Every indication clearly points to last Sunday's raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration
Paul Joseph Watson
Propaganda Matrix
Monday, May 9, 2011
Merely a week after President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, there is literally a deluge of evidence that clearly indicates the whole episode has been manufactured for political gain and to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration so that they can be easily manipulated in the run up to the 2012 election. Here are ten facts that prove the Bin Laden fable is a contrived hoax....
1) Before last Sunday's raid, every intelligence analyst, geopolitical commentator or head of state worth their salt was on record as stating that Osama Bin Laden was already dead, and that he probably died many years ago, from veteran CIA officer Robert Baer, to former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to former FBI head of counterterrorism Dale Watson. In addition, back in 2002 Alex Jones was told directly by two separate high level sources that Bin Laden was already dead and that his death would be announced at the most politically opportune moment. Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under five different Presidents, serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the Nixon, Ford and Carter, told the Alex Jones Show last week that Bin Laden died of marfan syndrome shortly after he was visited by CIA physicians at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001.
2) The official narrative of how the raid unfolded completely collapsed within days of its announcement. First there had been a 40 minute shootout, then there was no shootout and just one man was armed, first Bin Laden was armed then he was not, first Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield and then he did not. First the compound was described as a "$1 million dollar mansion" then it turned out to be a rubbish-strewn dilapidated compound that was worth less than a quarter of that. Almost every single aspect of the official narrative has changed since Obama first described the raid last Sunday as the White House struggles to keep its story straight.
3) The alleged body of Bin Laden was hastily dumped in the sea to prevent any proper procedure of identification. The White House claimed this was in accordance with normal Islamic burial rituals, however numerous Muslim scholars all over the globe disputed this claim, pointing out that Muslims can only be buried at sea if they die at sea. While the White House claimed that Bin Laden's death on May 1st was proven by DNA and facial recognition evidence, such proof was never released for public scrutiny and the Obama administration refused to release photos of Bin Laden's dead body, suggesting a cover-up.
4) Despite the fact that the White House released "situation room" photos which purported to show Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and the rest of Obama's security staff watching the raid which killed Bin Laden live, it was later admitted by CIA director Leon Panetta that Obama could not have seen the raid because the live feed was cut off before the Navy SEALS entered the compound. The photos were described by many as having “historical significance,” forming a “captivating” record of Obama’s greatest success and being the “defining moment” of his Presidency. One image showed Hillary Clinton with her hand over her mouth as if witnessing an anxious or crucial moment in the raid. Media reports at the time claimed that the photos represented the moment when “The leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.” However, the photos were staged as a PR stunt for public consumption, nobody in the photos ever saw Bin Laden killed live, nor did they see the Navy SEALS even enter the compound.
5) As even mainstream journalists began to cast suspicion on the official narrative behind the raid, the media reported that Al-Qaeda itself had confirmed every detail of Obama's address to the nation. However, the conduit for such a claim was in fact an organization called SITE, which is a notorious Pentagon propaganda front run by the daughter of an Israeli spy that has been caught on numerous occasions releasing fake cartoonish "Al-Qaeda" videos at the most politically expedient times for both the Bush and Obama administrations. The SITE organization is nothing more than a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, and yet the corporate media instantly swallowed and regurgitated the claim that "Al-Qaeda" had confirmed the official story after SITE directed them to an anonymous posting on an Islamic website.
6) Almost every single neighbor that lived near the alleged Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad that was interviewed by news reporters said with absolute certainty that they had never seen Bin Laden and that they knew of no evidence whatsoever to suggest he lived there. Since the town is a staging ground for the Pakistani military, which has a training facility situated virtually a stone's throw away from the alleged Bin Laden compound, residents were required to show ID when they moved into the area. Pakistani troops and anti-terror police in the town refused to confirm that Bin Laden had lived in the house. Barack Obama himself admitted to 60 Minutes that the White House was only 55/45 sure that Osama lived there before the raid and this uncertainty prompted concerns that the US Navy SEALS sent in could have targeted a "prince from Dubai" or some other individual that was not Bin Laden.
7) The videos released by the White House this past weekend which purport to show Osama Bin Laden making Al-Qaeda tapes in October-November 2010 are almost identical to footage first released by Pentagon front group SITE nearly four years ago. Remember, a May 2010 Washington Post story reported how the CIA had admitted to making fake Bin Laden videos. Despite the White House's insistence that the footage of Bin Laden is recent, he looks younger and healthier than tapes released almost a decade ago, having apparently dyed his beard black. A separate video that purports to show Bin Laden in his compound flicking through satellite TV channels depicts a much older looking man with a gray beard. Analysts have pointed out that the man has different shaped ears to real Osama pictures from back in 2001. A doctor has also pointed out the fact that the man in the tapes released Saturday has no problem moving his left arm, whereas video from 2001 clearly illustrates how Bin Laden was unable to move his left upper extremity because of a permanent injury probably related to damage to the peripheral nerves. Why the cameraman would film the back of Bin Laden's head as he watches television is also dubious. Residents in the town of Abbottabad claim the man in the "television" video is not Osama, with one individual claiming that the man labeled by the White House as being Bin Laden is actually his neighbor, a man named Akhbar Han.
8) Despite the fact that numerous neo-cons came out on the days after the alleged raid to erroneously assert that torturing terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay led to the discovery of Bin Laden, Osama himself, the supposed world's most wanted terrorist and a treasure trove of terror information, despite the fact that he was unarmed, was not taken in for questioning, he was instantly shot in the head according to the official narrative.
9) The US government has been caught on several occasions within the past decade staging military operations for the purposes of generating contrived, pro-war sentiment amongst the American public. Both the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch and the death of Pat Tillman were complete fables, scripted and staged at complete odds with the truth and unleashed on Americans as part of a psychological warfare offensive to elicit support for the war on terror, almost identical to what we’re seeing now with the Bin Laden sideshow. Given the fact that the US government has been caught red-handed scripting tales of pure fiction in order to justify the war on terror, notably in the cases of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, why on earth should we believe them now?
10) Despite the fact that Obama announced last Sunday on live television that the world was now "safer" because Bin Laden was dead, his administration, with the aid of the fearmongering mass media, instantly seized upon the situation to terrify Americans into being afraid of imminent "reprisal" terror attacks inside the United States, later claiming that Bin Laden had formulated an "aspirational rather than operational" plan to derail US trains that travel over 500 mph, although no trains in the US can actually travel at such speeds. This led "terror experts" to salivate over how TSA agents were now needed in shopping malls to stick their hands down Americans' pants, while New York Senator Chuckie Schumer called for the no fly list to be expanded to trains and subways.
Obama hurried to ground zero for a photo op as he desperately tried to use the Bin Laden hoax to whip up phony patriotism as a means of boosting his flagging poll numbers. Others, like Democrat Bill Richardson, exploited the situation to try and push through policies that had no connection to Bin Laden or terrorism at all, like cap and trade. The haste with which the whole Bin Laden fable was exploited for political points scoring and as a psychological ploy to return Americans to a post-9/11 state of intellectual castration was painfully transparent, (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) clearly suggesting that the entire farce was planned well in advance to achieve precisely those goals in the run up to 2012.
Showing posts with label Global War on Terror (GWOT). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global War on Terror (GWOT). Show all posts
Monday, May 9, 2011
Monday, December 13, 2010
The March to War: Was September 11 2001 the Start of World War III?
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research
December 11, 2010
The tragic attacks of September 11, 2001 have resulted in almost ten years of perpetual war. September 11, 2001 was the first drum beats, or the opening salvos, of a much wider conflict. The deployment of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan has secured a bridgehead into the Eurasian Heartland, which is geographically positioned on or near the borders of Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
Was Afghanistan the starting battle of a global war? The invasion of Afghanistan can be compared to the landing of the Western Allies, specifically the Americans, in North Africa as a bridgehead into Italy and Europe. At the same time NATO has been pushing from Europe towards the Eurasian Heartland, like the landing of the invading forces of the Western Allies in France.
Was September 11th, 2001 the start of the Third World War?
Historically speaking, it should be noted that distinctions between times of war and peace are not always clear-cut and conflicts do not always correspond to the dates set and standardized by historians. War was not even declared in the cases of many past conflicts, such as in the early 1700s when Augustus II of Saxony-Poland invaded Livonia or when Frederick IV of Denmark invaded Holstein-Gottorp. Also, in the cases of many conflicts, attempts were always made to cloak or hide the nature of the conflict as being a war or an act of aggression. The Romans and other imperial powers regularly engaged in this type of conduct.
Examples in history are the abstract chronological dates customarily used by historians to note important points in the Second World War and the start of the Cold War. In Western Europe and North America, the starting date for World War II is considered to be September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. For the former Czechoslovakia, March 16, 1939 (the date Germany invaded Czechoslovakia) was the starting date for the Second World War. In Russia and the former U.S.S.R. the start date of the Second World War is 1941, the date the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Even the end date for World War II in Europe is different, because Germany officially surrendered to the Western Allies (namely the U.S., Britain, and France) on May 8, 1945 and to the Soviet Union on May 9, 1945.
The above dates are all set from an ethnocentric European perspective, which leaves out Asia. The history of World War II starts much earlier in Asia. Many consider the start of the Second World War to have been when Japan invaded China in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, two years before 1939. Even before 1937, since 1931 the Chinese and Japanese were in conflict and 1931 too can be seen as the start of World War II.
The various dates and events for the start of the Cold War also vary, because of the identification of various events as the Cold War’s opening salvo(s). The 1945 American-Soviet tensions over the occupation of the Korean Peninsula, the Azerbaijan Crisis (1947-1948) arising from the Soviet occupation of Iranian provinces, the near wins for the Communists in national elections held in France and Italy (1947-1948), the struggle for power between the Communists and the non-Communists in Czechoslovakia (1947-1948), and the West Berlin Blockade (1948-1949) are also viewed as starting dates for the Cold War. Even events taking place during the Second World War, such as the Yalta Conference, the Tehran Conference, and the dropping of the atom bomb on the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by President Harry Truman as a threat to the Soviets (about U.S. supremacy in the post-war order) are considered as the starting dates of the Cold War.
This question about dates also gives rise to another point in historiography. The nature of history is seamless and not the arbitrary one unintentionally made out by historians and history textbooks. One set of events leads to another. Just as how the First World War led to the Second World War and the Second World War led to the Cold War, the Cold War has led to the “Global War on Terrorism.”
The point is that in retrospect, historical dates and events are defined by people in the future and that sometimes people need to stand back to see the bigger picture.
