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Posts Tagged ‘Pentagon’

Coronavirus Update – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on February 3, 2020

DARPA, for instance, has been developing a series of unsettling research projects that ranges from microchips that can create and delete memories from the human brain to voting machine software that is rife with problems.

Also left out of the media narrative have been the direct ties of both the USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the city of Wuhan, including its Institute of Medical Virology.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/02/02/coronavirus-update/

Paul Craig Roberts

Using more recent data from China of the coronavirus’ infection and death rates than the Indian scientists had, “Moon of Alabama” concludes that the “pandemic” has reached its peak and will be over with in a month.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/coronaupdate.html

If so, then Jon Rappoport was correct in the beginning that coronavirus was just another big scare hype.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/01/28/coronavirus-a-real-threat-or-another-scare/

Let’s hope that this is the case and that the coronavirus is a far less threat than ordinary flu. Nevertheless, such a happy outcome still leaves us with a lot of puzzling questions.  Here are a few of them:

  1. Why such an enormous effort by the Chinese government using draconian quarantine measures affecting millions of people and multi-country halts of travel to and from China over a threat far less serious than ordinary flu?
  2. Why is there a rush to develop a vaccine?
  3. Why the expert predictions of a worldwide pandemic?
  4. Why did the virus originate in a Chinese city known to have labs for the study of dangerous viruses?
  5. Why do the scare viruses originate in China—SARS, swine flu, bird flue, coronavirus?
  6. Why did the team of scientists in India find elements of HIV in the coronavirus genome that is believed to raise the infectious potential, a finding, if correct, implies the engineering of a bioterror weapon?

The scientists might be wrong, but they are not presenting a conspiracy theory.  They published their paper provisionally in order to get input from other scientists.  I have no idea whether their findings will be validated, and whatever we are told, we might never know.  If the virus proves to be bioengineered, the Chinese government will know whether something they did escaped.  If they are not responsible for the virus, they will perceive an attack on them by the US.  This type of information would confirm Chinese suspicions:

“Research conducted by the Pentagon, and DARPA specifically, has continually raised concerns, not just in the field of bioweapons and biotechnology, but also in the fields of nanotechnology, robotics and several others. DARPA, for instance, has been developing a series of unsettling research projects that ranges from microchips that can create and delete memories from the human brain to voting machine software that is rife with problems.

“Now, as fear regarding the current coronavirus outbreak begins to peak, companies with direct ties to DARPA have been tasked with developing its vaccine, the long-term human and environmental impacts of which are unknown and will remain unknown by the time the vaccine is expected to go to market in a few weeks time.

“Furthermore, DARPA and the Pentagon’s past history with bioweapons and their more recent experiments on genetic alteration and extinction technologies as well as bats and coronaviruses in proximity to China have been largely left out of the narrative, despite the information being publicly available. Also left out of the media narrative have been the direct ties of both the USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the city of Wuhan, including its Institute of Medical Virology.

“Though much about the origins of the coronavirus outbreak remains unknown, the U.S. military’s ties to the aforementioned research studies and research institutions are worth detailing as such research — while justified in the name of “national security” — has the frightening potential to result in unintended, yet world-altering consequences. The lack of transparency about this research, such as DARPA’s decision to classify its controversial genetic extinction research and the technology’s use as a weapon of war, compounds these concerns. While it is important to avoid reckless speculation as much as possible, it is the opinion of this author that the information in this report is in the public interest and that readers should use this information to reach their own conclusions about the topics discussed herein.”

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/76139/bats-gene-editing-and-bioweapons-recent-darpa-experiments-raise-concerns-amid-coronavirus.html

If the Indian scientists’ findings are correct, we should expect them to be shouted down by government supported scientists.  To save their careers, they would have to acknowledge a mistake in their research.  If the virus were a US manufactured one, China would have the same incentive to coverup the fact as Washington, because otherwise the consequence would be war, for which China is not ready.

