Ferencz Condemns Drone Attacks: “A Crime Against Humanity” -- 26 Bipartisan Congress Members, UN Question Unmanned Aerial Assaults

 

Innocent people are being blown up…somebody has to write about these things.

Nicole Kidman speaks these words in the film “Hemingway and Gellhorn.”  She plays Martha Gellhorn, perhaps the world’s greatest war correspondent, reacting to the Russians attacking Finland in World War II.

The words hold true today with America’s obsessive drone attacks in its worldwide aggressive war on “terror.”

In news article after news article, reports site American drones killing “suspected terrorists” and often innocent people. On rare cases, the U.S. has actually reported the demise of a leading insurgent. Meanwhile, authorities on international law have responded to the drone attacks, including the latest CIA drone maneuvers in Pakistan and Yemen, with everything from condemnation to wary questioning of their legality.

“The illegal use of armed force knowing that it will inevitably kill large numbers of civilians is a crime against humanity, and those responsible should be held accountable by national and international courts,” Benjamin B. Ferenzc told Peculiar Progressive by email on June 16, when asked for a statement about America’s drone attacks. “The use of any weapon that will unavoidably kill a disproportionate number of non-combatants is an inhumane act that should be condemned and punishable as a crime against humanity under customary international law.” 

Ferencz was the Army’s chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders following World War II. He told the court that the defendants’ chief crime was “aggressive war” which led to all other offences they committed. Sixty years later, in the summer of 2006, he claimed that George W. Bush should be charged with the same crime for ordering the illegal invasion of Iraq. Now Ferencz is condemning his country’s drone assaults. Since drone strikes began under George W. Bush as early as 2001, Ferencz’s complaint of crimes would include both Bush and Barack Obama.

Ferencz isn’t alone in his criticisms. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and 25 fellow Members of Congress  on June 13 wrote to President Obama demanding the White House’s legal justification for “signature” drone strikes, which could significantly increase the risk of killing innocent civilians or those who have no relationship to a potential attack on the U.S.

In their letter, the Congress members specifically sought “the process by which ‘signature’ strikes are authorized and executed (drone strikes where the identity of the person killed is unknown); mechanisms used by the CIA and JSOC to ensure that such killings are legal; the nature of the follow-up that is conducted when civilians are killed or injured; and the mechanisms that ensure civilian casualty numbers are collected, tracked and analyzed.” 

The lawmakers went on to say:

We are concerned that the use of such ‘signature’ strikes could raise the risk of killing innocent civilians or individuals who may have no relationship to attacks on the United States. Our drone campaigns already have virtually no transparency, accountability or oversight. We are further concerned about the legal grounds for such strikes under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

The implications of the use of drones for our national security are profound. They are faceless ambassadors that cause civilian deaths, and are frequently the only direct contact with Americans that the targeted communities have.  They can generate powerful and enduring anti-American sentiment. 

Peculiar Progressive had checked on June 19 with Kucinich’s office to see if Obama had responded to the letter, but had not heard back as of the afternoon.

In a June 1 news story, the Times of India states that “a July 2009 Brookings Institution report shows that 10 civilians die for every one suspected militant from US drone strikes.” Also, the report cites another study by the New American Foundation which “concluded that out of 114 drone attacks in Pakistan, at least 32 per cent of those killed by the strikes were civilians.”

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows drone strikes going back to 2001 in Yemen. Its latest figures as of June 18 for Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia show:

CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan 2004 – 2012

Total US strikes: 332
Obama strikes: 280
Total reported killed: 2,486-3,188
Civilians reported killed: 482-832
Children reported killed: 175
Total reported injured: 1,192-1,308

US Covert Action in Yemen 2001- 2012

Total confirmed US operations (all): 44-54
Total confirmed US drone strikes: 33-43
Possible additional US operations: 95-108
Possible additional US drone strikes: 52-62
Total reported killed (all): 317-884
Total civilians killed (all): 58-138
Children killed (all): 24

US Covert Action in Somalia 2007 – 2012

Total US strikes: 10-21
Total US drone strikes: 3-9
Total reported killed: 58-169
Civilians reported killed: 11-57
Children reported killed: 1-3 

By June 18, Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, brought her concern about American drone attacks in Pakistan to the UN Human Rights Council. According to an advance copy (June 17) of her speech, she stated:

During my visit [to Pakistan the previous week], I also expressed serious concern over the continuing use of armed drones for targeted attacks, in particular because it is unclear that all persons targeted are combatants or directly participating in hostilities. The Secretary-General has expressed concern about the lack of transparency on the circumstances in which drones are used, noting that these attacks raise questions about compliance with distinction and proportionality. I remind States of their international obligation to take all necessary precautions to ensure that attacks comply with international law. I urge them to conduct investigations that are transparent, credible and independent, and provide victims with effective remedies.