The NATO and Anglo-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are clearly tied to September 11, 2001. These events are also related to the military threats directed against Iran and Syria, the tensions in Lebanon and East Africa, as well as U.S. and NATO threats directed against China and Russia. In this regard, the historians of the future may say that World War III could have started on September 11, 2001 or that the tragic events on September 11, 2001 were a prelude to World War III.
Revelations from the U.S. Media on the Dawn of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War: Are We in a World War?
As a note on the subject of whether World War III is currently being waged, the U.S. media watchdog Media Matters for America made a note that much of the mainstream media was touting that the U.S. was in the midst of a global war days after Israel began its war against Lebanon. Media Matters for America reported as follows on July 14, 2006:
Most recently, on the July 13 [2006] edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly said “World War III ... I think we’re in it.” Similarly, on the July 13 [2006] edition of MSNBC’s Tucker, a graphic read: “On the verge of World War III?” As Media Matters for America has noted, CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck began his program on July 12 [2006] with a discussion with former CIA officer Robert Baer by saying “we’ve got World War III to fight,” while also warning of the “impeding apocalypse.” Beck and [former] officer Robert Baer had a similar discussion on July 13 [2006], in which Beck said: “I absolutely know that we need to prepare ourselves for World War III. It is here.” [1]
The mainstream media serves as a tool for the economic and political elite. It falls into line in propagating and supporting state domestic and foreign policy. In this sense the mainstream media is a vital component of a military-industrial-financial-media complex that helps shape the views of what the sociologist C. Wright Mills has termed a mass society.
It is clear that a World War III scenario was possible in 2006. The Israeli attack on Lebanon could have expanded into Syria. This would have seen Iranian intervention, which would have seen the U.S. and NATO entering the war to come to the aid of Tel Aviv as combatants. This could have resulted in a dangerous global war scenario arising from the Middle East, which will be examined later.
The dangers of a military intervention by the U.S. and NATO were very real. The Pentagon had planned to launch a NATO invasion of Lebanon, which would have included the deployment of U.S. Marines to fight the Lebanese Resistance. This has also been confirmed by Alain Pellegrini, the former military commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in an interview with the newspaper As-Safir.
The Weekly Standard, in the following month after September 11, 2001, ominously went on to outline the broader military campaign that was to come in an editorial by Robert Kagan and William Kristol published on October 29, 2001:
When all is said and done the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North Africa campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But to what looms over the horizon — a wide-range war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back again to the United States — Afghanistan will prove but an opening battle. [2]
The Weekly Standard editorial, like a script, went on to clearly state that the multi-front war that was in the works would develop to become or resemble the “Clash of Civilizations” post-Cold War conflict model outlined by Samuel P. Huntington:
[T]his war will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. And it is going to put enormous and perhaps unbearable strain on parts of an international coalition that basks in contented consensus. [3]
In 2001, both Robert Kagan and William Kristol were well aware of the conflagration of war in Eurasia. Both men are U.S. political insiders that were aware of what direction U.S. foreign policy would take the U.S. military. After all Kagan and Kristol were associates with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz through the political think-tank the Project for a News American Century (PNAC) that outlined a global military roadmap for a “new American century.”
World War III in the Horizon?
Since the invasion of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan war has spread from Central Asia to the Middle East, Pakistan, the Caucasus, and East Africa. What is looming in the horizon? Is the “Global War on Terror” another name for the “Great Game?”
The “Great Game” for control of all Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and the Middle East to Central Asia, is underway. International tensions are building. In Eurasia and worldwide there is geo-political rivalry between a U.S. led military alliance and bloc and a Russian-Chinese-Iranian counter-alliance.
There are numerous fronts that can ignite a global war, but the Middle East has the highest risk. If Israeli attacks in 2006 threatened to lead to a global war, what would an attack on Iran lead to? An Israeli-U.S. attack against Iran and its allies could develop rapidly into a global war with the use of nuclear weapons. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
NOTES
[1] “Right-wing media divided: Is U.S. now in World War III, IV, or V?”, Media Matters for America, July 14, 2006:.
[2] Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “The Gathering Storm”, The Weekly Standard, October 29, 2001, p.13.
[3] Ibid.
Global Research
December 11, 2010
The tragic attacks of September 11, 2001 have resulted in almost ten years of perpetual war. September 11, 2001 was the first drum beats, or the opening salvos, of a much wider conflict. The deployment of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan has secured a bridgehead into the Eurasian Heartland, which is geographically positioned on or near the borders of Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
Was Afghanistan the starting battle of a global war? The invasion of Afghanistan can be compared to the landing of the Western Allies, specifically the Americans, in North Africa as a bridgehead into Italy and Europe. At the same time NATO has been pushing from Europe towards the Eurasian Heartland, like the landing of the invading forces of the Western Allies in France.
Was September 11th, 2001 the start of the Third World War?
Historically speaking, it should be noted that distinctions between times of war and peace are not always clear-cut and conflicts do not always correspond to the dates set and standardized by historians. War was not even declared in the cases of many past conflicts, such as in the early 1700s when Augustus II of Saxony-Poland invaded Livonia or when Frederick IV of Denmark invaded Holstein-Gottorp. Also, in the cases of many conflicts, attempts were always made to cloak or hide the nature of the conflict as being a war or an act of aggression. The Romans and other imperial powers regularly engaged in this type of conduct.
Examples in history are the abstract chronological dates customarily used by historians to note important points in the Second World War and the start of the Cold War. In Western Europe and North America, the starting date for World War II is considered to be September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. For the former Czechoslovakia, March 16, 1939 (the date Germany invaded Czechoslovakia) was the starting date for the Second World War. In Russia and the former U.S.S.R. the start date of the Second World War is 1941, the date the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Even the end date for World War II in Europe is different, because Germany officially surrendered to the Western Allies (namely the U.S., Britain, and France) on May 8, 1945 and to the Soviet Union on May 9, 1945.
The above dates are all set from an ethnocentric European perspective, which leaves out Asia. The history of World War II starts much earlier in Asia. Many consider the start of the Second World War to have been when Japan invaded China in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, two years before 1939. Even before 1937, since 1931 the Chinese and Japanese were in conflict and 1931 too can be seen as the start of World War II.
The various dates and events for the start of the Cold War also vary, because of the identification of various events as the Cold War’s opening salvo(s). The 1945 American-Soviet tensions over the occupation of the Korean Peninsula, the Azerbaijan Crisis (1947-1948) arising from the Soviet occupation of Iranian provinces, the near wins for the Communists in national elections held in France and Italy (1947-1948), the struggle for power between the Communists and the non-Communists in Czechoslovakia (1947-1948), and the West Berlin Blockade (1948-1949) are also viewed as starting dates for the Cold War. Even events taking place during the Second World War, such as the Yalta Conference, the Tehran Conference, and the dropping of the atom bomb on the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by President Harry Truman as a threat to the Soviets (about U.S. supremacy in the post-war order) are considered as the starting dates of the Cold War.
This question about dates also gives rise to another point in historiography. The nature of history is seamless and not the arbitrary one unintentionally made out by historians and history textbooks. One set of events leads to another. Just as how the First World War led to the Second World War and the Second World War led to the Cold War, the Cold War has led to the “Global War on Terrorism.”
The point is that in retrospect, historical dates and events are defined by people in the future and that sometimes people need to stand back to see the bigger picture.
The NATO and Anglo-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are clearly tied to September 11, 2001. These events are also related to the military threats directed against Iran and Syria, the tensions in Lebanon and East Africa, as well as U.S. and NATO threats directed against China and Russia. In this regard, the historians of the future may say that World War III could have started on September 11, 2001 or that the tragic events on September 11, 2001 were a prelude to World War III.
Revelations from the U.S. Media on the Dawn of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War: Are We in a World War?
As a note on the subject of whether World War III is currently being waged, the U.S. media watchdog Media Matters for America made a note that much of the mainstream media was touting that the U.S. was in the midst of a global war days after Israel began its war against Lebanon. Media Matters for America reported as follows on July 14, 2006:
Most recently, on the July 13 [2006] edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly said “World War III ... I think we’re in it.” Similarly, on the July 13 [2006] edition of MSNBC’s Tucker, a graphic read: “On the verge of World War III?” As Media Matters for America has noted, CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck began his program on July 12 [2006] with a discussion with former CIA officer Robert Baer by saying “we’ve got World War III to fight,” while also warning of the “impeding apocalypse.” Beck and [former] officer Robert Baer had a similar discussion on July 13 [2006], in which Beck said: “I absolutely know that we need to prepare ourselves for World War III. It is here.” [1]
The mainstream media serves as a tool for the economic and political elite. It falls into line in propagating and supporting state domestic and foreign policy. In this sense the mainstream media is a vital component of a military-industrial-financial-media complex that helps shape the views of what the sociologist C. Wright Mills has termed a mass society.
It is clear that a World War III scenario was possible in 2006. The Israeli attack on Lebanon could have expanded into Syria. This would have seen Iranian intervention, which would have seen the U.S. and NATO entering the war to come to the aid of Tel Aviv as combatants. This could have resulted in a dangerous global war scenario arising from the Middle East, which will be examined later.
The dangers of a military intervention by the U.S. and NATO were very real. The Pentagon had planned to launch a NATO invasion of Lebanon, which would have included the deployment of U.S. Marines to fight the Lebanese Resistance. This has also been confirmed by Alain Pellegrini, the former military commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in an interview with the newspaper As-Safir.
The Weekly Standard, in the following month after September 11, 2001, ominously went on to outline the broader military campaign that was to come in an editorial by Robert Kagan and William Kristol published on October 29, 2001:
When all is said and done the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North Africa campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But to what looms over the horizon — a wide-range war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back again to the United States — Afghanistan will prove but an opening battle. [2]
The Weekly Standard editorial, like a script, went on to clearly state that the multi-front war that was in the works would develop to become or resemble the “Clash of Civilizations” post-Cold War conflict model outlined by Samuel P. Huntington:
[T]his war will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. And it is going to put enormous and perhaps unbearable strain on parts of an international coalition that basks in contented consensus. [3]
In 2001, both Robert Kagan and William Kristol were well aware of the conflagration of war in Eurasia. Both men are U.S. political insiders that were aware of what direction U.S. foreign policy would take the U.S. military. After all Kagan and Kristol were associates with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz through the political think-tank the Project for a News American Century (PNAC) that outlined a global military roadmap for a “new American century.”
World War III in the Horizon?