There are other concerns.  For example, concurrent with the announcement of the new virus there were accusations that the Chinese virus lab was responsible for the pandemic threat and might even have released it purposely on its own population. Moon of Alabama is correct to call this a conspiracy theory.  It is a conspiracy theory to discredit the Chinese government with the Chinese population and the rest of the world.  The Chinese government has no interest in harming the Chinese economy and discrediting itself with a population that it is trying to rule without a harsh hand, but Washington has an interest in ruining the Chinese.

I think it is a good thing that the question whether coronavirus is an engineered virus came up. There are a number of secret high security labs around the world doing scary things.  As Whitney Webb writes, “The lack of transparency about this research, such as DARPA’s decision to classify its controversial genetic extinction research and the technology’s use as a weapon of war, compounds these concerns.”  There is a treaty—or was as Washington might have pulled out of it like it has the arms control agreements with the Russians—that supposedly prevents countries from making bioweapons.  However, whether they are making the weapons or not, they are doing research that could quickly be weaponized.

Perhaps it would be a good thing if there were a worldwide public discussion whether the benefit of the research is greater than the risk of a deadly pandemic.  The lack of transparency makes mischief possible.  Remember the anthrax letters in the wake of 9/11 that turned out to contain a version of anthrax available only in a US government lab.  To cover this up, the letters were blamed on a dead man who had no motive to send the letters and no access to the anthrax.  Something as dangerous as bioengineered pathogens require plenty of transparency.

There is no reason scientists should be permitted to investigate whatever they want.  Think for a minute, what is the good of nuclear weapons?  Perhaps if Earth were invaded by hightech Aliens, thermonuclear weapons could be a defense.  Perhaps if an astroid is on collision course with Earth, nuclear missiles could shatter it into small pieces that would burn up in the atmosphere or into smaller pieces that would do less damage.  What else are nuclear weapons good for but to bring us Armageddon?

A lot of thought is needed also about robotics and artificial intelligence.  Robots such as those that can withstand deep underwater pressures and radiation are useful.  But robots that displace people can leave humans unemployed and without purpose.  And do we really want machines as smart or smarter than humans or weaponized?

The challenges of these technologies can be very interesting to scientists, but the unintended and ignored consequences can be horrific.

An obvious question is:  If people with white skin cannot use certain words or long-established expressions, cannot read, study, or teach certain subjects that some believe are offensive, and cannot organize or segregate themselves as others are permitted to do, why can scientists and governments study and manufacture things that could terminate life itself?  This makes no sense.  If we do not begin to make better sense soon, conspiracy theories are going to become very real.

We cannot rely on the ethics and morality of governments.  They have neither.  Consider the US and its European vassals.  For 20 years they have bombed, invaded, murdered, and ravaged seven countries, destroying them in whole or part, all on the basis of transparent lies.  And nothing is done about it. Indeed, the murderous process continues.

Based on these transparent lies, President George W. Bush violated the US Constitution and held indefinitely American citizens on suspicion alone, and President Obama violated due process by executing US citizens on suspicion alone.

Neither were impeached.  Congress, the judiciary, and the public accepted this shredding of the US Constitution and stepped into a police state.  When there is no honest media to protect the people, government transparency becomes even more critical.

Since 2009, the US government has overthrown governments in Honduras, Ukraine, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, reversed the reform process in Ecuador, temporarily overthrew Chevez in Venezuela and continues to try to overthrow his successor Maduro. Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Russia, and China remain on Washington’s list of countries to be overthrown.

This extraordinary arrogance is easily capable of using a false flag engineered pathogen to produce termoil within a country that collapses a government.  For this reason, the transparency of research is of the upmost importance.

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Flu Prevention Amid Coronavirus Scare (1-30-20) - One News ...

 

 

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Pentagon Now Says 50 Suffered Brain Injuries in January 8 Iran Missile Attack – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2020

There was advanced warning, troops were in bunkers, why the injuries?