Pillay’s statement, while seeming reasonable, is actually a step back for the UN. In October 2009 a UN human rights investigator warned that the U.S. drone attacks might breach international law. Philip Alston told the UN General Assembly:

Of the many concerns that I raised, one has grown dramatically in importance since June [2009]. It concerns the use of unmanned drones or predators to carry out targeted executions. While there may be circumstances in which the use of such techniques is consistent with applicable international law, this can only be determined in light of information about the legal basis on which particular individuals have been targeted, the measures taken to ensure conformity with the international humanitarian law principles of discrimination, proportionality, necessity and precaution, and the steps taken retrospectively to assess compliance in practice. I consider that, unless the US Government moves to answer these questions, it will increasingly be perceived as carrying out indiscriminate killings in violation of international law.

The major question: Considering the gravity of conditions listed in both the Congress members’ June letter and Alston’s 2009 UN report, what’s taken the federal legislators and UN so long to push the drone issue, and with weaker language compared to historic Nazi-prosecutor Ferencz?

The drone strikes agenda surely lies in Obama’s hands, according to The New York Times. In a May 29 article entitled “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane note, “Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the [kill] chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.”

And in an appalling opposition to America’s innocent-until-proven-guilty justice system, the Obama drone policy, according to the Times article, calls any adult a combatant, only judged innocent after death:

It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

 

Asked about the Times article the same day in a press briefing, White House press secretary Jay Carney explained:

I think your [the Times] description of the policy is not quite exact.  I would refer you to John Brennan’s speech not long along on these matters, in which he was very explicit and transparent about methods that are used in our counterterrorism operations and the care that is taken to avoid civilian casualties.  We have at our disposal tools that make avoidance of civilian casualties much easier, and tools that make precision targeting possible in ways that have never existed in the past. 

And I think that this administration’s commitment, this President’s commitment to, A, go after those who would do harm to the United States and do harm to our allies is clear.  This President’s first and primary -- this President’s first priority is the protection of the United States, protection of the citizens of this country, and he takes that responsibility enormously seriously.  And that is why he has pursued the fight against al Qaeda in the very direct way that he has. 

Carney was referring to John O. Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser. In a May 1 speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Brennan said:

Targeted strikes conform to the principle of distinction, the idea that only military objectives may be intentionally targeted and that civilians are protected from being intentionally targeted. With the unprecedented ability of remotely piloted aircraft to precisely target a military objective, while minimizing collateral damage, one could argue that never before has there been a weapon that allows us to distinguish more effectively between an al-Qaida terrorist and innocent civilians.

The statistics offered by the Brookings Institution, The New American Foundation, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism would seem to disagree with Brennan’s assessment.

In columns to come for the Clyde Fitch Report, we’ll have Peculiar Progressive take a look at Obama’s responding, or not, to Congress and the UN, along with other issues dealing with drone attacks overseas and drone surveillance throughout America’s air space.

Nazi prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz on Iraq and Bush: http://www.alternet.org/world/38604/could_bush_be_prosecuted_for_war_crimes/

Congressional letter to Obama regarding drone strikes:

http://kucinich.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=299392

Times of India article with drone statistics:

http://kucinich.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=299392

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s data on drone strikes:

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone-data/

Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speech:

http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2012/06/17/advance-copy-pillays-18-june-address-to-un-human-rights-council/

Investigator Philip Alston’s statement to UN General Assembly:

http://marsgroupkenya.org/pdfs/2009/10/Statement-Alston_GA_2009-3.pdf

The New York Times “kill list” article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

White House press secretary’s May 29 press briefing:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/29/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-52912

John Brennan’s speech on drone policy:

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/01/151778804/john-brennan-delivers-speech-on-drone-ethics

Julian Assange’s Coup d’TV

Julian Assange, the internationally controversial editor-in-chief of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, evidently can’t be silenced. Since mid-April he’s hosted a half-hour TV news-interview show, the latest two with a president who couldn’t be overthrown—Rafael Correa, the chief executive of the Republic of Ecuador—followed this past week with leaders of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London movements.

