All posts tagged: Pentagon

America’s Runaway Bacteria

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How Yet Another US Bio-weapon is Getting Rampant in Europe Jean Perier via NEO In my previous articles I’ve touched upon the deadly weapons of tomorrow, those that reek of death and destruction for the mankind, developed in top-secret US laboratories. Previously, I’ve examined the mutated bacteria codenamed Cynthia, that was originally designed to consume hydrocarbon wastes but instead it started to consume human flesh. Even though there’s been a number of lethal cases along the Gulf of Mexico, American authorities chose to keep this whole deal a secret. However, their secret experiments haven’t stopped there, but now they are being conducted away from American shores, namely in Europe, as Donald Trump himself listed this continent as one of the principal rivals of the United States in the world-wide war for global domination. A rather disturbing number of reports has recently been presented by independent media sources, all talking about the Xylella fastidiosa bacteria that threatens to completely wipe both Italy and a number of other Mediterranean countries clean off centuries-old olive trees. This microbe, which would typically appear …

Bipartisan panel: US must prepare for “horrendous,” “devastating” war with Russia and China

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by Andre Damon, 16 November 2018, via WSWS A bipartisan commission appointed by Congress issued a lengthy report Tuesday backing the Pentagon’s plans to prepare for a “great-power” war against Russia, China, or both, making clear that the Trump administration’s belligerent policies are shared by the Democratic Party. Safe in the knowledge that its findings will never be seriously reported by the mass media, the authors of this report do not mince words about what such a war will mean. A war between the United States and China, which according to the report might break out within four years, will be “horrendous” and “devastating.” The military will “face greater losses than at any time in decades.” Such a war could lead to “rapid nuclear escalation,” and American civilians will be attacked and likely killed. It is impossible to understand anything in American politics without recognizing one fundamental reality: the events and scandals that dominate political discourse, which make it onto the evening news and into headlines on news sites and social media feeds, have precious …

Trillions of Dollars in U.S. Military Spending Is Unaccounted-For

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Now, and for many decades past, the American public has displayed far higher confidence and trust in “The Military” than in any other “Institution” (including than churches, schools, the Presidency, the police, courts — any). And yet — according to the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense — many billions, and sometimes even trillions, of dollars, in the Department’s periodic financial reports, are not documented.

Why did the American Military take precautions to prevent “fanciful” impossibilities?

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by Kit Late last night, The Pentagon stated that their attack on the Syrian Government air-base near Homs was not targeting the regime’s supposed chemical weapon stocks. Despite “all the signs” pointing to Assad’s guilt, and it being “very likely” that this base is where the gas attack originated…no efforts were made to destroy any chemical weapons. At all. The Pentagon’s official statement says: The strike was a proportional response to Assad’s heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. And that the attack… …was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again.” But the targets were limited to: …aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. So they “know” where the chemical weapons are. And they “know” Assad used them on civilians and (for all they know) may well do so again. So why not target and destroy these weapons? Wouldn’t …

Russia Remains the Only Target Country of NATO’s Nuclear Weapons

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by Brian Cloughley, via Strategic Culture Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the world’s five “nuclear weapons states”, a description officially recognised in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which lays down that “each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices…” It is apparent that the word ‘transfer’ involves ownership and not location, because the United States has transferred many nuclear weapons to countries which, although members of the US-NATO military alliance, are not nuclear weapons states. An analysis by the Nuclear Threat Initiative indicates that the US has positioned 160-200 B-61 nuclear warheads «at six bases in five NATO countries: Belgium (10-20), Germany (10-20), Italy (60-70), Netherlands (10-20), and Turkey (60-70)». According to a NATO statement of December 2015, «A number of NATO member countries contribute a dual-capable aircraft (DCA) capability to the Alliance. These aircraft are available for nuclear roles at various levels of readiness – the highest level of readiness is measured in weeks. In their nuclear role, the aircraft are equipped to carry …

No more “deal with the devil”: Obama directs Pentagon to target Al-Qaeda forces fighting Assad

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A (failed) Jabhat Fatah al-Sham suicide attack against the Syrian Army in New Aleppo on November 3. The Washington Post: President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government, U.S. officials said. The decision to deploy more drones and intelligence assets against the militant group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra reflects Obama’s concern that it is turning parts of Syria into a new base of operations for al-Qaeda on Europe’s southern doorstep, the officials said. The move underlines the extent to which Obama has come to prioritize the counter­terrorism mission in Syria over efforts to pressure President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, as al-Nusra is among the most effective forces­­ battling the Syrian government. That shift is likely to accelerate once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has said he will be even more aggressive in going after militants than Obama, a stance that …

