Obama Raises American Hypocrisy To A Higher Level

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
March 30, 2011

What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28 speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a rebellion.

 

Gadhafi has been a black hat for as long as I can remember. If we believe the adage that “where there is smoke there is fire,” Gadhafi is probably not a nice fellow. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the current US president and the predecessor Bush/Cheney regime have murdered many times more people in

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than Gadhafi has murdered in Libya.

 Moreover, Gadhafi is putting down a rebellion against state authority as presently constituted, but Obama and Bush/Cheney initiated wars of aggression based entirely on lies and deception.

Yet Gadhafi is being demonized, and Bush/Cheney/Obama are sitting on their high horse draped in cloaks of morality. Obama described himself as saving Libyans from violence while Obama himself murders Afghans, Pakistanis, and whomever else.

Indeed, the Obama regime has been torturing a US soldier, Bradley Manning, for having a moral conscience. America has degenerated to the point where having a moral conscience is evidence of anti-Americanism and “terrorist activity.”

The Bush/Cheney/Obama wars of naked aggression have bankrupted America. Joseph Stiglitz, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, concluded that the money wasted on the Iraq war could have been used to fix America’s Social Security problem for half a century. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan

Instead, the money was used to boost the obscene profits of the armament industry.
The obscene wars of aggression, the obscene profits of the offshoring corporations, and the obscene bailouts of the rich financial gangsters have left the American public with annual budget deficits of approximately $1.5 trillion. These deficits are being covered by printing money. Sooner or later, the printing presses will cause the US dollar to collapse and domestic inflation to explode. Social Security benefits will be wiped out by inflation rising more rapidly than the cost-of-living adjustments. If America survives, no one will be left but the mega-rich. Unless there is a violent revolution.

Alternatively, if the Federal Reserve puts the brake on monetary expansion, interest rates will rise, sending the economy into a deeper depression.

Washington, focused on its newest war, is oblivious to America’s peril. As Stiglitz notes, the costs of the Iraq war alone could have kept every foreclosed family in their home, provided health care for every American child, and wiped out the student loans of graduates who cannot find jobs because they have been outsoured to foreigners. However, the great democratic elected government of “the world’s only superpower” prefers to murder Muslims in order to enhance the profits of the military/security complex. More money is spent violating the constitutional rights of American air travelers than is spent in behalf of the needy.
The moral authority of the West is rapidly collapsing. When Russia, Asia, and South America look at Europe, Australia and Canada, they see American puppet states that contribute troops to the aggressive wars of the Empire. The French president, the British prime minister, the “president” of Georgia, and the rest are merely functionaries of the American Empire. The puppet rulers routinely sell out the interests and welfare of their peoples in behalf of American hegemony. And they are well rewarded for their service. One year out of office former British prime minister Tony Blair had a net worth of $30 million.
In his war against Libya, Obama has taken America one step further into Caesarism. Obama did Bush one step better and did not even bother to get congressional authorization for his attack on Libya. Obama claimed that his moral authority trumped the US Constitution. The hypocrisy reeks. How the public stands it, I do not know:

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and–more profoundly–our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

This from the Great Moral Leader who every day murders civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and now Libya and who turns a blind eye when “the great democracy in the Middle East,” Israel, murders more Palestinians.

The American president, whose drones and air force slaughter civilians every day of the year went on to say Libya stands alone in presenting the world with “the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.” Obviously, Obama thinks that one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and an unknown number of murdered Afghans is just a small thing.

The rest of Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984.
How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

Webster Tarpley: Al Qaeda does US dirty work in Libya

Obama’s Bay of Pigs in Libya: Imperialist Aggression Shreds UN Charter

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
March 19, 2011

Tarpley at anti-war rally at the White House, Washington DC, March 19, 2011

Washington DC, March 19 – Late today US and British cruise missiles joined with French and other NATO combat aircraft in Operation Odyssey Dawn/Operation Ellamy, a neo-imperialist bombing attack under fake humanitarian cover against the sovereign state of Libya. Acting under UN Security Council resolution 1973, US naval forces in the Mediterranean on Saturday night local time fired 112 cruise missiles at targets which the Pentagon claimed were related to Libya’s air defense system. But Mohammed al-Zawi, the Secretary General of the Libyan Parliament, told a Tripoli press conference that the “barbaric armed attack” and “savage aggression” had hit residential areas and office buildings as well as military targets, filling the hospitals of Tripoli and Misurata with civilian victims. Zawi accused the foreign powers of acting to protect a rebel leadership which contains notorious terrorist elements. The Libyan government repeated its request for the UN to send international observers to report objectively on events in Libya.
The attacking forces are expected to deploy more cruise missiles, Predator drones, and bombers, seeking to destroy the Libyan air defense system as a prelude to the systematic decimation of Libyan ground units. International observers have noted that US intelligence about Libya may be substandard, and that many cruise missiles may indeed have struck non-military targets.
Libya had responded to the UN vote by declaring a cease-fire, but Obama and Cameron brushed that aside. On Saturday, France 24 and al-Jazeera of Qatar, international propaganda networks hyping the attacks, broadcast hysterical reports of Qaddafi’s forces allegedly attacking the rebel stronghold of Bengazi. They showed a picture of a jet fighter being shot down and claimed this proved Qaddafi was defying the UN by keeping up his air strikes. It later turned out that the destroyed plane had belonged to the rebel air force. Such coverage provided justification for the bombing attacks starting a few hours later. The parallels to the Kuwait incubator babies hoax of 1990 were evident. Qaddafi loyalists said Saturday’s fighting was caused by rebel assaults on government lines in the hopes of provoking an air attack, plus local residents defending themselves against the rebels.
At the UN vote, the Indian delegate correctly pointed out that the decision to start the war had been made on the basis of no reliable information whatsoever, since UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon’s envoy to Libya had never reported to the Security Council. The bombing started shortly after a glittering Paris summit “in support of the Libyan people,” where Sarkozy, Cameron, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Harper of Canada and other imperialist politicians had strutted and postured.
Token contingents from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia were supposed to take part in the attack, but were nowhere to be seen, while some Arab states were expected to provide financial support. The minimum estimated cost of maintaining a no-fly zone over Libya for one year is estimated in the neighborhood of $15 billion – enough to fund WIC high-protein meals for impoverished US mothers and infants for two years.

From no-fly zone to regime change

 

The alleged purpose of the bombing was to establish a no-fly zone and to protect a force of CIA-sponsored Libyan rebels composed of the Moslem Brotherhood, elements of the Libyan government and army subverted by the CIA (including such sinister figures as former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil and former Interior Minister Fattah Younis), and monarchist Senussi tribesmen holding the cities of Benghazi and Tobruk. But twin Friday ultimatums by President Obama and British premier Cameron, plus a speech by Harper, made clear that the goal was the ouster of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and regime change in the North African oil-producing nation, whose proven reserves of crude are the largest on that continent.
Prospects for military success are uncertain, despite the apparent NATO preponderance. No clear military objective has been articulated, and disagreements about the scope of the war are likely. If Qaddafi’s tanks and infantry are engaged in house to house battles with the rebels in cities like Bengazi and Tobruk, it will be hard for NATO to bring its air superiority to bear without massacring large numbers of civilians.

