Iran writes to UNSC, warns against any Israeli ‘adventurism’ amid rise in threats
Press TV – October 14, 2021
Iran has written to the United Nations Security Council over a sharp increase in Israeli threats against the country, warning against any “miscalculation” or “military adventurism” on the part of the regime against the Islamic Republic, including its nuclear program.
In a letter submitter to the current president of the Security Council on Wednesday, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi warned that the frequency and severity of the regime’s provocative and adventurous threats had steadily increased over the past months and reached an alarming level.
Such blatant systematic threats against one of the founding members of the United Nations are a gross violation of international law, in particular Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter, he added.
As a case in point, the diplomat referred the recent comments by the Israeli military chief, Aviv Kochavi, who said earlier this month that the regime was in constant preparations for an attack on the Iranian nuclear program.
Kochav had said, “The operational plans against Iran’s nuclear program will continue to evolve and improve,” and that “operations to destroy Iranian capabilities will continue, in any arena and at any time.”
The fact that the Tel Aviv regime continues to try to “destroy Iran’s capabilities” proves without any doubt that it had been responsible for terrorist attacks against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program in the past, Takht-Ravanchi said.
Given the ominous history of the Israeli regime’s destabilizing practices in the region and its covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program, it is necessary to counter the regime and stop all its threats and disruptive behavior, the top diplomat added.
Israel prevents realization of nuke-free Middle East: Iran
Meanwhile, Iran’s Representative to the UN General Assembly First Committee Heidar Ali Balouji also said at a Wednesday session on “Nuclear Weapons, Other WMDs, Outer Space, and Conventional Weapons” that the Israeli regime is the main hurdle to a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.
“We reiterate our call on the international community to compel Israel to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, promptly accede to the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon party without any preconditions and place all of its nuclear facilities under the IAEA’s full-scope safeguards,” he said.
He described the Islamic Republic as one of the countries “with the highest record in accession to the international instruments banning” weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
“Achieving global nuclear disarmament remains one of the most long-lasting goals of the United Nations. Today, international security is under threat by the existence of almost 14,000 nuclear weapons with well-funded, long-term plans to not only modernize but also strengthen the arsenals of NWSs (nuclear weapons states) and so nuclear arms race,” he said.
He said the United States’ withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and its unwillingness to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the 2015 nuclear agreement signed between Iran and major world powers — have inflicted immense damage on international disarmament measures.
The diplomat said chemical weapons remain a grave concern, with the United States as the only possessor, urging Washington to meet a 2012 deadline for the destruction of its stockpile of such weapons.
Balouji said the ratification of a legally binding protocol would be the most effective way to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention, urging the United States to withdraw its objection to the adoption of such a measure.
Similarly, a legally binding instrument is required to prevent an arms race in outer space, he said, saying the United States already has a space force with a $17 billion budget, which will increase by 13 percent, he noted.
Iran believes that the arms race in space should be stopped through a binding legal document, he emphasized.
The Iranian diplomat defended countries’ right to possess conventional weapons, warning that massive and irresponsible production and transfer of such weapons in the Middle East pose a threat to the entire region.
“Israel is the largest recipients of US arms aids in the region. Using these weapons, it is committing different crimes and causing destabilization and insecurity that must be stopped,” he said.
Nuclear Weapons and Europe
By Brian Cloughley | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 12, 2021
On October 5 the U.S. State Department announced that the U.S. military’s arsenal of nuclear weapons numbered 3,750 as of September 30, 2020. It was stated with satisfaction that “This number represents an approximate 88 percent reduction in the stockpile from its maximum (31,255) at the end of fiscal year 1967”, although it wasn’t mentioned that the reduction since 2018 was only 35.
On the same day, the U.S. Defense Department publication Stars and Stripes reported that “an Air Force fighter jet slated to debut later this year in Europe passed a milestone when it dropped mock nuclear bombs during training flights designed to ensure its ability to fulfil NATO’s nuclear deterrence mission . . . The successful test of the F-35A Lightning II came as the 48th Fighter Wing, based at Britain’s RAF Lakenheath, reactivated the 495th Fighter Squadron last week for a new mission in Europe. [Emphasis added.] Ahead of the fighter model’s arrival at Lakenheath, two F-35As that took off from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, completed a full weapon system demonstration, regarded as a graduation flight test for achieving nuclear certification.”
