As reported by myweathertech.com.

The United States Congress is set to vote on legislation that authorizes the official start of World War 3.

The legislation authorizes the President of the United States to take unilateral military action against all nations, organizations, and persons, both domestically and abroad, who are alleged to be currently or who have in the past supported or engaged in hostilities or who have provided aid in support of hostilities against the United States or any of its coalition allies.

The legislation removes the requirement of congressional approval for the use of military force and instead gives the President totalitarian dictatorial authority to engage in any and all military actions for an indefinite period of time.

It even gives the President the authority to launch attacks against American Citizens inside the United States with no congressional oversight whatsoever.

Just to recap, because that was a mouthful:

• Endless War – The war will continue until all hostilities are terminated, which will never happen.
• No Borders – The president will have the full authority to launch military strikes against any country, organization or person, including against U.S citizens on U.S soil.
• Unilateral Military Action – Full authority to invade any nation at any time with no congressional approval required.
• No Clearly Defined Enemy – The US can declare or allege anyone a terrorist or allege they are or have been supporting “hostilities” against the US and attack at will.
• Authorization To Invade Several Countries – The president would have full authority to invade Iran, Syria, North Korea, along with several other nations in Africa and the Middle East and even Russia and China under the legislation all of which are “know” to have supported and aided hostilities against the United States.

The Hill writes:

House Dems protest GOP’s plans for permanent war against terror

Nearly three dozen House Democrats are calling on Republicans to withdraw a section of the 2012 defense authorization bill that they say would effectively declare a state of permanent war against unnamed Taliban and al Qaeda operatives.

A Tuesday letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and 32 other Democrats argues that affirming continued war against terrorist forces goes too far, giving too much authority to the president without debate in Congress.

Their letter cites language in the authorization bill that incorporates the Detainee Security Act, which affirms continued armed conflict against terrorists overseas.

“By declaring a global war against nameless individuals, organizations and nations ‘associated’ with the Taliban and al Qaeda, as well as those playing a supporting role in their efforts, the Detainee Security Act would appear to grant the president near unfettered authority to initiate military action around the world without further congressional approval,” Democrats wrote. “Such authority must not be ceded to the president without careful deliberation from Congress.”

The specific language in the bill is found in section 1034 of H.R. 1540, which affirms that the U.S. is “engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.” It also affirms that the president has the authority to detain “certain belligerents” until the armed conflict is over.

“Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces still pose a grave threat to U.S. national security,” the bill says. “The Authorization for Use of Military Force necessarily includes the authority to address the continuing and evolving threat posed by these groups.”

The America Civil Liberties Union writes:

New Authorization of Worldwide War Without End?

Congress may soon vote on a new declaration of worldwide war without end, and without clear enemies. A “sleeper provision” deep inside defense bills pending before Congress could become the single biggest hand-over of unchecked war authority from Congress to the executive branch in modern American history.

President Obama has not sought new war authority. In fact, his administration has made clear that it believes it already has all of the authority that it needs to fight terrorism.

But Congress is considering monumental new legislation that would grant the president – and all presidents after him – sweeping new power to make war almost anywhere and everywhere. Unlike previous grants of authority for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the proposed legislation would allow a president to use military force wherever terrorism suspects are present in the world, regardless of whether there has been any harm to U.S. citizens, or any attack on the United States, or any imminent threat of an attack. The legislation is broad enough to permit a president to use military force within the United States and against American citizens. The legislation contains no expiration date, and no criteria to determine when a president’s authority to use military force would end.

Of all of the powers that the Constitution assigns to Congress, no power is more fundamental or important than the power “to declare War.” That is why, in 2002, when Congress was considering whether to authorize war in Iraq, it held fifteen hearings, and passed legislation that cited specific harms, set limits, and defined a clear objective. Now, Congress is poised to give unchecked authority to the executive branch to use military force worldwide, with profoundly negative consequences for our fundamental democratic system of checks and balances. Once Congress expands the president’s war power, it will be nearly impossible to rein it back in. The ACLU strongly opposes a wholesale turnover of war power from Congress to the president – and all of his successors.

Coalition Memo to the House Committee on Armed Services Regarding a Proposed New Declaration of War

Comparison of 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and Proposed Expanded Authorization

The offending text (section 1034) uses doublespeak to declare World War 3. Specifically, the text uses the phrase “affirms” “armed conflict” which is the terminology used by congress declare war in every war since World War 2.

Congress affirms that —

(1) the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces and that those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens, both domestically and abroad;

(2) the President has the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note);

(3) the current armed conflict includes nations, organization, and persons who—

(A) are part of, or are substantially supporting, al‐Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or

(B) have engaged in hostilities or have directly supported hostilities in aid of a nation, organization, or person described in subparagraph (A); and

(4) the President’s authority pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) includes the authority to detain belligerents, including persons described in paragraph (3), until the termination of hostilities.

A joint letter regarding the proposed legislation has been sent to congress condemning the proposed legislation.

MEMORANDUM

TO:	All Members of the House Committee on Armed Services
FROM:	American Civil Liberties Union Appeal for Justice Brave New Foundation Center for Constitutional Rights CREDO Action Defending Dissent Foundation High Road for Human Rights Human Rights First International Justice Network Just Foreign Policy Leadership Conference of Women Religious MoveOn.org Muslim Public Affairs Council New Security Action Pax Christi USA Peace Action Physicians for Human Rights Psychologists for Social Responsibility Shalom Center Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society USAction Win Without War
DATE:	May 9th, 2010
RE:	Oppose Section 1034 and Any Similar New Declaration of War or New Authorization for Use of Military Force in the National Defense Authorization Act

The undersigned organizations strongly oppose the new Declaration of War, which is in Section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”). We urge you to oppose the provision and any other similar new Declaration of War or new Authorization for Use of Military Force (“AUMF”) in the NDAA.

While we have written separately, and met with many of you and your military legislative assistants, on our concerns with other provisions of the Chairman’s mark, we are writing on this new Declaration of War specifically because it is a provision that has received almost no review, despite its likely tremendous effect on almost every facet of United States national security policy. At minimum, Congress should hold hearings andfollow regular order before even considering such sweeping legislation.

This monumental legislation–with a large-scale and practically irrevocable delegation of war power from Congress to the President–could commit the United States to a worldwide war without clear enemies, without any geographical boundaries (the use of military force within the United States could be permitted), and without any boundary relating to time or specific objective to be achieved. Unlike the AUMF that authorized the Afghanistan War and the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, the proposed new Declaration of War does not cite any specific harm, such as the 9/11 attacks, or specific threat of harm to the United States. It appears to be stating that the United States is at war wherever terrorism suspects reside, regardless of whether there is any danger to the United States.

Under the guise of a “reaffirmation” of authority, Section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the NDAA would give the President unchecked authority–and if the section constitutes a declared “war,”¹ possibly the unchecked duty²–to use military force worldwide against or within any country in which terrorism suspects reside. The proposed new Declaration of War would be without precedent in the scope of war authority or duties transferred by Congress to the President:

• The President would be able to use this authority–or might be required to use this authority–regardless of whether there has been any harm to United States citizens, or any attack on the United States or any imminent threat of any attack. There is not even any requirement of any threat whatsoever to the national security of the United States.
• There is no geographical limitation–the new Declaration of War has no specification of countries against which military force could be used, and no specification of countries where U.S. armed forces could be deployed with or without the permission of the host country. Military force could even be used within the United States and against American citizens.
• There is no specific objective for the new Declaration of War, which means that there is no clear criteria after which the President’s authority to use military force would expire. Although the proposed new Declaration of War lists “al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces” as the “threat,” there is no definition for any of these entities, which historically have been amorphous, with shifting names, memberships, and organizational relationships.
• If Congress broadly turns over to the President the power that Article I of the Constitution provides to Congress to declare war, it very likely will never get the power back. The broad terms of the proposed new Declaration of War could last for decades.
• Whether Congress realizes it or not, the proposed new Declaration of War would authorize the President to use the United States military against countries such as Somalia, Iran, or Yemen, or send the American military into any of the scores of countries where suspected terrorists reside, which include not only nearly all Middle East, African, and Asian countries, but also European countries and Canada–and of course, the United States itself. Under the expansive terms used for organizations in the proposed new Declaration of War, targets could include suspects having no connection to the 9/11 attacks or to any other specific harm or threat to the United States. The President would have the power to go to war almost anywhere, at any time, and based on the presence of suspects who do not have to pose any threat to the national security of the United States.
• If Section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the NDAA constitutes a declaration of war–which Congress has not declared since 1942–the declaration would trigger various exemptions from federal statutes and even broader authority for the President to control more aspects of both government and private businesses. The March 17, 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications,” lists all of the statutory provisions, ranging from exemptions from budgetary limitations to new government claims over oil and mineral resources, that are triggered by a declaration of war.
• Of course, if Congress believes that there is a significant new threat to the national security of the United States that requires significant military force as a response, it can declare war or enact a new AUMF, but Congress should, at minimum, follow what it did in 2002 with the AUMF for the Iraq War, where it held fifteen hearings on the proposed war and passed an AUMF that cited specific harms, set limits, and defined a clear objective that, if met, would effectively terminate the AUMF. A specific declaration of war or a specific AUMF would better preserve the system of checks and balances and make an endless, worldwide war less likely.