Could it be that if no one was hurt it would harder to justify reprisal, didn’t fit the plan?

https://news.antiwar.com/2020/01/28/pentagon-now-says-50-suffered-brain-injuries-in-january-8-iran-missile-attack/

Starting with the official declaration that there were “no casualties,” the number of people suffering traumatic brain injuries in January 8’s missile attack against Iraq’s Ayn al-Asad base has continued to grow, and the Pentagon now says 50 soldiers were injured.

This is an increase from the 34 injured reported just days. The Pentagon says that 15 of the 50 were diagnosed since they made the 34 announcement. They say it is not unusual for concussion symptoms to take awhile to present.

Of the 50, the Pentagon says 31 of them were treated within Iraq and have returned to duty already, while 18 others were sent to Germany for further evaluation and treatment. Another was sent to Germany for unrelated reasons and got symptoms while there.

The mounting casualties have been an issue in no small part because President Trump insisted there were no injuries, and then derided the reports as just “headaches.” Veterans groups were deeply critical, as brain injuries are rapidly growing, and the military has struggled to treat them.

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115th Congress passed more laws than before, but of ...

Brain Dead

 

 

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Pentagon racks up $35 trillion in accounting changes in a year

Posted by M. C. on January 22, 2020

The Defense Department acknowledged that it failed its first-ever audit in 2018…

FIRST EVER!

While auditors found no evidence of fraud…

Of course not. The government is auditing itself. Like when the justice department investigates the (justice department’s own) FIB.

All that money and we haven’t won a war since 1945 and have been in a stalemate with a couple of almost stone age countries since 2002.

Pentagon: The definition of failure…is rewarded more money by Government: The definition of failure.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/pentagon-racks-up-dollar35-trillion-in-accounting-changes-in-a-year/ar-BBZcVdy

Tony Capaccio

The Pentagon made $35 trillion in accounting adjustments last year alone — a total that’s larger than the entire U.S. economy and underscores the Defense Department’s continuing difficulty in balancing its books.

The latest estimate is up from $30.7 trillion in 2018 and $29 trillion in 2017, the first year adjustments were tracked in a concerted way, according to Pentagon figures and a lawmaker who’s pursued the accounting morass.

The figure dwarfs the $738 billion of defense-related funding in the latest U.S. budget, a spending plan that includes the most expensive weapons systems in the world including the F-35 jet as well as new aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.

“Within that $30 trillion is a lot of double, triple, and quadruple counting of the same money as it got moved between accounts,” said Todd Harrison, a Pentagon budget expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Defense Department acknowledged that it failed its first-ever audit in 2018 and then again last year, when it reviewed $2.7 trillion in assets and $2.6 trillion in liabilities. While auditors found no evidence of fraud in the review of finances that Congress required, they flagged a laundry list of problems, including accounting adjustments.

Although it gets scant public attention compared with airstrikes, troop deployments, sexual assault statistics or major weapons programs, the reliability of the Pentagon’s financial statement is an indication of how effectively the military manages its resources considering that it receives over half of discretionary domestic spending.

The military services make adjustments, some automatic and some manual, on a monthly and quarterly basis, and those actions are consolidated by the Pentagon’s primary finance and accounting service and submitted to the Treasury.

There were 546,433 adjustments in fiscal 2017 and 562,568 in 2018, according to figures provided by Representative Jackie Speier, who asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate. The watchdog agency will release a report on the subject Wednesday after reviewing more than 200,000 fourth-quarter 2018 adjustments totaling $15 trillion.

‘Sloppy Record-Keeping’…

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f35-moneydump

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Long Sordid History of Pentagon Intervention in Iraq – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2020

Ninth, once the Pentagon discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction, which was the Pentagon’s excuse for the invasion in the first place, it should have apologized for its “mistake” and come home. Instead, the Pentagon stayed in Iraq for several more years, killing and injuring countless more Iraqis…

https://www.fff.org/2020/01/10/the-long-sordid-history-of-pentagon-intervention-in-iraq/

by

There is no reason for the Pentagon to be depressed, despondent, or angry over the fact that Iraqi officials are kicking the Pentagon out of Iraq. The Pentagon doesn’t belong in Iraq in the first place.