VIDEO: Pentagon warns of “unavoidable” dystopian future for megacities

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from Nick Turse’s October 13, 2016 piece in the Intercept According to a startling Pentagon video obtained by The Intercept, the future of global cities will be an amalgam of the settings of “Escape from New York” and “Robocop” — with dashes of the “Warriors” and “Divergent” thrown in. It will be a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers. At least that’s the scenario outlined in “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a five-minute video that has been used at the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University. All that stands between the coming chaos and the good people of Lagos and Dhaka (or maybe even New York City) is the U.S. Army, according to the video, which The Intercept obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. [….]  The video was used as part of an “Advanced Special Operations Combating Terrorism” course offered at JSOU earlier this year, for a lesson on “The Emerging Terrorism Threat.” JSOU …

Escalations in a New Cold War

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by Jonathan Marshall, via Consortium News If the United States ever ends up stumbling into a major conventional or nuclear war with Russia, the culprit will likely be two military boondoggles that refused to die when their primary mission ended with the demise of the Soviet Union: NATO and the U.S. anti-ballistic missile (ABM) program. The “military-industrial complex” that reaps hundreds of billions of dollars annually from support of those programs got a major boost this week when NATO established its first major missile defense site at an air base in Romania, with plans to build a second installation in Poland by 2018. Although NATO and Pentagon spokesmen claim the ABM network in Eastern Europe is aimed at Iran, Russia isn’t persuaded for a minute. “This is not a defense system,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. “This is part of U.S. nuclear strategic potential brought [to] . . . Eastern Europe. . . Now, as these elements of ballistic missile defense are deployed, we are forced to think how to neutralize emerging threats …

Some questions for the Pentagon

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by Vaska Pentagon’s most recent briefing and its figures on ISIL numbers in Iraq and Syria raise a lot of questions:  1.  Who is enabling the continuing influx of ISIL recruits into Syria and Iraq? 2.  Why is the US-coalition unable to stop this? 3.  Why, if the US coalition has been as successful as it claims in killing ISIL fighters, did Iraq invite Russia to help it deal with the terrorists? 4.  Which parts of Syria does the US-coalition claim to have liberated from Daesh? 5.  Which parts of Iraq does it claim to have done the same for? 6.  What numbers of ISIL fighters does the US-coalition estimate the Russian military have managed to eliminate in Syria? 7.  Which parts of Syria have been liberated from ISIL due to the work of the Russian military? Perhaps the MSM reporters who are given access to Pentagon briefings will remember to ask such questions in the future and inform us of the answers the US-led military coalition has to them.

VIDEO: TeleSur interview – “Empire never has enough” says former Bush official

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Abby Martin interviews retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former national security advisor to the Reagan administration, who spent years as an assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell during both Bush administrations. Today, he is honest about the unfixable corruption inside the establishment and the corporate interests driving foreign policy. Hear a rare insider’s view of what interests are behind U.S. wars, the manipulation of intelligence, the intertwining of the military and corporate world, and why the U.S. Empire is doomed.

Pentagon: Russian air defense grounds US warplanes in Syria

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Russian S400 anti-aircraft missiles arriving in Syria in late November 2015.   Press TV reports: Russia’s deployment of sophisticated air defense systems in Syria, as part of Moscow’s aerial campaign against Daesh (ISIL) terrorists there, has forced the US to halt manned flights in some parts of the country, says a Pentagon official. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman admitted that advanced Russian air defense systems have complicated the situation for the US-led coalition over the skies in Syria, BloombergView reported on Thursday. Russia deployed its S-400 air defense missile system to the Syrian city of Latakia in the wake of Turkey’s shooting down of its warplane over the Arab country last month. The S-400 has a range of about 400 kilometers and can destroy tactical and strategic aircraft as well as ballistic and cruise missiles. The move has ignited a debate in Washington on how to respond, said another administration official, the report added. The US government could decide to resume flights in support of what it calls “moderate” militants, but that could risk a deadly incident with the …

Boyle: New Pentagon War Manual Reduces Us To “Level of Nazis”

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by Sherwood Ross The Pentagon’s new Law of War Manual(LOWM) sanctioning nuclear attacks and the killing of civilians, “reads like it was written by Hitler’s Ministry of War,” says international law authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois at Champaign. “Historically, this is a terrible development,” he added in an exclusive interview with [Ross]. “We are reducing ourselves to the level of the Nazis.” The grim, 1,165-page-long document, issued in June by the Defense Department’s Office of the General Counsel, also sanctions the use of napalm, herbicides, depleted uranium, and drone missile strikes, among other barbarities. For the full text of the article, please continue reading here.