Since the invasion of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan war has spread from Central Asia to the Middle East, Pakistan, the Caucasus, and East Africa. What is looming in the horizon? Is the “Global War on Terror” another name for the “Great Game?”
The “Great Game” for control of all Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and the Middle East to Central Asia, is underway. International tensions are building. In Eurasia and worldwide there is geo-political rivalry between a U.S. led military alliance and bloc and a Russian-Chinese-Iranian counter-alliance.
There are numerous fronts that can ignite a global war, but the Middle East has the highest risk. If Israeli attacks in 2006 threatened to lead to a global war, what would an attack on Iran lead to? An Israeli-U.S. attack against Iran and its allies could develop rapidly into a global war with the use of nuclear weapons. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
NOTES
[1] “Right-wing media divided: Is U.S. now in World War III, IV, or V?”, Media Matters for America, July 14, 2006:
[2] Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “The Gathering Storm”, The Weekly Standard, October 29, 2001, p.13.
[3] Ibid.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The War On Terror
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research
October 16, 2010
Does anyone remember the “cakewalk war” that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?
Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?
Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.
Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?
Are Americans aware that the same neoconservarives who made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in control of the government in Washington?
The “war on terror” is now in its tenth year. What is it really all about?
The bottom line answer is that the “war on terror” is about creating real terrorists. The US government desperately needs real terrorists in order to justify its expansion of its wars against Muslim countries and to keep the American people sufficiently fearful that they continue to accept the police state that provides “security from terrorists,” but not from the government that has discarded civil liberties.
The US government creates terrorists by invading Muslim countries, wrecking infrastructure and killing vast numbers of civilians. The US also creates terrorists by installing puppet governments to rule over Muslims and by using the puppet governments to murder and persecute citizens as is occurring on a vast scale in Pakistan today.
Neoconservatives used 9/11 to launch their plan for US world hegemony. Their plan fit with the interests of America’s ruling oligarchies. Wars are good for the profits of the military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us in vain a half century ago. American hegemony is good for the oil industry’s control over resources and resource flows. The transformation of the Middle East into a vast American puppet state serves well the Israel Lobby’s Zionist aspirations for Israeli territorial expansion.
Most Americans cannot see what is happening because of their conditioning. Most Americans believe that their government is the best on earth, that it is morally motivated to help others and to do good, that it rushes aid to countries where there is famine and natural catastrophes. Most believe that their presidents tell the truth, except about their sexual affairs.
The persistence of these delusions is extraordinary in the face of daily headlines that report US government bullying of, and interference with, virtually every country on earth. The US policy is to buy off, overthrow, or make war on leaders of other countries who represent their peoples’ interests instead of American interests. A recent victim was the president of Honduras who had the wild idea that the Honduran government should serve the Honduran people.
The American government was able to have the Honduran president discarded, because the Honduran military is trained and supplied by the US military. It is the same case in Pakistan, where the US government has the Pakistani government making war on its own people by invading tribal areas that the Americans consider to be friendly to the Taliban, al Qaeda, “militants” and “terrorists.”
Earlier this year a deputy US Treasury secretary ordered Pakistan to raise taxes so that the Pakistani government could more effectively make war on its own citizens for the Americans. On October 14 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered Pakistan to again raise taxes or the US would withhold flood aid. Clinton pressured America’s European puppet states to do the same, expressing in the same breath that the US government was worried by British cuts in the military budget. God forbid that the hard-pressed British, still reeling from American financial fraud, don’t allocate enough money to fight America’s wars.
On Washington’s orders, the Pakistani government launched a military offensive against Pakistani citizens in the Swat Valley that killed large numbers of Pakistanis and drove millions of civilians from their homes. Last July the US instructed Pakistan to send its troops against the Pakistani residents of North Waziristan. On July 6 Jason Ditz reported on antiwar.com that “at America’s behest, Pakistan has launched offensives against [the Pakistani provinces of] Swat Valley, Bajaur, South Waziristan, Orakzai,and Khyber.”
A week later Israel’s US Senator Carl Levin (D,MI) called for escalating the Obama Administration’s policies of US airstrikes against Pakistan’s tribal areas. On September 30, the Pakistani newspaper, The Frontier Post, wrote that the American air strikes “are, plain and simple, a naked aggression against Pakistan.”
The US claims that its forces in Afghanistan have the right to cross into Pakistan in pursuit of “militants.” Recently US helicopter gunships killed three Pakistani soldiers who they mistook for Taliban. Pakistan closed the main US supply route to Afghanistan until the Americans apologized.
Pakistan warned Washington against future attacks. However, US military officials, under pressure from Obama to show progress in the endless Afghan war, responded to Pakistan’s warning by calling for expanding the Afghan war into Pakistan. On October 5 the Canadian journalist Eric Margolis wrote that “the US edges closer to invading Pakistan.”
In his book, Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward reports that America’s puppet president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, believes that terrorist bombing attacks inside Pakistan for which the Taliban are blamed are in fact CIA operations designed to destabilize Pakistan and allow Washington to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
To keep Pakistan in line, the US government changed its position that the “Times Square Bombing” was the work of a “lone wolf.” Attorney General Eric Holder switched the blame to the “Pakistani Taliban,” and Secretary of State Clinton threatened Pakistan with “very serious consequences” for the unsuccessful Times Square bombing, which likely was a false flag operation aimed at Pakistan.
To further heighten tensions, on September 1 the eight members of a high-ranking Pakistani military delegation in route to a meeting in Tampa, Florida, with US Central Command, were rudely treated and detained as terrorist suspects at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport.
For decades the US government has enabled repeated Israeli military aggression against Lebanon and now appears to be getting into gear for another Israeli assault on the former American protectorate of Lebanon. On October 14 the US government expressed its “outrage” that the Lebanese government had permitted a visit by Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who is the focus of Washington’s intense demonization efforts. Israel’s representatives in the US Congress threatened to stop US military aid to Lebanon, forgetting that US Rep. Howard Berman (D,CA) has had aid to Lebanon blocked since last August to punish Lebanon for a border clash with Israel.
Perhaps the most telling headline of all is the October 14 report, “Somalia’s New American Primer Minister.” An American has been installed as the Prime Minister of Somalia, an American puppet government in Mogadishu backed up by thousands of Ugandan troops paid by Washington. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
This barely scratches the surface of Washington’s benevolence toward other countries and respect for their rights, borders, and lives of their citizens.
Meanwhile, to silence Wikileaks and to prevent any more revelations of American war crimes, the “freedom and democracy” government in DC has closed down Wikileaks’ donations by placing the organization on its “watch list” and by having the Australian puppet government blacklist Wikileaks.
Wikileaks is now akin to a terrorist organization. The American government’s practice of silencing critics will spread across the Internet.
Remember, "they hate" us because we have "freedom and democracy", First Amendment rights, habeas corpus, respect for human rights, and show justice and mercy to all.
Global Research
October 16, 2010
Does anyone remember the “cakewalk war” that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?
Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?
Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.
Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?
Are Americans aware that the same neoconservarives who made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in control of the government in Washington?
The “war on terror” is now in its tenth year. What is it really all about?
The bottom line answer is that the “war on terror” is about creating real terrorists. The US government desperately needs real terrorists in order to justify its expansion of its wars against Muslim countries and to keep the American people sufficiently fearful that they continue to accept the police state that provides “security from terrorists,” but not from the government that has discarded civil liberties.
The US government creates terrorists by invading Muslim countries, wrecking infrastructure and killing vast numbers of civilians. The US also creates terrorists by installing puppet governments to rule over Muslims and by using the puppet governments to murder and persecute citizens as is occurring on a vast scale in Pakistan today.
Neoconservatives used 9/11 to launch their plan for US world hegemony. Their plan fit with the interests of America’s ruling oligarchies. Wars are good for the profits of the military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us in vain a half century ago. American hegemony is good for the oil industry’s control over resources and resource flows. The transformation of the Middle East into a vast American puppet state serves well the Israel Lobby’s Zionist aspirations for Israeli territorial expansion.
Most Americans cannot see what is happening because of their conditioning. Most Americans believe that their government is the best on earth, that it is morally motivated to help others and to do good, that it rushes aid to countries where there is famine and natural catastrophes. Most believe that their presidents tell the truth, except about their sexual affairs.
The persistence of these delusions is extraordinary in the face of daily headlines that report US government bullying of, and interference with, virtually every country on earth. The US policy is to buy off, overthrow, or make war on leaders of other countries who represent their peoples’ interests instead of American interests. A recent victim was the president of Honduras who had the wild idea that the Honduran government should serve the Honduran people.
The American government was able to have the Honduran president discarded, because the Honduran military is trained and supplied by the US military. It is the same case in Pakistan, where the US government has the Pakistani government making war on its own people by invading tribal areas that the Americans consider to be friendly to the Taliban, al Qaeda, “militants” and “terrorists.”
Earlier this year a deputy US Treasury secretary ordered Pakistan to raise taxes so that the Pakistani government could more effectively make war on its own citizens for the Americans. On October 14 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered Pakistan to again raise taxes or the US would withhold flood aid. Clinton pressured America’s European puppet states to do the same, expressing in the same breath that the US government was worried by British cuts in the military budget. God forbid that the hard-pressed British, still reeling from American financial fraud, don’t allocate enough money to fight America’s wars.
On Washington’s orders, the Pakistani government launched a military offensive against Pakistani citizens in the Swat Valley that killed large numbers of Pakistanis and drove millions of civilians from their homes. Last July the US instructed Pakistan to send its troops against the Pakistani residents of North Waziristan. On July 6 Jason Ditz reported on antiwar.com that “at America’s behest, Pakistan has launched offensives against [the Pakistani provinces of] Swat Valley, Bajaur, South Waziristan, Orakzai,and Khyber.”
A week later Israel’s US Senator Carl Levin (D,MI) called for escalating the Obama Administration’s policies of US airstrikes against Pakistan’s tribal areas. On September 30, the Pakistani newspaper, The Frontier Post, wrote that the American air strikes “are, plain and simple, a naked aggression against Pakistan.”
The US claims that its forces in Afghanistan have the right to cross into Pakistan in pursuit of “militants.” Recently US helicopter gunships killed three Pakistani soldiers who they mistook for Taliban. Pakistan closed the main US supply route to Afghanistan until the Americans apologized.
Pakistan warned Washington against future attacks. However, US military officials, under pressure from Obama to show progress in the endless Afghan war, responded to Pakistan’s warning by calling for expanding the Afghan war into Pakistan. On October 5 the Canadian journalist Eric Margolis wrote that “the US edges closer to invading Pakistan.”