First, it’s important to keep in mind that ever since the Pentagon and the rest of the U.S. national-security establishment lost their official Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, with the end of the Cold War in 1989, Iraq never invaded the United States or even threatened to do so. In the 30 years that the Pentagon has been killing people and wreaking destruction in Iraq, it has always been the Pentagon that has been the aggressor and Iraq the defender.

Second, it’s also important to keep in mind that during the 1980s, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a partner and ally of the Pentagon, when the Pentagon was helping him to wage his brutal 8-year war against Iran.

Third, U.S. officials expressed indifference to their partner and ally Saddam when he expressed exasperation with Kuwait, which, he said, was stealing oil from Iraq by slant-drilling into Iraqi land. That expressed indifference to a partner and ally could easily be construed as giving a green light for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

Fourth, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the dispute was no business of the Pentagon, given that the invasion did not constitute an invasion of the United States. Nonetheless, the Pentagon intervened in the conflict, notwithstanding the fact that Congress had not declared war on Iraq, as the Constitution requires. The Pentagon killed countless Iraqis in what was clearly an illegal U.S. war under U.S. law.

Fifth, the Pentagon had no business intentionally destroying Iraq’s water-and-sewage treatment plants during the course of its intervention. That was a war crime, especially since the Pentagon’s intent was to spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people.

Sixth, the Pentagon had no legitimate authority to establish “no-fly zones” over Iraq after hostilities ended. The Pentagon continue to kill Iraqis during the enforcement of such zones, including a teenage boy who was just tending his sheep.

Seventh, the Pentagon had no business enforcing sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s, especially when it became painfully clear that they were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, including through infectious illnesses from polluted water. The sanctions were preventing Iraqis from repairing the water-and-sewage treatment plants that the Pentagon had intentionally destroyed during the Persian Gulf War. It was the deaths of those children that turned out to be a major contributing cause to anti-American terrorism, such as the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa, the 9/11 attacks, the Fort Hood attacks, the Detroit would-be attack, and many more.

Eighth, the Pentagon had no legitimate authority to invade Iraq after the 9/11 attacks because Congress never issued a declaration of war against Iraq, as the Constitution requires. Moreover, even if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN resolutions, only the UN had the authority to enforce its own resolutions. Iraq never invaded the United States. That made the Pentagon the aggressor against Iraq once again. The Pentagon killed and injured countless more Iraqis in the process and ended up destroying the entire country under its mantra “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Ninth, once the Pentagon discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction, which was the Pentagon’s excuse for the invasion in the first place, it should have apologized for its “mistake” and come home. Instead, the Pentagon stayed in Iraq for several more years, killing and injuring countless more Iraqis during its occupation and wreaking continued destruction all across the country.

Tenth, the Pentagon’s invasion of Iraq gave rise to ISIS, which the Pentagon used as the excuse for wreaking even more death and destruction, not only in Iraq but also across the Middle East. That’s why the Pentagon is in Iraq today—ostensibly to defeat the entity that the Pentagon brought into existence with its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Evicting the Pentagon from Iraq is the best thing Iraqi officials could do, both for the people of the Middle East and the United States. The Pentagon has wreaked enough death, suffering, and destruction in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. The sooner the Pentagon comes home, the better off everyone will be.

Donate – Jacob Hornberger – Libertarian for President

Next President?

 

 

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How Controlled Explanations Are Achieved – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on January 3, 2020

The “institutional investor” in question was Alex Brown Inc., a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank whose former CEO and Chairman A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard (until 1998) had just become Executive Director of the CIA in March 2001.

I don’t know what is going with the lack of images-MCViewpoint

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/12/28/how-controlled-explanations-are-achieved/

Paul Craig Roberts

In 2014 Progressive Press published a book by a French author, Laurent Guyenot, titled JFK-9/11: 50 Years of Deep State. The book contains much interesting reporting that shows that the official explanations we are given about even major events, such as the assassination of a President and 9/11, are transparently false. Yet, these transparently false explanations are hard to challenge despite all available evidence being against the explanations.