To be clear, President Obama has not sought enactment of the proposed new Declaration of War. To the contrary, his Administration has made clear its position that it believes it already has all of the authority that it needs to fight terrorism. But if the proposed new Declaration of War becomes law, President Obama and all of his successors, until and unless a future Congress and future President repeal it, will have the sweeping new power to make war almost anywhere and everywhere.

Of all of the powers that Article I of the Constitution assigns to Congress, no power is more fundamental or important than the power “to declare War.” We urge you to use this power carefully, and to oppose this wholesale turnover of war power, without any checks–and without even holding a single hearing. Thank you for your attention to this issue, and we would be pleased to meet with you or your staff to discuss our concerns further.

¹ The most critical sentence of section 1034 of the Chairman’s mark for the NDAA is “Congress affirms that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces and that those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens, both domestically and abroad.” If “affirms” is replaced with the synonym “declares” and “armed conflict” is replaced with the synonym “war,” the result is “Congress declares that the United States is in a war with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces . . . “, which is very similar to the declaration of war clauses of the eleven declarations of war made by Congress, from the War of 1812 through World War II. Since 1942, Congress has passed several authorizations for use of military force, but has not made any declarations of war.

² Although the question of whether a declaration of war imposes a duty on the President to carry out the war has only rarely come up in court decisions, at least one federal court, in comparing the legal consequences of a declaration of war with an authorization for use of military force, stated, “If war existed why empower the President to apprehend foreign enemies? War itself placed that duty upon him as a necessary and inherent incident of military command.” Gray v. United States, 21 Ct. Cl. 340, 373 (1886) (emphasis added).

The bill has many other shocking elements as well, such as the requirement that all arrests related to terrorism be treated as military arrests (section 4), thus circumventing the constitution. Furthermore, legislation introduce under the McCain bill would make it illegal for military prisoners in US overseas torture prisons to be returned to US Facilities.

Indeed, the moment we all feared has come before us as the Congress meddles giving the President absolute power over the military, including the authority to launch military strikes within the United States against U.S. Citizens. With the assassination of Osama Bin Laden on Pakistan soil many of were naïve in believing that the War on Terror would come to an end.

Instead,  the reported success of the raid is being used as a crutch to push through new legislation in the defense bills up for vote before congress which literally authorize World War 3, which will be declared as an endless war with no defined enemies and no borders. Short of committing genocide the termination of the hostilities will never come and as such the war will never come to end.

We have already learned that officials falsified reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq for the “prize” of oil. If a whole government of top officials can not be trusted then surely a single president cannot be trusted either.

We have seen the U.S Government turn Nazi and buy and burn every copy of a book that had evidence of a 9/11 coverup. The Department of Justice has already published a memo calling constitutionalists and survivalist as potential terrorists.

Is it not bad enough that the U.S courts have already legalized the abduction of U.S Citizens along with their indefinite detention and torture in overseas prison camps? Or that the U.S Government openly admits to gunning down, kidnapping and torturing American college students?

Under the definition of the legislation, the President could authorize the military to attack the ACLU building because they have supported the “terrorists” by arguing for their civil rights.

It will not be long before they are assassinating activists. The have already labeled conspiracy theories as “dangerous thoughts that could lead to violence” and have even specifically called The Intel Hub, which routinely publishes my articles, as an echo chamber pushing out these “dangerous thoughts that could lead to violence”.

Uncle Sam openly admits to turning its multi-billion dollar espionage network against U.S Citizenswhich has produced such great fruits as innocent activists exercising their first amendment rights being placed on the terrorist watch list by the FBI and DHS.

Seriously, this is so out of control and it is only a time that the World War 3 is being fought against you and me. Just remember as long as we are in a state of war your civil liberties and constitutional rights are pretty much null and void, only enforceable if the Government allows you to have them. Even then, they can declare you as a terrorist, enemy combatant or a threat to national security to revoke your constitutional rights anyway. Then they can play the national security card when they are asked to explain their allegations.

All around this is rotten and the first step to getting our rights back is to end the perpetual wars.

Contact your congressman and tell them No Way To this egregious bill!

Update – Here is some corporate media coverage of this story, since some people like to see it in the mainstream media to believe it.

Salon:

Critics: GOP bill a declaration of constant war

House Republicans want to reaffirm war against al-Qaida, the Taliban — and anyone else — with controversial bill

Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee, Howard McKeon, R-Calif., revealed The National Defense Authorization Act on Monday, which includes a bill renewing an act passed just days after 9/11, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). AUMF gave then-President George W. Bush carte blanche to hunt down the 9/11 perpetrators and their allies. The renewed bill, however, makes no reference to the 9/11 attackers and some critics have called it “the first full-scale declaration of war by the U.S. since World War II,” since it makes no reference to the capturing of parties guilty of a specific act. Indeed, the section of The National Defense Authorization Act under question here is called the Declaration of War.

According to POLITICO:

 

The new language drops any reference to 9/11 and “affirms” a state of “armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.” The measure also explicitly gives the president the right to take prisoners “until the termination of hostilities” – something the courts have found to be implicit in the current version of the AUMF, though the new proposal could be seen to extend that power.

The argument from proponents of the Republican-backed bill is that, in the decade since AUMF was enacted, terror groups with no connection to 9/11 have come into the picture. Critics say such terror suspects should be dealt with using law enforcement and that we should not be affirming a commitment to war without specific aims or boundaries. The bill would also give the president the ability to attack an individual, group, or nation without Congressional approval.

The Daily Paul:

ALERT: Congress is About to Vote on Worldwide War Authority

The time is now to restore respect for the Constitution. Tell Congress that a blank check on war isn’t just unnecessary — it’s truly dangerous.

They have to be kidding. Congress is about to vote on worldwide war authority. This was long on the Bush administration’s wish list. Now, a few top congressional insiders see an opportunity to sneak it in to a “must pass” piece of legislation: the Defense Authorization bill.

This expanded war authority would give the president — any president — the power to use military force, whenever and however he or she sees fit. It would essentially declare a worldwide war without end.

It is shocking that Congress is entertaining such legislation at a time when many are looking to see an end to escalating conflict and abuses of power in the name of fighting terrorism.

ACLU Petition

Oppose New Worldwide War Authority

A few top congressional insiders are aiming to sneak new worldwide war authority in to a “must pass” piece of legislation: the Defense Authorization bill.

This new war authority would give the president — any president — the power to unilaterally take our country to war wherever, whenever and however he or she sees fit. It would essentially declare a worldwide war without end.

It is shocking that Congress is entertaining such legislation at a time when many are looking to see an end to escalating conflict and abuses of power in the name of fighting terrorism.

Take action! Tell your representative to oppose new worldwide war authority.

Politico:

GOP seeks to redefine war on terror

A little over a week after the United States finally succeeded in its long-sought goal of killing Osama bin Laden, Congress is set to engage in a debate over whether to extend the war on terror indefinitely or leave in place legislation that could eventually wind it down.

Enacted over a lone dissenting vote just three days after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the “Authorization for the Use of Military Force,” or AUMF, authorized President George W. Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those involved in the 9/11 attacks as well as anyone who harbored the perpetrators.

…

The new language drops any reference to 9/11 and “affirms” a state of “armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.” The measure also explicitly gives the president the right to take prisoners “until the termination of hostilities” – something the courts have found to be implicit in the current version of the AUMF, though the new proposal could be seen to extend that power.

…

But critics say the Republican-sponsored measure amounts to the first full-scale declaration of war by the U.S. since World War II – at a moment when counter-terrorism efforts are succeeding, the U.S. is withdrawing from Iraq, and about to begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan. And, they say, it gives Obama and any successor carte blanche to attack any individual or any nation without further approval from Congress.

The Wall Street Journal.

Defense Bill Would ‘Affirm’ War With al Qaeda

Even though Osama bin Laden is dead, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R., Calif.) wants to remind Washington: The war on terror ain’t over.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Howard McKeon (R., Calif.) (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

And with that in mind, Rep. McKeon, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, is pushing for Congress to renew the 2001 authorization to use military force against terrorists.

The chairman on Monday revealed his version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2012, and his mark of the bill includes a provision that “would affirm that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces.”

Critics say provisions in the bill are tantamount to a congressional declaration of war that could give the president broad new powers over private business and government spending.

One provision seeks to bolster the Authorization for Military Force, passed by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, which the Bush and Obama administration have used as legal authority to conduct military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan and other countries where al Qaeda affiliates have sprung up.

The American Civil Liberties Union and more than a dozen mostly left leaning groups wrote a letter to members of the House Armed Services Committee to oppose the “reaffirmation” saying that it essentially declares war and gives broad powers to the president that normally belong to Congress.

[...]

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Now sign the ACLU Petition and share this post to get the word out so we can stop this before it happens.

Yahoo – Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has denied the reports that Osama Bin Laden was killed, Geo News reported.

The statement came even as American officials said that the US Special Forces operation to find and kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday was planned as an elite strike by a small team to minimize any collateral damage or death in the area.

According to CBS News, the team went on board two Black Hawk helicopters.

“It was a military team of about two dozen, but they were operating under the authority of Leon Panetta, the CIA Director, since the US military does not have authority to operate in Pakistan. A second team of about two dozen orbited out of sight in case they were needed,” the officials said.