From hope and change to shock and awe

 

While Obama’s action is being widely compared to the Bush-Cheney 2003 attack on Iraq, parallels to the April 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco are also strong. In that instance, a force of anti-Castro Cubans organized by the CIA was militarily defeated in an attempt to take over Cuba, resulting in calls from Allen Dulles to President Kennedy for air strikes and a ground invasion. Kennedy rejected those calls and fired the Dulles CIA leadership. Obama, faced by the military collapse of a CIA force in Libya, has ordered such bombing, opening a second phase of the present US debacle.
The rebel region of Cerenaica has long been the scene of Moslem brotherhood agitation against Qaddafi, much of it fomented from across the Egyptian border with US assistance. After the failed 1995 assassination attempt against the Libyan leader reported by MI-5 defector David Shayler (for which MI-6 paid £100,000 to an al Qaeda subsidiary), eastern Libya was the scene of a protracted Islamist insurrection. In the wake of events in Tunisia and Egypt, it has become clear that the CIA has stipulated a worldwide alliance against existing Arab governments with the reactionary and oligarchical Muslim brotherhood, which was created by British intelligence in Egypt in the late 1920s. Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), another CIA front, is trumpeting full support for the rebels on its website.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was first to recognize the Benghazi rebels, calling for a no-fly zone and air strikes a week earlier, seconded by British Prime Minister Cameron. Until about 18 hours before the UN vote, top US officials like Secretary of State Clinton and Defense Secretary Gates were stressing the difficulties of a no-fly zone. French Foreign Minister Juppé lamented that it was already too late for a no-fly zone. Then, the US abruptly demanded a no-fly zone plus a blank check for aerial bombing. Diplomatic observers are puzzled by Obama’s turnaround. Was he being blackmailed by the British and the French, the same imperialist coalition that invaded Egypt to seize the Suez Canal back in 1956? Because of Obama’s decision, the US is now at war with a fourth Moslem nation after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. In Pakistan, the simmering conflict is threatening to escalate into the open at any time in the wake of the scandal around CIA contractor Ray Davis, accused by the Pakistanis as a terrorist controller.
The Arab League, surprising many analysts, had voted unanimously for a no-fly zone over Libya. The African Union, by contrast, has resolutely opposed foreign intervention. Western diplomats have discounted the AU position, giving rise to suspicions of racism. These are reinforced by reports that the anti-Qaddafi rebels have lynched a number of black Africans, claiming that they were mercenaries hired by Qaddafi.

Interference in Libyan internal affairs violates UN Charter

 

Diplomatic observers were shocked by the sweeping resolution passed by the Security Council, which allows “all necessary measures” to be used against Libya. The United Nations Charter strictly limits Chapter 7 military actions to threats to international peace and security, which Libya has never represented, but rules out interference in internal affairs of member states. The pretext cited in this case was the protection of defenseless civilians, but it is clear that the rebels constitute an armed military force in their own right. Since no state can be an aggressor on its own territory, the Security Council resolution stands in flagrant violation of the UN Charter. Russia, China, Brazil, Germany, and India abstained. The resolution contains an arms embargo against Libya which the US is already violating by arming the rebels through Egypt.
Among US officials demanding aggression, UN ambassador Susan Rice, Samantha Power of the National Security Council, and Secretary of State Clinton have shown that they are as bellicose as any neocon of the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz school.
The Libyan Air Force has 13 airbases and some 374 combat capable aircraft, many of them obsolete. Military observers will be watching the performance of Qaddafi’s air defenses, thought to be based largely on older Russian SAMs. But Qaddafi also has mobile and hand-held surface to air missiles. During a 1986 bombing raid on Tripoli aimed at killing Qaddafi, the US lost one F-111 to Libyan fire. The Libyan Defense Ministry has warned that Libya would retaliate against incursions by striking at air and maritime traffic over the central Mediterranean. In 1986, Libya fired two Scud missiles at the US Coast Guard station on the Italian island of Lampedusa, but both missed. Whether Qaddafi has used his immense oil revenues to procure more capable modern anti-ship missiles of Russian design is another question that may be answered soon. A further problem for the aggressors is the March 19 supermoon, which will illuminate the night sky for several days; the preferred time for air attacks is the dark of the new moon.
The propaganda choreography of the current aggression, designed to mask Obama’s warmonger role, requires the right-wing leaders of Britain and France, the Suez 1956 partners, to take the lead. Obama has assumed a low profile, not attending then Paris conference, not making a formal Oval Office address to the American people, and letting the French attack first. Obama is visiting Brazil. This charade is supposed to placate the anti-US hatred of the Arab street. The result is that the inferior Anglo-French military equipment and command structures may contribute to unpleasant reverses for the aggressors, particularly if Sarkozy’s Napoleonic delusions lead him to meddle in military decisions.
The Panavia Tornados to be deployed by London are obsolete; seven (6 UK, 1 Italian) were shot down by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War twenty years ago. Eurofighter Typhoons are ultra-modern planes, but they have never been tested in real combat. The troubled French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle flies the Dassault Raffale, also largely untested in combat, plus the accident-plagued 30-year old Super-Étendard. Mirage F1s of various vintages, none recent, are expected. This equipment is vulnerable to attrition by Qaddafi’s countermeasures.
Anglo-American propaganda portrays Qaddafi as a kleptocrat. In reality, Libya is one of the most advanced developing countries, ranking 53 on the UN Human Development Index, making it the most developed society in Africa. Libya ranks ahead of Russia (65), Ukraine (69), Brazil (73), Venezuela (75) and Tunisia (81). The rate of incarceration is 61st in the world, below that of the Czech Republic, and far below that of the United States (1). Longevity has increased by 20 years under Qaddafi’s rule. Qaddafi, while suppressing political challenges, had shared the nation’s oil income better than the rest of OPEC.
US bureaucratic resistance to the imperial overstretch involved in a war with Libya on top of the three existing conflicts may also have been overcome thanks to the activation of pro-British networks in the US government. If so, this would repeat a long-established pattern. In 1990, Margaret Thatcher claimed to have performed an emergency “backbone implant” on George H.W. Bush, convincing him to retake Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. In 1999, Tony Blair pressed for the bombing of Serbia and then for a ground invasion; Clinton wisely declined at least the latter. In September 2001, Blair helped convince Bush the younger to use the 9/11 attack as a pretext for an attack on Afghanistan.
The purpose of this attack, in the context of the CIA’s spring 2011 campaign of putsches, palace coups, color revolutions, and people power insurrections, is to cripple the ability of US client states to seek alternative arrangements through alliances with Russia, China, Iran, and other states. The CIA onslaught takes the form of an attack on the nation state itself. In 2008, Serbia was partitioned. This year, Sudan is being carved in two, while Yemen is increasingly likely to face the same fate. The UN resolution of Libya mentions Bengazi specifically, indicating the clear intent of partitioning and balkanizing this nation along an east-west division. Other countries can expect similar treatment. It is time to end the destructive cycle of color revolutions before one of them turns into a civil war in a country like Belarus, where an internal clash could easily turn into a large-scale confrontation between Russia and NATO

The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq

 

2007 West Point Study Shows Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk Area was a World Leader in Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Recruitment

“Serpents, thirst, heat, and sand … Libya alone can present a multitude of woes that it would beseem men to fly from.”
Lucan, Pharsalia

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
March 24, 2011

Washington DC, March 24, 2011 — The current military attack on Libya has been motivated by UN Security Council resolution 1973 with the need to protect civilians. Statements by President Obama, British Prime Minister Cameron, French President Sarkozy, and other leaders have stressed the humanitarian nature of the intervention, which is said to aim at preventing a massacre of pro-democracy forces and human rights advocates by the Qaddafi regime.
But at the same time, many commentators have voiced anxiety because of the mystery which surrounds the anti-Qaddafi transitional government which emerged at the beginning of March in the city of Benghazi, located in the Cyrenaica district of north-eastern Libya. This government has already been recognized by France and Portugal as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The rebel council seems to be composed of just over 30 delegates, many of whom are enveloped in obscurity. In addition, the names of more than a dozen members of the rebel council are being kept secret, allegedly to protect them from the vengeance of Qaddafi. But there may be other reasons for the anonymity of these figures. Despite much uncertainty, the United Nations and its several key NATO countries, including the United States, have rushed forward to assist the armed forces of this rebel regime with air strikes, leading to the loss of one or two coalition aircraft and the prospect of heavier losses to come, especially if there should be an invasion. It is high time that American and European publics learned something more about this rebel regime which is supposed to represent a democratic and humanitarian alternative to Gaddafi.
The rebels are clearly not civilians, but an armed force. What kind of an armed force?
Since many of the rebel leaders are so difficult to research from afar, and since a sociological profile of the rebels cannot be done on the ground in the midst of warfare, perhaps the typical methods of social history can be called on for help. Is there a way for us to gain deeper insight into the climate of opinion which prevails in such northeastern Libyan cities as Benghazi, Tobruk, and Darnah, the main population centers of the rebellion?