The U.S. and other western governments have longed to quell Assange’s activities, particularly since 2010 when WikiLeaks posted online hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents on the Iraqi and Afghan invasions, and individual State Department cables.

The Obama administration had considered trying Assange under the Espionage Act, and may still want to. But the Congressional Research Service issued a 2011 report citing problems, including Assange not being a U.S. citizen, and also his classification as a journalist, and freedom of the press.

Obama might like to see him swept away in the dead of night to one of the military’s secret foreign prisons, but Assange’s international profile, journalistic standing, and being located in England would make that a sticky wicket.  Also, Assange has been staying at a mansion outside of London, indicating he has connections (and is situated in a location too politically sensitive and farfetched for a drone strike—even though Congress and Obama now will allow drones throughout America’s airways.} 

So the West seems to have formulated a multi-national effort to legally corral Assange.  A Swedish prosecutor—not a judge—in 2010 issued a rape-molestation warrant for Assange and is seeking his extradition from England. This led last week to the British high court finally ruling that Assange could be extradited, only then to grant Assange’s attorney a delay.

The U.K. Guardian this weekend published a column by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman in which she considers that once Assange ends up in Sweden, he’ll then be extradited to the United States for an espionage trial.

All this political maneuvering while, in the meantime, Assange has been under house arrest just outside of London for nearly two years without being charged with a crime.

Powers that be seem to have figured this would freeze him and silence him.

But Assange has refused to remain mute. He landed the news-interview broadcasts with RT, Russia Today, the Russian television network which is broadcast even in the U.S.—with offices in Washington, New York and Los Angeles.  His shows have been taped primarily at his residence, and aired on Tuesday nights. He’s conducted his interviews either by Skype, or in person at his residence. His subjects have included international newsmakers, ranging from his premiere interview with the head of Hezbollah, Sayyid Nasrallah, to the leaders mentioned above. He actually interviewed the Occupy movement mainstays in London.

Assange’s news show represents a savvy legal and professional maneuver.

The Legal Angle

First, it solidifies his international standing as a journalist. He’s talking to newsmakers well known outside the U.S., but basically shunned by the conglomerate-controlled major media.  And this position as a working international journalist should help him in his legal stance if extradited to America.

Peculiar Progressive, in a column published in the Clyde Fitch Report last year, reviewed the Congressional Research Service report on Assange and the espionage law.  The CRS report noted that government precedent has been not to prosecute anyone in Assange’s journalistic position for having leaked classified information publicly.

“Leaks of classified information to the press have only rarely been punished as crimes, and we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it,” explains legislative attorney Jennifer K. Elsea in her Sept. 8, 2011 CRS report, “Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information.” “There may be First Amendment implications that would make such a prosecution difficult, not to mention political ramifications based on concerns about government censorship.”

Assange’s attorney has the CRS report and more to present, should the U.S. extradite Assange:

The New York Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller wrote in October 2010 that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had sent an Aug. 16, 2010 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, diffusing the threat of the WikiLeaks Pentagon-document revelations. In his letter, Gates told Levin, "...the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure."

Times blogger Robert Mackey recapped the Bumiller report in his Jan. 19, 2011 post where he wrote about the State Department also judging WikiLeaks’ other mass release of diplomatic cables as basically unharmful to U.S. security. Mackey wrote that an unnamed Congressional aide told Reuters the leak "was embarrassing but not damaging."

Those two news reports would seem to dampen Obama Administration efforts in court. When added to precedence cited by attorney Elsea in her CRS review, a government case would seem even weaker.

The Professional Angle

Through the lengthy TV news interviews, Assange is proving himself a knowledgeable journalist, and one respected by his interviewees.  He opens to an international TV audience the philosophies and experiences of the likes of two prominent Arab Spring figures, Egypt’s Alaa Abd El-Fattah and Bahrain’s Nabeel Rajab. They spoke about fighting against oppressive regimes and what should come in their place.  On another show, Tunisia’s new president Moncef Marzouki has vowed to protect human rights in the “new” Tunisia.

The presidents of Ecuador and Tunisia don’t sit in front of a Skype lens for half an hour unless they value the interviewer and the medium. That should be clear to any audience.