They also said that US troops were at the compound for less than 40 minutes.

“Laden did not go peacefully. He resisted arrest and was killed in a firefight as US troops entered the compound,” the officials said.

The officials also revealed that none of the specific intelligence resulting in the raid was shared with any other country, and only a “very small group of people” inside the Obama administration knew it was to happen.
The Pakistan government was notified after the operation was over, officials say. (ANI)

By Press TV

November 03,2010 “Press TV” — Renowned Jewish-American scholar Noam Chomsky says US invasion of Afghanistan was illegal since to date there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks.

“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program a Simple Question.

“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”

The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.

“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”

Chomsky added that three weeks into the war, “a British officer announced that the US and Britain would continue bombing, until the people of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban… That was later turned into the official justification for the war.”

“All of this was totally illegal. It was more, criminal,” Chomsky said.

The 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan was launched with the official objective of curbing militancy and bringing peace and stability to the country.

Nine years on, however, the American and Afghan officials admit that the country remains unstable and civilians continue to pay the heaviest price.

Killing 20 Taliban costs $1 Billion / Killing all the Taliban would cost $1.7 Trillion

By Matthew Nasuti

October 05, 2010 “Kabul Press” – –  The Pentagon will not tell the public what it costs to locate, target and kill a single Taliban soldier because the price-tag is so scandalously high that it makes the Taliban appear to be Super-Soldiers. As set out in this article, the estimated cost to kill each Taliban is as high as $100 million, with a conservative estimate being $50 million. A public discussion should be taking place in the United States regarding whether the Taliban have become too expensive an enemy to defeat.

Each month the Pentagon generates a ream of dubious statistics designed to create the illusion of progress in Afghanistan. In response this author decided to compile his own statistics. As the goal of any war is to kill the enemy, the idea was to calculate what it actually costs to kill just one of the enemy. The obstacles encountered in generating such a statistic are formidable. The problem is that the Pentagon continues to illegally classify all negative war news and embarrassing information. Regardless, some information has been collected from independent sources. Here is what we know in summary and round numbers:

1. Taliban Field Strength: 35,000 troops

2. Taliban Killed Per Year by Coalition forces: 2,000 (best available information)

3. Pentagon Direct Costs for Afghan War for 2010: $100 billion

4. Pentagon Indirect Costs for Afghan War for 2010: $100 billion

Using the fact that 2,000 Taliban are being killed each year and that the Pentagon spends $200 billion per year on the war in Afghanistan, one simply has to divide one number into the other. That calculation reveals that $100 million is being spent to kill each Taliban soldier. In order to be conservative, the author decided to double the number of Taliban being killed each year by U.S. and NATO forces (although the likelihood of such being true is unlikely). This reduces the cost to kill each Taliban to $50 million, which is the title of this article. The final number is outrageously high regardless of how one calculates it.

To put this information another way, using the conservative estimate of $50 million to kill each Taliban:

It costs the American taxpayers $1 billion to kill 20 Taliban

As the U.S. military estimates there to be 35,000 hard-core Taliban and assuming that no reinforcements and replacements will arrive from Pakistan and Iran:

Just killing the existing Taliban would cost $1.75 Trillion

The reason for these exorbitant costs is that United States has the world’s most mechanized, computerized, weaponized and synchronized military, not to mention the most pampered (at least at Forward Operating Bases). An estimated 150,000 civilian contractors support, protect, feed and cater to the American personnel in Afghanistan, which is an astonishing number. The Americans enjoy such perks and distinctions in part because no other country is willing to pay (waste) so much money on their military.

The ponderous American war machine is a logistics nightmare and a maintenance train wreck. It is also part-myth. This author served at a senior level within the U.S. Air Force. Air Force “smart” bombs are no way near as consistently accurate as the Pentagon boasts; Army mortars remain inaccurate; even standard American field rifles are frequently outmatched by Taliban weapons, which have a longer range. The American public would pale if it actually learned the full story about the poor quality of the weapons and equipment that are being purchased with its tax dollars. The Taliban’s best ally within the United States may be the Pentagon, whose contempt for fiscal responsibility and accountability may force a premature U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as the Americans cannot continue to fund these Pentagon excesses.

If President Obama refuses to drastically reform the Pentagon’s inefficient way of making war, he may conclude that the Taliban is simply too expensive an enemy to fight. He would then have little choice but to abandon the Afghan people to the Taliban’s “Super-Soldiers.” That would be an intolerable disgrace.

The problem is not simply within the Pentagon.

The hapless U.S. State Department is equally to blame. It:

1. Continues to sit on the sidelines of this war;

2. Refused for nine years to deploy an adequate number of civilian experts;

3. Continues to hire abusive and disreputable security contractors;

4. Failed to fight for the needs of Afghan civilians; and

5. Has made little effort to win their hearts and minds.

A crucial statistic that demonstrates this is to compare military and security expenditures by the United States in Afghanistan with expenditures for civilian aid, such as reconstruction. That statistic is as follows:

Money spent on Military/Security: $365 billion Money spent on Afghan civilians: $8.5 billion

This latter number spells out “FAILURE.” U.S. diplomats and USAID officials have failed to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans and as a result they have accomplished the impossible. Their lack of resolve and interest has made an increasing number of disillusioned Afghans view Taliban rule as potentially an improvement.

Appendix (Supporting Information)

Taliban Field Strength:

The figure of 35,000 is based on an interview given by General Stanley McChrystal earlier this year.

Taliban Soldiers Killed:

The Pentagon refuses to disclose the total number of Taliban killed each month in Afghanistan by coalition forces, special operations personnel and the CIA. One reason became obvious during Operation Moshtarak in Marjah earlier this year. The Pentagon and NATO refused to specify the actual number of Taliban casualties in Marjah because the number was embarrassing low. American, NATO and Afghan forces reportedly suffered more casualties (killed and wounded) than they inflicted on the Taliban, making Marjah a military defeat for the West (if casualties determine victory or defeat).

To fill the gap created by Pentagon silence on this issue, media groups have published their own Taliban casualty count based on official and press reports. That count is inflated as the U.S. military labels everyone it kills a “Taliban militant,” even if they are criminals, drug traders, war lords or civilians defending their homes. As a result of the Pentagon’s lack of credibility on this issue, this author assumes that only 50% of those labeled as Taliban actually are.

The Associated Press has reported that 3,800 militants were killed in 2008, and 4,500 in 2009. Pro-NATO blogs, such as the web site “Terrorist Death Watch,” have calculated that 3,667 terrorists have been killed in Afghanistan since January 1, 2006, (about 700 per year). The author assumes that an average of 2,000 hard-core Taliban are killed each year

U.S. Military Costs:

Total military expenditures in Afghanistan are not clear as the Pentagon does not release all of its direct and indirect cost for the war. While most direct costs are known, billions of dollars in CIA and special operations costs are improperly classified and remain hidden. In addition, the indirect costs for the war (i.e., military regular pay, equipment depreciation, wear & tear, long term health costs, Pentagon support costs within the U.S., USTRANSCOM transportation costs, transport hub costs such as Manas air base, costs for borrowing funds etc.) are not precisely known. Independent studies conducted of the Iraq war are available and they calculate that the indirect costs equal or exceed the direct costs.

What we know about Pentagon direct costs is as follows:

- From 2001, to April 2009, the Pentagon directly spent $171.7 billion in Afghanistan.
From May 2009, to the present, the Pentagon directly spent an additional $166.3 billion. This is an incredible increase over the past 17 months.

Monthly expenditures have also seen a staggering increase.

October 2009, the Pentagon was directly spending $3.6 billion a month.
February 2010, the Pentagon was directly spending $6.7 billion a month.
October 2010, with the addition of 35,000 more combat and support troops into Afghanistan, the number must be close to $8 billion a month.

Some estimates place direct Pentagon Afghan war costs for all of 2010, at $105 billion.

U.S. State Department Costs:

Officially the State Department and USAID have expended about $35 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. According to most audits, about 75% or $27.5 billion has been spent on training, housing and equipping the Afghan security services, and road construction with the balance ($8.5 billion) being spent on civilian projects. Much of this $8.5 billion has been wasted on dilapidated schools and minor “trophy” projects in Kabul.

The American people are afraid, they see disaster coming. Everyone is waiting to see what city is chosen to be sacrificed. Will it be Phoenix or Sacramento or perhaps Atlanta? This is the real fear, the “not so secret” fear in the heart of every American.

By Gordon Duff

For years, America’s military has been divided, competent military professionals and patriots on one side and Christian Zionists, loyal to Israel and addicted to a propaganda “dreamworld” on the other.

Americans sat, on 9/11, with their military “asleep at the switch,” their president in a daze and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, perhaps out of confusion, we may never know, talking about airliners being shot down and the Pentagon being attacked by missiles. Yes, he said these things, things he couldn’t “unsay” but things the press showed once and quickly buried. Something terribly wrong happened, something years in planning, but not planned in a cave in Afghanistan. Everywhere investigators look, one thing pops up, Israel. The moment that door is opened, it is slammed shut, often with threats, often with more than threats.

We may never know the full extent of the brutality used against those who have spoken up. We know that Arab leaders can be assassinated anywhere, any time. America will remain silent and the news will always support Israel. Israel owns the news.