Download West Point Study (pdf)

It turns out that there is, in the form of a December 2007 West Point study examining the background of foreign guerrilla fighters — jihadis or mujahedin, including suicide bombers — crossing the Syrian border into Iraq during the 2006-2007 timeframe, under the auspices of the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda. This study is based on a mass of about 600 Al Qaeda personnel files which were captured by US forces in the fall of 2007, and analyzed at West Point using a methodology which we will discuss after having presented the main findings. The resulting study¹ permits us to make important findings about the mentality and belief structures of the northeastern Libyan population that is furnishing the basis for the rebellion, permitting important conclusions about the political nature of the anti-Qaddafi revolt in these areas.

Darnah, northeast Libya: World Capital of Jihadis

The most striking finding which emerges from the West Point study is that the corridor which goes from Benghazi to Tobruk, passing through the city of Darnah (also transliterated as Derna) them represents one of the greatest concentrations of jihadi terrorists to be found anywhere in the world, and by some measures can be regarded as the leading source of suicide bombers anywhere on the planet. Darnah, with one terrorist fighter sent into Iraq to kill Americans for every 1,000 to 1,500 persons of population, emerges as suicide bomber heaven, easily surpassing the closest competitor, which was Riyad, Saudi Arabia.

Read more

LIBYA TARGETED

By James P. Tucker Jr.
AFP.net

Bilderberg luminaries—those “world citizens” who meet secretly each year in sealed-off resorts to control governments, resources, money and people—are reportedly secretly plotting to push the United States into a  broader war across the Middle East and Iran, apparently on Israel’s behalf. 

British newspapers have reported extensively on  the collaboration of the Bilderberg boys, including “Nat” Rothschild of the infamous banking family and other luminaries, with Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi’s son, Saif. In the United States, only AFP is exposing this collusion of billionaires. 

Young Rothschild gave a party when Saif completed his Ph.D. on “global governance” at the London School of Economics (LSE), a long-established incubator for those who enter the world of high finance and other power channels. Other Bilderberg boys who hung around with the young Qadaffi included Sir Howard Davies, director of the LSE and one of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s British envoys to Libya  regarding economics. Blair was also present. So was Lord Peter Mandelson, a Blair adviser, cabinet minister and European commissioner, who now advises “companies hoping to expand markets overseas.”

Saif became the conduit through which the British companies invested in Libya, and through which the Libyan Investment Authority invested in British companies. Bilderberg-connected banks in the United States also get a piece of the action.

Why are these Bilderbergers interested in sowing unrest in Libya? Mainly to provoke war that generates immense profits. A full-scale civil war in Libya, they evidently believe, will enflame the entire region, thus “threatening Israel” and prompting the U.S. military to enter the fray.

This writer was personally told that Mandelson had been overheard saying, “If we can get the U.S. and European allies to attack Libya, the whole Middle East will erupt and an attack on Iran will surely result.  Israel may want to join in as a bow to patriotism, but it will be mostly a U.S. action. And we can make it a big action.”  
 
 On the other side, the protesters are being “run by the White House,” Yemini President Ali Abdullah Saleh, an American ally, claimed on March 1. In a    speech, he asked President Obama: “Are you president of the United States or president of the world?”

 That is a fair question to ask the leader of a nation already devoted to undeclared military actions 365 days a year across the globe, including various clandestine operations in Pakistan and elsewhere.

AFP editor James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Since 1975 he has won widespread recognition, here and abroad, for his pursuit of on-the-scene stories reporting the intrigues of global power blocs such as the Bilderberg Group. Tucker is the author of Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary: One Man’s 25-Year Battle to Shine the Light on the World Shadow Government. Bound in an attractive full-color softcover and containing 272 pages—loaded with photos, many never published before—the book recounts Tucker’s experiences over the last quarter century at Bilderberg meetings. $25 from AFP. No charge for S&H in U.S.

TIME: Everything is Tracked– Get Over It

Aaron Dykes
Infowars.com
March 13, 2011

In an astounding cover story for the March 21 issue called ‘Your Data for Sale,’ TIME tells its readers to “get over” constant surveillance. The tagline, “Everything about you is being tracked– get over it” puts the issue in your face. Yeah, get over it, and the TSA porno-scanners and grope-downs, too.
Newsweek, another Skull and Bones-dominated media organ, similarly published a shocker in 2009 with its cover story, ‘The Case for Killing Granny,’ preparing the masses to simply accept massive shifts in society’s norms as if it were a trifling occurrence. Unauthorized NSA wiretapping and other related surveillance (started long ago) was at least controversial during the Bush Administration, though it has unabashedly continued under Obama.



In an interview with CNN, author of the article, Joel Stein, makes light of the fact that his social security number (and lots of other personal data), as well as that of his family members, were easily found online. Stein and CNN host Kiran Chetry giggle like schoolgirls about Facebook’s exploitation of personal data, and the many other data-mining companies who keep “permanent files” on us. Stein even quips that he has “blackmail material” now on his mother and sister, whose SSN numbers he obtained during his research. Stein further called personalized-ads on systems like Google’s G-MAIL “kinda cool.” That’s right, now that we’re at the heart of a big brother system, 1984 is kinda cute-and-fuzzy.

Gadget, covering the story, has posted an article ‘How to Opt Out of Everything Online‘ with information on how to opt-out from many of the online data companies. Below is the first of a long-list of resources and/or preference settings where you can lobby to take yourself off of the datamining lists.

How a Libyan No-fly Zone Could Backfire

www.stratfor.com

JOHN MOORE/Getty Images

Libyan rebels on March 7 load an anti-aircraft gun near oil facilities in Ras Lanuf

By George Friedman
Calls are growing for a no-fly zone over Libya, but a power or coalition of powers willing to enforce one remains elusive.
In evaluating such calls, it is useful to remember that in war, Murphy’s Law always lurks. What can go wrong will go wrong, in Libya as in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Complications to Airstrikes

 

It has been pointed out that a no-fly zone is not an antiseptic act. In order to protect the aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone, one must begin by suppressing enemy air defenses. This in turn poses an intelligence problem. Precisely what are Libyan air defenses and where are they located? It is possible to assert that Libya has no effective air defenses and that an SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) attack is therefore unnecessary. But that makes assumptions that cannot be demonstrated without testing, and the test is dangerous. At the same time, collecting definitive intelligence on air defenses is not as easy as it might appear — particularly as the opposition and thieves alike have managed to capture heavy weapons and armored vehicles, meaning that air defense assets are on the move and under uncertain control.
Therefore, a no-fly zone would begin with airstrikes on known air defense sites. But it would likely continue with sustained patrols by SEAD aircraft armed with anti-radiation missiles poised to rapidly confront any subsequent threat that pops up. Keeping those aircraft on station for an extended period of time would be necessary, along with an unknown number of strikes. It is uncertain where the radars and missiles are located, and those airstrikes would not be without error. When search radars and especially targeting radars are turned on, the response must be instantaneous, while the radar is radiating (and therefore vulnerable) and before it can engage. That means there will be no opportunity to determine whether the sites are located in residential areas or close to public facilities such as schools or hospitals.
Previous regimes, hoping to garner international support, have deliberately placed their systems near such facilities to force what the international media would consider an atrocity. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi does not seem like someone who would hesitate to cause civilian casualties for political advantage. Thus, the imposition of a no-fly zone could rapidly deteriorate into condemnations for killing civilians of those enforcing the zone ostensibly for humanitarian purposes. Indeed, attacks on air defenses could cause substantial casualties, turning a humanitarian action into one of considerable consequence in both humanitarian and political terms.