In his book, Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward reports that America’s puppet president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, believes that terrorist bombing attacks inside Pakistan for which the Taliban are blamed are in fact CIA operations designed to destabilize Pakistan and allow Washington to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
To keep Pakistan in line, the US government changed its position that the “Times Square Bombing” was the work of a “lone wolf.” Attorney General Eric Holder switched the blame to the “Pakistani Taliban,” and Secretary of State Clinton threatened Pakistan with “very serious consequences” for the unsuccessful Times Square bombing, which likely was a false flag operation aimed at Pakistan.
To further heighten tensions, on September 1 the eight members of a high-ranking Pakistani military delegation in route to a meeting in Tampa, Florida, with US Central Command, were rudely treated and detained as terrorist suspects at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport.
For decades the US government has enabled repeated Israeli military aggression against Lebanon and now appears to be getting into gear for another Israeli assault on the former American protectorate of Lebanon. On October 14 the US government expressed its “outrage” that the Lebanese government had permitted a visit by Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who is the focus of Washington’s intense demonization efforts. Israel’s representatives in the US Congress threatened to stop US military aid to Lebanon, forgetting that US Rep. Howard Berman (D,CA) has had aid to Lebanon blocked since last August to punish Lebanon for a border clash with Israel.
Perhaps the most telling headline of all is the October 14 report, “Somalia’s New American Primer Minister.” An American has been installed as the Prime Minister of Somalia, an American puppet government in Mogadishu backed up by thousands of Ugandan troops paid by Washington. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
This barely scratches the surface of Washington’s benevolence toward other countries and respect for their rights, borders, and lives of their citizens.
Meanwhile, to silence Wikileaks and to prevent any more revelations of American war crimes, the “freedom and democracy” government in DC has closed down Wikileaks’ donations by placing the organization on its “watch list” and by having the Australian puppet government blacklist Wikileaks.
Wikileaks is now akin to a terrorist organization. The American government’s practice of silencing critics will spread across the Internet.
Remember, "they hate" us because we have "freedom and democracy", First Amendment rights, habeas corpus, respect for human rights, and show justice and mercy to all.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The True Cost of the War
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 02, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Obama’s “end of Iraq war” speech must have shattered any remaining belief in him. Forced to appease both his supporters and the warmonger right-wing, who denounce him as a Muslim and a Marxist, Obama resorted to Orwellian DoubleSpeak. He could only announce an end to the war by praising the president who started it and the troops who fought it. Yet, as most earthlings, if not Americans, surely know by now, the war was based on a lie and on intentional deception. The American troops died for a lie.
President Obama spoke of the cost to Americans of liberating Iraq, but is Iraq liberated or is Iraq in the hands of American puppet politicians and still occupied by 50,000 American troops and 200,000 private mercenaries and “contractors,” governed out of the largest embassy in the world, essentially a fortress?
President Obama did not speak of the cost to Iraqis of being “liberated.” The uncounted Iraqi deaths, estimates of which range from 100,000 to 1,000,000, most being women and children, were not mentioned. Neither were the uncounted orphaned and maimed children, the four million displaced Iraqis, the flight from Iraq of the professional middle class, the homes, infrastructure, villages and towns destroyed, along with whatever remained of America’s reputation.
All of this was left out of the picture that Obama painted of America’s “commitment” to Iraq which brought Iraqis “peace” and liberated Iraqis from Saddam Hussein in order that that a destroyed Iraq can now be an American puppet state and take its orders from Washington.
As it is impossible for the U.S. government to any longer pretend that the invasion of Iraq was necessary to save America from weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda terrorists, the U.S. government’s justification for its massive war crime has come down to removing Saddam Hussein, who, like the Americans, tortured his opponents.
Does anyone on earth, even among the most moronic of the flag-waving American super-patriots, believe that the bankrupt United States government spent three trillion borrowed dollars to remove one man, Saddam Hussein, in order to free Iraq from tyranny? Anyone who believes this is insane.
Saddam Hussein would have resigned for far less money had it been offered to him.
Do Americans see the irony in the “saving Iraq from tyranny” excuse? The greatest price of the neoconservative war against Iraq is not the $3 trillion or the dead and maimed American soldiers and their broken families. The greatest price of this evil war is the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and American civil liberties.
The Bush/Cheney/Obama National Security State has eviscerated the Constitution and civil liberty. Nothing remains. The fascist Republican Federalist Society has put enough federal judges in the judiciary to rule that the president is above the law. The president doesn’t have to obey the law against spying on American citizens without warrants. The president doesn’t have to obey U.S. and international laws against torture. The president doesn’t have to obey the Constitution that mandates that only Congress can declare war. The president can do whatever he wants as long as he justifies it as “national security.”
The president’s part of the government, the unaccountable executive branch, is supreme. The president can announce, without being impeached, his decision to murder Americans abroad and at home if someone somewhere in the unaccountable executive branch regards such American citizens as “threats.”
Murder first. No accountability later.
The executive branch has exercised unilateral, unaccountable power to deep-six the U.S. Constitution, with little interference from the judiciary and with support from Congress. The executive branch has declared foreign opponents of America’s illegal invasions and occupations of their countries to be “terrorists,” subject neither to the laws of war nor to the criminal laws of the U.S. and, therefore, subject to indefinite torture and detention without charges or evidence.
This is the legacy of the Bush/Cheney regime, and this criminal regime continues under Obama.
America’s “war on terror,” a fabrication, has resurrected the unaccountable dungeon of the Middle Ages and the raw tyranny that prevailed prior to the Magna Carter.
This is the true cost of “liberating” Iraq, that is, of turning Iraq into an American puppet state that sells out its people for America’s interests.
Who will now liberate Americans from the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative/Obama tyranny?
President Obama asserts that America’s war crimes have come to an end in Iraq, but Obama asserts the power to export America’s war crimes to Afghanistan in order to reign in what the CIA director says are “fifty or less” al Queda members remaining in Afghanistan. Bankrupt Americans will now be saddled with another three billion dollars of debt in order to chase after “fifty or less” alleged terrorists. To cover up this extraordinary waste of borrowed money, Obama, following the dishonest practices of prior American regimes, equated al Qaeda with the Taliban, a home-grown movement of hundreds of thousands of Afghans seeking to unify the country.
The least expensive way to combat “terrorists” would be to stop trying to create an American empire in the Middle East and Central Asia and to stop imposing American puppet states on indigenous populations, the bought-and-paid-for-European-puppet states, who preen themselves with their superior morality, fall in line with Washington, obeying their American master who fills their pockets with dollars. The West having fought tyranny since the Magna Carter, now imposes tyranny both on itself and on the rest of the world.
If Hitler and Stalin had prevailed, what would be the difference? (editor's emphasis)
Is the Obama regime going to shoot the “enemies of the state,” condemned without trial or evidence, by shooting them in the front of the head instead of in the back of the neck, as was the practice in the Lubyanka?
What other difference is there?
September 02, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Obama’s “end of Iraq war” speech must have shattered any remaining belief in him. Forced to appease both his supporters and the warmonger right-wing, who denounce him as a Muslim and a Marxist, Obama resorted to Orwellian DoubleSpeak. He could only announce an end to the war by praising the president who started it and the troops who fought it. Yet, as most earthlings, if not Americans, surely know by now, the war was based on a lie and on intentional deception. The American troops died for a lie.
President Obama spoke of the cost to Americans of liberating Iraq, but is Iraq liberated or is Iraq in the hands of American puppet politicians and still occupied by 50,000 American troops and 200,000 private mercenaries and “contractors,” governed out of the largest embassy in the world, essentially a fortress?
President Obama did not speak of the cost to Iraqis of being “liberated.” The uncounted Iraqi deaths, estimates of which range from 100,000 to 1,000,000, most being women and children, were not mentioned. Neither were the uncounted orphaned and maimed children, the four million displaced Iraqis, the flight from Iraq of the professional middle class, the homes, infrastructure, villages and towns destroyed, along with whatever remained of America’s reputation.
All of this was left out of the picture that Obama painted of America’s “commitment” to Iraq which brought Iraqis “peace” and liberated Iraqis from Saddam Hussein in order that that a destroyed Iraq can now be an American puppet state and take its orders from Washington.
As it is impossible for the U.S. government to any longer pretend that the invasion of Iraq was necessary to save America from weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda terrorists, the U.S. government’s justification for its massive war crime has come down to removing Saddam Hussein, who, like the Americans, tortured his opponents.
Does anyone on earth, even among the most moronic of the flag-waving American super-patriots, believe that the bankrupt United States government spent three trillion borrowed dollars to remove one man, Saddam Hussein, in order to free Iraq from tyranny? Anyone who believes this is insane.
Saddam Hussein would have resigned for far less money had it been offered to him.
Do Americans see the irony in the “saving Iraq from tyranny” excuse? The greatest price of the neoconservative war against Iraq is not the $3 trillion or the dead and maimed American soldiers and their broken families. The greatest price of this evil war is the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and American civil liberties.
The Bush/Cheney/Obama National Security State has eviscerated the Constitution and civil liberty. Nothing remains. The fascist Republican Federalist Society has put enough federal judges in the judiciary to rule that the president is above the law. The president doesn’t have to obey the law against spying on American citizens without warrants. The president doesn’t have to obey U.S. and international laws against torture. The president doesn’t have to obey the Constitution that mandates that only Congress can declare war. The president can do whatever he wants as long as he justifies it as “national security.”
The president’s part of the government, the unaccountable executive branch, is supreme. The president can announce, without being impeached, his decision to murder Americans abroad and at home if someone somewhere in the unaccountable executive branch regards such American citizens as “threats.”
Murder first. No accountability later.
The executive branch has exercised unilateral, unaccountable power to deep-six the U.S. Constitution, with little interference from the judiciary and with support from Congress. The executive branch has declared foreign opponents of America’s illegal invasions and occupations of their countries to be “terrorists,” subject neither to the laws of war nor to the criminal laws of the U.S. and, therefore, subject to indefinite torture and detention without charges or evidence.
This is the legacy of the Bush/Cheney regime, and this criminal regime continues under Obama.
America’s “war on terror,” a fabrication, has resurrected the unaccountable dungeon of the Middle Ages and the raw tyranny that prevailed prior to the Magna Carter.
This is the true cost of “liberating” Iraq, that is, of turning Iraq into an American puppet state that sells out its people for America’s interests.
Who will now liberate Americans from the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative/Obama tyranny?