What about the “suicided” British scientist Dr. David Kelly, the man responsible for moving the Israeli nukes out of South Africa? Reliable sources tell us he was ready to come forward with the facts about a massive political scandal, a cover-up of lost nuclear weapons, blackmail and bribery.

Do we really believe that there are so many unlucky United States senators? Crashes of small aircraft has done more to control the US Senate than any election, control used to set the stage for a generation of wars. With AIPAC capable of buying any election, capable, willing and doing it, not an American organization at all but a lobby for a foreign government, one that likes America “not so much” as we are led to believe, is representative government in the United States dead? When someone swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, is it meaningless when the government itself is no longer “American?”

Control of America, or, more appropriately, control of America’s vast military, tired and worn as it is, represents the key to ruling the world. Fooling the people, buying the government and duping America’s military through infiltrating every level of critical decision making and communications is a task, not only attempted but one long since accomplished. Problem is, even with, not only control of the press, but powerful news organizations directly under foreign control like Fox News, word is getting out.

The American people are afraid, they see disaster coming. Everyone is waiting to see what city is chosen to be sacrificed. Will it be Phoenix or Sacramento or perhaps Atlanta? This is the real fear, the “not so secret” fear in the heart of every American.

When and if it happens, Americans are not so willing to believe a few goatherds in a cave 8,000 miles away planned it, not anymore.

Why do you think Senator Lieberman has demanded a “kill switch” on the internet? Why do you think “censorship czar” Cass Sunstein has asked to have accusations of Israeli complicity in 9/11 made a criminal act and openly advocated infiltration of groups pushing for an honest investigation. Who is the real “conspiracy theorist” now?

With thousands of of military and intelligence officials, retirees openly, others hiding their rage, aware of the decades of Israeli spying and the 9/11 cover-up, this divide has never been so strong. What we don’t know is how many serving today have the personal courage to speak out openly. Now the threat is nuclear weapons, not just a “shoebox dirty bomb” but full sized nukes, the weapons we have been hunting for years, claiming Saddam was prepared to use them “at 45 minutes notice,” the same nukes “sent to Syria by ambulance.” They could be anywhere and anyone could be ready to use one. There is only one possible culprit capable of doing this, however, only one country with something to gain and the willingness to act.

“We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital . . . our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us.” (Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld)

Today, America may be facing the nuclear holocaust Creveld describes and there is no reason to trust that our military, intelligence and law enforcement, the dozens of agencies, bureaus and commands tasked with defending America are willing to do so if the attack comes from Israel. In fact, some leaders, even a former head of the Department of Homeland Security, could be on a list of those that might be one of the America’s greatest terrorist threats. How can perceptions differ so much? If perceptions are based on information and that information is pure propaganda, consistent, continual and skillfully presented, not only in news format but reinforced in movies, television series and anyone publicly questioning the “message “is attacked and destroyed, and they are, perceptions can be assumed to be false.

Thus, the general basis for the public’s ideas about who Israel is, what Zionism advocates and what Islam is really about will be unreliable. When you add control of universities, all academic publishing and even total disruption of free speech, the most extreme ideas can be accepted as fact. They have been.

A substantial evidentiary trail exists that places Israel’s possible involvement in 9/11 on the table, with dozens of suspects questioned and more and more of the “facts” about 9/11 now proving, as with the Kennedy assassinations, to be lies.

Real theories, not “conspiracy,” tell us that 9/11 was planned to get America to attack Iraq, part of Israel’s long term strategy for the region, leaving them, not only the only nuclear power, but an armed aggressor afloat in a sea of broken nations occupied by American troops, troops who take orders from politicians who take orders from Israel. However, after the massive Bush administration blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and the virtual destruction of a military incapable of sustaining a decade long war, the planned Israeli attack using American troops, again, isn’t moving forward as we all know it was planned to.

This time, after America was so badly burned, pushed by the Bush security team, almost all Israeli citizens, many of them still around, running America for Obama, into two insane “Vietnams” it will take more than 3000 murders. With the “duping of America” over 9/11 coming unraveled, something horrendous is in the planning. There is an obvious next step and it has to be nuclear. Anything less would bring an outcry against Israel immediately. Only the “unthinkable” combined with a strong public relations campaign and a cover story with a “do it yourself” terrorist group, like so many of the “just add water” terrorist organizations the Mossad has organized for just such an occasion, will sell the lie, this and the press, not just in America but the other real voice of Israel, the BBC.

The stories about the mobile labs, the “yellow cake” uranium were lies, pap fed to a willing and complicit press. However, the threats are real but how does America protect herself when those tasked with that duty turn a blind eye to the biggest threat. In 1967, Israel was allowed to kill or wound 201 of 296 Americans on the USS Liberty. Surviving crewmen are still threatened by Israeli security for speaking up, as Philip Tourney and his wife will gladly tell you. Captain McGonagle, who won the Medal of Honor working to save his crew from hours of brutal attacks, cried out for justice to his dying day. The American military stood silent as it did on 9/11, as it did on that day in 1967 and as it may have done many times since.

Those among America’s military in 1967, those willing to send the planes from the carriers America and Saratoga to bomb Egypt on behalf of Israel received the thanks of a grateful nation. Too bad that nation was not the United States of America. Only when Israel informed Washington that it had failed to both sink the USS Liberty and effect a takeover of the ship, killing the entire crew, did Admiral McCain order planes headed toward Egypt to return. It had been previously believed these planes were meant to help the USS Liberty.

We have since been reliably informed by sources within the Navy that the planes were armed for ground attack. Thus, as early as 1967, America was willing to see its own troops butchered “for the good of Greater Israel.” Proof of this is incontrovertible and witnesses on both the Liberty and Saratoga have come forward.

We will never know for sure, what secrets are stolen, what weapons given, what enemies aided, what American interests betrayed. With dozens of organizations demanding 9/11 be investigated and the lowest estimate of those who no longer believe the cover story at 30 percent, not a single active duty military officer, not one member of congress nor a single member of the mainstream press has said a word about it. How can thousands of prominent Americans demand that their country begin defending itself and it be covered up? Who has that power?

America has lost at least six nuclear weapons since 1990, maybe more, not Russia or some “breakaway republic,” once part of the Soviet Union. Three were American hydrogen bombs off Somalia, no longer usable but with enough plutonium in them to build many fission weapons. Three more were part of 9 produced by Israel in South Africa back in the 80s, all supposedly sent to America for dismantling. Three of the containers were filled with concrete blocks. They had been consigned to “friends of Israel” for shipment and were stolen from an unguarded facility in Oman after having been abandoned for months. This would be a wild claim if we hadn’t interviewed those involved in the project and been made privy to a well documented and detailed history of the operation.

These “unattributable” nukes have only one purpose, to be used in a terrorist attack on the United States, a “false flag” attack, to drive America to attack Iran and Pakistan.

How many loyal Americans, FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies are searching the nation, warehouses, ports, looking for the blue 20 foot shipping containers? How many “dual citizens” are tasked with some other purpose? Are our “protectors” really “ours” or do they work for the same pack that bought our congress? Will we find out when a mushroom cloud appears over one of our cities?

Today, America is facing the biggest threat since World War 2. Nothing will be in the news, nothing will ever be in the news, not the truth anyway. When it happens, the news will be ready, like on 9/11 when it was called on to talk Arabs and box cutters, a childish conspiracy theory millions still believe. It was ready to talk weapons of mass destruction and when that turned out to be a lie, it was ready to sit silent for its complicity in war crimes. “War crimes” seems like a harsh term but the definition fits. Invading Iraq on, not a whim, but a series of lies orchestrated by a criminal conspiracy is a war crime. Less obvious to many, the takeover of Afghanistan as a drug production facility or a base for destabilizing Pakistan or an operation center for gas pipelines, whichever reason you choose, was justified by lies as serious as those used to justify Iraq.

For those who follow such things, real leaks are proving two things:

1. Osama bin Laden never stopped working for the Central Intelligence Agency and their “regional affiliates.”
2. Bin Laden was murdered to silence him after 9/11 just as Benzir Bhutto was murdered to silence her.

Real news never reaches America, news that shows terrorism, corporate banditry and the biggest drug cartel in history, tied to American allies, some Muslim but one worse than all combined, Israel. Even today, the mythology of “threatened” Israel and the rockets raining down on their cities, all imagination, is still believed by many in our military. When 9/11 came, be it radio controlled planes, missiles, controlled demolition, our military was on “stand down,” ordered to let the attacks move forward and then roll across the Middle East, an Army hijacked by Israel to help them start their long planned world conquest. Today, America basks in defeat and humiliation and Israel laughs.

We have continual debates about religion in the military. Should Christian sects be able to force troops to prayer? Is America a Christian nation, is this what the founding fathers meant? What if, lets say, these sects were not loyal to the United States but rather constituted a national threat? Is an officer belonging to a Christian Zionist church likely to pass secrets on to Israel? Will they obey orders from the Mossad above their own commanders? Will an Christian Zionist with nuclear access follow his religious calling and cause a nuclear war to bring about Armageddon?