Reviewing such a book is a challenge that I avoided by securing permission to reprint two chapters from the book. One chapter, “Ghost planes,” deals with the mystery of the four allegedly hijacked airliners. No trace of the one that allegedly hit the Pentagon has ever been found, and the many videos of the event remain under lock and key. No trace of the one that allegedly crashed in Pennsylvania has ever been found. Neither has any trace of the two that allegedly hit the two World Trade Center towers ever been found, although an unburnt passpost was allegedly found in the ruins of two massive buildings.

Readers might remember that I raised the question why we did not hear demands for explanations from the families of the victims of the four destroyed airliners like we did from the families whose relatives were in the twin towers. Guyenot reports that of the alleged casualties of AA77 “only five of these have relatives who received the 9-11 Compensation Fund offered by the State. . . . no family of the victims of Flight UA93 requested compensation.”

How can this be?

The other chapter, “The Art of the Patsy,” shows that the key to the ability of the authorities to control the explanation is to have an explanation of the event ready at hand. No one expected President Kennedy’s assassination or he wouldn’t have been riding in a convertible. Yet it was instantly known that Oswald was the assassin. The explanation for 9/11 was also instantaneous. It was CIA-asset Osama bin Laden, who was dying from renal failure and no longer useful to the CIA.
If you find Guyenot interesting, you might want to read his book. What Guyenot shows us is that what the CIA has schooled the dumbshit presstitute media to ridicule as “conspiracy theory” is indeed a conspiracy, a real one usually involving the CIA.

Sorry. The images didn’t transfer.

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Social Media and Social Control: How Silicon Valley Serves the US State Department

Posted by M. C. on December 26, 2019

…he presents the media as a bottleneck through which information about the world beyond the perception of our senses must pass.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/social-media-control-how-silicon-valley-serves-us-state-department/263267/

By Morgan Artyukhina

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is in the spotlight for “dining with far-right figures,” and their influence over the information that appears in your feed is apparent. However, Facebook isn’t the only Silicon Valley firm that’s masquerading as nonpartisan as it curates the “facts” you see in ads, posts, or searches: Google, Twitter, Microsoft, and others are deeply wedded to the U.S. security state and the billionaires it upholds.

Walter Lippmann’s groundbreaking 1922 study of the news media, “Public Opinion,” begins with a chapter titled, “The World Outside and the Pictures in our Heads,” in which he presents the media as a bottleneck through which information about the world beyond the perception of our senses must pass. Aside from the question of which stories get passed through that bottleneck, which information about an event that survives the crucible of condensation into an article, news bulletin or wire is determined by the biases of the writer and editor. In turn, control over that information bottleneck gives the controller incredible power to shape the consciousness of readers about “the world outside” – the “manufacturing of consent,” as Lippmann originally described it.

The depth of information about the world made available by the internet seems to remove the bottleneck about which Lippmann fretted — indeed, a generation of techie evangelists tried to present it in just such a manner — but the truth is that it only further obscured both the bottlenecks and the crucibles that distill information for our consumption.

The media giants that control our access to information, from search engines like Google to social media like Facebook, have turned themselves into portals to the world and present themselves as impartial in that role. However, behind a facade of separateness, strong connecting links bind the tech giants to the oligarchy and security state on which they rely, giving the interests of the elite determinative influence over which information we access.

This article will expose and discuss some of the many ways this shady web of influence and oversight operates.

The revolving door between these tech companies and intelligence agencies, think tanks, defense contractors and security companies is constantly revolving, especially at the higher echelons of important departments, like cybersecurity. Notably, many of these companies cater along partisan lines depending on the political proclivities of their owners, in a bid to tip the scales toward their point of view.

They have embraced this role as an information portal, offering special “news” sections on their platforms. They are rolling out new apps to judge the trustworthiness of news sources. Facebook and Google, in particular, have also become two of the largest funders of journalism around the world, helping to further entrench State Department-approved models of truth in key hotspots of geopolitical interest.