Airstrikes vs. Ground Operations

 

The more important question is what exactly a no-fly zone would achieve. Certainly, it would ground Gadhafi’s air force, but it would not come close to ending the fighting nor erode Gadhafi’s other substantial advantages. His forces appear to be better organized and trained than his opponents, who are politically divided and far less organized. Not long ago, Gadhafi largely was written off, but he has more than held his own — and he has held his own through the employment of ground combat forces. What remains of his air force has been used for limited harassment, so the imposition of a no-fly zone would not change the military situation on the ground. Even with a no-fly zone, Gadhafi would still be difficult for the rebels to defeat, and Gadhafi might still defeat the rebels.
The attractiveness of the no-fly zone in Iraq was that it provided the political illusion that steps were being taken, without creating substantial risks, or for that matter, actually doing substantial damage to Saddam Hussein’s control over Iraq. The no-fly zone remained in place for about 12 years without forcing change in Saddam’s policies, let alone regime change. The same is likely to be true in Libya. The no-fly zone is a low-risk action with little ability to change the military reality that creates an impression of decisive action. It does, as we argue, have a substantial downside, in that it entails costs and risks — including a high likelihood of at least some civilian casualties — without clear benefit or meaningful impact. The magnitude of the potential civilian toll is unknown, but its likelihood, oddly, is not in the hands of those imposing the no-fly zone, but in the hands of Gadhafi. Add to this human error and other failures inherent in war, and the outcome becomes unclear.
A more significant action would be intervention on the ground, an invasion of Libya designed to destroy Gadhafi’s military and force regime change. This would require a substantial force — and it should be remembered from Iraq that it would require a substantial occupation force to stabilize and build a new regime to govern Libya. Unlike in Egypt, Gadhafi is the regime, and sectarian elements that have been kept in check under his regime already are coming to the fore. The ability of the country to provide and administer basic government functions is also unknown. And it must also be borne in mind that Gadhafi clearly has substantial support as well as opposition. His supporters will not go without a fight and could choose to wage some form of post-invasion resistance, as in Iraq. Thus, while the initial costs in terms of casualties might be low, the long-term costs might be much higher.
It should also be remembered that the same international community that condemned Saddam Hussein as a brutal dictator quite easily turned to condemn the United States both for deposing him and for the steps its military took in trying to deal with the subsequent insurgency. It is not difficult to imagine a situation where there is extended Libyan resistance to the occupying force followed by international condemnation of the counterinsurgency effort.
Having toppled a regime, it is difficult to simply leave. The idea that this would be a quick, surgical and short-term invasion is certainly one scenario, but it is neither certain nor even the most likely scenario. In the same sense, the casualties caused by the no-fly zone would be unknown. The difference is that while a no-fly zone could be terminated easily, it is unlikely that it would have any impact on ground operations. An invasion would certainly have a substantial impact but would not be terminable.
Stopping a civil war is viable if it can be done without increasing casualties beyond what they might be if the war ran its course. The no-fly zone likely does that, without ending the civil war. If properly resourced, the invasion option could end the civil war, but it opens the door to extended low-intensity conflict.

The National Interest

 

It is difficult to perceive the U.S. national interest in Libya. The interests of some European countries, like Italy, are more substantial, but it is not clear that they are prepared to undertake the burden without the United States.
We would argue that war as a humanitarian action should be undertaken only with the clear understanding that in the end it might cause more suffering than the civil war. It should also be undertaken with the clear understanding that the inhabitants might prove less than grateful, and the rest of the world would not applaud nearly as much as might be liked — and would be faster to condemn the occupier when things went wrong. Indeed, the recently formed opposition council based out of Benghazi — the same group that is leading the calls from eastern Libya for foreign airstrikes against Gadhafi’s air force — has explicitly warned against any military intervention involving troops on the ground.
In the end, the use of force must have the national interest in mind. And the historical record of armed humanitarian interventions is mixed at best

Keiser Report from Cairo: US Gaddafies

 

This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report from Cairo on war profiteers blaming foreign 'financial terrorists' for the economic collapse that they helped cause. They also talk about Gaddafi's billions and China's gold. In the second half of the show, Max talks to investigative journalist and blogger, Hisham Allam, about Egypt's revolution and what his investigations into corruption are finding in terms of the Mubarak family's loot.

S.C. Senator Wants Currency Alternative to Federal Reserve

A push for an alternative currency to the dollar is sweeping across state
legislatures.

AFP PODCAST recently interviewed State Senator Lee Bright (R-Roebuck) on
his legislation introduced to study the possible creation of an
alternative currency to Federal Reserve notes.

State Senator Bright explains why he thinks it's prudent to be prepared
for the inevitable collapse of the U.S. dollar and the Federal Reserve
System.

South Carolina joins states such as Virginia who are proposing similar
bills. Never before have so many states simultaneously lost confidence in
the hastily created central bank, whose main purpose is to "earn"
trillions off the backs of average Americans, by issuing debt.

Bahrain and the Battle Between Iran and Saudi Arabia

By George Friedman

The world’s attention is focused on Libya, which is now in a state of civil war with the winner far from clear. While crucial for the Libyan people and of some significance to the world’s oil markets, in our view, Libya is not the most important event in the Arab world at the moment. The demonstrations in Bahrain are, in my view, far more significant in their implications for the region and potentially for the world. To understand this, we must place it in a strategic context.
As STRATFOR has been saying for quite a while, a decisive moment is approaching, with the United States currently slated to withdraw the last of its forces from Iraq by the end of the year. Indeed, we are already at a point where the composition of the 50,000 troops remaining in Iraq has shifted from combat troops to training and support personnel. As it stands now, even these will all be gone by Dec. 31, 2011, provided the United States does not negotiate an extended stay. Iraq still does not have a stable government. It also does not have a military and security apparatus able to enforce the will of the government (which is hardly of one mind on anything) on the country, much less defend the country from outside forces.

