US troops secretly return to Iraq

PressTV

Over 3,000 U.S. troops have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait for
operations pertaining to the recent developments in Syria and
northern Iraq, Press TV reports.

According to our correspondent, the U.S. troops have secretly entered Iraq in multiple stages and are mostly stationed at Balad military garrison in Salahuddin province and al-Asad air base in al-Anbar province.

Reports say the troops include U.S. Army officers and almost 17,000 more are set to secretly return to Iraq via the same route.

All U.S. troops left Iraq by the end of 2011, after nine years of occupation, as required by a 2008 bilateral security agreement between the two countries. The troops left Iraq for the neighboring Kuwait.

Washington decided to pull out all its troops from Iraq after Baghdad refused to grant legal immunity to the remaining U.S. soldiers.

Washington claims that the only U.S. military presence left in Iraq now is 157 soldiers responsible for training at the U.S. Embassy, as well as a small contingent of Marines protecting the diplomatic mission.

FACTS & FIGURES

In 2003, the U.S. led the invasion of Iraq under the pretext that former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The initial invading force in Iraq was around 130,000 soldiers.  This number was expected to be dropped down to under 50,000 within a year.  Two years later, there were 150,000 U.S. soldiers in the country.  One of the interesting Iraq war facts is that as of November 2009, there were around 115,000 U.S. soldiers still stationed there. iraqwarfacts.com

In October 2004, a CIA report concluded that former Iraqi dictator did not possess weapons of mass destruction at the time of U.S. invasion in 2003.

There is no agency that keeps track of accurate numbers of Iraqis killed but some local sources put the number well over one million.

Most of the Iraqis displaced post-2006 have not returned home, and an estimated 1.5 million live in neighboring countries. undispatch.com

The direct cost of the Iraq war to the United States Treasury was $1 trillion. That excludes the “downstream” costs of things like veteran benefits and long-term care for the wounded. One trillion divided by the U.S. population of 307 million equals a cost of over $3,200 per American citizen taxpayer. undispatch.com

According to icasualties.org, the total number of U.S. military fatalities, as a result of the 2003 attack and the following occupation, stands at 4,486.

US-Military Use of Privateers Circumvents Geneva Convention and sets Precedence for Institutionalized Neo-Fascism.

NSNBC

Christof Lehman

Interview with retired Lt. General of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service outlines serious problems with respect to International Law and Human Rights.In a recent interview for Voice of Russia, the retired Lt. General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Gennady Yevstafiew, warns about the increasing use of outsourcing by US-Military and Intelligence Services. Yestafiew is drawing attention to a US-institutionalization of the systematic circumvention of the Geneva Convention, Military Codes of Conduct, Military Law as well as Human Rights.


Yevstafiew warns that the USA is increasingly outsourcing, and hiring local people for the most “dirty” operations and that the boundaries between violations of laws by US military and intelligence services vs. violations of national criminal laws become increasingly diffuse.

The personnel of these private military companies often consists of militarily trained or retired military personnel from both the USA and other countries. Thus, Yevstafiew exemplifies, the USA is unofficially participating with military personnel in maintaining the military supply lines of the Northern Distribution Network through Pakistan to Afghanistan.

The protection of the supply lines is outsourced to private military companies, and these private military companies; military companies which are playing an ever-increasing role in US military aggressions throughout the world.

The fact that these privateers are not on official military payrolls and that casualties among these troops are not counted in official military casualty figures is also playing a significant role in domestic US politics, and that even though a large number of the employees of these private military companies and casualties among them are citizens of the USA.

Thus, US Administrations are able to mask actual casualty figures in conflicts throughout the world. As example, Yevstafiew states, that the US has lost about 4000 troops in Afghanistan over the last ten years, while about 1000 privateers lost their lives in Afghanistan over the same period.

With respect to violations of the Geneva Convention, military law and the military code of conduct, Yevstafiew is drawing attention to the serious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Yevstafiew reiterates that many of the most serious excesses of violence were committed by private paramilitary forces and not only by military personnel. In fact Yevstafiew states that employees of private paramilitary companies committ the most and the most serious violations of human rights.