In February 2021 U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that “President Biden has made it clear: the U.S. has a national security imperative and a moral responsibility to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction” and President Biden pledged to “take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” but it has not been made clear how elimination of the threat from nuclear weapons or reduction of their role in U.S. military strategy can be achieved by training more combat aircraft pilots in the use of nuclear weapons and then deploying them to Europe with their strike aircraft.
The United Kingdom has an equally interesting perspective in what it describes as its “leading approach to nuclear disarmament” and is increasing its arsenal of nuclear weapons. As the Royal United Services Institute noted in March, the UK’s 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy states that the UK is “raising a self-imposed limit on its overall nuclear warhead stockpile” of the current 225 warheads.
The Review, headed “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”, explains that in 2021 it had been announced as national policy that there would be a reduction in “our overall nuclear warhead stockpile ceiling from not more than 225 to not more than 180 by the mid-2020s. However, in recognition of the evolving security environment . . . this is no longer possible, and the UK will move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads.” Then it assured the international community that in spite of increasing the number of its nuclear weapons delivery systems the United Kingdom is “strongly committed to full implementation of the NPT in all its aspects, including nuclear disarmament.”
It is intriguing that the present British government would have us believe that more nuclear weapons and deployment of 27 U.S. nuclear-capable F-35 aircraft to the UK’s Royal Air Force base at Lakenheath are in some fashion compatible with nuclear disarmament, but what is consistent is their linkage with the stockpiles of U.S. nuclear bombs already in Europe.
It is not known if there are or will be any U.S. nuclear weapons kept at Lakenheath, and no doubt the UK government would be comfortable with such storage which would add comparatively few bombs to the hundred or so already stored in vaults in air bases at Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi in Italy, Volkel in the Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey. It is regrettable that while the U.S. and Britain insist that they are trying to reduce the threat of nuclear war they are actually increasing and expanding numbers, locations and strike capabilities of nuclear weapons’ systems.
The U.S.-Nato military alliance policy is that “nuclear weapons are a core component of NATO’s overall capabilities for deterrence and defence,” resting almost entirely on U.S. nuclear delivery capabilities which are to be expanded at vast expense, with the new generation of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems, now referred to as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, likely to cost 95 billion dollars — if there are no cost overruns.
As stated by the Congressional Budget Office, it is “required by law to project the 10-year costs of nuclear forces every two years” and its latest paper, “Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2021 to 2030” makes sobering reading because it is projected that U.S. taxpayers, in this era of fiscal crises, will be required to pay sixty billion dollars a year for nuclear forces over the next ten years. The Office estimates that “about $188 billion of the $551 billion total over the 2021–2030 period would go toward modernizing nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Of that amount, $175 billion would go toward modernizing the strategic nuclear triad, and $13 billion would be for modernizing tactical nuclear weapons and delivery systems.” And this does not include funding of such massive projects as the F-35 strike aircraft which will cost some $1.6 trillion.
The political justification for massive military spending on conventional and nuclear weapons by the governments in London and Washington is their contention that Russia and China pose a threat and that, in the words of the 2021 U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, Russia, for example, is “determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.” (Presumably Washington means the sort of disruption that Associated Press reported on October 7 when “Europe’s soaring gas prices dropped . . . after Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested his country could sell more gas to European spot buyers via its domestic market in addition to through existing long-term contracts.”)
The surge in deployment of nuclear systems and the overall tenor of nuclear weapons developments in Europe do not meet with approval in the European community. For example, a survey published in January revealed that 74% of Italians, 58% of Dutch and 57% of Belgians and 83% of Germans want U.S. nuclear weapons removed from their countries, and another poll (albeit by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) found that 77% of Britons favour a total ban on nuclear weapons.