Filling the Vacuum in Iraq

 

The decision to withdraw creates a vacuum in Iraq, and the question of the wisdom of the original invasion is at this point moot. The Iranians previously have made clear that they intend to fill this vacuum with their own influence; doing so makes perfect sense from their point of view. Iran and Iraq fought a long and brutal war in the 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran is now secure on all fronts save the western. Tehran’s primary national security imperative now is to prevent a strong government from emerging in Baghdad, and more important, a significant military force from emerging there. Iran never wants to fight another war with Iraq, making keeping Iraq permanently weak and fragmented in Tehran’s interest. The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq sets the stage for Iran to pursue this goal, profoundly changing the regional dynamic.
Iran has another, more challenging strategic interest, one it has had since Biblical times. That goal is to be the dominant power in the Persian Gulf.
For Tehran, this is both reasonable and attainable. Iran has the largest and most ideologically committed military of any state in the Persian Gulf region. Despite the apparent technological sophistication of the Gulf states’ militaries, they are shells. Iran’s is not. In addition to being the leading military force in the Persian Gulf, Iran has 75 million people, giving it a larger population than all other Persian Gulf states combined.
Outside powers have prevented Iran from dominating the region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, first the United Kingdom and then the United States, which consistently have supported the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. It was in the outsiders’ interests to maintain a divided region, and therefore in their interests to block the most powerful country in the region from dominating even when the outsiders were allied with Iran.
With the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, this strategy is being abandoned in the sense that the force needed to contain Iran is being withdrawn. The forces left in Kuwait and U.S air power might be able to limit a conventional Iranian attack. Still, the U.S. withdrawal leaves the Iranians with the most powerful military force in the region regardless of whether they acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, in my view, the nuclear issue largely has been an Iranian diversion from the more fundamental issue, namely, the regional balance after the departure of the United States. By focusing on the nuclear issue, these other issues appeared subsidiary and have been largely ignored.
The U.S. withdrawal does not mean that the United States is powerless against Iran. It has been reconstituting a pre-positioned heavy brigade combat team set in Kuwait and has substantial air and naval assets in the region. It also can bring more forces back to the region if Iran is aggressive. But it takes at least several months for the United States to bring multidivisional forces into a theater and requires the kind of political will that will be severely lacking in the United States in the years ahead. It is not clear that the forces available on the ground could stop a determined Iranian thrust. In any case, Iraq will be free of American troops, allowing Iran to operate much more freely there.
And Iran does not need to change the balance of power in the region through the overt exercise of military force. Its covert capability, unchecked by American force, is significant. It can covertly support pro-Iranian forces in the region, destabilizing existing regimes. With the psychology of the Arab masses changing, as they are no longer afraid to challenge their rulers, Iran will enjoy an enhanced capacity to cause instability.
As important, the U.S. withdrawal will cause a profound shift in psychological perceptions of power in the region. Recognition of Iran’s relative power based on ground realities will force a very different political perception of Iran, and a desire to accommodate Tehran. The Iranians, who understand the weakness of their military’s logistics and air power, are pursuing a strategy of indirect approach. They are laying the foundation for power based on a perception of greater Iranian power and declining American and Saudi power.

Bahrain, the Test Case

 

Bahrain is the perfect example and test case. An island off the coast of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are linked by a causeway. For most purposes, Bahrain is part of Saudi Arabia. Unlike Saudi Arabia, it is not a major oil producer, but it is a banking center. It is also the home of the U.S. 5th Fleet, and has close ties to the United States. The majority of its population is Shia, but its government is Sunni and heavily linked to Saudi Arabia. The Shiite population has not fared as well economically as Shia in other countries in the region, and tensions between the government and the public have long existed.
The toppling of the government of Bahrain by a Shiite movement would potentially embolden Shia in Saudi Arabia, who live primarily in the oil-rich northeast near Bahrain. It also would weaken the U.S. military posture in the region. And it would demonstrate Iranian power.
If the Saudis intervened in Bahrain, the Iranians would have grounds to justify their own intervention, covert or overt. Iran might also use any violent Bahraini government suppression of demonstrators to justify more open intervention. In the meantime, the United States, which has about 1,500 military personnel plus embassy staff on the ground in Bahrain, would face the choice of reinforcing or pulling its troops out.
Certainly, there are internal processes under way in Bahrain that have nothing to do with Iran or foreign issues. But just as the internal dynamic of revolutions affects the international scene, the international scene affects the internal dynamic; observing just one of the two is not sufficient to understand what is going on.
The Iranians clearly have an interest in overthrowing the Bahraini regime. While the degree to which the Iranians are involved in the Bahraini unrest is unclear, they clearly have a great deal of influence over a cleric, Hassan Mushaima, who recently returned to Bahrain from London to participate in the protests. That said, the Bahraini government itself could be using the unrest to achieve its own political goals, much as the Egyptian military used the Egyptian uprising. Like all revolutions, events in Bahrain are enormously complex — and in Bahrain’s case, the stakes are extremely high.
Unlike Libya, where the effects are primarily internal, the events in Bahrain clearly involve Saudi, Iranian and U.S. interests. Bahrain is also the point where the Iranians have their best chance, since it is both the most heavily Shiite nation and one where the Shiites have the most grievances. But the Iranians have other targets, which might be defined as any area adjoining Saudi Arabia with a substantial Shiite population and with American bases. This would include Oman, which the United States uses as a support facility; Qatar, headquarters of U.S. Central Command and home to Al Udeid Air Base; and Kuwait, the key logistical hub for Iraqi operations and with major army support, storage and port facilities. All three have experienced or are experiencing demonstrations. Logically, these are Iran’s first targets.
The largest target of all is, of course, Saudi Arabia. That is the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, and its destabilization would change the regional balance of power and the way the world works. Iran has never made a secret of its animosity toward Saudi Arabia, nor vice versa. Saudi Arabia could now be in a vise. There is massive instability in Yemen with potential to spill over into Saudi Arabia’s southern Ismaili-concentrated areas. The situation in Iraq is moving in the Iranians’ favor. Successful regime changes in even one or two of the countries on the littoral of the Persian Gulf could generate massive internal fears regardless of what the Saudi Shia did and could lead to dissension in the royal family. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Saudis are moving aggressively against any sign of unrest among the Shia, arresting dozens who have indicated dissent. The Saudis clearly are uneasy in the extreme.

Iran’s Powerful Position

 

The Iranians would be delighted to cause regime change throughout the region, but that is not likely to occur, at least not everywhere in the region. They would be equally happy simply to cause massive instability in the region, however. With the United States withdrawing from Iraq, the Saudis represent the major supporter of Iraq’s Sunnis. With the Saudis diverted, this would ease the way for Iranian influence in Iraq. At that point, there would be three options: Turkey intervening broadly, something it is not eager to do; the United States reversing course and surging troops into the region to support tottering regimes, something for which there is no political appetite in the United States; and the United States accepting the changed regional balance of power.
Two processes are under way. The first is that Iran will be the single outside power with the most influence in Iraq, not unlimited and not unchallenged, but certainly the greatest. The second is that as the United States withdraws, Iran will be in a position to pursue its interests more decisively. Those interests divide into three parts:

1. eliminating foreign powers from the region to maximize Iranian power,
2. convincing Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region that they must reach an accommodation with Iran or face potentially dangerous consequences, and
3. a redefinition of the economics of oil in the Persian Gulf in favor of Iran, including Iranian participation in oil projects in other Persian Gulf countries and regional investment in Iranian energy development.

The events in the Persian Gulf are quite different from the events in North Africa, with much broader implications. Bahrain is the focal point of a struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran for control of the western littoral of the Persian Gulf. If Iran is unable to capitalize on events in Bahrain, the place most favorable to it, the moment will pass. If Bahrain’s government falls, the door is opened to further actions. Whether Iran caused the rising in the first place is unclear and unimportant; it is certainly involved now, as are the Saudis.
The Iranians are in a powerful position whatever happens given the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Combine this with a series of regime changes, or simply destabilization on the border of Saudi Arabia, and two things happen. First, the Saudi regime would be in trouble and would have to negotiate some agreement with the Iranians — and not an agreement the Saudis would like. Second, the U.S. basing position in the Persian Gulf would massively destabilize, making U.S. intervention in the region even more difficult.
The problem created by the U.S. leaving Iraq without having been able to install a strong, pro-American government remains the core issue. The instability in the Persian Gulf allows the Iranians a low-risk, high-reward parallel strategy that, if it works, could unhinge the balance of power in the entire region. The threat of an uprising in Iran appears minimal, with the Iranian government having no real difficulty crushing resistance. The resistance on the western shore of the Persian Gulf may be crushed or dissolved as well, in which case Iran would still retain its advantageous position in Iraq. But if the perfect storm presents itself, with Iran increasing its influence in Iraq and massive destabilization on the Arabian Peninsula, then the United States will face some extraordinarily difficult and dangerous choices, beginning with the question of how to resist Iran while keeping the price of oil manageable.
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"Bahrain and the Battle Between Iran and Saudi Arabia is republished with permission of STRATFOR."