Yevstafiew is emphasizing that many of these violations of human rights also were gross violations of the victims and occupied nations national religion and character or culture.

The former Lt. General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service also warns that it is not only the US military that is outsourcing in order to circumvent international law, stating that various American institutions are using them to do their dirty work for them.

As example, Gennady Yevstafiew recalls the discussions about secret American prisons in European countries, including Eastern European countries, as well as secret US prisons in other parts of the world, especially in Asian and Arab countries. These prisons were kept by paramilitary forces, while those who were officially employed by the CIA only rendered the prisoners to the paramilitaries. Often these paramilitaries, who are doing the CIA´s dirty work, are citizens of the country in which the illegal prison is located. This practice diffuses the boundaries of both national and international law and constitute a signifficant problem with respect to human rights and international law.

Yevstafiew considers this development dangerous because it diffuses the American military and intelligence services responsibility for human rights violations and violations of the rights of Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention.

While the American military should adhere to military manuals which are based on the principles that are enshrined in the Geneva Convention, which prescribe certain conducts, rights, privileges, and protections, so Yevstafiew, the privateers are not obliged to adhere to any of these norms. This enables the US Administrations and certain US representatives to carry out unprecedentedly dirty work with all kinds of violations of human rights.

Somehow, so Yevstafiew, this problem is not being sufficiently discussed, but the time would come when Americans would be forced to explain their use of private military forces as a means of circumventing international law.

“Let us wait for the time when the international community will touch on this very sensitive issue” the former Lt. General of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said.

Yevstafiew also drew attention to the fact that the use of private military institutions has become an institutionalized part of US foreign policy. As example, he mentions that it has been announced that some private paramilitary institutions are going to participate in the training of Afghan and Iraqi military detachments, which allows President Obama to claim that he is withdrawing US troops.

While Obama is somewhat bound by his promises to withdraw troops from Afghanistan he can do so to a certain degree without anybody speaking about the fact that these troops will be substituted by private military companies. In particular these private troops are being used for the protection of very sensitive buildings, installations, and so on.

While, for example, a first glance may reveal that there are 10.000 Americans in Kabul, so Yevstafiew, a closer look reveals that there are thousands more in Kabul who are involved in, as it was recently announced, making Afghanistan as strategic ally.

While Gennady Yestafiew is diplomatic enough only to call some of the human rights abuses that are systematically being outsourced for unprecedentedly dirty work by the US military and intelligence services, the development is in fact indicative of what one could describe as the systematic implementation of institutionalized fascism in US politics, military and intelligence services.

The fusion of private corporations with institutions of government or corporatism are fascism in deed.

Taking the ongoing, illegal, US and NATO led subversion attempt in Syria into account, the fact that the USA and other NATO members overtly are providing political and material support to organizations which they themselves designate as terrorist organizations; taking into account that official US training circulars in unconventional warfare state that the USA in the foreseeable future mainly will wage unconventional wars; and taking the fact into account that NATO is aggressively waging unconventional wars under the guise of a fabled ”the responsibility to protect”, it would be high time to make this “very sensitive issue”, as Yestafiew describes it, an issue that will receive the appropriate coverage within the global political discourse.

Christof Lehmann

25.07.2012 

Notes:

1)US army share responsibility with mercenaries. http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_07_22/US-army-share-responsibility-with-mercenaries/

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“The Warrior Class”: The Blackwater Videos

Harper's Magazine

The April 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine includes “The Warrior Class,” a feature by Charles Glass on the rise of private-security contractors since 9/11. The conclusion to the piece describes a series of videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for the private-security company Blackwater (now Academi, formerly also Xe Services) in Iraq. Clips and photos from the videos are shown below, introduced by Glass’s descriptions:

The first [video], identified as “Baghdad, Iraq, May–­September 2005,” showed Blackwater convoys racing through town. Suddenly, the door of a Blackwater SUV opened and a rifle fired at passing traffic. “They opened the door,” my companion said. “You should never break the seal.”

A still photo showed some graffiti scrawled on a metal beam: THIS IS FOR THE AMERICANS OF BLACKWATER THAT WERE MURDERED HERE IN 2004 SEMPER FIDELIS 3/5 PS FUCK YOU.