Europe is in a state of flux, and not only because of the economic and social effects of the pandemic. For example, the Warsaw government’s recent refusal to abide by European Union laws could result in Poland leaving the EU (which would be greeted with approval by most EU citizens) but this would have no effect on the U.S.-Nato military buildup — the “Enhanced Forward Presence” along Russia’s borders, backed to the hilt by nuclear weapons.
U.S. deployment of a further squadron of nuclear strike aircraft to the UK, for a “new mission in Europe”, combined with its existing stocks of nuclear weapons in Europe and Britain’s undebated decision to increase its nuclear weapons’ arsenal are signals to continental European nations that planning for nuclear war against Russia is accelerating. While these countries prefer to engage with Washington and London in a balanced fashion and wish to maintain cordial relations, it would be advisable to question the motives behind the growing emphasis on nuclear war and insist on reduction in confrontational deployments.
US is only country still hanging on to chemical weapons, Russia says, after Washington unveils ‘Novichok’ questions
An open storage for the collection of burnt ammunition containing toxicant agents. © Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
RT | October 6, 2021
Russian diplomats have hit out at the US after American officials signed a letter demanding information on the circumstances of the purported poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, accusing Washington of double standards.
On Tuesday, Moscow’s embassy in Washington issued a fiery statement after the US and 44 other countries presented a series of answers from Russia over the incident as part of a missive passed over to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Navalny and his German doctors insist that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok last year. The envoys blasted the allegations as “unfounded,” and the Kremlin has argued that all requests for evidence from Berlin have gone unanswered.
In response to the allegations, the embassy argued that Russia “is committed to its obligations” under chemical weapons treaties and, “in 2017, our country destroyed all national stocks of chemical warfare agents, which was documented by the OPCW.”
However, the envoys argue that “the US continues to be the only country in the world that has not destroyed its impressive arsenal of chemical weapons.” In 1991, then-US President George H.W. Bush committed to destroying its stockpiles of lethal agents, but progress has since been hampered by a number of issues and decommissioning is still underway, leaving large quantities of chemical munitions, including mustard gas shells.
In March, the US slammed Russia with sanctions, urging Moscow to get rid of the country’s chemical weapons stockpile following the allegations of the use of Novichok against Navalny. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, however, maintained that “Russia declared and verified the destruction of all chemical weapons on its territory many years ago and fully complied with international conventions… Russia has no chemical weapons.”
“By the way,” Peskov added, “we expect that our counterparts will also comply with these conventions.”
This is not the first time that Russia has called on the US to dispose of its chemical weapons. In 2018, the spokesperson for the country’s Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, responded to former US President Donald Trump’s request for Russia to “stop the arms race” developing between the two nations. “Great idea,” Zakharova said. “Let’s start by getting rid of chemical weapons. American ones.”
In response to the US’ latest accusations regarding Russia’s supposed chemical warfare capabilities, the embassy said that it is in the world’s interest that Washington complies with the UN’s international regulations surrounding disarmament. “We call on Washington to complete the chemical demilitarization program as soon as possible and fulfill international obligations, making the world safe from the potential use of this type of weapon,” the embassy added.
The Ultimate Drug-War Crackdown
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 1, 2021
Throughout the long sordid history of America’s war on drugs, drug-war proponents have claimed that if only government officials would really crack down on drug use and drug distribution, the decades-old war on drugs could finally — finally! — be won.
But one big problem is that throughout the decades of drug warfare, there have been crackdowns — big crackdowns.
Many federal judges, for example, some of whom have considered themselves to be fierce drug warriors, have long imposed maximum jail sentences on drug-law violators.
Congress itself has gotten involved in drug-war crackdowns, for example by mandating that federal judges, some of whom weren’t proving tough enough, mete out “mandatory minimum sentences” for drug violators.
There is also the asset-forfeiture racket to consider, a program that entitles DEA officers and state and local cops to steal money from people who are suspected of violating drug laws.
There has been the extradition of Latin American drug lords to the United States, followed by long jail sentences in American prisons.
And of course, there has been the racist component to the drug war, by which cops have used drug laws to stop, search, frame, and harass blacks.
Obviously, those crackdowns didn’t end up winning the war on drugs. On the contrary, the war on drugs is as far away from being won as it’s ever been.