President Obama asserts that America’s war crimes have come to an end in Iraq, but Obama asserts the power to export America’s war crimes to Afghanistan in order to reign in what the CIA director says are “fifty or less” al Queda members remaining in Afghanistan. Bankrupt Americans will now be saddled with another three billion dollars of debt in order to chase after “fifty or less” alleged terrorists. To cover up this extraordinary waste of borrowed money, Obama, following the dishonest practices of prior American regimes, equated al Qaeda with the Taliban, a home-grown movement of hundreds of thousands of Afghans seeking to unify the country.
The least expensive way to combat “terrorists” would be to stop trying to create an American empire in the Middle East and Central Asia and to stop imposing American puppet states on indigenous populations, the bought-and-paid-for-European-puppet states, who preen themselves with their superior morality, fall in line with Washington, obeying their American master who fills their pockets with dollars. The West having fought tyranny since the Magna Carter, now imposes tyranny both on itself and on the rest of the world.
If Hitler and Stalin had prevailed, what would be the difference? (editor's emphasis)
Is the Obama regime going to shoot the “enemies of the state,” condemned without trial or evidence, by shooting them in the front of the head instead of in the back of the neck, as was the practice in the Lubyanka?
What other difference is there?
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Arch-Neocon and Neo-Nazi Newt Gingrich: US should attack Iran and North Korea
Newt Gingrich Suggests Attacking Rest Of 'Axis Of Evil'
By Jeremy Binckes
July 30, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called members by invading Iraq. He also claimed that Muslims are trying to install Sharia law on America and said that the "War on Terror" should have been a war on "radical Islamists" instead.
Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event, Gingrich compared not following through on President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" agenda with not fully engaging the Axis power in World War II.
"If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in '41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won," Gingrich said, adding that Americans should "over-match the problem."
On the reaction to Bush's declaration of an "Axis of Evil," Gingrich blamed Democrats because Americans had not followed through on President Bush's words:
I believe he was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we're one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 -- and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it -- then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it's because we've stood at brink, looked over and thought, "Too big a problem."
In a separate interview with Newsmax Thursday, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken "threats to America" seriously and that newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.
"Radical Islamists are people who want to impose on the rest of us Sharia, which is a form of medieval law which would fundamentally end America as we've known it," he said. "There are disturbing signs that some places ... you see judges succumb to this line of reasoning." He called on "isolating and defeating radicals," while "modernizing" moderates.
Gingrich told Newsmax that the planned mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan should be stopped. He suggested that, were he president, he would "declare the area around the World Trade Center a national military battlefield because that was a battle and it part of a real war."
The former Speaker has been aggressively attacking Islam in the past weeks. Last week, he came out against the "Ground Zero Mosque," saying that it "showed hypocrisy" because there are no churches in Saudi Arabia.
Gingrich's Renewing American Leadership Action PAC has used the controversy as a fund raising platform, Salon's Justin Elliott reports. In a blast email sent to the World Net Daily list, a Gingrich-signed letter reads, "Please SELECT HERE to STOP the Ground Zero mosque! Your decisive DONATION to Real Action will help us to RALLY and ACTIVATE all Americans, to TAKE REAL ACTION!"
Gingrich also told Newsmax that he expects Sarah Palin to run for President in 2012 in a large Republican field. Gingrich is rumored to be running for President in 2012 but did not say whether or not he's running.
"She's already a very strong personality and has the potential to be a very strong candidate," he said.
NOTE:
What is truly frightening is that Gingrich has indicated a willingness to run for President in 2012. The fact that he has a following at all is very worrisome. Of all the Neocon's he is perhaps the greatest "war-monger" of those who have run for elected office. His desire for war appears to exceed even that of Dick Cheney who is now tied to a left ventricular assist device and is in need of a heart transplant. At his age, let us hope that he is not allowed to be a candidate. If he is given a heart we will know that ethical guidelines were broken due to his power and influence.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
By Jeremy Binckes
July 30, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called members by invading Iraq. He also claimed that Muslims are trying to install Sharia law on America and said that the "War on Terror" should have been a war on "radical Islamists" instead.
Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event, Gingrich compared not following through on President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" agenda with not fully engaging the Axis power in World War II.
"If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in '41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won," Gingrich said, adding that Americans should "over-match the problem."
On the reaction to Bush's declaration of an "Axis of Evil," Gingrich blamed Democrats because Americans had not followed through on President Bush's words:
I believe he was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we're one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 -- and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it -- then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it's because we've stood at brink, looked over and thought, "Too big a problem."
In a separate interview with Newsmax Thursday, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken "threats to America" seriously and that newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.
"Radical Islamists are people who want to impose on the rest of us Sharia, which is a form of medieval law which would fundamentally end America as we've known it," he said. "There are disturbing signs that some places ... you see judges succumb to this line of reasoning." He called on "isolating and defeating radicals," while "modernizing" moderates.
Gingrich told Newsmax that the planned mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan should be stopped. He suggested that, were he president, he would "declare the area around the World Trade Center a national military battlefield because that was a battle and it part of a real war."
The former Speaker has been aggressively attacking Islam in the past weeks. Last week, he came out against the "Ground Zero Mosque," saying that it "showed hypocrisy" because there are no churches in Saudi Arabia.
Gingrich's Renewing American Leadership Action PAC has used the controversy as a fund raising platform, Salon's Justin Elliott reports. In a blast email sent to the World Net Daily list, a Gingrich-signed letter reads, "Please SELECT HERE to STOP the Ground Zero mosque! Your decisive DONATION to Real Action will help us to RALLY and ACTIVATE all Americans, to TAKE REAL ACTION!"
Gingrich also told Newsmax that he expects Sarah Palin to run for President in 2012 in a large Republican field. Gingrich is rumored to be running for President in 2012 but did not say whether or not he's running.
"She's already a very strong personality and has the potential to be a very strong candidate," he said.
NOTE:
What is truly frightening is that Gingrich has indicated a willingness to run for President in 2012. The fact that he has a following at all is very worrisome. Of all the Neocon's he is perhaps the greatest "war-monger" of those who have run for elected office. His desire for war appears to exceed even that of Dick Cheney who is now tied to a left ventricular assist device and is in need of a heart transplant. At his age, let us hope that he is not allowed to be a candidate. If he is given a heart we will know that ethical guidelines were broken due to his power and influence.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Saturday, June 27, 2009
America's "Bases of Empire"
by Stephen Lendman
Global Research, June 27, 2009
Besides waging perpetual wars, nothing better reveals America's imperial agenda than its hundreds of global bases - for offense, not defense at a time the US hasn't had an enemy since the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.
So when they don't exist, they're invented as former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles W. Freeman, Jr., suggested in a May 24, 2007 speech to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs:
"When our descendants look back on the end of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, they will be puzzled. The end of the Cold War relieved Americans of almost all international anxieties." As the world's sole remaining superpower, "We did not rise to the occasion."
"We are engaged in a war, a global war on terror, a long war, we are told....How can a war with no defined ends beyond the avoidance of retreat ever reach a convenient stopping point? How can we win (any war let alone the hearts and minds of millions) with an enemy so ill-understood that we must invent a nonexistent ideology" for justification.
In his 2006 book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic," Chalmers Johnson discussed the known number of foreign US bases by size and branch of service. According to the Department of Defense's Base Structure Report (BSR) through 2005, it totaled 737 but likely exceeds 1000 today with so many new ones built since then - some known, others secret and always others planned.
Johnson also highlighted the fallout - unacceptable noise, pollution, environmental destruction, expropriation of valuable public and private land, and drunken, disorderly, and abusive soldiers committing crimes that include rape and murder that often go unpunished under provisions in US-imposed Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs).
An excerpt from his book reads:
"Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial footprint and the militarism that grows with it....even more than in past empires, a well-entrenched militarism (lies) at the heart of our imperial adventures." To such an extreme that "each year we spend more on our armed forces than all others nations on Earth combined" to garrison troops "in more than 130 countries."
The Pentagon lists them in its annual Base Structure Report, but "its official count of between 737 and 860 overseas installations is incomplete" because excluded are numerous secret ones - for espionage, unofficially shared with host countries, or other reasons not disclosed.
The bases reflect "force projection" for global dominance and are positioned to strike any nation that might challenge it, friend or foe. But they come at a great cost - well over $1 trillion annually with all homeland, foreign, and other budget categories included. According to Johnson, a far greater one as well, the same dynamic that doomed past empires unwilling to change - "isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy" as well as the end of democracy, loss of personal freedoms, and tyranny.
During WW II, Brits complained that GIs were "overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and over here." Despite the war, some called it the US "occupation," and UK historian David Reynolds discussed it in his book, "Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945." He borrowed the word from George Orwell's December 1943 comment that "It is difficult to go anywhere in London without having the feeling that Britain is now Occupied Territory."
Today, millions in countries globally feel the same, and with good reason. Even at peace, America's presence is intrusive, hostile, and at the expense of the host country populations.
A new book is now out titled "The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against US Military Posts," a collection of important articles on America's worldwide empire and military presence that enforces it.
It's edited by Catherine Lutz, Brown University Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Watson Institute for International Studies with a forward by Cynthia Enloe, Clark University Research Professor, Department of International Development, Community and Environment and Women's Studies.
Enloe dispels some common myths in her forward:
-- about Americans believing that foreign bases benefit the host country populations;
-- the notion that other countries request our presence;
-- that the US military is the most "civilized" in the world, and
-- their presence is for other nations' security "in an age of an allegedly diffuse (and ill-defined) 'global terror,' (that) trumps any other 'lesser' concerns."
Contributors to "The Bases of Empire" reflect a powerfully opposite point of view as well as Enloe in her forward and Lutz in her detailed introduction, discussed below.
Introduction - Bases, Empire, and Global Response
Lutz cites the "unprecedented....global omnipresence and unparalleled lethality of the US military, and the ambition with which it is being deployed around the world." Its presence shows that America stands "able and willing to control events in other regions militarily" and proves it through numerous foreign wars and other hostile interventions, directly or through proxies.
Citing data from DOD's 2007 Base Structure Report (BSR), she states:
"Officially, over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are massed in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories. There, the US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, and 26,000 buildings and structures valued at $146 billion."
However, the numbers are misleading as they exclude the massive base and troop presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, former Soviet republics, and Warsaw Pact countries as well as unknown numbers of secret facilities in numerous other nations. They consist of three types:
-- Main Operating Bases (MOBs) like the Iraq Balad Air Base housing 30,000 troops, 10,000 contractors, and covering 16 square miles plus another 12-square mile "security perimeter." MOBs are large and permanent, have extensive infrastructure, command and control headquarters, accommodations for families in non-war zones, hospitals, schools, recreational facilities, and nearly anything available in a typical US city.