The next tape had been taken by a camera in the turret of an armored vehicle.
An [M4A1]¹1. Corrected text. The gun was initially misidentified as an AK47.  fired from the turret at cars that had stopped to let the convoy pass. Whoever was firing the [gun] did so enthusiastically and often, sending rounds into parked cars and an overhead bridge. Another sequence showed a contractor vehicle rear-ending a car, shattering its back windshield.



   

The footage continued. A Humvee smashed into a car to move it out of the way. Guards swore at passersby. More armored vehicles smashed into civilian cars.

   

Blackwater helicopters shot at targets below in a Baghdad street.

   

But what about the tape dated April 1, 2006, which was shot from the front seat of the fourth car in an armored convoy? Driving along a wide boulevard in Baghdad, the lead vehicle swerved close to the curb of a traffic island. A woman in a black full-length burka began to cross the street. The vehicle struck the woman and knocked her unconscious body into the gutter. The cars slowed for a moment, but did not stop, nor did they even determine whether the victim was dead or alive. A voice in the car taking the video said, “Oh, my God!” Yet no one was heard on the radio requesting help for her. Most sickeningly, the sequence had been set to an AC/DC song, whose pounding, metallic chorus declared: “You’ve been… thunderstruck!”

 

The tape ended with the inscription IN SUPPORT OF SECURITY, PEACE, FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY EVERYWHERE.

Military Wants $3 Billion for a War It Isn’t Fighting

Wired

Thought the Iraq war was over? The Obama administration certainly wants you to think so, the better for its re-election campaign. Inconvenient fact, though: The Pentagon is asking for nearly $3 billion for a war it isn’t actually fighting.

To be specific, the Pentagon’s brand-new budget request asks for $2.9 billion for what it calls “Post-Operation NEW DAWN (OND)/Iraq Activities.” That’s almost as much money as the Pentagon spends on Darpa, its mad-science arm. And there are practically no U.S. troops in Iraq.

The Pentagon’s briefing materials provide little explanation for the expense. “Finalizing transition” is the ostensible mission the Pentagon wants funded. Its remaining office in Baghdad, the Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq, will get cash to “continue security assistance and security cooperation” with the Iraqi military “and amounts for the reset of equipment redeploying from Iraq and the theater of operations.”

And that won’t be all the cash going to Iraq. Contained within the classified “black” budget is sure to be money for special operations forces to hunt Iraq’s remaining terrorists on a case-by-case basis. And chances are, the CIA is spending money in Iraq, too.

Aside from that, the U.S. military has turned over operations in Iraq to the State Department, which in turn has hired an army of private security contractors the size of a heavy combat brigade. State has blocked congressional oversight into how its contractors will operate in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. But it’s clear that the diplomats are also buying themselves an air force — since Dec. 17, 2011 marked the first day in 20 years that the U.S. Air Force received no orders for operations in or over Iraq.

The New York Times noted over the weekend that in Afghanistan, “even dying is being outsourced” to civilian contractors. During the coming years in Iraq, that trend is likely to accelerate.

By and large, though, the point of the military’s residual operations in Iraq will be to sell the Iraqis weapons. It’s already brokered a sale of 18 F-16s to Iraq’s fledgling Air Force, worth $835 million. The Iraqis are already talking about doubling that purchase in the future. They can discuss future weapons sales with a U.S. military office that’s flush with cash.

Afghan War outsourced – US lost more civilians than servicemen in 2011

Russia Today

As the US readies to walk away from Afghanistan after a decade of destruction, a drawdown of troops is already causing a drop in military deaths. As those numbers drop, however, private employees hired by defense contractors are dying in droves.

For the first time since American troops began a military operation in Afghanistan over a decade ago, casualties suffered by private sector employees have surpassed that of US troops. In 2011, at least 430 workers employed by American contractors lost their lives as the US began relying less on military enforcements and more on performance by way of private companies. By comparison, the US military reports that 418 of their own died last year.

As the Department of Defense discusses plans to pull out troops from Afghanistan ahead of schedule, the transition away from the government hired guns that instead favors a roster staffed by private contractors, the number of civilian deaths could only increase in the years to come.