Tarpley: US-UK Imperialist Rampage Envelops Libya in Civil War with Help from "al Qaeda"...

US-UK Imperialist Rampage Envelops Libya in Civil War with Help from "al Qaeda"; Qaddafi Regime Counterattacking; Cameron Pushes Obama for No-Fly Zone, Invasion of Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) to Seize Oil Fields; Russia Calls Stories of Qaddafi Air Force Strafing Protesters Unfounded; Anti-Qaddafi Lynch Mobs Target Black Africans; 30,000 Chinese in Danger; 1995 Shayler Affair Scenario Operative

The Truth About the Middle East Revolutions ∞ David Icke

5 Proposals to Combat ‘Global Warming’ That Should Make Us All Cringe

Eric Blair
Infowars.com
March 1, 2011

Taxing the air we exhale, rationing human necessities, a global one-child policy, geoengineering (high-altitude chemical spraying), and now nuclear war have all been proposed to combat global warming. Have climate theorists lost their marbles, or just their humanity?



There has not been much middle ground found between global warming believers and the “it’s a hoax” crowd. I started as a believer after watching An Inconvenient Truth. I struggled to even look into the alternative view because the establishment had so successfully made the deniers seem insane.
However, having now done extensive research, I can attest that the “hoax” crowd has just as much, if not more, compelling evidence on their side as believers do. Furthermore, most global warming deniers won’t disagree that the climate is changing or shifting in some noticeable way, only that man-made CO2 is not the primary cause.
This article is not intended to debate the questions surrounding the man-made global warming theory, but rather the proposed “solutions.” Most believers genuinely care about the environment and view deniers as selfish “takers” who care not for mother nature. This is not the case at all.  In fact, I would argue that most deniers feel just as passionately about environmental issues as believers.  The difference seems to be that deniers focus their energy on tangible and measurable problems in the environment like water, air and soil pollution, GMO food, excessive pharmaceuticals, chemical spraying, and results from oil spills and gas fracking to name a few.
None of these very real threats to human and environmental health are addressed by the global warming crowd, save for possibly air pollution.  When one dissects the proposals to combat global warming, it seems clear that the environmental movement has been hijacked by CO2 propagandists for an ulterior motive.  Even though hardcore believers seem to have a healthy distrust for bankers, corporations, and their puppet politicians, they have a very difficult time challenging the establishment’s science or solutions pertaining to global warming.  They seem too busy defending the theory to make the connection to what they’re actually supporting — which is a cabal of big banks, big oil, and big brother seeking further control of society by hyping unprovable environmental threats that they never actually intend to fix in the first place.
At the very least, eyebrows should be raised since “hacked” emails exposed that the science data had been manipulated to fit the theory.  Alarm bells should go off when we learn that, as Vice President, Gore designed the proposed Cap and Trade system with Enron’s criminal CEO Ken “Kenny Boy” Lay years before the global warming theory had been introduced to the public. And for progressives, a full blown revolt should take place knowing that the scandalous international Banksters and Big Oil have shaped Cap and Trade to line their pockets. Finally, as with any modern legislative proposal, it is designed as a Robin-Hood-in reverse scheme where provisions appear to tax personal human choices, while major corporate polluters are exempt.
Regardless of what we believe about the man-made global warming theory, it certainly appears that the establishment’s fix fits their problem-reaction-solution model of social engineering where many proposed solutions distort humanity’s moral compass.  Below are 5 proposals to combat global warming that should make all environmentalists and humanitarians cringe with embarrassment for supporting them:
1. Taxes to International Bankers: Does anyone still trust the international bankers after their wholesale looting of the general public?  Do genuine environmentalists actually believe it’s a good thing to have this criminal institution in charge of collecting and regulating carbon taxes. The thought of being forced to give more power and more money to the banks seems utterly foolish to support, no matter what environmental catastrophes we may face.  The carbon market is almost entirely voluntary and is still in its infancy, yet there is already major financial fraud occurring which is par for the course for the banksters.  We should be ashamed to promote them as any part of a solution.
2. One-Child Policies: After vilifying China’s one-child policy since its inception, the Western world is now warming to the idea to combat CO2.  In fact, Canada joined China in publicly calling for a Worldwide One-Child Policy during Copenhagen climate talks in 2009.  Forcing this type of law on a previously free society will surely result in forced abortions and other horrific consequences.  It is the epitome of tyranny for the State to take away such basic rights to life.  It seems that the numerous heavyweights pushing this agenda are hell-bent on population reduction in spite of the global warming theory.  If forcing your friends and neighbors into a one-child policy makes sense to you, you may have already lost your humanity to a theoretical fear.
3. Geoengineering: The AP reported during the 2010 Cancun climate talks that “we may need geoengineering as a ‘Plan B,’ if nations fail to forge agreement on a binding treaty to rein in greenhouse gases.” Geoengineering (sometimes referred to as chemtrailing), is high-altitude chemical spraying.  They are the unnatural crisscrossed long white trails left by planes that take days to dissipate. Their patents are high in nanoparticle aluminum and barium, both of which have been found in dangerously high concentrations in otherwise pristine locations.  For decades this program was top secret, and environmental activists were called conspiracy theorists for questioning it.  Now, it is being promoted as the savior to global warming, claiming the extremely poisonous chemicals reflect sunlight away from earth. To learn more about what you would be advocating for as ‘Plan B’ to stop global warming, please watch the very reputable new film What in the World are They Spraying?
4. Rationing: At the COP16 climate meeting in Cancun during record cold temperatures this winter “Some climate change experts say World War II-style rationing in developed countries may be needed to bring down carbon emissions to fight against global warming.”  We all know who is most affected by rationing:  the average little citizen.  I’m reminded of the character Winston Smith in 1984 getting his allotments of fabricated coffee and fuel-like alcohol while the controllers lived in the lap of luxury.  Perhaps, if we’re lucky, the State will take control of local farm harvests for rationed distribution circa the Soviet Union. Ahh, freedom is on the march with this proposal.
5. Nuclear War: Last, but certainly not least, the idea has been floated that a small nuclear war may save us from the global warming bogeyman.  Yes, for the good of humanity and the environment, let’s blow a couple of million people to smithereens and radiate thousands of square miles to force the cooling of the earth.  This is not some fringe group proposing this, but instead NASA, the National Geographic and Ted Turner-owned Time magazines floating the idea.  They say, “Models suggest that though the world is currently in a warming trend, small-scale war could lower global temperatures 2.25 degrees F for two-to-three years following war.”  It seems this scenario will do nothing to reduce CO2, but simply block and absorb heat from the sun.  In fact, they admit it may add carbon into the atmosphere.  If you can’t tell how wrong this concept is on multiple levels then perhaps it’s more appropriate to refer to you as a world-is-flat Neanderthal.
Despite differences in theories, can’t we all agree that these proposals seem downright tyrannical, if not evil?  They all seem to further crush the poorest among us, while eliminating basic individual rights, to openly promoting reducing the human population. And that means you too by the way.  Believers won’t be exempt from the darkest wrath of these proposals.
And worst of all, none of these proposals will do anything to solve authentic environmental degradation, or even CO2 concentrations for that matter.  So, it’s all right to believe any theory you wish, but just be more informed and honest when defending the establishment’s proposed solutions. They are not designed or intended to protect you or the environment from global warming.