-- Forward Operation Sites (FOSs) that are also major installations but are smaller than MOBs, and
-- Cooperative Security Locations (CLSs) that are small, austere, called 'lily pads," - to preposition weapons, munitions, and modest numbers of troops.
Lutz highlights the fallout:
"The environmental, political, and economic impact of these bases is enormous and, despite Pentagon claims that the bases simply provide security to the regions they are in, most of the world's people feel (not at all) reassured by (their) global reach," and with good reason.
Farm and public land is expropriated for their use. Toxic pollution is enormous as well as extensive environmental damage. Noise levels from round-the-clock aircraft are intolerable, and around numerous bases America is at war. It also imprisons and tortures thousands, props up despotic rulers for its own advantage, and virtually holds the entire planet hostage to its extremist agenda.
Lutz says this book describes US militarism globally and campaigns to hold America accountable for the "damage and to reorient (host) countries' security policies in other, more human, and truly secure directions."
For its part, America occupies the world, reflects a hostile presence, trains about 100,000 local forces in 180 countries as partners, and turns a blind eye to human rights abuses, by its own troops and those of host nations.
Besides its presence in fixed bases, the Pentagon is involved in "jungle, urban, desert, maritime, and polar training exercises across wide swathes of landscape" - always intrusive and often provocative as in the Philippines. After it was forced to give up its bases in 1992, US troops remained in the country despite strong popular opposition and the Philippine constitution prohibiting the basing of foreign forces. No matter, US military and civilian personnel lobby to change local laws to accommodate America's access.
Laws are there for legitimate reasons, one of which is the focus of this book - the impact and costs that a foreign presence has on host countries' people. Lutz explores why it's there, how it's configured, popular myths, and "the global movement to push back or expel (it) altogether."
The Purpose of US Bases
They reflect empire, an aim to dominate everywhere, a sense of "racial, cultural, or social superiority," and a success when "wealth is extracted from peripheral areas and redistributed to the imperial center."
The Pentagon claims they're in place to:
-- defend the homeland with a forward or global presence; and
-- provide other nations with security.
In fact, they're to control trade, resources, local supplies of cheap labor, and political, economic, and social life of host countries. They also force them to support American imperialism, including foreign wars despite harmful fallout to local populations.
A Short History of US Bases
-- they go back to colonial America, then grew to a "frontier project" to remove Native Indians for a new nation with European settlers;
-- in 1938, 14 foreign bases existed; post-WW II "an astounding 30,000 (large and small) installations" were in about 100 countries; by 1948, it was 2000;
-- besides creating America coast-to-coast and the 1846 - 48 Mexican war, US history reflects three imperial periods:
(1) the 1898 Spanish-American war conquest and occupation of foreign territory and acquisition of bases in them;
(2) World War II and its Cold War aftermath established the "bulk of the US basing system;" even so, from 1947 - 1990, America was asked to leave France, Yugoslavia, Iran, Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Vietnam, Indonesia, Peru, Mexico, and Venezuela; in the 1990s and later, the Pentagon was forced out of the Philippines, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Puerto Rico's island-municipality Vieques, Uzbekistan, and Ecuador, and decided voluntarily to leave elsewhere;
(3) post-9/11 militarism under George Bush neocons advanced the goal of "full spectrum dominance" over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively.
Common Myths about US Foreign Bases
Why do sovereign nations and the US public tolerate them? One explanation is that "the bases are naturalized or normalized, meaning that they are thought of as unremarkable, inevitable, and legitimate," and militarism supports these notions as the way to bring order to a dangerous world.
The Pentagon argues their legitimacy on these grounds:
-- "utilitarianism and realism" as follows:
(1) to secure America by deterring attacks and preventing or removing military challenges;
(2) overseas forces represent America's first line of defense; and
(3) "potential security challenges in Asia" require American intervention to prevent or intervene to "restore order."
Strategic language justifies them to project power anywhere in the world and "contend with (any) uncertainty (regarding America's) security challenges."
Bases also "serve the national economic interests of the United States, ensuring access to markets and commodities needed to maintain the American standard of living...." Also to react to any threat, maintain trade, keep commerce routes open, and assure the dollar remains the world's dominant reserve currency. In a word, to have America's footprint everywhere with a military presence for enforcement.
US forces are a "visible expression of the extent of America's status as a superpower" and its goal to keep it that way unchallenged. It suggests that more bases are better and a way to project a visible presence everywhere or close by.
A second argument "sees them as positive expressions of American character, and particularly its humanitarian ethos." The Pentagon portrays itself as a benefactor, a liberator, and helper on the scene at times of natural or other disasters. We claim bases are "gifts to other nations, both as defense sites and as wealth generators. They represent American altruism and sacrifice" when, in fact, they're for hardline dominance intolerant of opposition, national sovereignty, democratic freedoms, and social justice.
They also fail on their own terms. Instead of providing safety and security, they incite antagonism, opposition and blowback against an American occupier and enemy. Yet they proliferate on the notion that "humans are naturally violent and that war can be a glorious and good venture." It's also hugely profitable for the defense establishment and related industries, energy and technology to name two.
The World Responds
"Social movements have proliferated around the world in response to the empire of US bases." For some, just their presence is an affront to national sovereignty and pride. Others reject their purpose - aggressive wars, continued violence, and all the other above-cited fallout wherever they're located. Globally, these bases "represent a massive injustice" to host nations and communities where they're located.
Despite providing jobs for local workers, wages are poor, benefits few if any, and most Pentagon dollars flow to large military contractors, other major US corporations, and selected local business elites. Ordinary people are exploited and entirely left out, especially in developing countries, hence their opposition to militarism and foreign occupation.
"With the end of the Cold War, the central pretext for most US bases evaporated, and calls for their return were renewed." In 1991, a successful Philippine movement ousted them with a post-Ferdinand Marcos constitution declaring:
"foreign military bases, troops or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate and, when the Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose."
In 2003, sustained direct action campaigns and political lobbying also succeeded in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in part because naval activities caused environmental and health damage - a core issue wherever US bases are located.
"The Bases of Empire includes 10 articles by different writers, divided in two parts: Mapping US Power and Global Resistance.
Part I includes:
-- Joseph Gerson's "US Foreign Military Bases and Military Colonialism: Personal and Analytical Perspectives;"
-- John Lindsay-Poland's "US Military Bases in Latin America and the Caribbean;"
-- David Heller and Hans Lammerant's "US Nuclear Weapons Bases in Europe;" and
-- Tom Englehardt's "Iraq as a Pentagon Construction Site."
Part II includes:
-- Roland Simbulan's "People's Movement Response to Evolving US Military Activities in the Philippines;"
-- Katherine McCaffrey's "Environmental Struggle after the Cold War: New Forms of Resistance to the US Military in Vieques, Puerto Rico;"
-- Ayse Gil Altinay and Amy Holmes "Opposition to the US Military Presence in Turkey in the Context of the Iraq War;"
-- Kyle Kajihiro's "Resisting Militarism in Hawaii;" and two other articles discussed below.
David Vine and Laura Jeffrey's "Give Us Back Diego Garcia: Unity and Division among Activists in the Indian Ocean."
Diego Garcia is an 84-square mile British-controlled Indian Ocean island in the Chagos archipelago, lying strategically half way between Asia and Africa, and the reason the Pentagon wants it.
It was home to indigenous Chagossians, British citizens, before being expelled between 1967 - 1973 to let America have their island-state as a military base. In flagrant denial of their human rights, they were mass-exiled to Mauritius and Seychelles, 1300 miles away, where they remain in abject poverty and despair. The population had no say, and those who objected were lied to and told they had no choice because their removal was "legal" under colonial rule.
In their new home, life was hellish. They were consigned to a society foreign to their simple ways and weren't able to adjust. On Diego Garcia, they had their own home, grew their own food, fished, and worked on plantations. In exile, they needed jobs to survive but couldn't get them. By the mid-1970s, most were unemployed, impoverished and began to die, but the British Foreign Office and High Commission told them to let the Mauritius and Seychelles governments handle it.
Chagossians are UK citizens entitled to the same rights as other Brits, but all they got was 1000 pounds (around $1600 today) in exchange for renouncing their right to return, agreed to on a document they couldn't read.
The history of this episode was hidden until the 1990s when declassified documents were found in the National Archives at Kew in London. They proved a conspiracy between Britain and America that the International Criminal Court's (ICC) Article 7 calls a "deportation or forcible transfer of a population (and) and crime against humanity."
Britain's action also violated the UN Charter's Article 73 that obliges a colonial government to obey its "sacred trust" to protect the human rights of its people. Instead, America and the UK engaged in cover-up and deception that continued for a decade and went to the highest levels of both governments. Involved were prime minister Harold Wilson and Queen Elizabeth along with presidents Johnson, Nixon and others.
Everything was hidden, including financial kickbacks Washington made that were concealed from Congress and Parliament. That changed once the truth came out. On November 3, 2000, the British High Court stunned the government, cited the Magna Carta, annulled the original deportation order, and effectively ruled that British subjects were entitled to go home. However, the victory was short-lived as a year later Chagossians were back in the High Court seeking compensation for their ordeal.
This time a hostile judge called their case "unmeritorious" and denied their claim. Three months later, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Chagos sent an "order-in-council" to the Queen for her automatic approval that overturned the High Court 2000 victory, banning Chagossians from ever returning home.
Nonetheless, they pursued their case, again before the High Court. On May 11, 2006, a damning verdict condemned the expulsion order as "repugnant" and overturned the Blair government's "order-in-council." Thus far to no avail, yet Chagossians still fight for their right of return and an end to their decades-long plight.
They held an April 18, 2009 meeting, met with the Royal Commonwealth Society in late May, made their case, but it remains unresolved. The UK Chagos Support Association said at the time:
"the original people of Chagos are dying of broken hearts and spirit. They are still waiting for justice to be done and it seems like this is dragging until all the people who really have the right to fight for the cause no longer have a voice. It has been 45 years and we believe it is time that justice is done and peace is found." Thus far, Britain and Washington won't agree. Imperial considerations take precedence over all else.
Kozue Akibayashi and Suzuyo Takazato's "Okinawa; Women's Struggle for Demilitarization."