The news comes from a study just made available by Steven L Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University in DC. He compared statistics made available by some of the US military’s biggest private sector employers with data posted on iCasualties, a website that chronicles the death toll of American servicemen overseas. In describing his findings, Schooner explains the realities of the wartime transition as a very unfortunate phenomenon.

Schooner writes that, historically, an increase in military deaths has in turn caused a decrease in public support for those operations. As opposition against Afghanistan has existed across the world since America began its skirmishes following the September 11 terrorist attacks, ongoing battles punctuated with continuous deaths have not caused support to surge in recent years. With news of an end to the war earlier than anticipated, however, Americans may be quick to lend support to expediting the transition. As the military responds by removing troops and the public death toll drops, the truth is that deaths are still occurring, and they aren’t the ones that Uncle Sam has to send in press releases for.

“This article asserts that this stark and monolithic metric requires re-examination in light of a little-known phenomenon: on the modern battlefield, contractor personnel are dying at rates similar to – and at times in excess of – soldiers,” explains Schooner, who co-authored the study along with GWU’s Collin D Swan. “For the most part, this ‘substitution’ has taken place outside of the cognizance of the public and, potentially, Congress. This article explains the phenomenon, identifies some of the challenges and complexities associated with quantifying and qualifying the real price of combat in a modern outsourced military, and encourages greater transparency so that the public can more meaningfully participate in ‘the great American experiment.’”

As the transition away from the armed forces that instead favors private sector workers, Schooner equates it to outsourcing the worst possible outcome. “By continuing to outsource high-risk jobs that were previously performed by soldiers, the military, in effect, is privatizing the ultimate sacrifice,” he tells the New York Times.

That sacrifice, sadly, is privatized in more ways than one. “No one believes we’re underreporting military deaths. Everyone believes we’re underreporting contractor deaths,” adds Schooner. While the US military details the information of deaths suffered by its own servicemen and women, private contractors don’t opt to do the same. The actual tally of wartime deaths delivered onto translators, interpreters, private security teams and bodyguards could well surpass the 430 figure.

Drone glitch a huge blow to US military

Local police forces are now little armies. Why?

If you got it, flaunt it. Concussion grenades, rubber bullets,
pepper spray, tear gas, snow plows, horses and
dump trucks...Republican National Convention,
St. Paul, August 2008.

Nieman Watchdog
John Hanrahan

Last March, when some 500 activists arrived at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in northern Virginia to protest the abusive treatment that Pfc. Bradley Manning, the accused leaker of secret government documents to the Wikileaks website, was being subjected to while incarcerated there, they were confronted by a heavily-armed, riot-geared phalanx of dozens of state and local police, many of them on horseback for added measure.

I was there and wondered what in the world was going on.

These police in their black Darth Vader-like gear weren’t exactly facing a gun-wielding horde, or guerrillas with grenade launchers or a mob threatening to storm the base. Instead, they were confronting unarmed, nonviolent protesters who included older military veterans, recent Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, government workers, the ever-active antiwar women (and men) of Code Pink, members of various anti-war and anti-torture groups, lawyer observers and a smattering of reporters mainly from alternative media. Did the police think this assembly was going to charge into a heavily-fortified military base, overpower well-armed and well-trained Marines, and spring Manning from solitary confinement?

Since then I found out police often dress like Darth Vader at protest rallies. It’s a tactic to discourage dissent, with battlefield equipment supplied by the Pentagon and other equipment paid for in part with Homeland Security funds.

Increasingly around the country, noted civil liberties attorney Bill Quigley told Nieman Watchdog this summer, "What we have had is a militarization of the police response to nonviolent demonstrations. You attend one of those rallies and you could get the impression that it's unpatriotic to protest, that you're doing something wrong, that you're some sort of security threat."

Compared to the Vietnam war era, Quigley said, police around the country use more intimidating tactics these days, which likely discourages or scares off some people who might otherwise want to participate in protests. During the Vietnam war, he said, there was "pushback" – often violent – by police at demonstrations, but the police then were not decked out in full-blown military regalia and carrying the often heavy weaponry that can be the case today.