Report: US Special Forces Arrive In Libya

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
March 1, 2011


Image: Wikimedia Commons

US Special Forces have reportedly landed in Libya to train anti-Gaddafi rebels as a western-backed coup d’état in the oil-rich nation nears, with British and French “defense advisors” also arriving to set up training bases in the rebel-controlled eastern region of the country.
According to a report in the Pakistan Observer, hundreds of special forces personnel from the US, Britain and France arrived on February 23 and 24 in “American and French warships and small naval boats off Libyan ports of Benghazi and Tobruk.”
The article states that the report was confirmed by a Libyan diplomat in the region, who said that “The three Western states have landed their special forces troops in Cyrinacia and are now setting up their bases and training centres,” in a bid to bolster rebel forces resisting Gaddafi’s militia in the surrounding region.
“The Western forces are reportedly preparing to set-up training bases for local militias set-up by the rebel forces for an effective control of the oil-rich region and counter any push by pro-Qaddafi forces from Tripoli,” states the report.
In addition, efforts to “neutralize” the Libyan Air Force are underway in a bid to stymie Gaddafi’s ability to rule from Tripoli if he manages to remain in power.
The US Navy has also confirmed that the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which had previously been on pirate-hunting duty off the coast of Somalia, is now steaming towards Libya as tensions rise.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly admitted for the first time yesterday that the United States was preparing to back anti-government rebels, despite Hafiz Ghoga, the spokesman for the newly formed National Libyan Council in the rebel controlled eastern city of Benghazi, warning that any “foreign intervention” would not be welcome.

“The rest of Libya will be liberated by the people … and Gaddafi’s security forces will be eliminated by the people of Libya,” Ghoga said during a news conference.
Meanwhile, ex-European representative for the Carlyle Group and former British Prime Minister John Major has become the latest to add his voice to the growing chorus of those calling for military intervention to oust Gaddafi.
Major backed, “Other Western leaders who are on the brink of ordering military action against Col Muammar Gaddafi amid fears that the Libyan dictator could use chemical weapons against his own people,” reports the Telegraph.
Current British Prime Minister David Cameron has also been busy setting the stage for a western-backed coup d’état, calling for a no fly zone to be erected over the country.
“If Col Gaddafi uses military force against his own people, the world cannot stand by. That is why we should be looking at a no-fly zone,” Cameron said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blasted the idea of a no fly zone as “superfluous,” instead signaling support for UN-backed sanctions.
On Friday, 40 influential neo-conservatives signed a letter to Barack Obama urging the President to “immediately” prepare military action to overthrow Gaddafi.
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Any regime change achieved with the assistance of western nations will provide deeper access to a country that holds the largest amount of oil reserves in Africa and the tenth largest in the world, with a reserve to production ratio of around 66 years.
—
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

Max Igan : Stealing The World With Paper

Max Igan - American Voice Radio - 11/26/10 wars are not about bringing freedom , it is about controlling people and resources , nobody wants wars except the elite ....
The International Banking Cartel : its about control of the world and all its resources and eliminating the "useless eaters" .It is a scientific dictatorship. The nazi's used their concentration camps for scientific experiments, got transferred to the US after the war, and then started to work for CIA, NASA, MK-ultra etc... money was created as a tool to control and manipulate people. The truth is that the manipulators need the people far more than the people need the manipulators. They depend completely on our compliance, this fact easy to demonstrate, yet so many good, loving, righteous people ignore the correct choice because they are scared, feared into a reality where their dependence on an outside savior supersedes their faith is themselves..This was a well formed, concise video and positive with all the relevant information .

If the government ends fractional reserve banking and issues debt-free public paper, the government would need to print a lot of money to prevent deflation. enough money to pay off any national debt to legitimate bond holders without a dime of taxation.A promissory note/money/credit in circulation is real to a degree thats how the banks pull of there scam off,interest charged is not real as its never created in the first place ,what is real is the fact interest & principal is getting laundered out of circulation by deception.creation of credit through a fractional system is questionable as a debtor really creates the promissory note via his signature.The bank fraudulently intervenes publishing evidence of OUR promissory notes.

The Bob Chapman Channel - Feb 28 Show

Keiser Report: Middle Class Misery

Celente: Great 21 century war looming, Egypt & Libya just brush fires

Never Fight a Land War in Asia

By George Friedman
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” In saying this, Gates was repeating a dictum laid down by Douglas MacArthur after the Korean War, who urged the United States to avoid land wars in Asia. Given that the United States has fought four major land wars in Asia since World War II — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — none of which had ideal outcomes, it is useful to ask three questions: First, why is fighting a land war in Asia a bad idea? Second, why does the United States seem compelled to fight these wars? And third, what is the alternative that protects U.S. interests in Asia without large-scale military land wars?

The Hindrances of Overseas Wars

 

Let’s begin with the first question, the answer to which is rooted in demographics and space. The population of Iraq is currently about 32 million. Afghanistan has a population of less than 30 million. The U.S. military, all told, consists of about 1.5 million active-duty personnel (plus 980,000 in the reserves), of whom more than 550,000 belong to the Army and about 200,000 are part of the Marine Corps. Given this, it is important to note that the United States strains to deploy about 200,000 troops at any one time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many of these troops are in support rather than combat roles. The same was true in Vietnam, where the United States was challenged to field a maximum of about 550,000 troops (in a country much more populous than Iraq or Afghanistan) despite conscription and a larger standing army. Indeed, the same problem existed in World War II.
When the United States fights in the Eastern Hemisphere, it fights at great distances, and the greater the distance, the greater the logistical cost. More ships are needed to deliver the same amount of materiel, for example. That absorbs many troops. The logistical cost of fighting at a distance is that it diverts numbers of troops (or requires numbers of civilian personnel) disproportionate to the size of the combat force.
Regardless of the number of troops deployed, the U.S. military is always vastly outnumbered by the populations of the countries to which it is deployed. If parts of these populations resist as light-infantry guerrilla forces or employ terrorist tactics, the enemy rapidly swells to a size that can outnumber U.S. forces, as in Vietnam and Korea. At the same time, the enemy adopts strategies to take advantage of the core weakness of the United States — tactical intelligence. The resistance is fighting at home. It understands the terrain and the culture. The United States is fighting in an alien environment. It is constantly at an intelligence disadvantage. That means that the effectiveness of the native forces is multiplied by excellent intelligence, while the effectiveness of U.S. forces is divided by lack of intelligence.
The United States compensates with technology, from space-based reconnaissance and air power to counter-battery systems and advanced communications. This can make up the deficit but only by massive diversions of manpower from ground-combat operations. Maintaining a helicopter requires dozens of ground-crew personnel. Where the enemy operates with minimal technology multiplied by intelligence, the United States compensates for lack of intelligence with massive technology that further reduces available combat personnel. Between logistics and technological force multipliers, the U.S. “point of the spear” shrinks. If you add the need to train, relieve, rest and recuperate the ground-combat forces, you are left with a small percentage available to fight.
The paradox of this is that American forces will win the engagements but may still lose the war. Having identified the enemy, the United States can overwhelm it with firepower. The problem the United States has is finding the enemy and distinguishing it from the general population. As a result, the United States is well-suited for the initial phases of combat, when the task is to defeat a conventional force. But after the conventional force has been defeated, the resistance can switch to methods difficult for American intelligence to deal with. The enemy can then control the tempo of operations by declining combat where it is at a disadvantage and initiating combat when it chooses.
The example of the capitulation of Germany and Japan in World War II is frequently cited as a model of U.S. forces defeating and pacifying an opposing nation. But the Germans were not defeated primarily by U.S. ground troops. The back of the Wehrmacht was broken by the Soviets on their own soil with the logistical advantages of short supply lines. And, of course, Britain and numerous other countries were involved. It is doubtful that the Germans would have capitulated to the Americans alone. The force the United States deployed was insufficient to defeat Germany. The Germans had no appetite for continuing a resistance against the Russians and saw surrendering to the Americans and British as sanctuary from the Russians. They weren’t going to resist them. As for Japan, it was not ground forces but air power, submarine warfare and atomic bombs that finished them — and the emperor’s willingness to order a surrender. It was not land power that prevented resistance but air and sea power, plus a political compromise by MacArthur in retaining and using the emperor. Had the Japanese emperor been removed, I suspect that the occupation of Japan would have been much more costly. Neither Germany nor Japan are examples in which U.S. land forces compelled capitulation and suppressed resistance.
The problem the United States has in the Eastern Hemisphere is that the size of the force needed to occupy a country initially is much smaller than the force needed to pacify the country. The force available for pacification is much smaller than needed because the force the United States can deploy demographically without committing to total war is simply too small to do the job — and the size needed to do the job is unknown.

