” said Vallely, “means replacing government leaders.” He argued America today bears “many similarities to the fall of Rome.” America, he added, is not immune to collapse or even revolution, which he notes “has happened many times in history. … External and internal threats could precipitate this as well as any financial collapse.”

Vallely added that “politics as usual will not be effective or sufficient enough to turn the country around.”

“We are in a war for America,” he told WND, adding that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Dr. Ben Carson, the noted brain surgeon and author of “America the Beautiful” and other bestselling books have made similar observations.

Americans have had enough, he said, and the Obama White House and identifiable members of Congress “must now depart from a progressive socialist and treasonous death march and bankrupting the country beyond expectations.”

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, who was a founding member of Delta Force and later deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President George W. Bush, tells WND it is worrying that four-star generals are being retired at the rate that has occurred under Obama.

“Over the past three years, it is unprecedented for the number of four-star generals to be relieved of duty, and not necessarily relieved for cause,” Boykin said. “I believe there is a purging of the military. The problem is worse than we have ever seen.” – wealthydebates.com

Glonass to compete with GPS

The US Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency have been trying to persuade the US State Department not to let Roscosmos build several GLONASS ground-based measuring stations in the United States, alleging that they could be used for military purposes.

They fear that these structures could help Russia spy on the United States and improve the precision of Russian weaponry, the officials said. These monitor stations, the Russians contend, would significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of Moscow’s version of the Global Positioning System, the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their targets and thirsty smartphone users to the nearest Starbucks.

The Pentagon argues that if the State Department sanctions the GLONASS stations’ deployment, Russia might be able to significantly increase the accuracy of its guided missiles and might also use those stations for intelligence activity from US territory. The arguments have prompted the White House to postpone decision-making on the issue until Russia provides additional information, according to anonymous sources in the US Administration and Department of State.

US congressman Michel Rogers, who earlier requested the Pentagon’s estimates of the consequences of the GLONASS stations’ deployment for US national security, said that he didn’t understand why the US should be interested in encouraging GLONASS, a competitor of the American GPS system, when the use of GPS worldwide gives the US obvious advantages in many respects.

Moscow rejects the structures have anything to do with surveillance operations, contending they are designed to improve the accuracy of Russia’s version of the Global Positioning System (GPS), the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their targets and helps passengers with navigation.

“They don’t want to be reliant on the American system and believe that their systems, like GPS, will spawn other industries and applications,” said a former senior official in the State Department’s Office of Space and Advanced Technology.

The monitor stations have been a high priority of Russian President Vladimir Putin for several years as a means to improve Glonass not only to benefit the Russian military and civilian sectors but also to compete globally with GPS.

Earlier this year, Russia positioned a station in Brazil, and agreements with Spain, Indonesia and Australia are expected soon, according to Russian news reports. The United States has stations around the world, but none in Russia.

In May 2012, Moscow requested that the United States allow the ground-monitoring stations on American soil. American technical and diplomatic officials have met several times to discuss the issue and have asked Russian officials for more information, said Ms. Harf, the State Department spokeswoman.

In the meantime, CIA analysts reviewed the proposal and concluded in a classified report this fall that allowing the Russian monitor stations here would raise counterintelligence and other security issues.

The State Department does not think that is a strong argument, said an administration official. “It doesn’t see them as a threat.”

Voice of Russia, RIA, Press TV, NY Times