The militarization of the nation’s police forces is one of the most under-reported stories in the mainstream U.S. press. The issue sometimes surfaces in connection with SWAT teams conducting drug raids, particularly when police or Drug Enforcement Administration agents bust down the wrong door and frighten innocent occupants half to death and even injure them and destroy property. But rarely are there news stories questioning the propriety of these police forces becoming, in effect, little domestic armies. And the increase in anti-terrorism fear-mongering to justify the use of heavily-armed, riot-geared police at political demonstrations has the added dimension of providing a chilling effect on people’s exercise of their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and to petition their government.

It’s time reporters on all news organizations begin going to their local and state police departments and asking: How much of this crap do you have, and why do you need it?

Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and director of the law clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans, has served as counsel to a number of public interest organizations on civil liberties, constitutional rights and civil disobedience issues. In that capacity and until recently as the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, he frequently monitors demonstrations. Quigley said that around the country, protests, both small and large, are often overseen by a "heavy-duty police presence," replete with "those Ninja-Turtle-type outfits, special batons, shields, kneepads, surveillance cameras," etc. Police are sometimes on horseback (as they were at Quantico), astride "animals that are specially trained for crowd control" and that can be especially daunting to older and disabled people who aren't so nimble on their feet. Police also often try to orchestrate the protests, imposing new rules as they go along (as was the case at Quantico) – and, in some cases, using sound trucks to issue orders to control marchers.

While monitoring protests in various communities, Quigley said he has often asked state and local police why they turn out in their military gear for protests involving several hundred people engaging in a peaceful march or rally. Speaking as if from the same playbook, the answer they always give, Quigley said, is that it's not the peaceful demonstrators they are worried about but the fear that militants bent on violence will infiltrate and turn a peaceable demonstration into street fighting and property destruction.

To Quigley and others who have attended protests, this is pure bunkum.

"When they come dressed like that, they are not there to protect and defend our constitutional rights to peaceably assemble," Quigley said. "They are there to intimidate. Every demonstration is like a practice-run for state and local police to try out their new equipment and devices. They're all getting the federal anti-terrorist money, so if you go to a peaceful protest in Georgia, or Pittsburgh or New York or other places, you'll likely see the police using that as a pretext for a military-like response."

Overall, Quigley said, since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "it is absolutely true that people's ability to protest, as well as the response of the government to those protests, is different than it was before. It's tougher to organize and hold a protest" these days with police and city officials setting harsh terms for demonstrations – in effect, creating penned-in “free-speech zones,” arbitrary boundaries within which protesters must stay or face arrest. The police desire for crowd control and security takes precedence over the Constitution.

At Quantico, even after the police had closed the roads off to traffic for miles, they still ordered marchers to stay on the side of the road and not go into the street. When a designated contingent of six protesters, including Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, asked to be allowed as a sign of respect to put flowers on a replica of the Iwo Jima Memorial outside the base on federal property, the police at first agreed and then reneged. They told Ellsberg and the others that Quantico officials wouldn’t allow them to go right up to the World War II memorial – which is normally open to the public – but they could stand behind the police barrier 10 feet or more away and throw the flowers at the memorial. For absolute arbitrariness and callousness, the police and military orchestration of what was meant to be a solemn moment at a monument that honors Marines who died in battle is hard to top. Did they think the protesters were going to deface the memorial? That the 80-year-old Ellsberg was going to make a dash onto the base? The sheer authoritarianism embodied in this situation is symptomatic of the tragic diminishment of civil liberties since 9/11, when homeland security and the be-afraid, be-very-afraid syndrome took over.

Washington Post reporter Darryl Fears – in a well-done story that was a rare instance of that newspaper actually covering a protest by progressive activists – quoted former Army colonel and State Department official Ann Wright as saying: “They wouldn't even let us get up to the memorial...It was disrespectful.”

FBI Investigation Reveals DoD Contractors Stole Iraq Artifacts

Top Secret Writers
Dennis Dufrene

The FBI has returned invaluable artifacts to Iraq, and publicly revealed that the relics were stolen by Department of Defense contractors.

Terracotta plaques and other artifacts were seized during a 2006 investigation.