And then came Rodrigo Duterte, the elected dictator of the Philippines and an absolute favorite among American drug warriors. Having been elected in 2016, Duterte announced that he was going to win the war on drugs in the Philippines.
Today, five years later, Duterte is under investigation by the International Criminal Court, which is alleging that Philippine police have killed 6,100 suspects in drug trafficking raids.
Notice the operative word: “suspects.” None of these dead people ever had a trial. None of them were ever convicted. They were just killed.
Moreover, that 6,100 figure might be an extremely low estimate. According to an article in Laprensalatina.com, “Human rights groups speak of between 27,000 and 30,000 dead, mostly victims of alleged extrajudicial executions.” The article also points out that the “victims include 112 children, according to a report published in 2020 by the World Organization Against Torture.”
Duterte is claiming that he’s innocent, but if he isn’t, his system has to be considered the ultimate drug-war crackdown. Just think about it. No constitutional technicalities to follow. No reading of Miranda rights. No criminal defense attorneys. No due process of law. No jury trials.
Just imagine U.S. officials establishing a system in which the cops are empowered to kill anyone they suspect is violating the drug laws. What could be better than that, at least from the perspective of a drug-war proponent, right?
Well, except for one thing. They still haven’t won the drug war in the Philippines! They’re still fighting. And from the way things look, they will be fighting forever, just like American drug warriors!
If the killing spree in the Philippines hasn’t worked to win the war on drugs, isn’t that a good sign that no crackdown, no matter how vicious, can ever succeed in winning the war on drugs?
I suppose a drug-war proponent could say, “Jacob, bring in the military and have them fight the drug war as viciously as they fought the Taliban.” But at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the military lost its war against the Taliban. Moreover, when Mexico used its military to fight to the drug war, the results was tens of thousands of innocent people killed, with no end in sight to the drug war.
I’ve got a better idea, a libertarian idea: Let’s just end the drug war by legalizing all drugs. No more drug-war searches, arrests, harassment, incarceration, or killings. Just leave people free to ingest whatever they want. Leave drug rehabilitation to private groups, like Alcoholics Anonymous.
Legalizing drugs would immediately put all drug lords out of business because they couldn’t compete against legitimate pharmacies and other businesses. It would enable drug addicts to secure sound drugs rather than the polluted drugs that they are forced to buy on the black market and that often lead to their deaths. It would encourage people with drug problems to openly seek treatment. And it would put the entire drug-war enforcement bureaucracy out of business, which would save taxpayers a ton of money.
No crackdown, no matter how vicious, will ever end up winning the war on drugs. The drug war will continue to destroy our civil liberties and bring ever-increasing violence to our land.
More important though is a fundamental principle of liberty: People have the fundamental right to ingest whatever they want, no matter how harmful.
For those two reasons — the futility of winning the war on drugs and the freedom of the individual — there is no reason for Congress or the states to continue the drug war one day longer. To move toward a free, peaceful, prosperous, healthy, and harmonious society, they need to legalize drugs — all drugs — now.
General Milley Strikes Out Demonstrating What Is Wrong with the US Military
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 30, 2021
Most Americans do not know that in the United States currently there are approximately 900 Active-duty generals and flag officers to lead 1.3 million troops in the combined armed forces. This is a ratio of one senior officer per every 1,400 men and women. During World War II, an admittedly different era, there were roughly twice as many flag and general officers for a little more than 12 million active duty troops a ratio of one to 6,000. In the Navy there are 32 flag officers for each ship currently in commission. In 1944, there was one flag officer for every 24 ships.
This development is referred to as “rank creep” which does not improve performance and instead clutters the chain of command by adding multiple bureaucratic layers to decision-making while also costing more due to funding the higher paygrades. And lest one be confused about why there continue to be so many flag officers, possibly concluding that they are needed to provide the leadership to fight wars, it could be pointed out that most of them will never get anywhere near combat even if the U.S. continues its belligerency on a global scale in an effort to establish and enforce its leadership of a fictional “rules based international order.”