Okinawa is Japan's southern-most and poorest prefecture. It's also home to dozens of US military bases since 1945. In his book "Nemesis," Chalmers Johnson cited a history of abuse - from 1998 - 2004 alone, 2024 reported crimes and accidents in which US forces were involved. Only one led to a court-martial, 318 others to administrative discipline, and the rest were absolved, yet they involved robberies, assaults, rapes and reckless homicides. Okinawa's women and girls suffered most.
Akibayashi is a researcher at the Institute for Gender Studies at Toyko's Ochanomizu University. Takazato is an activist fighter for women's rights, especially against the threat of US military personnel-committed rape and sexual assaults. She's also a City Council member of Okinawa's capital, Naha, and helped found Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence and the Rape Emergency Intervention Counseling Center of Okinawa, established after three US Marines gang-raped a 12-year old girl on September 4, 1995.
After Japan surrendered in 1945, America wrote its constitution, and occupied the country ever since, now with 88 bases in a nation smaller than California. Thirty-seven are on Okinawa, a tiny sliver of land about the size of a large US city, so it's easy to understand why its people are long-suffering and justifiably angry.
They've been practically pushed into the Pacific to accommodate America's occupation, forced to relinquish their most valued real estate, and put up with over six decades of all the above-cited abuses. Their greatest outrage is over the SOFA's article 17 covering criminal justice. It states:
"The custody of an accused member of the United States armed forces or the civilian component (shall) remain with the United States until he is charged."
It means when US personnel commit crimes, including rape and murder, Japanese investigative authorities have no exclusive access to suspects until they're indicted in court. That alone hamstrings investigations enough to make prosecutors reluctant to press charges because they can't get enough evidence for trials. Further, the longer things drag out, the easier it is for the Pentagon to whitewash crimes and transfer guilty parties to new locations, far removed from Okinawa.
The most serious incident was the above-cited 1995 rape. The 12-year old girl involved was also beaten, then left on a beach after which the three Marines returned to their base in a rented car. In October, 85,000 Okinawans protested. They demanded Japanese and American authorities address the issue after the Pentagon initially refused to hand over suspects to Japanese police. Usually they never do anywhere, but this case was an exception. Because of political pressure, the Marines were arrested, tried in a Japanese court, convicted and sentenced to prison terms for their crime - seven years for two of them and six and a half for the other.
This case highlights what Okinawans and other people have endured for decades. SOFAs let the Pentagon run its affairs unaccountable to host country laws, including on Okinawa. The result everywhere is that US personnel get away with rapes, drunken brawling, muggings, drug violations, reckless driving and related accidents, arson, and criminal homicide, especially in host countries with non-white populations - abuses unchanged for decades on Okinawa.
As a result, Akibayashi and Takazato concluded:
-- "Integral elements of misogyny infect military training....The military is a violence-producing institution to which sexual and gender violence are intrinsic....The essence of military forces is their pervasive, deep-rooted contempt for women, which can be seen in military training that completely denies femininity and praises hegemonic masculinity," and
-- "The OWAAMV (Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence) movement illustrates from a gender perspective that 'the protected,' who are structurally deprived of political power, are in fact not protected by the militarized security policies; rather their livelihoods are made insecure by these very policies." Gated bases don't deter violence outside them and result in local populations being oppressed and denied their rights when it happens.
America's "Bases of Empire" menace world societies. Okinawan women and young girls bear testimony to how grievously.
Global Research, June 27, 2009
Besides waging perpetual wars, nothing better reveals America's imperial agenda than its hundreds of global bases - for offense, not defense at a time the US hasn't had an enemy since the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.
So when they don't exist, they're invented as former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles W. Freeman, Jr., suggested in a May 24, 2007 speech to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs:
"When our descendants look back on the end of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, they will be puzzled. The end of the Cold War relieved Americans of almost all international anxieties." As the world's sole remaining superpower, "We did not rise to the occasion."
"We are engaged in a war, a global war on terror, a long war, we are told....How can a war with no defined ends beyond the avoidance of retreat ever reach a convenient stopping point? How can we win (any war let alone the hearts and minds of millions) with an enemy so ill-understood that we must invent a nonexistent ideology" for justification.
In his 2006 book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic," Chalmers Johnson discussed the known number of foreign US bases by size and branch of service. According to the Department of Defense's Base Structure Report (BSR) through 2005, it totaled 737 but likely exceeds 1000 today with so many new ones built since then - some known, others secret and always others planned.
Johnson also highlighted the fallout - unacceptable noise, pollution, environmental destruction, expropriation of valuable public and private land, and drunken, disorderly, and abusive soldiers committing crimes that include rape and murder that often go unpunished under provisions in US-imposed Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs).
An excerpt from his book reads:
"Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial footprint and the militarism that grows with it....even more than in past empires, a well-entrenched militarism (lies) at the heart of our imperial adventures." To such an extreme that "each year we spend more on our armed forces than all others nations on Earth combined" to garrison troops "in more than 130 countries."
The Pentagon lists them in its annual Base Structure Report, but "its official count of between 737 and 860 overseas installations is incomplete" because excluded are numerous secret ones - for espionage, unofficially shared with host countries, or other reasons not disclosed.
The bases reflect "force projection" for global dominance and are positioned to strike any nation that might challenge it, friend or foe. But they come at a great cost - well over $1 trillion annually with all homeland, foreign, and other budget categories included. According to Johnson, a far greater one as well, the same dynamic that doomed past empires unwilling to change - "isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy" as well as the end of democracy, loss of personal freedoms, and tyranny.
During WW II, Brits complained that GIs were "overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and over here." Despite the war, some called it the US "occupation," and UK historian David Reynolds discussed it in his book, "Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945." He borrowed the word from George Orwell's December 1943 comment that "It is difficult to go anywhere in London without having the feeling that Britain is now Occupied Territory."
Today, millions in countries globally feel the same, and with good reason. Even at peace, America's presence is intrusive, hostile, and at the expense of the host country populations.
A new book is now out titled "The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against US Military Posts," a collection of important articles on America's worldwide empire and military presence that enforces it.
It's edited by Catherine Lutz, Brown University Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Watson Institute for International Studies with a forward by Cynthia Enloe, Clark University Research Professor, Department of International Development, Community and Environment and Women's Studies.
Enloe dispels some common myths in her forward:
-- about Americans believing that foreign bases benefit the host country populations;
-- the notion that other countries request our presence;
-- that the US military is the most "civilized" in the world, and
-- their presence is for other nations' security "in an age of an allegedly diffuse (and ill-defined) 'global terror,' (that) trumps any other 'lesser' concerns."
Contributors to "The Bases of Empire" reflect a powerfully opposite point of view as well as Enloe in her forward and Lutz in her detailed introduction, discussed below.
Introduction - Bases, Empire, and Global Response
Lutz cites the "unprecedented....global omnipresence and unparalleled lethality of the US military, and the ambition with which it is being deployed around the world." Its presence shows that America stands "able and willing to control events in other regions militarily" and proves it through numerous foreign wars and other hostile interventions, directly or through proxies.
Citing data from DOD's 2007 Base Structure Report (BSR), she states:
"Officially, over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are massed in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories. There, the US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, and 26,000 buildings and structures valued at $146 billion."
However, the numbers are misleading as they exclude the massive base and troop presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, former Soviet republics, and Warsaw Pact countries as well as unknown numbers of secret facilities in numerous other nations. They consist of three types:
-- Main Operating Bases (MOBs) like the Iraq Balad Air Base housing 30,000 troops, 10,000 contractors, and covering 16 square miles plus another 12-square mile "security perimeter." MOBs are large and permanent, have extensive infrastructure, command and control headquarters, accommodations for families in non-war zones, hospitals, schools, recreational facilities, and nearly anything available in a typical US city.
-- Forward Operation Sites (FOSs) that are also major installations but are smaller than MOBs, and
-- Cooperative Security Locations (CLSs) that are small, austere, called 'lily pads," - to preposition weapons, munitions, and modest numbers of troops.
Lutz highlights the fallout:
"The environmental, political, and economic impact of these bases is enormous and, despite Pentagon claims that the bases simply provide security to the regions they are in, most of the world's people feel (not at all) reassured by (their) global reach," and with good reason.
Farm and public land is expropriated for their use. Toxic pollution is enormous as well as extensive environmental damage. Noise levels from round-the-clock aircraft are intolerable, and around numerous bases America is at war. It also imprisons and tortures thousands, props up despotic rulers for its own advantage, and virtually holds the entire planet hostage to its extremist agenda.
Lutz says this book describes US militarism globally and campaigns to hold America accountable for the "damage and to reorient (host) countries' security policies in other, more human, and truly secure directions."
For its part, America occupies the world, reflects a hostile presence, trains about 100,000 local forces in 180 countries as partners, and turns a blind eye to human rights abuses, by its own troops and those of host nations.
Besides its presence in fixed bases, the Pentagon is involved in "jungle, urban, desert, maritime, and polar training exercises across wide swathes of landscape" - always intrusive and often provocative as in the Philippines. After it was forced to give up its bases in 1992, US troops remained in the country despite strong popular opposition and the Philippine constitution prohibiting the basing of foreign forces. No matter, US military and civilian personnel lobby to change local laws to accommodate America's access.
Laws are there for legitimate reasons, one of which is the focus of this book - the impact and costs that a foreign presence has on host countries' people. Lutz explores why it's there, how it's configured, popular myths, and "the global movement to push back or expel (it) altogether."
The Purpose of US Bases
They reflect empire, an aim to dominate everywhere, a sense of "racial, cultural, or social superiority," and a success when "wealth is extracted from peripheral areas and redistributed to the imperial center."
The Pentagon claims they're in place to:
-- defend the homeland with a forward or global presence; and
-- provide other nations with security.
In fact, they're to control trade, resources, local supplies of cheap labor, and political, economic, and social life of host countries. They also force them to support American imperialism, including foreign wars despite harmful fallout to local populations.
A Short History of US Bases
-- they go back to colonial America, then grew to a "frontier project" to remove Native Indians for a new nation with European settlers;
-- in 1938, 14 foreign bases existed; post-WW II "an astounding 30,000 (large and small) installations" were in about 100 countries; by 1948, it was 2000;
-- besides creating America coast-to-coast and the 1846 - 48 Mexican war, US history reflects three imperial periods:
(1) the 1898 Spanish-American war conquest and occupation of foreign territory and acquisition of bases in them;
(2) World War II and its Cold War aftermath established the "bulk of the US basing system;" even so, from 1947 - 1990, America was asked to leave France, Yugoslavia, Iran, Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Vietnam, Indonesia, Peru, Mexico, and Venezuela; in the 1990s and later, the Pentagon was forced out of the Philippines, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Puerto Rico's island-municipality Vieques, Uzbekistan, and Ecuador, and decided voluntarily to leave elsewhere;
(3) post-9/11 militarism under George Bush neocons advanced the goal of "full spectrum dominance" over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively.