The relics are thousands of years old and have tremendous cultural significance in Iraq. The success of the law enforcement operation that returned the relics was celebrated during a ceremony in Washington, DC.

“These artifacts are truly invaluable,” said Ron Hosko, special agent in charge of the Criminal Division in the Washington Field Office. “The FBI is pleased to be able to return them to their rightful owner.”

The artifacts were seized by agents during a public corruption investigation headed by the Contract Corruption Task Force, which was formed to stop fraud and abuses among Defense Department contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the FBI, contractors passing through the Babylon region stole the artifacts in 2004. Agents determined the relics were used as bribes, gifts and were sold to other contractors, who smuggled the artifacts into the United States.

Two contractors have ben convicted and sentenced to time in prison.

Hosko praised investigators during the ceremony and said that the bureau is committed to preventing fraud among contractors, who many view as working outside US, Iraqi and Geneva Convention laws.
Hosko added that working abroad does not entitle anyone to break laws or remove artifacts.

Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Shakir Mahmood, said he was thankful for the efforts of the task force and the return of the important artifacts. The Ambassador issued the following statement about the returned artifacts:

“As Iraq works to reconstruct our country and our heritage, we are grateful for the cooperation from the American authorities.”

The terracotta pieces were made of clay, pressed into a mold and fired in an oven. Experts say that ancient Iraqis believed the plaques protected them from evil and sickness.

Voices of Opposition • "Private Warriors"/"Blackwater Invades Illinois"

Video includes key excerpts of films followed by a talk and QnA session with Jody Gibbs, who discusses American politicians and their complicity in war crimes.

Blackwater Worldwide, formerly Blackwater USA, is a self-described private military company which trains more than 40,000 people a year, from U.S. or foreign military and police services, as well as other U.S. government agencies. They have opened training facilities across the US. Technologies used and techniques trained are not limited by U.S. domestic law.

Tea Party Caucus Moves To Make Sure Money Will NOT Be Cutoff From Military Industrial Complex

The Military as a Jobs Program: There are More Efficient Ways to Stimulate the Economy

Ellen Brown

Dwight David Eisenhower

Global Research, June 22, 2011
Web of Debt

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."

–Dwight David Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace," speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953

In a Wall Street Journal editorial on June 8 bemoaning the failure of the Obama stimulus package, Martin Feldstein wrote:

"Experience shows that the most cost-effective form of temporary fiscal stimulus is direct government spending. The most obvious way to achieve that in 2009 was to repair and replace the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan that would otherwise have to be done in the future.?But the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department."

You can’t make this stuff up. The most obvious way to stimulate the economy is to replace military equipment? And the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department? When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, the military now devours half the U.S. budget. If military spending is such a cost-effective stimulus, why have the trillions poured into it in the last decade left the economy reeling?

The military is the nation’s largest and most firmly entrenched entitlement program, one that takes half of every tax dollar. Even if "national security" is considered our number one priority (a dubious choice when the real unemployment rate is over 16%), estimates are that the military budget could be cut in half or more and we would still have the most powerful military machine in the world. Our enemies (if any) are now "terrorists," not countries; and what is needed to contain them (if anything) is local policing, not global warfare. Much of our military hardware is just good for "shock and awe," not needed for any "real and present danger."

Military spending is the very essence of "built-in obsolescence": it turns out products that are designed to blow up. The military is not subject to ordinary market principles but works on a "cost-plus" basis, with producers reimbursed for whatever they have spent plus a guaranteed profit. Gone are the usual competitive restraints that keep capitalist corporations "lean and mean." Private contractors hired by the government on no-bid contracts can be as wasteful and inefficient as they like and still make a tidy profit. Yet legislators looking to slash wasteful "entitlements" persist in overlooking this obvious elephant in the room.

The reason massive military spending is considered the most "obvious" way to produce a fiscal stimulus is simply that it is the only form of direct government spending that gets a pass from the deficit hawks. The economy is desperate to get money flowing through it, and today only the government is in a position to turn on the spigots; but there is a tourniquet on government spending. That is true for everything but the military, the only program on which the government is allowed to spend seemingly without limit, often even without oversight.