It turns out that current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was, during the latter days of the Donald Trump Administration, talking to his counterparts in China as well as to some folks in Congress who had no love for Trump. Some of the conversations were routine, but others were apparently driven by the notion that Donald Trump just might do something stupid like starting a war unless some restraints were placed on his ability to do mischief. Inevitably, there have emerged major differences of opinion regarding the propriety of what Milley was engaged in, with Democrats in general and Trump haters in particular finding no problem with the intrusion into policy-making while many Republicans have been calling for a thorough investigation to include possible consequences up to and including court-martial.
The various conversations were reported in a just released book “Peril” written by Bob Woodward and, Robert Costa and, based on a claimed 200 interviews, are generally conceded to be accurate by both sides to include the Milley camp plus the journalists involved. Some of the calls at least were made with other officials in the room and on separate phone lines, though there were also conversations with politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, that were clearly considered off-the-record as they dealt with keeping nuclear weapons out of the president’s hands.
Milley, according to the book, reportedly told the Chinese General Li Zuocheng in a back-channel phone call that had as a subject the possibility that the president might order an attack directed against China, something in the nature of a “surprise attack.” He reportedly said “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” Milley apparently justified the action by stating that he disapproves of surprise attacks in principal and his defenders cite the example of “Pearl Harbor,” which was viewed so repugnantly by the American public that something like a war of extermination became inevitable. Unstated by the Milley supporters, though implicit in their argument, is the assumption that Donald Trump was both ignorant and a loose cannon on deck who would do something stupid like initiating a conflict with China.
Milley also shared his view that Trump had experienced a “mental decline” after the election with Nancy Pelosi in a phone call to her on January 8th, two days after the alleged insurrection at the Capitol. Pelosi reportedly demanded that Milley take the nuclear launch codes away from Trump, which admittedly he did not seek to do. On the same day Milley also reviewed procedures with the senior officers at the National Military Command Center for launching nuclear weapons, insisting that he also had to be involved. To be completely clear, Milley had no legal authority or power to insert himself into the chain of command, though “Peril” reports that he did just that and at a minimum he was acting “extra-constitutionally” in his interpretation of his government role.
But it is the outreach to China that is most disturbing. It is indeed possible to regard Donald Trump negatively while at the same time responding rationally with one’s international nuclear armed adversaries. One does not know what Milley intended to do by his phone call, but “Peril” makes the case, without providing any evidence, that “American intelligence showed that the Chinese believed that Mr. Trump planned to launch a military strike to create an international crisis that he could claim to solve as a last-ditch effort to beat Joseph R. Biden Jr.” In any event, it is unlikely that the Milley phone call reassured Li of anything. Indeed, Li and the Chinese government would have only two possible responses to the threat. First would be to shut up shop, batten down the hatches, and sit still for punishment. The other option would be to preemptively strike U.S. forces in and around China which presumably would be used for the attack. Either option could easily lead to a nuclear exchange once things cease to go according to plan, presuming that the surprise attack itself was not intended to include nuclear weapons in the first place.
Colonel Richard Black observes sagely that “If the report of Milley’s intentions is accurate, he should be relieved for cause, for though he did not consummate a criminal act by making that promise, the promise was so fraught with impropriety that an officer who betrayed his government in such fashion should never be trusted to serve. Indeed, it is likely that had his Chinese counterpart made such a promise to General Milley, he’d have been executed for doing so.”
Beyond the disruption of the chain of command and ignoring the Constitution, there are, of course, some other problems with Milley’s line of thinking. Trump has, to be sure, demonstrated enough irrational behavior to make one suspect that he is not in full possession of all his marbles, but that is not the point. He was elected president of the United States and the U.S. Constitution was set up to ensure civilian control of the military, not vice versa.
And there is no solid evidence, only innuendo, that Trump ever seriously contemplated war with China. Indeed, he ran for office pledging to end the pointless wars that Washington was engaged in in Asia and towards the end of his administration he negotiated an exit from Afghanistan, which Joe Biden then postponed before bungling the evacuation. Trump did indeed assassinate a senior Iranian General and also launched cruise missiles against Syria based on bad intelligence, but otherwise his record is significantly better than that of his predecessor Barack Obama who both initiated and broadened the policy of assassinating American and Afghan citizens overseas by drone and also was party to the overthrow of the Libyan government while also conniving to replace the government of Ukraine.