And you can bet Assange and his subjects know the audience is vast, and can be lasting. Vast because RT is broadcast through 22 satellite and 230 cable operators throughout the world.  Lasting because it can spread and be filed, particularly by the younger generation, through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the other social media nets.

That’s a hefty audience for Assange to reach, and one that can respond politically to his treatment by the world’s governments.

That’s something, no doubt, Obama will be paying close attention to. He may want to punish Assange for forcing transparency on America and the West. But he’s also facing election in November. And it’s tight.

ABC News reported this week, “Obama still beats Romney in favorable ratings overall, by an 11-point margin, 52 vs. 41 percent. But that's down from 21 points last month, giving Romney the better trajectory. And both get only even divisions among registered voters, marking the closeness of the race between them.”

A CNN poll released June 1 listed Obama leading by only three percentage points.

Those types of numbers should have Obama weighing whether he wants to challenge Assange and risk further alienating his voter base, to which he had promised increased transparency, along with a vow that he would honor the Constitution. It’s Bill of Rights, of course, includes freedom of the press, which is also covered in the CRS report on Assange.

Or Obama may want to move ahead with extradition and prosecution of Assange, hoping to endear himself more to the right, where he’s leaned more and more in his suppressive administration.

(Peculiar Progressive will rejoin the Clyde Fitch Report out of New York City when it renews publication later in June.)

Amy Goodman’s Guardian column on Assange:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/31/americas-vendetta-against-wikileaks-julian-assange

The New York Times’ topics article on Assange:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/julian_p_assange/index.html

Congressional Research Service Report on publishing classified information:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R41404.pdf

Article on Secretary Gates to Sen. Levin:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17gates.html

Robert Mackey blog on WikiLeaks:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/u-s-officials-reportedly-said-wikileaks-revelations-were-not-damaging/

RT’s articles on the Julian Assange Show:

http://rt.com/tags/the-julian-assange-show/

Assange’s television news-interview shows:

http://assange.rt.com/

 ABC’s Obama-Romney poll:

http://news.yahoo.com/romney-rebounds-among-women-while-obamas-favorability-slips-160054648--abc-news-politics.html

CNN’s poll:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/cnn-poll-president-obama-and-mitt-romney-in-dead-heat/2012/06/01/gJQAU40g7U_blog.html?wprss=rss_campaigns

Memorial Day: Recalling and Caring for Our Constant Brave

How shall we recall and care for these, our constant brave: the individuals who have volunteered, trained, and sacrificed so much in the name of America and its military?

First, let’s remember the solemn oath they have taken when inducted into the armed services. Here’s the Army enlistment oath:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Millions of courageous men and women have taken this oath. When they did, they should have received the right to demand an oath in return from us, the American people: to support and protect them from elected officials who have allowed the flagrant expansion of a military-industrial complex which Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about.

Eisenhower saw the dangers of money and power turning America’s military missions into greedy, aggressive, endless war for the sake of the profit of a few, rather than the protection of many. On leaving the presidency in 1961, this greatest of World War II’s heroes, a Republican, said publicly:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Are we “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry?”

Would an alert and knowledgeable citizenry allow a homeless population of over 600,000 to exist in the U.S., with one-third of them consisting of our military veterans?

Would we allow 18 U.S. veterans, men and women, to daily commit suicide, primarily due to psychiatric drugs? (ABC News)

Would we allow our dedicated warriors to be sent into an aggressive invasion based on a lie, and which our political leaders knew would turn into a quagmire?

Listen to Dick Cheney’s explaining in 1984 why George H.W. Bush refused to invade Iraq’s capitol of Baghdad, which would put our military irrationally in harm’s way:

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. 

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? 

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right. 

Cheney didn’t get it right the second time on Iraq, when the U.S. invaded, resulting in the death of over 4,400 U.S. forces (as of Feb. 13) and nearly 32,000 wounded. Add to that over 16,600 Iraqi military and police, 26,000 Iraqi “insurgents” and over 66,000 civilian deaths.

All this, because George W. Bush lied to his electorate and the world about Weapons of Mass Destruction existing in Iraq. And Colin Powell carried that lie to the United Nations. Powell’s former chief of staff, U.S. Army Col. (ret.) Lawrence B. Wilkerson—

who helped prepare Powell for his U.N. speech—said Powell wasn’t aware of the falsehoods in his presentation, but it was a “hoax.” Wilkerson told PBS in 2006:

I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing…

…we turned to the National Intelligence estimate as part of the recommendation of George Tenent and my agreement with. But even that turned out to be, in its substantive parts--that is stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals and production capability that was hot and so forth, and an active nuclear program. The three most essential parts of that presentation turned out to be absolutely false.