Standard & Poors Cuts U.S. Outlook to Negative Because Both Parties Keep Throwing Money at Endless Wars, Endless Bailouts and a Ponzi Financial System

Washington's Blog

As I've been warning for years, America's irresponsible financial policy will lead to a credit downgrade.

Today, S&P cut its U.S. outlook to negative, warning of a 1 in 3 chance of a credit downgrade in the next couple of years.

As the Wall Street Journal notes:

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services Inc. cut its outlook on the U.S. to negative, increasing the likelihood of a potential downgrade from its triple-A rating, as the path from large budget deficits and rising government debt remains unclear.

"More than two years after the beginning of the recent crisis, U.S. policy makers have still not agreed on how to reverse recent fiscal deterioration or address longer-term fiscal pressures," S&P credit analyst Nikola G. Swann said. He said the rating agency puts the chance of a U.S. downgrade within two years at least one-in-three.

***

S&P said Monday it sees material risk that policymakers might not agree on how to address budgetary challenges by 2013, which would render the U.S. fiscal profile weaker than that of other triple-A-rated countries.

***

S&P said that if an agreement isn't reached and meaningful implementation is not begun by 2013, it would make the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of other triple-A-rated sovereigns.

While the Democratic and Republican leadership point fingers at the other side, and bicker about ideological pet peeves, this is not a question of left-versus-right.

The war between liberals and conservatives is a false divide-and-conquer dog-and-pony show created by the powers that be to keep the American people divided and distracted. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

The real problem is that both Democrats and Republicans want to fund endless wars, give endless bailouts to the too big to fail banks and corporations, and perpetuate the expensive Ponzi scheme of printing money out of thin air.

Imperial wars reduce our national security. Indeed, our top military and intelligence officials say that debt is the main threat to our national security, and have said that the Pentagon must cut spending. See this and this.

Moreover, endless bailouts harm the economy. Ponzi finance costs trillions of dollars (and leads to a decrease in loans to Main Street). And see this and this.

To the extent that both the Republican and Democratic parties slavishly follow these meta-policies - which supersede the stated "conservative" and "liberal" goals - they will ensure that we lose our AAA credit, and they will destroy our economy.

U.S. indirectly paying Afghan warlords as part of security contract

Washington Post

The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.

The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and "dramatically undermine" larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said.

The report describes a Defense Department that is well aware that some of the money paid to contractors winds up in the hands of warlords and insurgents. Military logisticians on the ground are focused on getting supplies where they are needed and have "virtually no understanding of how security is actually provided" for the local truck convoys that transport more than 70 percent of all goods and materials used by U.S. troops. Alarms raised by prime trucking contractors were met by the military "with indifference and inaction," the report said.

"The findings of this report range from sobering to shocking," Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) wrote in an introduction to the 79-page report, titled "Warlord, Inc., Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan."

The report comes as the number of U.S. casualties is rising in the Afghan war, and public and congressional support is declining. The administration has been on the defensive in recent weeks, insisting that the slow progress of anti-Taliban offensives in Helmand province and the city of Kandahar does not mean that more time is needed to assess whether President Obama's strategy is working.

"I think it's much too early to draw a negative conclusion," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. "I think there's more positive than negative. We're heading toward a year-end assessment, which will be a big one for us." The review was set when Obama announced in December that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and begin to withdraw them in July 2011.

Tierney is chairman of the national security subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose majority staff spent six months preparing the report. A proponent of a smaller U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan and targeted attacks on insurgents, Tierney said in an interview Monday that he hopes the report will help members of Congress "analyze whether they think this is the most effective way to go about dealing with terrorism. Or the most cost-effective way."

The report's conclusions will be introduced at a hearing Tuesday at which senior military and defense officials are scheduled to testify. The report says that all evidence and findings were made available to Republicans on the subcommittee. A spokesman for Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), the ranking Republican, said the lawmaker will not comment until he has seen the entire report.

In testimony shortly after Obama's strategy announcement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that "much of the corruption" in Afghanistan has been fueled by billions of dollars' worth of foreign money spent there, "and one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money."