U.S. Global Interests

 

The deeper problem is this: The United States has global interests. While the Soviet Union was the primary focus of the United States during the Cold War, no power threatens to dominate Eurasia now, and therefore no threat justifies the singular focus of the United States. In time of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States must still retain a strategic reserve for other unanticipated contingencies. This further reduces the available force for combat.
Some people argue that the United States is insufficiently ruthless in prosecuting war, as if it would be more successful without political restraints at home. The Soviets and the Nazis, neither noted for gentleness, were unable to destroy the partisans behind German lines or the Yugoslav resistance, in spite of brutal tactics. The guerrilla has built-in advantages in warfare for which brutality cannot compensate.
Given all this, the question is why the United States has gotten involved in wars in Eurasia four times since World War II. In each case it is obvious: for political reasons. In Korea and Vietnam, it was to demonstrate to doubting allies that the United States had the will to resist the Soviets. In Afghanistan, it was to uproot al Qaeda. In Iraq, the reasons are murkier, more complex and less convincing, but the United States ultimately went in, in my opinion, to convince the Islamic world of American will.
The United States has tried to shape events in the Eastern Hemisphere by the direct application of land power. In Korea and Vietnam, it was trying to demonstrate resolve against Soviet and Chinese power. In Afghanistan and Iraq, it was trying to shape the politics of the Muslim world. The goal was understandable but the amount of ground force available was not. In Korea, it resulted in stalemate; in Vietnam, defeat. We await the outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan, but given Gates’ statement, the situation for the United States is not necessarily hopeful.
In each case, the military was given an ambiguous mission. This was because a clear outcome — defeating the enemy — was unattainable. At the same time, there were political interests in each. Having engaged, simply leaving did not seem an option. Therefore, Korea turned into an extended presence in a near-combat posture, Vietnam ended in defeat for the American side, and Iraq and Afghanistan have turned, for the time being, into an uncertain muddle that no reasonable person expects to end with the declared goals of a freed and democratic pair of countries.

Problems of Strategy

 

There are two problems with American strategy. The first is using the appropriate force for the political mission. This is not a question so much of the force as it is of the mission. The use of military force requires clarity of purpose; otherwise, a coherent strategy cannot emerge. Moreover, it requires an offensive mission. Defensive missions (such as Vietnam and Korea) by definition have no terminal point or any criteria for victory. Given the limited availability of ground combat forces, defensive missions allow the enemy’s level of effort to determine the size of the force inserted, and if the force is insufficient to achieve the mission, the result is indefinite deployment of scarce forces.
Then there are missions with clear goals initially but without an understanding of how to deal with Act II. Iraq suffered from an offensive intention ill suited to the enemy’s response. Having destroyed the conventional forces of Iraq, the United States was unprepared for the Iraqi response, which was guerrilla resistance on a wide scale. The same was true in Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency is occupation warfare. It is the need to render a population — rather than an army — unwilling and incapable of resisting. It requires vast resources and large numbers of troops that outstrip the interest. Low-cost counter-insurgency with insufficient forces will always fail. Since the United States uses limited forces because it has to, counterinsurgency is the most dangerous kind of war for the United States. The idea has always been that the people prefer the U.S. occupation to the threats posed by their fellow countrymen and that the United States can protect those who genuinely do prefer the former. That may be the idea, but there is never enough U.S. force available.
Another model for dealing with the problem of shaping political realities can be seen in the Iran-Iraq war. In that war, the United States allowed the mutual distrust of the two countries to eliminate the threats posed by both. When the Iraqis responded by invading Kuwait, the United States responded with a massive counter with very limited ends — the reconquest of Kuwait and the withdrawal of forces. It was a land war in Asia designed to defeat a known and finite enemy army without any attempt at occupation.
The problem with all four wars is that they were not wars in a conventional sense and did not use the military as militaries are supposed to be used. The purpose of a military is to defeat enemy conventional forces. As an army of occupation against a hostile population, military forces are relatively weak. The problem for the United States is that such an army must occupy a country for a long time, and the U.S. military simply lacks the ground forces needed to occupy countries and still be available to deal with other threats.
By having an unclear mission, you have an uncertain terminal point. When does it end? You then wind up with a political problem internationally — having engaged in the war, you have allies inside and outside of the country that have fought with you and taken risks with you. Withdrawal leaves them exposed, and potential allies will be cautious in joining with you in another war. The political costs spiral and the decision to disengage is postponed. The United States winds up in the worst of all worlds. It terminates not on its own but when its position becomes untenable, as in Vietnam. This pyramids the political costs dramatically.
Wars need to be fought with ends that can be achieved by the forces available. Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of war. You do not engage in war if the army you have is insufficient. When you understand the foundations of American military capability and its limits in Eurasia, Gates’ view on war in the Eastern Hemisphere is far more sound than Rumsfeld’s.

The Diplomatic Alternative

 

The alternative is diplomacy, not understood as an alternative to war but as another tool in statecraft alongside war. Diplomacy can find the common ground between nations. It can also be used to identify the hostility of nations and use that hostility to insulate the United States by diverting the attention of other nations from challenging the United States. That is what happened during the Iran-Iraq war. It wasn’t pretty, but neither was the alternative.
Diplomacy for the United States is about maintaining the balance of power and using and diverting conflict to manage the international system. Force is the last resort, and when it is used, it must be devastating. The argument I have made, and which I think Gates is asserting, is that at a distance, the United States cannot be devastating in wars dependent on land power. That is the weakest aspect of American international power and the one the United States has resorted to all too often since World War II, with unacceptable results. Using U.S. land power as part of a combined arms strategy is occasionally effective in defeating conventional forces, as it was with North Korea (and not China) but is inadequate to the demands of occupation warfare. It makes too few troops available for success, and it does not know how many troops might be needed.
This is not a policy failure of any particular U.S. president. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have encountered precisely the same problem, which is that the forces that have existed in Eurasia, from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Korea to the Taliban in Afghanistan, have either been too numerous or too agile (or both) for U.S. ground forces to deal with. In any war, the primary goal is not to be defeated. An elective war in which the criteria for success are unclear and for which the amount of land force is insufficient must be avoided. That is Gates’ message. It is the same one MacArthur delivered, and the one Dwight Eisenhower exercised when he refused to intervene in Vietnam on France’s behalf. As with the Monroe Doctrine, it should be elevated to a principle of U.S. foreign policy, not because it is a moral principle but because it is a very practical one.


"Never Fight a Land War in Asia is republished with permission of STRATFOR."

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