The Afghanistan invasion—prompted by 9/11, which appeared to be set up by the Bush administration (see Peculiar Progressive column “The Afghanistan Plan: A Pipeline, an Invasion, a Pipeline, and an “Exodus”)—followed by America’s Iraqi aggression both cost the U.S. over one trillion dollars. According to the Congressional Research Service report from March 29, 2011:

…based on DOD, State Department/USAID, and Department of Veterans Administration budget submissions, the cumulative total appropriated from the 9/11 for those war operations, diplomatic operations, and medical care for Iraq and Afghan war veterans is $1.283 trillion including:

$806 billion for Iraq;

$444 billion for Afghanistan;

$29 billion for enhanced security; and

$6 billion unallocated

While the decade-long quagmires have bled our brave military and our taxpayers, Cheney’s folks seem to have profited from the invasions. Before becoming vice-president, he was serving as CEO of Halliburton. That corporation and its subsidiaries, while Cheney was vice president, pulled in billions from work in Iraq and Afghanistan. While it’s difficult to get a total figure, sources list Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) getting $16 billion in contracts from 2004-06 alone. Politifact cites KBR government work for Iraq reconstruction from 2001-10 of $31 billion. Cheney was vice president from 2001-2008. Halliburton broke ties with KBR in 2007.

Halliburton, of course, wasn’t the only corporate profiteer benefiting from the efforts of our American brave.  In the sources listed at this column’s end, you can find links to the top 20 and top 100 defense contractors.

Eisenhower pointed out in his farewell address that the military-industrial complex was something new in the ’50s. America’s founding fathers opposed a standing army, and the U.S. basically didn’t have one until World War II when the Nazi onslaught required it.  America’s brave met that onslaught and defeated it.

In the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders, the Army’s chief prosecutor Benjamin Ferenccz, told the court that the defendants’ chief crime was “aggressive war” which led to all other offences they committed. Sixty years later, in the summer of 2006, he claimed that Bush should be charged with the same crime:

The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States, formulated by the United States, in fact, after World War II. It says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, ‘Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do.’ The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter.

But, of course, Congress refused to impeach Bush or Cheney, and reluctantly and rarely has prosecuted contractors. Only our brave warriors and their families are expected to suffer patriotically, with death, physical wounds, and psychological trauma. As are the civilian victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the truth is, our military brave will suffer patriotically. They have dedicated and trained themselves to do so. Some do it without questioning. A few have challenged our government on its endless, aggressive war, and paid the consequences under military law.

This conniving by the military-industrial complex isn’t new. Our experience with the Vietnam quagmire surely should have taught us. Our young soldiers and sailors and airmen and women may not be old enough to remember it. But members of Congress are certainly aware of its history, as is the American taxpayer.

Now the White House is making war taunts toward Pakistan, Syria, and heavily toward Iran. Powell’s Col. Wilkerson, in the documentary “The Israel Lobby,” predicted that, if the U.S. attacks Iran, the American military will see a major exodus of veteran officers who oppose aggressive war.

How can we stop the military-industrial complex from embroiling us in future fiascos like Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq? We need to remove any president and Congress that continues the profiteering practice, and replace them. And we need to get Congress and the White House to truly regulate and break up the mammoth conglomerates that have taken control of government.

It will require the American voters to get organized, get educated and get active.  It will take work to become the “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” Eisenhower encouraged us to become. As citizens, at a minimum, we owe our brave military forces and veterans that much.