Military officials said that they have begun several corruption investigations in Afghanistan and that a task force has been named, headed by Navy Rear Adm. Kathleen Dussault, director of logistics and supply operations for the chief of naval operations and former head of the Baghdad-based joint contracting command for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Full Article

CFG spokeswoman Ann Marie Calhoun missing after controversial video leak

Conspiracy For Good spokesperson and internationally acclaimed rock violinist Ann Marie Calhoun is missing after uploading a leaked confidential lobbyist video by the UK security company Blackwell Briggs onto YouTube five days ago. She also posted a re-edited version of the video with the comment: “This is the truth they don’t want you to see. Help us fight corporate greed, join the resistance on www.conspiracyforgood.com.”

The UK private security, construction and drilling company Blackwell Briggs, responded by stating that it would take legal actions and "extreme measures" against the “cyber-terrorists” of the Conspiracy For Good and the file sharing site The Pirate Bay. Blackwell Briggs opines that "these are individuals that compromise the advancement of the free market" and proposes that "extreme measures must be taken when protecting the safety and security of society."

Blackwell Briggs is in the security and surveillance business. The leaked video is meant to convince members of the British Parliament to pass a bill to allow private companies to take control over SCADA ('supervisory control and data acquisition') services in the UK, restricting and limiting mobile technologies and allowing intrusive surveillance and security measures to be taken without informing the public. Blackwell Briggs is also a large military contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ann Marie Calhoun has been confirmed as missing by her management at Weapons of Mass Entertainment. If you have any ideas where Ann Marie might be, please contact webmaster@ethrill.net.

Blackwell Briggs Revealed:

Blackwell Briggs - Conspiracy For Good Re-Edit:

Is Changing the Troop/Contractor Ratio "Pulling Out of Iraq"?

Army awards lucrative Iraq support contract to KBR

• AP foreign, Tuesday March 2 2010

RICHARD LARDNER

Associated Press Writers= WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense giant KBR Inc. was awarded a contract potentially worth $2.8 billion for support work in Iraq as U.S. forces continue to leave the country, military authorities said Tuesday.

KBR was notified of the award Friday, a day after the company told shareholders it lost about $25 million in award fees because of flawed electrical work in Iraq.

The Houston-based company was charged with maintaining the barracks where Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth of Pittsburgh, a 24-year-old Green Beret, was electrocuted in 2008 while showering. The company has denied wrongdoing, and investigators said in August there was "insufficient evidence to prove or disprove" that anyone was criminally culpable in Maseth's death.

The uproar over his death triggered a review of 17 other electrocution deaths in Iraq and widespread inspections and repairs of electrical work in Iraq, much of it performed by KBR.

Dan Carlson, a spokesman for the Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Ill., said the new contract is for one year, with an option for four more. KBR will handle logistics support, transportation mission, and postal operations.

KBR has long been the military's largest support contractor in Iraq, providing troops with everything from mail and laundry to housing and meals. The new award was made through a revamped contract structure intended to foster competition among companies.

"The award demonstrates that the government recognizes KBR's ability and expertise in delivering high quality service in challenging contingency environments," KBR said in a statement.

Charles Tiefer, a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School and a vocal critic of KBR, called the award an "outrage" because of the company's record in Iraq.

"Giving KBR this contract while denying them award fees for their enormous problem of accidentally electrocuting soldiers amounts to rapping them on the knuckles on one hand while handing them a multibillion dollar deal in the other," said Tiefer, who is also a member of the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting.

Last October, the Defense Contract Audit Agency criticized KBR for having more employees in Iraq than were necessary. The excess, the agency said, was unnecessarily costing U.S. taxpayers.

KBR said it had reduced the size of its work force in Iraq consistent with guidance from U.S. military commanders. The company also fired back at the audit agency for its "heavy-handed intrusion" into the military's complex logistics process.

Carlson said Army Sustainment Command is working closely with commanders in Iraq to make sure the contractor work force is properly sized to support drawdown operations in Iraq.

Iraqi Reaction to Blackwater Immunity

This story begs the question: "Who is left behind to bear the wrath of justice by the people of Iraq?" Our U.S. soldiers, not the contractors.