What if their power in the military was that great, part of a systematic infiltration of the military through an extremist take-over of the chaplain’s services and eventually admissions and curriculum of the service academies themselves? What else could explain the total silence we have seen when torture, kidnapping, illegal invasions and “stand downs” to allow terrorist attacks are the norm. How many officers have violated the Geneva Convention, their oaths and the Uniform Code of Military Justice because they felt obliged to a “higher power” to exhibit extreme cruelty, cleansing the world of “infidels?”

Those in the military that feel, as Christians, they are tied to Israel, have lost their minds. Islam and Judaism are much closer than Christianity and Judaism. With the advent of the trinity, both Jews and Muslims see Christians as, not only polytheistic, worshiping 3 gods, not one, but idolaters as well. To both Jews and Muslims, these issues alone are enough to make Christianity an enemy. Islam, a religion totally based on Judaism, an Abrahamic faith, built on the foundation of the books of Moses, sees itself as a reform movement stressing moral values as outlined in the Koran and the teachings of the prophet, Mohammad (peace be on him).

To a Christian with a real education, the struggle between the Jews and Muslims is a “family matter.” Jews are the beloved children of Islam who have yet to accept the reforms that defined the true religion. We must remember, without Judaism and g-d’s covenant with Israel, there would be no Islam. Christianity is seen as a Hellenistic bastardization of biblical teachings watered down to sell to the pagan Roman empire. You won’t hear it, not publicly, but it is exactly what is taught to every student, Jew, Muslim — this is their belief.

Muslims have “jihad” and Jews were chosen by g-d to rule the world. Ninety percent of the most serious accusations each makes of the other are, actually, part of the religion of both, only Jews are much better at public relations. After all, they own 90 percent of the world’s media, print, broadcast, even much of the Internet. How do we trust military leaders who don’t know that “goyim” means “cattle?” If you are “cattle” and you believe those who see you as such are your best friends, you are not dealing with reality. Perhaps we should teach The Scorpion and the Toad at West Point. This should be the start of the first day’s lecture on America’s Strategic Security in the 21st Century:

The scorpion, in the course of a long journey, encounters a river. The scorpion cannot swim and so he is momentarily stymied until he spies the toad, on the opposite river bank. “Toad!” the scorpion calls out, “will you please let me ride on your back to the other side of the river because, you see, I cannot swim.” “No way,” replied the toad, “if I let you ride on my back you will sting me!” To which the scorpion replied, “But if I am riding on your back and I sting you then we will both die because I cannot swim.” After thinking on it for a moment or two the toad agrees, swims over to the opposite bank of the river where the scorpion jumps onto his back and he turns to swim to the other side. When the toad, with the scorpion riding on his back, gets to the middle of the river, the scorpion stings him. “Scorpion!” Exclaimed the toad, “Why did you sting me? Now we both die.”

“Because it is in my nature.” Was the scorpion’s response.

Should we be sick of watching our troops walk through poppy fields, knowing the heroin being produced is destroying the United States, filling our prisons but, at the same time, filling the pockets of, well who? Who is getting a cut of the $65 billion dollars a year earned from the partnership in Afghanistan? Israel is the money end, the CIA does transportation, the Afghan government runs production, but who does distribution? Do the planes really land on military bases? We have already found bales of cash leaving Afghanistan heading for Dubai.

This is only a small part of the money involved. It is this money, combined with the billions we give Israel, the billions they take out of the American economy through control of the Federal Reserve System (a quasi-governmental scheme of banks with Rothschild lineage that control America) that makes it impossible to get honest news, elect honest politicians and even trust our own military.

In fact, a large majority of Americans openly admit, on every opinion poll, that they don’t trust our congress, our president or any American institution. Nobody asks them why. Would they know? Is it because a foreign country controls our banks, our news, our congress, our military, our foreign policy? Is it because the only reason politics exist in America is so the greedy can line up at the trough, not caring who is pouring the slop, as long as they get theirs first?

No American has a clue where President Obama came from. Many believe he is foreign born, many more think he is Muslim and some believe he is a space alien. In 250 years, documents will be declassified that will either prove or disprove that former President Bush belonged in prison, not the White House, guilty of not AWOL (absent without leave) but desertion during wartime. There is no reasonable doubt of his guilt, only that he used his power to prevent arrest and prosecution. After 9/11, no more questions were asked, and no more witnesses had to receive new homes, fat government jobs or have mysterious heart attacks.

For the Bush years, it was made clear that a military career had to be built on loyalty to Israel, even though their nuclear arsenal and their ethnic cleansing of Palestine are the root of every conflict confronting America today. There is no military alliance with Israel. America has no potential enemies. In fact, every nation in the region is either controlled by the United States, occupied or frightened to death. Iran trying to stand against America is the equivalent of Denmark standing against Hitler’s blitzkrieg.

The view of the state of affairs taught our military is childishly stupid. How many of our military leaders are childishly stupid also?

Also read: Trend Alert: Deadliest False Flag Terror Attack Soon! Updated

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic officer of UN humanitarian groups. Gordon Duff’s articles are published around the world and translated into a number of languages.

There are only two events known to cause ground-hugging pyroclastic flows (pictured above).

1. A volcanic eruption

2. A thermo nuclear detonation

by “Dennis”

All research provided by:

www.drjudywood.com and http://911u.org/

On the morning of September 11^th, 2001, we were told a fairy tale. That wide body jets flew into the twin towers and completely destroyed them. Let me repeat that: Passenger planes (large hollow aluminum tubes) flew into industrial steel, marble and concrete sky scrapers, and caused them to turn into a pile of dust. And the worst part about this fairy tale is that we, the American people believed it. Now, nine years later, it’s time to wake up from your slumber and take a good hard look at what did and did not happen on that fateful day. The conventional explanation we were provided, by government and media, for a top-down highly destructive gravitational collapse, in near-free-fall times, is physically impossible, and is thus about as worthy of discussion as is the belief that the Earth is flat.

FICTION: Passenger jets flew into the Twin Towers, and the burning jet fuel caused them to collapse.

FACT: The Twin Towers did not collapse. They suffered a mid-air pulverization due to an extreme unconventional energy source that caused the initial upward trajectory of so much of the towers’ mass during the ‘collapses’ as (supposedly only) gravity was pulling them down.

FICTION: The burning jet fuel melted all of the steel beams causing the buildings to collapse directly onto their own footprint.

FACT: 80% of each of the towers 50 million ton mass NEVER hit the ground. The steel did not melt, but turned into nano-dust. Pulverization + Molecular Dissociation = Ground ZeroEvidence. When matter is elevated to temperatures hotter than the surface of the Sun,molecular dissociation results. Molecular Dissociation (MD) is easy to understand once we realize that there are four (4) states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Just as ice has trouble surviving in water or steam, molecules have trouble surviving in plasma, which is highly energetic (ie, extremely hot). When molecules dissociate, they leave behind loose atoms and fragments of molecules. In other words, extremely small particles. In this sense, it is correct to think of molecular dissociation as disintegration.

What do these two pictures have in common? They both represent a highly unconventional destructive release of energy, with temperatures much hotter than the sun.

So once we confirm evidence of widespread molecular dissociation having occurred at Ground Zero in New York City, we have a very strong indication that only exotic, unconventional weaponry could have released that much extremely — unimaginably — high intensity energy which suddenly appeared just as the towers disintegrated from top to bottom. This understanding means we cannot blame the highly unconventional Ground Zero devastation on thermite/thermate/super thermate and “controlled demolition” any more than we can blame it on “jet fuel” or “box cutters”.

In a “pancake collapse” the rubble pile should be at least 1/8 of the original building height (12.5%). The actual rubble pile was no more than 2% of the original building height. Both towers went “poof.”

So where did these 110 story tall 50 million ton sky scrapers go?

They were turned into nano-dust and 80% of the “dust” floated off into the atmosphere.

From left to right: A huge steel beam from the south tower falters, turns to “dust” and blows away.

Now that we’ve scientifically proven that only exotic, unconventional weaponry could have released that much extremely — unimaginably — high intensity energy to cause the pulverization and molecular dissociation of these buildings, let’s look at some of the other unexplainable anomalies..

1400 VEHICLES melted NEAR WTC

All of these cars have unexplainable similar damage: Paint gone, instant rusting, and all of their door handles and engine blocks are missing!

A squad car on FDR drive with wilted doors, burned paint, instant rust and no door handles or engine block.

Strange fires appear to be attracted to the engine blocks, while the gas tanks and nearby paper are not affected.

Buildings a few blocks away,had mysterious holes in the windows, and the front marble façade is completely gone, but no other damage.

Why doesn’t the paper burn?

For months we witnessed trucks coming and going from Ground Zero and the media told us they were hauling away the steel. What steel? There was very little steel left in the rubble because it had been pulverized into nano-dust. So what were these trucks really hauling back and forth? Dirt! They hauled in dirt, spread it all over Ground Zero, then scooped it up and hauled it away, and this went on for years. Didn’t they do that at Chernobyl? Yes they did!