In any event, in America war is clearly playing politics by other means. President Joe Biden has already declared that he has full confidence in Milley. Several Republican Senators, including Marco Rubio, have instead demanded that he be fired. Given the fact that at least one of the general’s phone calls to his Chinese counterpart could have started a war that might have gone nuclear, he should at least have the integrity to resign and take up his expected board appointment with a defense contractor.
Philip Giraldi, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
US Expulsion from West Asia Region is Inevitable: IRGC
Al-Manar | September 24, 2021
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has issued a statement on the anniversary of Sacred Defense, saying that the United States has no choice but withdrawal from the West Asia region.
The IRGC issued a statement on Friday to commemorate the anniversary of the Iraqi Saddam regime-imposed war on Iran and the beginning of Sacred Defense by the Iranian nation against the Baathist regime of Saddam, which was sponsored and fully backed by Western powers between 1980-1988.
The statement said that after 41 years since the start of the imposed war, which was sponsored and supported by the world powers, the nation has grown more resilient and the country has solidified its defensive power.
The IRGC added that the imposed war ended while even a handspan of Iranian soil was not given to the enemy.
It also noted that the western powers continued non-stop to conspire against Iran over the past 33 years since the end of the imposed war.
The Guards also said that the power of hegemonic powers such as the United States, which supported Saddam’s regime, was declining while they made wrong calculations and invaded Islamic countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“But today, after more than twenty years [since the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and NATO], we are witnessing the humiliating escape of the Americans from Afghanistan and at God’s willing, we will see their expulsion from West Asia in the near future,” the IRGC statement read.
Shocking report exposes how US defense contractors have wasted trillions through fraud and corruption
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | September 15, 2021
The newly released ‘Profits of War’ report from Brown University has revealed in staggering detail the full extent of the corruption unleashed by Washington’s profligate defense spending during the 20-year War on Terror.
It notes that since the start of the intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001, Pentagon spending has totalled $14 trillion, with the US war budget increasing between 2002 and 2003 by more than the entire military spending of any other country. Between one-third and one-half of that total was pocketed by defense firms, which provided logistics and reconstruction, private security services and weapons – along the way, these contractors habitually engaged in “questionable or corrupt business practices,” including fraud, abuse, price-gouging and profiteering.
Wartime conditions meant standard contract processes were circumvented – bidders, bids, and subsequent delivery weren’t subject to significant oversight, so fleecing the Pentagon was extremely easy, particularly for well-connected companies with government ties.
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman have in recent years been awarded between a quarter to a third of all Pentagon contracts. It’s surely no coincidence that four of the past five US Defense Secretaries previously worked at one of the ‘big five’.
A key focus of the report is Halliburton, which was awarded an open-ended contract without competition, to provide a wide array of support for US soldiers overseas, including setting up and managing military bases, maintaining equipment, catering, and laundry services. A 2003 internal Pentagon review found the company had dramatically overcharged for basic goods and services to the tune of tens of millions, and conducted faulty work on bases that put soldiers at risk.
In some cases, Halliburton billed Washington for services it didn’t actually provide – in 2009, it was determined the number of meals for which it charged the Pentagon was up to 36 percent greater than the true figure. In others, the company’s reckless conduct had fatal consequences. The report documents how, from 2004 to 2008, at least 18 military personnel in Halliburton-built bases across Iraq were electrocuted due to sub-par installations.
It took the death of a Green Beret who was electrocuted while showering for Congress to launch an investigation into the issue, with a resultant review revealing that the wider building was found to have “serious electrical problems” almost a year before he died, but Halliburton did nothing to remedy the situation – not least because its contract didn’t oblige the firm to “[fix] potential hazards.” The company was also found to have employed untrained or inexperienced electricians to do work at a lower rate, while billing Washington for fees provided by professionals.
Despite criminal investigations being launched by the FBI, Justice Department, and Pentagon Inspector General during the mid-00s into Halliburton’s activities in Iraq, not a single employee was ever penalized, its government contracts only multiplied thereafter, and a civil servant who’d raised numerous concerns about the company’s conduct was demoted.