This cyberpunk dystopia isn’t a new perversion of a previously free internet, though – in fact, it is the internet’s raison d’être in the first place.

It’s astory so old, it goes back to the very origins of computing, as a tool for census counting in pursuit of racist immigration policies, and the internet, born of the Pentagon’s attempt to model whole societies for the purposes of improving counterinsurgency warfare in Southeast Asia.

 

Right hook

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Pentagon Pauses Training for All 5,000 Saudi Troops in US

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2019

This people work for the country that orchestrated 9/11, our government arms them, our government helps them bomb some of the poorest places on earth and still it doesn’t have a clue why these things happen.

Pauses?

https://news.antiwar.com/2019/12/10/pentagon-pauses-training-for-all-5000-saudi-troops-in-us/

While Pentagon officials had previously insisted that the Pensacola shooting would not have any serious impact on the US hosting Saudi military personnel, it seems that a review of security and screening is going to have a much bigger impact than anyone expected.

A new memo revealed that the Pentagon will be entirely pausing the training of Saudi troops on US military bases, and that this amounts to about 5,000 troops all told. Officials say they can have classroom training, but nothing operational.

This is a substantial step up from a report earlier in the day from the US Navy, which announced 175 Saudi Air Force personnel were being grounded at Pensacola base for the time being.

Though Pentagon officials downplayed it as a brief “safety stand-down,” the impact looks particularly broad, and is an uncomfortable reminder that the large presence of Saudi personnel in US is being facilitated by particularly lax standards.

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When the Deep State Bullied Reagan’s Foreign Policy Chief | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on November 29, 2019

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-the-deep-state-bullied-reagans-foreign-policy-chief/

George Shultz drew a line against certain anti-communist militants; Washington hardliners had other ideas.

 

The testimony of several witnesses during the current impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives highlighted one important and ominous point. Ambassador William B. Taylor, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George P. Kent, and others made it clear that they did not object merely to President Trump’s controversial phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump appeared to seek a quid pro quo. No, they saw Trump’s entire Ukraine policy as insufficiently hardline and therefore unacceptable.

Indeed, Taylor and Kent seemed to think it was improper for the president to change any aspect of a staunchly supportive U.S. policy toward Kiev and a correspondingly hostile policy toward Russia. Far from being loyal subordinates executing the White House’s vision, they opposed the president’s approach and anointed themselves as guardians of appropriate policy.

Unfortunately, such behavior on the part of foreign policy careerists is far from new; it has merely become more pervasive and brazen during the Trump years. This is indicative of what Trump’s supporters—andothers—contend is a campaign by the “deep state,” meaning career officials in the foreign policy bureaucracy and the intelligence agencies, to undermine the president’s foreign policy. Defenders of Taylor, Kent, and other Trump opponents within the foreign policy apparatus either praise them as patriotic dissenters or scoff at the notion that a deep state even exists.

It is extraordinarily naïve to assert that powerful bureaucracies and their key personnel do not protect their institutional interests, push policies in directions they prefer, and attempt to dilute, delay, or defeat initiatives they oppose. Such behavior is a long-standing characteristic of entrenched institutions.

An episode from Ronald Reagan’s presidency illustrates how the CIA seeks to manipulate policy. The agency’s target was Secretary of State George Shultz, who was then applying the Reagan Doctrine and providing U.S. aid to anti-communist rebels in the Third World. Shultz was the chief intellectual architect of the Reagan Doctrine, which he presented in detail during a February 1985 speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. But that intellectual pedigree did not shield him from attempted policy sabotage.

Despite his overall enthusiasm for the Reagan Doctrine in places such as Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Angola, Shultz drew the line at supporting some particularly unsavory alleged freedom fighters. He was especially wary of the anti-communist insurgency in Mozambique led by the Resistencia National Mozambicana, or RENAMO. Shultz recalled that when it came to implementing the Reagan Doctrine, “I took care to know who and what the United States was funding.” He stressed that “I steadfastly insisted that we refuse to give backing to the atrocity-prone RENAMO.”