So now you know what didn’t cause the buildings to “vanish.” Planes, jet fuel and thermite are irrelevant. So what kind of unconventional energy could have caused the Twin Towers to turn to dust? A fissionless fusion thermo nuclear event? Direct Energy Weapons? HAARP? A scaled up weaponized version of The Hutchison Effect? The investigation continues………

“I do not eat corporate food and I do not buy Made in China ” says Gerald Celente …If Israel and The US attack Iran it is the start of World War III , Iran is not Iraq… the top trends for 2010 are the crash of 2010 and terrorism 2010 , the anti Americanism is sweeping the glob is a big concern says Gerald Celente

Trends Expert Gerald Celente is also known as Dr Doom and the Nostradamus of Modern Times  , Gerald Celente is regarded as one of the foremost trend predictors in the world. This author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking, and publisher of The Trends Journal, is frequently a guest on television news and talk show programs. The New York Post said “if Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.” Subscribe to the Trends Journal >>>

Following are Gerald Celente’s Forecasts for 2010: · The Crash of 2010: The Bailout Bubble is about to burst. Be prepared for the onset of the Greatest Depression.  · Depression Uplift: The pursuit of elegance and affordable sophistication will raise spirits and profits.  · Terrorism 2010: Years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq  and now Pakistan  have intensified anti-American sentiment. 2010 will be the year of the lone-wolf, self-radicalized gunman.   · Neo-Survivalism: A new breed of survivalist is devising ingenious stratagems to beat the crumbling system. And, they’re not all heading for the hills with AK-47’s and pork & beans.   · Not Welcome Here: Fueled by fear and resentment, a global anti-immigration trend will gather force and serve as a major plank in building a new political party in the US.  · TB or Not TB: With two-thirds of Americans Too Big (TB) for their own good (and everyone else’s), 2010 will mark the outbreak of a “War on Fat,” providing a ton of business opportunities.   · Mothers of Invention: Taking off with the speed of the Internet revolution, “Technology for the Poor” will be a major trend in 2010, providing products and services for newly downscaled Western consumers and impoverished consumers everywhere.   · Not Made In China: A “Buy Local,” “My Country First” protectionist backlash will deliver a big “No” to unrestrained globalism and open solid niches for local and domestic manufacturers.  · The Next Big Thing: Just as the traditional print media (newspapers/magazines) were scooped by Internet competition, so too will new communication technologies herald the end of the TV networks as we know them.

Video Interview with Gerald Celente

By Giordano Bruno |  Neithercorp Press

World War III is the most iconic event in American culture that never happened. Since the early 1950’s, generations have been preparing for it, writing books about it, producing films and fictional accounts on it, and even playing video games based on it. The concept of another world war is so ingrained into our popular consciousness that it has become almost mythological. It is a legend, a fantasy story of something far away and incomprehensible, often associated with Tim Lahaye novels and action adventure narratives of religious prophecy and Armageddon. World War III has become “entertainment.”

The cartoon-ization of a “last great global conflict” is due to a natural tendency of human beings to cope with terrifying ideas, often by intellectually trivializing them, and thereby making them easily digestible, much like the proverbial public speaking tactic of imagining the audience with their clothes off.

The problem with this development in our society is that it causes us to become cynical to the point of idiocy when confronted with very real threats. By convincing ourselves that such an event is an impossibility we leave ourselves unguarded and without a conceptual point of reference, because we have not thought about the scenario in a practical levelheaded manner. This is akin to a man who has never even considered the likelihood of being mugged on the street, versus a man who has trained in self defense for just such a situation. When the event occurs, the two men will have totally different psychological reactions; the first man utterly surprised and out of his element with little to no constructive response, and the latter man far less mentally phased and thus more likely to survive.

With this fact in mind, we will endeavor to explore recent world events, along with international agreements and tensions, and how they could be used by Global Elites to trigger a war reaching around the planet.

Most Wars Happen To The Benefit Of Globalists

Elites often attempt to paint a pretty picture, a glossy flower filled love-fest, when it comes to the creation of World Government. The truth however has been and always will be that the road to globalization is paved with the death of innocents and civilizations. Every movement towards the formation of centralized global government has been preceded by unthinkable destruction. This may seem futile and horribly regressive to us, but to Globalists, war is a highly effective and useful tool.

Conflict on a massive scale creates an atmosphere of tension and terror, giving the average man, even men who are nowhere near danger, a sort of perpetual tunnel vision. World War has the ability to trigger the “fight or flight” psychological response and sustain it in an entire society over long periods of time. Maintaining such a mental state in a human being can cause severe exhaustion and emotional imbalance. Imagine the process of interrogation and torture used on a prisoner in places such as Guantanamo Bay, then, apply that to an entire nation of people. War breaks down our psychological defenses as a society, and makes us vulnerable to suggestion.

By creating war, Globalists change not only the political landscape of nations, but also the emotional and rational checks and balances of every individual who has not prepared himself to handle the pressures of fear. In this way, people can be made to forget how things were before, and accept a new world, a world designed around the corrupt appetites of elite minorities, if only to make the fear stop.

I often hear arguments that war is simply a product of temporary mass insanity. That it is often a “blunder,” an “oversight.” Make no mistake, governments and the power brokers behind them WANT war. Indeed, they commonly design wars that never would have happened without their help. Here are only a few of the many examples:

The Spanish American War:

The Spanish American war was one of the first to be a wholly media driven event, created out of thin air and forced on the American public. Elites in Washington, including Theodore Roosevelt, wanted to move the U.S. into an expansionist policy and the realm of empire building. Most American citizen wanted nothing to do with expansionism. Our country had been built in opposition to empires after all. Enter William Randolph Hearst; newspaper mogul and elitist. Hearst papers across the country went on a tabloid spree, reporting on battles between the Spanish government and Cuban guerrilla fighters that were not actually happening, along with exaggerated dramatizations of Spanish government mistreatment of civilians. Of course, the Spanish were certainly not treating the Cuban people well, but the fact that Hearst made stories up in order to paint a grave picture with which to manipulate Americans at home is what is important here.

Upon his arrival in Cuba, Hearst correspondent Fredrick Remington cabled to Hearst: “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst reportedly replied: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

Hearst’s propaganda though was not quite enough to make the people want to forcefully overtake another country or adopt expansionism. So, on February 15, 1898, an explosion was set on the USS Maine off the coast of Havana, Cuba. 260 out of 355 sailors lost their lives, though strangely, only two ranked as officers were killed. Hearst papers went into overdrive claiming the Spanish had sunk her with a mine or torpedo, and the pretext for war in Cuba was established. Ever since, the U.S. has held an ever more prominent policy of expansionism and empire building.

Interestingly, recent studies, including those of National Geographic, show that the debris from the Maine explosion pointed outward, indicating an explosion from INSIDE the ship, not outside. The government still maintains that this must have been “accidental”:

http://loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf

World War I:

The beginning of WW I is often blamed on a “mindlessly mechanical series of events,” but this is simply nonsense. The embroilment of America in the affairs of Europe was carefully orchestrated and far from accidental.

Norman Dodd, former director of the Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations of the U.S. House of Representatives, testified that the Committee was invited to study the minutes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the Committee’s investigation. The Committee stated: “The trustees of the Foundation brought up a single question. If it is desirable to alter the life of an entire people, is there any means more efficient than war…. They discussed this question… for a year and came up with an answer: There are no known means more efficient than war, assuming the objective is altering the life of an entire people. That leads them to a question: How do we involve the United States in a war. This is in 1909.”

http://www.threeworldwars.com/world-war-1/ww1.htm

Once again, Americans had no interest in expansionism or fighting wars along side Monarchies that we with good reason despised. The key to how we were fooled once again into going against our better instincts lay in the sinking of yet another ship; the Lusitania.

The Lusitania was attacked by a German U-boat and sunk on May 7, 1915, killing 1198 passengers and was later used as a pretext for drawing the U.S. into WWI; this is the commonly held view taught in every high school history class. The problem is that it is only half the story. What it does not mention is the fact that the British goaded the Germans into the attack.

In that era, there still existed “rules of war,” one of which was the expectation that German U-boats should surface before destroying any merchant vessel and allow the passengers to flee the ship. The Germans adhered to this standard until the British began arming merchant ships and ordering them to fly the colors of neutral countries. They were then to sink any U-boat that surfaced to deliver a warning. The good faith of the understanding was ruined, and the Germans decided it was safer to sink the ships without warning and be done with it.

The British also began smuggling arms and explosives using regular merchant ships as cover, making them participants in the war, and therefore targets. The Lusitania was no exception.

When the Lusitania was hit by a German torpedo, the initial explosion was certainly destructive, but not as destructive as the massive secondary explosion passengers witnessed as they were fleeing the scene, which ripped the ship apart. For decades the U.S. and British governments denied that the Lusitania was carrying arms, until divers exploring the wreckage discovered cases of nearly 4 million rounds of ammo! Meaning according to the articles of war, the Lusitania was in fact classified as a combatant, not a non-threatening ocean liner:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1098904/Secret-Lusitania-Arms-challenges-Allied-claims-solely-passenger-ship.html

The most shocking element to this engineered disaster however was the fact the U.S. and British governments were well aware that the ship would be attacked, and ALLOWED it to occur.

The German Embassy took out ads in 50 U.S. newspapers warning that the Lusitania could be made a target. The U.S. State Department in turn contacted each of the newspapers and in a threatening fashion suggested that they refrain from printing the ad. A small portion of the newspapers ignored the State Department and printed anyway, but most of the passengers of the Lusitania never saw it.