The Army enlistment oath: http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html

Eisenhower on military-industrial complex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY&feature=related

Eisenhower’s full farewell address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWiIYW_fBfY&feature=related

Details of the military-industrial complex:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

Homeless American veterans: http://voices.yahoo.com/our-lost-soldiers-wandering-americas-10480585.html?cat=70

The New York Times articles on homeless: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/homeless_persons/index.html

Veterans’ suicides: http://www.cchrint.org/2011/06/04/18-u-s-veterans-commit-suicide-daily-largely-due-to-psychiatric-drugs/

Military women’s suicides: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/47556147/ns/today-today_health/#.T8EvF1Kdh8E

Cheney on Iraq in ’94: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

http://www.infowars.com/articles/iraq/cheney_video_1994_warning_of_iraq_invasion_quagmire.htm

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson interview about “hoax”:

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/wilkerson.html

Total cost of Iraq and Afghanistan invasions:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

http://costofwar.com/en/

Halliburton: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=15

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/09/arianna-huffington/halliburton-kbr-and-iraq-war-contracting-history-s/

Top defense contractors:

http://defensesystems.com/articles/2010/05/27/top-20-defense-contractors.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors

Nazi prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz on Iraq: http://www.alternet.org/world/38604/could_bush_be_prosecuted_for_war_crimes/

The Afghanistan Plan: A Pipeline, an Invasion, a Pipeline, and an “Exodus”

“Instead of liberating the people, I was liberating their oil fields,” the military veteran claimed before throwing his medal off the platform into the street.

“I have one word for this global war on terrorism medal, and it is shame,” another said, then turned and tossed away his award, as shown in the news film clip on Chicago’s local CBS affiliate.

The two speakers were in an anti-NATO group of some 50 military veterans who threw their medals in the street, protesting America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. That was on Sunday near the NATO summit in Chicago.

Today, Monday, Barack Obama and other leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced they had agreed to an “irreversible transition” in Afghanistan, meaning they would finally bring to an end the violent invasion. After 2014, “this will not be a combat mission,” the NATO summit’s communiqué stated.

Can we believe them? Probably not. The international military-industrial complex must have endless, aggressive war, or else its purpose would cease to exist.

Also on Monday, Reuters reported this treacherous irony:

“Turkmenistan plans this week to sign a long-awaited agreement to supply natural gas to Pakistan and India through an ambitious U.S.-backed pipeline that would cross Afghanistan, a source in the Central Asian country's government told Reuters on Monday.”

Long-awaited indeed. Peculiar Progressive reported in the New York City-based Clyde Fitch Report two years ago about Western oil companies’ decades-long effort to secure a trans-Afghan pipeline. We cited the necessity for power and the pipeline as the U.S.’s chief reason for invading Afghanistan, supporting the report with the following facts:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor from 1977-81, has for decades espoused the need for America to control Eurasia: i.e. the uninterrupted landmass of Europe and Asia. To have this occur, he knew Russia needed to be weakened. He encouraged and got Carter to sign a directive to provide secret support to opponents of Afghanistan’s Soviet-supported regime, leading America’s chief foe to intervene in Afghanistan in 1979. Brzezinski has called that “Russia’s Vietnam,” meaning the aid to Russia’s decline through a military quagmire.

Brzezinski explained the plan in a 1998 interview in the French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur:

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap…The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Brzenzinski also has recognized the importance of controlling the flow of energy as the key to power in Eurasia. He reviews this within three paragraphs of his 1998 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives:

About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources. (p. 31)

The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea. (p. 125)

America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy. (p. 194)

Control of the flow of natural gas and oil was also of primary importance to America’s and other Western oil companies. As Larry Chin wrote in the March 3, 2002 issue of Online Journal:

As of 1992, 11 western oil companies controlled more than 50 percent of all oil investments in the Caspian Basin, including Unocal, Amoco, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Pennzoil, Texaco, Phillips and British Petroleum.

They also became actively involved in efforts to create a trans-Afghan pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. And familiar American political names were associated with those Western oil companies. Chin notes:

The United States government, its affiliated transnational oil and construction companies, and the ruling elite of the West had coveted the same oil and gas transit route for years… Among the most active operatives for US efforts: Brzezinski (a consultant to Amoco, and architect of the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1970s), Henry Kissinger (advisor to Unocal), and Alexander Haig (a lobbyist for Turkmenistan), and Dick Cheney (Halliburton, US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce).

Even the Taliban, when ruling Afghanistan, had come close to an oil-companies contract to build a trans-Afghan pipeline, but that plan fell apart due to both a civil war and Bill Clinton’s August 1998 order for a missile strike in Afghanistan.

By the time George W. Bush entered the White House in 2000, he brought Cheney with him as his Vice President, along with Condoleezza Rice, who had sat on Chevron’s board, as his Secretary of State.