The firm’s insulation from prosecution may well be explained by Vice President Dick Cheney serving as its CEO between 1995 and 2000 – he still held stock options worth millions, and had received millions of thousands of dollars more in deferred compensation for his role, when the War on Terror began.
Cheney was also instrumental in the privatization of US warfare more widely. In 1992, under his direction as Defense Secretary, the Pentagon paid the parent company of Halliburton $3.9 million to produce a report on how private contractors could provide logistics in overseas theaters of conflict.
Numerous examples of fraud, waste, and abuse in Afghanistan are also documented in ‘Profits of War’, including a US-appointed economic task force spending $43 million on a gas station that was never used, $150 million on lavish living quarters for economic advisors, and $3 million for patrol boats for the Afghan police that were also never used.
A cited Congressional investigation found a significant portion of the $2 billion in transportation contracts splurged by Washington ended up as kickbacks to warlords, police officials, or even the Taliban, sometimes as much as $1,500 per vehicle, or up to half a million dollars for each large convoy of 300 trucks. In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated such “protection money” was one of the group’s major sources of funding.
Smaller contractors weren’t always bulletproof though. Custer Battles, a firm founded by a former Army Ranger and an ex-CIA operative in the aftermath of 9/11, was awarded a contract – its first ever – to guard Baghdad airport, and collect old Iraqi currency so it could be destroyed. The firm’s chiefs had no experience in airport security, employed security guards with no prior training, didn’t hire translators who spoke Arabic, and acquired no security dogs to detect explosives.
Its operatives also went on a shooting spree in the city of Umm Qasr, firing on civilian cars and crowded minibuses, and only stopping when local authorities and a British military unit intervened. Mercifully, no one was injured or killed – no disciplinary actions arose either, as the staffers bribed witnesses to keep quiet.
Custer’s CEO was paying himself $3 million annually, and company staff on-the-ground lived in supreme luxury, their complexes replete with swimming pools, air conditioning and wireless internet – meanwhile, US troops often stayed in tents and abandoned buildings. In 2004, a consultant to the firm came across an internal document that exposed gross overcharges, provision of fake leases and bills, and use of false front companies by Custer. The company was barred from receiving any further US government contracts, and fined a meagre $10,000.
Still, those repercussions are positively seismic when one considers no major US defense contractor has to date ever suffered significant financial or criminal consequences for their work – or lack thereof – during the War on Terror. What’s more, there’s no indication any lessons have been learned in Washington – quite the opposite, in fact. The report notes the sector has “ample tools at its disposal to influence decisions over Pentagon spending going forward.”
Foremost is a vast and extremely well-funded lobbying effort. Defense contractors have provided $285 million in campaign contributions since 2001, with a special focus on presidential candidates, Congressional leadership, and members of the armed services and appropriations committees. Moreover, these firms have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying since 9/11, each employing over 700 lobbyists annually over the past five years on average, more than one for every member of Congress.
Many of these lobbyists, the report states, have passed through a “revolving door” from jobs in Congress, the Pentagon, National Security Council and other agencies key to determining the size and scope of the US military budget. Company chiefs openly brag about their effective purchase of lawmakers – in October 2001, Harry Stonecipher, then-Vice President of Boeing, declared that “any member of Congress who doesn’t vote for the funds we need to defend this country will be looking for a new job after next November.”
With the War on Terror now seemingly over, “exaggerated estimates of the military challenges posed by China have become the new rationale of choice” for defense contractors, as they seek to bloat the already unbelievably voluminous US defense budget even further.
In 2019, the National Defense Strategy Commission published a scaremongering report, which proposed three to five percent annual growth in the Pentagon budget to address the purported threat of China. Ever since, those figures have become a mantra for hawks in government, think tanks and the media – as the report notes, nine of the 12 members of the Commission had direct or indirect ties to the arms industry.
One can’t help but be reminded of President Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he offered a prophetic – and clearly unheeded – warning about the ever-growing power of the defense sector.