Finally, and most importantly, is a fascinating discussion from the book “The Intimate Papers of Colonel House,” between House; an advisor (some would say puppeteer) to Woodrow Wilson, and Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary of England before the attack on the Lusitania occurred. The coldness of the exchange is haunting:

Grey: “What will America do if the Germans sink an ocean liner with American passengers on board?”

House: “I believe that a flame of indignation would sweep the United States and that by itself would be sufficient to carry us into the war.”

World War II:

World War II was perhaps the first war in which Globalists created an enemy completely from scratch. That’s right; the Nazis were organized and funded by Elites from across the world, including those here in America.

Hitler himself was considered a joke among Germans when he first began his tirades for an “Aryan Empire,” and was shrugged off by the mainstream as a lunatic. But Germany was also in the middle of the worst economic collapse in recent memory, and when Hitler gained support from the Thule Society, a Freemason-like secret society in Europe, and also began receiving investment from Wall Street interests, including the Rockefeller family, the German people started taking notice. Hitler’s new aristocratic friends could bring to Germany what the people desperately wanted; jobs and cold hard cash.

The collusion between the Rockefellers and the Nazis is well documented, and was first exposed by the discovery of the Von Knieriem Documents during the Nuremberg Trials. The documents outline how the Rockefellers, through their company Standard Oil, supplied investment, as well as secret fuel technology, without which Nazi warplanes would have been inoperable:

http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=22

http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/07/NMT07-C001.htm

The Rockefellers also started the first eugenics population control program here in the U.S. in 1909, forcefully sterilizing over 60,000 “genetically inferior” Americans long before Hitler put the idea into practice in Germany:

http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

And how about the exposure of George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, as a Nazi collaborator and launderer of Nazi funds:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

This is only a small portion of the evidence which proves that the Nazi’s were an elitist creation, and World War II deliberately engineered.

Iraq / Afghanistan War:

I won’t go into the long and sordid background of the 9/11 attacks and how they were used to foment a never-ending war in the Middle East. To do so would take an entirely separate article. What I will say is, the “official story” of that event has been shown on numerous occasions by thousands of researchers, many of whom are architects and engineers, to be riddled with holes and completely unsatisfactory by any measure of logic. The collapses themselves have been left scientifically unexplained by NIST, the government agency tasked with constructing “answers” for the many oddities surrounding the structural failure of WTC 1, 2 and 7. NIST continues to refuse to release the source data for their computer models they claim prove that the towers fell naturally due to burning jet fuel. Without this source data, none of their conclusions hold any validity. They are simply opinions backed by nothing.

Dr. Steven Jones along with eight other scientists around the world have published a peer review paper in the Open Chemical Physics Journal proving beyond a doubt that military grade nanothermite (demolitions) is present in large quantities in the rubble of the WTC:

http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

This means that demolitions were placed in the buildings most likely by someone with easy access and were used to aid in their collapse. The suspects for such an operation I leave for you to decide, though I find it highly improbable that “Muslim Extremists” were involved.

After each of these wars was concocted, governments and Globalists around the planet pushed for even greater centralization of authority and consolidation of power. After the Spanish American War, Americans were herded towards accepting the idea of U.S. expansionism. After World War I, we were convinced to hurtle ourselves into European affairs and squander money and resources on unnecessary conflicts. We also witnessed the formation of the League of Nations, a pre-UN global body meant as a beginning foundation for world government. After World War II, Europe was nearly wiped off the map, its people downtrodden and psychologically ripe for centralization. Without WWII, the European Union would have never been possible. The U.S. also joined the United Nations, the body which is now being pushed along with the IMF for oversight of global financial regulation, as well as unified trade law and “harmonization.” After the Iraq / Afghan war began, a new threat was fabricated in the guise of “terrorism,” a faceless enemy with no real nation or border, no identifiable army, and an elusive and sloppily defined ideology. Anyone can be labeled a terrorist, even an American citizen, thus, a war on terrorism can be sustained indefinitely.

This sets the stage for the next possible global conflict which could be used as the final motivator to pressure the masses into an oppressive New World Order.

World War III: A Realistic Assessment

On Christmas Day 2009 a young Nigerian man by the name of Umar Abdulmutallab was lead into an airport in Amsterdam by what witnesses describe as a “well dressed Indian man” who lied about Umar’s status as a Sudanese refugee. Although Umar was already on a terrorist watch list, he was not flagged, and was allowed to board the plane without a passport and without difficulty:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/12/witness_alleged_bomber_possibl.html

Also according to witnesses, another man on the plane reportedly (and rather oddly) filmed the would-be terrorist during the entire flight. As the plane approached landing in Detroit, Umar proceeded to ignite an explosive substance hidden in his underpants. Only days after, Al-Qaeda agents allegedly based in Yemen took responsibility. Why anyone would take responsibility for a botched underwear bomb attack I leave to your imagination.

And how has the U.S. Government been proceeding in Yemen? Air strikes killing 63 civilians including 28 children:

But lets set aside the obvious false flag attack used to move into Yemen and ask the larger question: why?

Why Yemen? There are a few solid explanations, including the rather suspicious financial dealings of Umar Abdulmutallab’s father, who has been involved heavily with Yemen Government debt:

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/billions-in-recent-yememi-investments-and-the-underwear-bombers-daddy-its-a-small-world-aint-it/

But this seemingly small affair in this very small country I believe is part of a much larger design.

Yemen Rebels Labeled “Al Qaeda:”

There are most likely little to no “Al Qaeda” fighters in Yemen, but the Yemeni government has been fighting Houthi rebels in its mountain regions for years, and it seems, not doing very well. In response, Saudi Arabia insinuated itself into the fight, perhaps fearing what a revolution might do to their interests in the region. Only days before the Christmas false flag, U.S. officials were leaking their “concerns” over possible Yemeni rebel “connections” to Al Qaeda in the press:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2009/1221/Saudi-air-strike-kills-Yemen-rebels-as-US-drawn-into-fight

What we are seeing is yet another instance in which our government labels any insurgency group not as rebels with their own particular cause, but as “Al Qaeda,” a global James Bond-ian terrorist conspiracy. Its simple really; if someone stands in the way of your interests, label them as Al Qaeda and a decent sized portion of the American public will look the other way while you bomb their children.

Russia Expanding In the Middle East:

Now we get to the heart of the matter. Many of us have already forgotten the brief war between Russia and Georgia, started when U.S. backed Georgia invaded South Ossetia unprovoked, randomly shooting and bombing civilians, causing Russia to intercede. Not long after this event, Russia began announcing openly plans to expand its navy into the Middle East, including the construction of Navy Bases in Yemen, and Libya, as well as the modernization of a navy base the Russians already control on the coast of Syria:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/16/2468180.htm

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020643.html

Yemen’s dealings with Russia also include major arms sales:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/world/africa/27iht-27yemen.20489549.html?_r=2

Yemen recently announced plans to work closely with Iran in defending its coast from pirates:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=99165&sectionid=351020101

What does the U.S. presence in Yemen mean? It means a lot of ruffled feathers (or at least the appearance of such) and the increase of Middle Eastern tension to whole new level, conceivably putting us in a position of clashing with Russian interests.

Enter Israel.

The Israeli Government has said openly and often that it deems Iran a target if they continue to build nuclear power facilities, even going so far as to draw up plans to use low-yield nuclear weapons against them:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1290331.ece

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/30/opinion/oe-zenko30

This leads us to what may end up being the most important news of last year besides the “Great Recession”; a defense pact signed between Iran and Syria:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260447419513&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

So, what elements are we dealing with here?

We have a nuclear armed Israel itching to attack Iran. We have Iran engaged in a defense pact with Syria against Israel. We have Syria with Russian navy bases and weapons on its soil, and we have the U.S. rampaging through the Middle East encroaching on the borders of Pakistan and Yemen, essentially pissing off everyone. What we have is a Globalist made recipe for disaster, using the same ingredients they have used for the last several major wars.

The Trigger:

An Israeli attack on Iran could draw in the U.S., especially if Russia were to intervene through Syria. The likelihood of a large scale false flag attack is also very high over the next couple years, designed to frighten the American people into support for police state conditions at home, as well as greater complicity in an expanded war overseas. The war would not even necessarily have to become a nuclear event as is commonly expected (the elites would rather keep the planet in good condition for themselves), or even develop far beyond the Middle East. Its effects would still be felt everywhere.

The Advantages Of World War (For Globalists):

As we have covered in previous articles, Russia and other BRIC nations are moving to shore up wealth, buying gold and diversifying their currency holdings away from Treasuries and U.S. Dollars. This indicates the probability that they will soon drop the dollar as the world reserve currency if not entirely. Russia has in several instances stated its desire for a “world currency” and even world government, just as political elements of the U.S. and Europe have in the past. I believe what we see unfolding is a scenario much like that of WWII, except this time, the U.S. sits in the position of the Weimar Republic, its currency ready to hyperinflate, it treasury on the edge of insolvency, its debt holders becoming its enemies, and its government looking for any excuse to dilute personal liberties for the “greater good”.

Russia and other eastern nations appear to be forming an opposing economic (and perhaps political) block, yet the ultimate goal of the elites there is the same as it is for elites here. If war were to occur, it would once again be puppet governments set loose upon each other in an illusory conflict in which the real targets are the masses themselves.