Common Myths about US Foreign Bases
Why do sovereign nations and the US public tolerate them? One explanation is that "the bases are naturalized or normalized, meaning that they are thought of as unremarkable, inevitable, and legitimate," and militarism supports these notions as the way to bring order to a dangerous world.
The Pentagon argues their legitimacy on these grounds:
-- "utilitarianism and realism" as follows:
(1) to secure America by deterring attacks and preventing or removing military challenges;
(2) overseas forces represent America's first line of defense; and
(3) "potential security challenges in Asia" require American intervention to prevent or intervene to "restore order."
Strategic language justifies them to project power anywhere in the world and "contend with (any) uncertainty (regarding America's) security challenges."
Bases also "serve the national economic interests of the United States, ensuring access to markets and commodities needed to maintain the American standard of living...." Also to react to any threat, maintain trade, keep commerce routes open, and assure the dollar remains the world's dominant reserve currency. In a word, to have America's footprint everywhere with a military presence for enforcement.
US forces are a "visible expression of the extent of America's status as a superpower" and its goal to keep it that way unchallenged. It suggests that more bases are better and a way to project a visible presence everywhere or close by.
A second argument "sees them as positive expressions of American character, and particularly its humanitarian ethos." The Pentagon portrays itself as a benefactor, a liberator, and helper on the scene at times of natural or other disasters. We claim bases are "gifts to other nations, both as defense sites and as wealth generators. They represent American altruism and sacrifice" when, in fact, they're for hardline dominance intolerant of opposition, national sovereignty, democratic freedoms, and social justice.
They also fail on their own terms. Instead of providing safety and security, they incite antagonism, opposition and blowback against an American occupier and enemy. Yet they proliferate on the notion that "humans are naturally violent and that war can be a glorious and good venture." It's also hugely profitable for the defense establishment and related industries, energy and technology to name two.
The World Responds
"Social movements have proliferated around the world in response to the empire of US bases." For some, just their presence is an affront to national sovereignty and pride. Others reject their purpose - aggressive wars, continued violence, and all the other above-cited fallout wherever they're located. Globally, these bases "represent a massive injustice" to host nations and communities where they're located.
Despite providing jobs for local workers, wages are poor, benefits few if any, and most Pentagon dollars flow to large military contractors, other major US corporations, and selected local business elites. Ordinary people are exploited and entirely left out, especially in developing countries, hence their opposition to militarism and foreign occupation.
"With the end of the Cold War, the central pretext for most US bases evaporated, and calls for their return were renewed." In 1991, a successful Philippine movement ousted them with a post-Ferdinand Marcos constitution declaring:
"foreign military bases, troops or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate and, when the Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose."
In 2003, sustained direct action campaigns and political lobbying also succeeded in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in part because naval activities caused environmental and health damage - a core issue wherever US bases are located.
"The Bases of Empire includes 10 articles by different writers, divided in two parts: Mapping US Power and Global Resistance.
Part I includes:
-- Joseph Gerson's "US Foreign Military Bases and Military Colonialism: Personal and Analytical Perspectives;"
-- John Lindsay-Poland's "US Military Bases in Latin America and the Caribbean;"
-- David Heller and Hans Lammerant's "US Nuclear Weapons Bases in Europe;" and
-- Tom Englehardt's "Iraq as a Pentagon Construction Site."
Part II includes:
-- Roland Simbulan's "People's Movement Response to Evolving US Military Activities in the Philippines;"
-- Katherine McCaffrey's "Environmental Struggle after the Cold War: New Forms of Resistance to the US Military in Vieques, Puerto Rico;"
-- Ayse Gil Altinay and Amy Holmes "Opposition to the US Military Presence in Turkey in the Context of the Iraq War;"
-- Kyle Kajihiro's "Resisting Militarism in Hawaii;" and two other articles discussed below.
David Vine and Laura Jeffrey's "Give Us Back Diego Garcia: Unity and Division among Activists in the Indian Ocean."
Diego Garcia is an 84-square mile British-controlled Indian Ocean island in the Chagos archipelago, lying strategically half way between Asia and Africa, and the reason the Pentagon wants it.
It was home to indigenous Chagossians, British citizens, before being expelled between 1967 - 1973 to let America have their island-state as a military base. In flagrant denial of their human rights, they were mass-exiled to Mauritius and Seychelles, 1300 miles away, where they remain in abject poverty and despair. The population had no say, and those who objected were lied to and told they had no choice because their removal was "legal" under colonial rule.
In their new home, life was hellish. They were consigned to a society foreign to their simple ways and weren't able to adjust. On Diego Garcia, they had their own home, grew their own food, fished, and worked on plantations. In exile, they needed jobs to survive but couldn't get them. By the mid-1970s, most were unemployed, impoverished and began to die, but the British Foreign Office and High Commission told them to let the Mauritius and Seychelles governments handle it.
Chagossians are UK citizens entitled to the same rights as other Brits, but all they got was 1000 pounds (around $1600 today) in exchange for renouncing their right to return, agreed to on a document they couldn't read.
The history of this episode was hidden until the 1990s when declassified documents were found in the National Archives at Kew in London. They proved a conspiracy between Britain and America that the International Criminal Court's (ICC) Article 7 calls a "deportation or forcible transfer of a population (and) and crime against humanity."
Britain's action also violated the UN Charter's Article 73 that obliges a colonial government to obey its "sacred trust" to protect the human rights of its people. Instead, America and the UK engaged in cover-up and deception that continued for a decade and went to the highest levels of both governments. Involved were prime minister Harold Wilson and Queen Elizabeth along with presidents Johnson, Nixon and others.
Everything was hidden, including financial kickbacks Washington made that were concealed from Congress and Parliament. That changed once the truth came out. On November 3, 2000, the British High Court stunned the government, cited the Magna Carta, annulled the original deportation order, and effectively ruled that British subjects were entitled to go home. However, the victory was short-lived as a year later Chagossians were back in the High Court seeking compensation for their ordeal.
This time a hostile judge called their case "unmeritorious" and denied their claim. Three months later, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Chagos sent an "order-in-council" to the Queen for her automatic approval that overturned the High Court 2000 victory, banning Chagossians from ever returning home.
Nonetheless, they pursued their case, again before the High Court. On May 11, 2006, a damning verdict condemned the expulsion order as "repugnant" and overturned the Blair government's "order-in-council." Thus far to no avail, yet Chagossians still fight for their right of return and an end to their decades-long plight.
They held an April 18, 2009 meeting, met with the Royal Commonwealth Society in late May, made their case, but it remains unresolved. The UK Chagos Support Association said at the time:
"the original people of Chagos are dying of broken hearts and spirit. They are still waiting for justice to be done and it seems like this is dragging until all the people who really have the right to fight for the cause no longer have a voice. It has been 45 years and we believe it is time that justice is done and peace is found." Thus far, Britain and Washington won't agree. Imperial considerations take precedence over all else.
Kozue Akibayashi and Suzuyo Takazato's "Okinawa; Women's Struggle for Demilitarization."
Okinawa is Japan's southern-most and poorest prefecture. It's also home to dozens of US military bases since 1945. In his book "Nemesis," Chalmers Johnson cited a history of abuse - from 1998 - 2004 alone, 2024 reported crimes and accidents in which US forces were involved. Only one led to a court-martial, 318 others to administrative discipline, and the rest were absolved, yet they involved robberies, assaults, rapes and reckless homicides. Okinawa's women and girls suffered most.
Akibayashi is a researcher at the Institute for Gender Studies at Toyko's Ochanomizu University. Takazato is an activist fighter for women's rights, especially against the threat of US military personnel-committed rape and sexual assaults. She's also a City Council member of Okinawa's capital, Naha, and helped found Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence and the Rape Emergency Intervention Counseling Center of Okinawa, established after three US Marines gang-raped a 12-year old girl on September 4, 1995.
After Japan surrendered in 1945, America wrote its constitution, and occupied the country ever since, now with 88 bases in a nation smaller than California. Thirty-seven are on Okinawa, a tiny sliver of land about the size of a large US city, so it's easy to understand why its people are long-suffering and justifiably angry.
They've been practically pushed into the Pacific to accommodate America's occupation, forced to relinquish their most valued real estate, and put up with over six decades of all the above-cited abuses. Their greatest outrage is over the SOFA's article 17 covering criminal justice. It states:
"The custody of an accused member of the United States armed forces or the civilian component (shall) remain with the United States until he is charged."
It means when US personnel commit crimes, including rape and murder, Japanese investigative authorities have no exclusive access to suspects until they're indicted in court. That alone hamstrings investigations enough to make prosecutors reluctant to press charges because they can't get enough evidence for trials. Further, the longer things drag out, the easier it is for the Pentagon to whitewash crimes and transfer guilty parties to new locations, far removed from Okinawa.
The most serious incident was the above-cited 1995 rape. The 12-year old girl involved was also beaten, then left on a beach after which the three Marines returned to their base in a rented car. In October, 85,000 Okinawans protested. They demanded Japanese and American authorities address the issue after the Pentagon initially refused to hand over suspects to Japanese police. Usually they never do anywhere, but this case was an exception. Because of political pressure, the Marines were arrested, tried in a Japanese court, convicted and sentenced to prison terms for their crime - seven years for two of them and six and a half for the other.
This case highlights what Okinawans and other people have endured for decades. SOFAs let the Pentagon run its affairs unaccountable to host country laws, including on Okinawa. The result everywhere is that US personnel get away with rapes, drunken brawling, muggings, drug violations, reckless driving and related accidents, arson, and criminal homicide, especially in host countries with non-white populations - abuses unchanged for decades on Okinawa.
As a result, Akibayashi and Takazato concluded:
-- "Integral elements of misogyny infect military training....The military is a violence-producing institution to which sexual and gender violence are intrinsic....The essence of military forces is their pervasive, deep-rooted contempt for women, which can be seen in military training that completely denies femininity and praises hegemonic masculinity," and
-- "The OWAAMV (Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence) movement illustrates from a gender perspective that 'the protected,' who are structurally deprived of political power, are in fact not protected by the militarized security policies; rather their livelihoods are made insecure by these very policies." Gated bases don't deter violence outside them and result in local populations being oppressed and denied their rights when it happens.
America's "Bases of Empire" menace world societies. Okinawan women and young girls bear testimony to how grievously.
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