The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon gave Bush the reason he needed to invade Afghanistan. But a week after those attacks, the BBC reported:

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

It would seem logical that those Bush officials would know that Naik would carry that information back and share it with Pakistan’s neighbor Afghanistan, setting up a pre-emptive strike on the U.S.

Once having invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, Bush set up a new government led by Hamid Karzai, who remains the current Afghan president.  By May 2002, Karzai was planning a $2 billion trans-Afghan pipeline. The continuing war has delayed those plans until the new plans this week.

Despite the NATO announcement today, look for continued U.S. and western military involvement in protecting the pipeline efforts, and America’s continued desire to control Eurasia.

(Peculiar Progressive will rejoin the New York City-based Clyde Fitch Report when it renews publication in early June.)

Veterans throw away medals:

http://news.yahoo.com/veterans-symbolically-discard-medals-anti-nato-rally-235355143.html

NATO leaders seal end to Afghan invasion:

http://news.yahoo.com/nato-signals-end-afghan-war-sight-west-195601871.html

Turkmenistan plans trans-Afghan pipeline:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/gas-turkmenistan-idUKL5E8GL0RA20120521

Zbigniew Brzezinski interview in Le Nouvel Observateur:

http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview

Larry Chin’s article on Afghan pipeline connections: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html

An Afghan pipeline ‘90s timeline: http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm

BBC story on Bush plans to attack Afghanistan:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm

Karzai’s 2002 pipeline plans:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm

Making Your Mission Impossible Possible: Occupy the Presidency, Congress, and the Banks

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies...The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Last week, JPMorgan Chase reported losing $2 billion, which may go to $3 billion or more: a massive gamble reportedly on derivatives and credit default swaps, chief culprits in the 2008 world economic meltdown.

This week, news reports verify that Barack Obama has a private account with JPMorgan Chase between half a million to $1 million, according to his financial report. “This is a checking account used by the president and the first lady,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage told the press. "It is the equivalent of an interest-bearing checking account available at many other financial institutions.”

This week also, Obama calls JPMorgan Chase “one of the best managed banks there is.”

If Obama is accurate, and that’s the best managing a mammoth bank can do, then this is clear: the giant banks are not too big to fail. They are too big to remain. They are too big to be regulated. They need to be broken up.

Will that happen?

Not the way things are going. Last week, look what Reuters reported:

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved applications by three big Chinese government-controlled banks to set up branches and take stakes in U.S. banks after deciding they were adequately regulated in their home market.

Bank regulation, already in chaos, is about to fall even more at the mercy of the multinational corporate onslaught.

A majority of Congress consists of millionaires. From the latest report, Obama appears to be a millionaire, or close to it.

Knowing the above facts, do you really expect Congress and the president to legally change or regulate the banking system?

 

Nope. They’re obviously in government for the money.

YOU THE PEOPLE must create a major power shift.

You are going to have to toss out the president and Congress and elect fresh blood, courageous officials who aren’t a part of the insidious military-industrial complex, who will break it up and return America to a true democracy.  

You can start by demanding that Congress get rid of the bank holding companies, and separate the banks from their gambling racket they call “investment.” JPMorgan Chase is at the top of these bank holding companies.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission cited among the chief reasons for the 2008 meltdown “excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency.” Its report specifically blamed trading in over-the-counter derivatives and credit default swaps, along with complex bundling of home mortgages.

In 2012, nothing has changed. Nor will it change, unless YOU change it.

That doesn’t mean voting for Mitt Romney, who is just another millionaire Wall Street crony.

It will mean voting for an alternative for president, and someone outside the ruling Democratic and Republican parties’ millionaires, someone who doesn't cozy to the military-banking-industrial elite.

Do you have the knowledge and courage to do that? Are you willing to get organized, get educated, and get active and take this country back? If not, then, as Edward R. Murrow used to say, “Goodnight, and good luck.”

But if you are, then you have the choice of voting for the smaller, alternative parties the major media won’t tell you about. Or you’ll have to organize an aggressive write-in campaign, perhaps for a nationally known alternative like Ron Paul, a maverick millionaire libertarian and a vocal opponent of the Federal Reserve, the banking system, and the military-industrial complex’s dedication to aggressive war. Surely others like him exist out there, who aren’t even millionaires.

Knowing how dishonest power in national politics works, the odds are against you.