Shultz fretted that “President Reagan could be led to agree with the proposition that all freedom fighters,” even RENAMO, “deserved unquestioned support.” CIA director William Casey and other hardliners within the Agency, the secretary of state lamented, were more than happy to lead the compliant president in that direction, even if it meant undermining Shultz and other senior policymakers who favored a more moderate approach. Indeed, the State Department found its diplomatic initiatives subjected to repeated bureaucratic subversion. Not only did proponents of aid to RENAMO within the CIA misrepresent the behavior and ideological nature of the insurgent force, they wildly exaggerated its battlefield successes and the extent of support it enjoyed from the people of Mozambique. Shultz noted that in late 1985, briefers from the CIA “were showing their audiences in the administration and Congress a map of Mozambique to indicate—falsely—that RENAMO controlled virtually the entire country.”

The CIA’s sabotage was not confined to policy regarding Mozambique. Later that decade, during delicate negotiations to achieve a ceasefire and subsequent accord between Angola’s government and insurgent leader Jonas Savimbi, Shultz fumed that (emphasis added) “right-wing staffers from Congress, fueled by information from the CIA, were meddling—visiting Savimbi, trying to convince him that [Assistant Secretary of State Chester] Crocker and I would sell him out.”

Such behavior should debunk the notion that the CIA and other bureaucratic careerists are merely obedient public servants dedicated to executing policies that elected officials and their high-level political appointees have adopted. Such operatives have their own policy preferences, and they are not shy about pushing them, nor do they hesitate to impede or undermine policies they dislike.

Perhaps even more troubling, deep state personnel in the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department seem to have a distinct bias in favor of highly activist policies. CIA analysts and briefers regarded even the principal architect of the Reagan Doctrine as insufficiently committed in southern Africa. There is a noticeable parallel to the current bureaucratic opposition to Trump’s handling of Ukraine and Russia. The allegation that Trump has abandoned Kiev and pursues an appeasement policy toward Russia is absurd. His support for Kiev has actually been far more substantial than the approach the Obama administration adopted. Yet even that harder line is apparently not hard enough for establishment career diplomats and their allies.

Treating such saboteurs as heroic patriots is both obscene and dangerous. The honorable course for subordinates who disagree with a president’s policies is to resign and then express criticism. Adopting a termite strategy while working in a presidential administration is profoundly unethical. For Congress and the media to praise bureaucratic subversion is horridly myopic. The last thing defenders of a democratic republic should do is to encourage unelected—and in the case of the intelligence agencies, deeply secretive—bureaucrats to pursue their own rogue policy agendas.

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How the National Security Council Got So Powerful - The ...

Colonel Deep State

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Tomgram: William Astore, The Pentagon Has Won the War that Matters | TomDispatch

Posted by M. C. on November 24, 2019

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176487/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_the_pentagon_has_won_the_war_that_matters/#more

Posted by William Astore at 8:00am, October 25, 2018.

In June, Austin “Scott” Miller, the special-ops general chosen to be the 17th U.S. commander in Afghanistan, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Like so many of the generals who had preceded him, he suggested that he saw evidence of “progress” in the Afghan war, even if he refused to “guarantee you a timeline or an end date.” Smart move, general!

As it happens, just over a week ago, he got a dose, up close and personal, of what the Afghan version of “progress” really means. He was visiting key American allies in the southern province of Kandahar when the “insider” attack of all insider attacks occurred. In the sort of event that’s been going on since at least 2010, an ostensible ally, in this case a local member of the Afghan security forces who had evidently joined the Taliban, turned his gun on Kandahar’s chief of police (a crucial powerbroker in the region), the local intelligence chief, and the provincial governor, killing the first two and wounding the third. In the process, he ensured that, with local leadership literally down the tubes, elections in Kandahar would be postponed for at least a week. Three Americans, including a brigadier general, were also wounded in the attack.  (In 2014, an American major general was killed in just such an insider strike.)  In one of the rarest acts for an American commander in memory, General Miller reportedly drew his sidearm as the bullets began to fly, but was himself untouched. Still, it was a striking reminder that, 17 years after the U.S. invaded that country, the Taliban are again riding high and represent the only forces making “progress” or “turning corners” in that country.