The goal is to force the people to take sides, to divide them against each other and make them forget the true enemy; the elites who cultivated the problem in the first place. Under the threat of world conflict or rampant terrorism, the average American could be made to feel “disruptive,” or even “traitorous” for speaking out against the war, while those who point out the dangers of the police state could simply be labeled terrorists themselves. Such an atmosphere could also distract our attentions away from the eminent economic breakdown. It is difficult to imagine this happening here, but think of how many Germans laughed at Hitler in his early days, as opposed to how many eventually followed him when they were faced with absolute desperation.

In the midst of all this of course would stand the EU and the UN. I believe whether a war is triggered or the economy is simply left to disintegrate, it will be the UN and European interests that “dash to the rescue” with a new stabilized currency and unified government when all seems lost. Just as in the past, Globalists want to erase history, rewrite it, and play the part of the hero. With an extra century or more of constant propaganda, who would know to argue otherwise?

The Solution

What we have just covered is a possible state of affairs based on the circumstances of the moment. It is by no means our fate. What this examination is meant to convey is the gravity of the task before us, and the reality that it is we who must halt the machine in its tracks. We cannot leave it to future generations; to our children or theirs. It must stop right here. This is our fight, and if we do not succeed then there may not be a second chance for humanity. By continuing to educate our neighbors on the threats confronting us, and by preparing for the worst, mentally as well as physically, no future is set in stone.

I sometimes hear words like “impossible,” “pointless,” “futile,” in regards to our situation, and the obstacles which we face. “Impossibility” is an empty term driven by doubt, not by concrete reality. There is no “impossibility,” only destiny, and destiny is something we make, not follow. As far as I have seen men fall, I have never in the whole of my life believed there was anything we could not do. As long as we hold by what is true, there is no such thing as the insurmountable.

Regardless of where we are headed, be it moderately troubling times, or the worst of all possible worlds, our job here now is to at once walk through fire and yet stand immovable. This is what we are here to do.

by Rick Rozoff

January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting war in the Greater Middle East.

Beginning with the October 7, 2001 missile and bomb attacks on Afghanistan, American combat operations abroad have not ceased for a year, a month, a week or a day in the 21st century.

The Afghan war, the U.S.’s first air and ground conflict in Asia since the disastrous wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s first land war and Asian campaign, began during the end of the 2001 war in Macedonia launched from NATO-occupied Kosovo, one in which the role of U.S. military personnel is still to be properly exposed [1] and addressed and which led to the displacement of almost 10 percent of the nation’s population.

In the first case Washington invaded a nation in the name of combating terrorism; in the second it abetted cross-border terrorism. Similarly, in 1991 the U.S. and its Western allies attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait and launched devastating and deadly cruise missile attacks and bombing sorties inside Iraq in the name of preserving the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait, and in 1999 waged a 78-day bombing assault against Yugoslavia to override and fatally undermine the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty in the name of the casus belli of the day, so-called humanitarian intervention.

Two years later humanitarian war, as abhorrent an oxymoron as the world has ever witnessed, gave way to the global war on terror(ism), with the U.S. and its NATO allies again reversing course but continuing to wage wars of aggression and “wars of opportunity” as they saw fit, contradictions and logic, precedents and international law notwithstanding.

Several never fully acknowledged counterinsurgency campaigns, some ongoing – Colombia – and some new – Yemen – later, the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of 2003 with a “coalition of the willing” comprised mainly of Eastern European NATO candidate nations (now almost all full members of the world’s only military bloc as a result of their service).

The Pentagon has also deployed special forces and other troops to the Philippines and launched naval, helicopter and missile attacks inside Somalia as well as assisting the Ethiopian invasion of that nation in 2006. Washington also arms, trains and supports the armed forces of Djibouti in their border war with Eritrea. In fact Djibouti hosts the U.S.’s only permanent military installation in Africa to date [2], Camp Lemonier, a United States Naval Expeditionary Base and home to the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), placed under the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) when it was launched on October 1, 2008. The area of responsibility of the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa takes in the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen and as “areas of interest” the Comoros, Mauritius and Madagascar.

That is, much of the western shores of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, among the most geostrategically important parts of the world. [3]

U.S. troops, aerial drones, warships, planes and helicopters are active throughout that vast tract of land and water.

With senator and once almost vice president Joseph Lieberman’s threat on December 27 that “Yemen will be tomorrow’s war” [4] and former Southern Command chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark’s two days later that “Maybe we need to put some boots on the ground there,” [5] it is evident that America’s new war for the new year has already been identified. In fact in mid-December U.S. warplanes participated in the bombing of a village in northern Yemen that cost the lives of 120 civilians as well as wounding 44 more [6] and a week later “A US fighter jet…carried out multiple airstrikes on the home of a senior official in Yemen’s northern rugged province of Sa’ada….” [7]

The pretext for undertaking a war in Yemen in earnest is currently the serio-comic “attempted terrorist attack” by a young Nigerian national on a passenger airliner outside of Detroit on Christmas Day. The deadly U.S. bombing of the Yemeni village mentioned above occurred ten days earlier and moreover was in the north of the nation, although Washington claims al-Qaeda cells are operating in the other end of the country. [8]

Asia, Africa and the Middle East are not the only battlegrounds where the Pentagon is active. On October 30 of 2009 the U.S. signed an agreement with the government of Colombia to acquire the essentially unlimited and unrestricted use of seven new military bases in the South American nation, including sites within immediate striking distance of both Venezuela and Ecuador. [9] American intelligence, special forces and other personnel will be complicit in ongoing counterinsurgency operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the nation’s south as well as in rendering assistance to Washington’s Colombian proxy for attacks inside Ecuador and Venezuela that will be portrayed as aimed at FARC forces in the two states.

Targeting two linchpins of and ultimately the entire Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Washington is laying the groundwork for a potential military conflagration in South and Central America and the Caribbean. After the U.S.-supported coup in Honduras on June 28, that nation has announced it will be the first ALBA member state to ever withdraw from the Alliance and the Pentagon will retain, perhaps expand, its military presence at the Soto Cano Air Base there.

A few days ago “The Colombian government…announced it is building a new military base on its border with Venezuela and has activated six new airborne battalions” [10] and shortly afterward Dutch member of parliament Harry van Bommel “claimed that US spy planes are using an airbase on the Netherlands Antilles island of Curaçao” [11] off the Venezuelan coast.

In October a U.S. armed forces publication revealed that the Pentagon will spend $110 million to modernize and expand seven new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania, across the Black Sea from Russia, where it will station initial contingents of over 4,000 troops. [12]

In early December the U.S. signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Poland, which borders the Russian Kaliningrad territory, that “allows for the United States military to station American troops and military equipment on Polish territory.” [13] The U.S. military forces will operate Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) batteries as part of the Pentagon’s global interceptor missile system.

At approximately the same time President Obama pressured Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to base missile shield components in his country. “We discussed the continuing role that we can play as NATO allies in strengthening Turkey’s profile within NATO and coordinating more effectively on critical issues like missile defense,” [14] in the American leader’s words.

“Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has hinted his government does not view Tehran [Iran] as a potential missile threat for Turkey at this point. But analysts say if a joint NATO missile shield is developed, such a move could force Ankara to join the mechanism.” [15]

2010 will see the first foreign troops deployed to Poland since the breakup of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and the installation of the U.S’s “stronger, swifter and smarter” (also Obama’s words) interceptor missiles and radar facilities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the South Caucasus. [16]

U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, site of the longest and most wide-scale war in the world, will top 100,000 early in 2010 and with another 50,000 plus troops from other NATO nations and assorted “vassals and tributaries” (Zbigniew Brzezinski) will represent the largest military deployment in any war zone in the world.

American and NATO drone missile and helicopter gunship attacks in Pakistan will also increase, as will U.S. counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines and Somalia along with those in Yemen where CIA and Army special forces are already involved.

U.S. military websites recently announced that there have been 3.3 million deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 with 2 million U.S. service members sent to the two war zones. [17]

In this still young millennium American soldiers have also deployed in the hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post-conflict zones in Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mali, the Philippines, Romania, Uganda and Uzbekistan.

In 2010 they will be sent abroad in even larger numbers to man airbases and missile sites, supervise and participate in counterinsurgency operations throughout the world against disparate rebel groups, many of them secular, and wage combat operations in South Asia and elsewhere. They will be stationed on warships and submarines equipped with cruise and long-range nuclear missiles and with aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the world’s seas and oceans.

They will construct and expand bases from Europe to Central and South Asia, Africa to South America, the Middle East to Oceania. With the exception of Guam and Vicenza in Italy, where the Pentagon is massively expanding existing installations, all the facilities in question are in nations and even regions of the world where the U.S. military has never before ensconced itself. Practically all the new encampments will be forward bases used for operations “down range,” generally to the east and south of NATO-dominated Europe.

U.S. military personnel will be assigned to the new Global Strike Command and for expanded patrols and war games in the Arctic Circle. They will serve under the Missile Defense Agency to consolidate a worldwide interceptor missile network that will facilitate a nuclear first strike capability and will extend that system into space, the final frontier in the drive to achieve military full spectrum dominance.

American troops will continue to fan out to most all parts of the world. Everywhere, that is, except to their own nation’s borders.

By Jeremy Scahill

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight 

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan.  During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.

Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”

A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”

The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:

In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects.  According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects.  USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.

The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.

As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.

subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.