But if Jefferson were here today, he would tell you about how beating impossible odds formed the United States of America. How an oppressed people, deprived of rights and fed up with dictatorship and repression by a military policing force, moved, and kept moving with faith and action. They overcame such a superior foe, against such insane odds, that Las Vegas today wouldn’t even risk putting them on the board.

But the American people did it. And you can do it, too. But you’ll have to quit being afraid. You’ll have to get real, get humble, and unite. Educate yourself to your choices. Then, as the young today love to say: BRING IT!

Thomas Jefferson quotes: http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/private-banks-quotation

JPMorgan Chase’s loss: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2012/0515/JP-Morgan-loss-Did-US-regulators-know-what-CEO-Jamie-Dimon-apparently-didn-t-video

Obama’s JPMorgan Chase account: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/15/uk-jpmorgan-obama-idUKBRE84E1IX20120515

Chinese banks move in: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/09/usa-fed-china-banks-idUSL1E8G9G3720120509

Bank holding companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_holding_company

The top bank holding companies: http://www.ffiec.gov/nicpubweb/nicweb/Top50Form.aspx

Financal Crisis Inquiry Commission Report: http://fcic.law.stanford.edu/report/

Your and Your Children’s Return to a Cold…or Hot…War

Ivo Daalder, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), last week seemed to be in a state of denial or ignorance when discussing a planned U.S.-led ballistic missile defense system’s effect on Russia. His position should be of particular concern to Americans, because implementing such a system grinds us directly into another cold war, if not a hot one. And it also directly affects America’s massive and growing deficit, which will plague our children and generations beyond.

In speaking at a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington last Monday, Daalder said that Moscow was wary of the proposed missile defense system, and even wanted legal assurances the system wouldn’t threaten Russia.

Daalder said that the missile system’s placement “doesn’t concern Russia” because its sights will be on the Middle East, which must mean Iran and Syria. Although Daalder didn’t mention those two countries specifically, the U.S. Defense Department in a May 3 briefing in Moscow did:

“Shorter-range threats within key regions are growing rapidly: Iran, Syria, and North Korea possess 1000s of short-and medium-range missiles, potentially threatening to U.S. forces, allies, and partners,” the PowerPoint briefing said in its opening point “Ballistic Missile Threat Continues to Advance.” Yet the briefing also said, while the U.S. will provide missile defense to protect itself and its European partners, the defense system isn’t aimed at Russia.

Here’s the problem with that rationale: for a long time, Russia has aligned itself with Iran. At one point, while visiting Iran along with other Middle-East countries’ reps—to discuss their mutual relationship regarding natural gas supplies and distribution—Russian President Vladimir Putin and the other nations agreed that an attack on any one of their natural-gas alliance members, including Iran, would be an attack on all of them.

More recently, in January 2012, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO, said, “Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security.”

So, are Daalder, who represents the Obama administration and our country, and the Defense Department really not aware of these threatening goings-on? Are they in denial about Russia’s position? Or do they think America’s citizens who heard his question-answer session last Monday aren’t smart enough to catch the administration’s untruth, or can’t connect the dots between Russia and Iran’s relationship?

Daalder also told the Washington crowd that NATO is made up of 28 countries and is a Democratic organization in which each nation has a voice and vote in determining NATO policy and actions.

To anyone who understands money and power, that stance is hard to swallow. NATO receives funding from each of the nations, but four of those countries—the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France—provide 60% of the funds. The U.S. contributes nearly 22%. Do you really think those major funders don’t decide the directions NATO takes?

We’ll get a clearer view of that later this month, when NATO holds its 25^th summit in Chicago May 20-21. The agenda will include Afghanistan’s future. Also, the media is speculating that France’s new socialist president Francois Hollande may want to pull his country out of NATO. That would mean a loss of 12% of NATO’s funding. If that happens, who do you suspect NATO would eye to make up that deficit, and increase ours?

Ivo Daalder Q&A:   http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Stepsfo

Funding NATO: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_67655.htm

U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense briefing: http://photos.state.gov/libraries/russia/231771/PDFs/U_S_%20Ballistic%20Missile%20Defense%20Briefing%20ENG.pdf

Russia-Iran alliance: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/russia-should-anything-happen-to-iran-this-will-be-a-direct-threat-to-our-national-security.html

NATO Summit in Chicago: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-18E5B832-418B2ED0/natolive/news_87077.htm

France and NATO:  http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/hollande-victory-rattles-nato-1.1290346

Ivo Daalder:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Daalder