In a conflict with no end in sight that is now not only the longest in American history but more than four times as long as World War II, the “finest fighting force that the world has ever known” hasn’t been able to discover a hint of victory anywhere. And that’s something that could be said as well of the rest of its war on terror across the Greater Middle East and ever-expanding regions of Africa. Today, TomDispatch regular retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore suggests that no great military stays at war for 17 years unless it is, in some sense, victorious. As a result, in his latest post, he explores just where, in our increasingly upside-down American world, evidence of such triumph might be found. Tom

Why American Leaders Persist in Waging Losing Wars
Hint: They’re Winning in Other Ways
By William J. Astore

As America enters the 18th year of its war in Afghanistan and its 16th in Iraq, the war on terror continues in Yemen, Syria, and parts of Africa, including Libya, Niger, and Somalia. Meanwhile, the Trump administration threatens yet more war, this time with Iran. (And given these last years, just how do you imagine that’s likely to turn out?) Honestly, isn’t it time Americans gave a little more thought to why their leaders persist in waging losing wars across significant parts of the planet?  So consider the rest of this piece my attempt to do just that.

Let’s face it: profits and power should be classified as perennial reasons why U.S. leaders persist in waging such conflicts. War may be a racket, as General Smedley Butler claimed long ago, but who cares these days since business is booming? And let’s add to such profits a few other all-American motivations. Start with the fact that, in some curious sense, war is in the American bloodstream. As former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges once put it, “War is a force that gives us meaning.” Historically, we Americans are a violent people who have invested much in a self-image of toughness now being displayed across the “global battlespace.” (Hence all the talk in this country not about our soldiers but about our “warriors.”) As the bumper stickers I see regularly where I live say: “God, guns, & guts made America free.” To make the world freer, why not export all three?

The rest here

Be seeing you

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News Roundup 11/18/19

Posted by M. C. on November 24, 2019

Japan

  • The US asks Japan to pay $8 billion for US forces deployed in Japan. [Link]        Perhaps running their own military would be cheaper. Okinawans certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the back of US.

North Korea

  • The US and South Korea postponed upcoming wargames. [Link]

Can’t right. Makes too much sense.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news-roundup/news-roundup-11-18-19/

By

Kyle Anzalone

US News

  • A man in Georgia was executed. The state refused to test DNA his lawyers’ claim would clear him of the murder. [Link]
  • The 11th Circuit of Appeals rules that distributing food in public is protected by the First Amendment. The ruling comes over a Florida group suing after being arrested for giving food to the homeless. [Link]
  • Amazon will protest the Pentagon awarding the Penton’s cloud contract – JEDI – to Microsoft. [Link]
  • Explosives used at Fort Jackson are contaminating the groundwater. [Link]
  • Trump pardons two convicted war criminals and restores the rank of another man, who was demoted after committing war crimes but was not convicted in court. [Link]

Bolivia

  • Bolivia expels Venezuelan diplomats and Cuban doctors alleging they were fueling protests. [Link]

Ukraine

  • Russia will return three ships to Ukraine. Russia seized the ships after the Ukrainian ships entered Russian waters without permission. [Link]

North Korea

  • The US and South Korea postponed upcoming wargames. [Link]
  • Trump tweets at Kim Jong-un telling him to make a deal soon. [Link]
  • North Korea says it will not engage in talks with the US unless the US hostile policy is on the agenda. [Link]

Japan

  • The US asks Japan to pay $8 billion for US forces deployed in Japan. [Link]

Middle East

  • Protest breakout in Iran over rising fuel prices. At least one person has died during protests. [Link]
  • Turkey says Syria Kurds killed 10 people with a car bomb in a Turkish controlled in northern Syria. [Link]
  • Russia announces it has taken control of a former-US base in northern Syria. [Link]
  • A bomb exploded in Baghdad, killing two people. [Link]

 

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