“We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all US corporations,” he reflected. “The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government…We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
An Evil Rationalization on Afghanistan
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | September 15, 2021
One of the arguments that interventionists, including many U.S. military veterans, use to rationalize the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan is that U.S. forces were fighting to bring “freedom, democracy, and women’s rights” to the country. In fact, the Pentagon even coined the term “Operation Enduring Freedom” as one of the ways to justify the invasion and occupation of the country. Even though the effort failed, the argument goes, interventionists, including veterans, should nonetheless feel good about their “service” to both America and Afghanistan.
There is a problem with this rationale and justification, however. The problem is that it is evil to the core.
In any invasion and occupation, there are inevitably going to be people killed, injured, and maimed. There is also going to be destruction of homes, business, and infrastructure. That certainly proved to be the case in Afghanistan.
Therefore, what interventionists were — and are — saying is that all those deaths, injuries, and property destruction were worth bringing freedom, democracy, and women’s rights to Afghanistan.
But who died and made these people the arbiters of that type of mathematical life-and-death calculation? After all, those who were killed in the process would never have experienced freedom, democracy, and women’s rights. That’s because they would be dead.
Now, it’s one thing for the citizens of a country to decide for themselves whether to revolt against the tyranny of their own government. Violent revolutions can be very costly in terms of life and property. That’s why people might decide to put up with a lot of tyranny before they revolt. They don’t want to lose their family members, friends, and countrymen by revolting, until the situation gets so bad that they feel that they have no choice but to do so. In the final analysis, the decision to revolt and when to revolt can be highly subjective.
But that’s a far cry from U.S. officials making that decision from afar. Their decision is a cavalier one because they don’t put the same value on Afghan life that the Afghan people do. In fact, interventionists put little or no value on Afghan life. That mindset is reflected by the fact that early in the invasion and occupation, the Pentagon, with the full support of Washington, D.C., officials, made the conscious decision to not even keep track of how many Afghans they were killing. Moreover, there was never an upward limit on the number of Afghan people who could be killed, injured or maimed in the effort to bring freedom, democracy, and women’s rights to the country. It just didn’t matter. Any number of Afghan people killed in the effort would be considered worth it by U.S. interventionists.
That’s why the purported concern that U.S. interventionists, including many U.S. military veterans, express for the Afghan people rings hollow, given that they were willing to kill or maim any number of Afghans to reach their political goal.
How many Afghan lives were worth the U.S. effort to bring “freedom, democracy, and women’s rights” to Afghanistan? None! It was never morally or religiously justified for the U.S. government to kill even one single Afghan citizen for the sake of a political goal. Killing, injuring, or maiming even just one single Afghan, much less tens of thousands of Afghans, for the sake of “freedom, democracy, and women’s rights” has always been the epitome of evil.
Latvian military apologizes for NATO war games gunfire in busy streets of Riga which left civilians terrified
RT | September 13, 2021
Latvia’s capital RIga briefly turned into a warzone at the weekend, with heavily armed soldiers firing weapons among startled civilians. The firefight turned out to be an exercise that had somehow not been marked or cordoned off.
Multiple videos of the incident surfaced online on Saturday, promptly going viral. Footage from the scene shows multiple soldiers in the middle of a street, crouching behind cars and firing their weapons at a building.
One of the solders discharged his assault rifle as a woman with her baby was passing by, another video shows. The woman was left visibly shaken, while the baby began crying.
There were no visible cordons or markings that the area was being used for drills, with pedestrians walking right next to the heavily armed troops. The exercise looked very lifelike, with only an unarmed supervising officer casually moving among the troops serving to indicate that the street had not turned into an actual warzone.
The incident has drawn an overwhelmingly negative reaction, with the comment sections of the videos full of angry remarks. Some said that residents of the city should have at least been given clear notice via SMS, while others argued that the area should have been completely cordoned off.
Following the outcry, the military gave a lackluster apology, stating that it uses only blank cartridges for such events, and insisting that no harm was caused.
“During such drills, we only use blank cartridges, which make noise but do not pose any danger to the health and life of others. In this case, blank cartridges were also used, and this situation was a bitter misunderstanding, for which we apologize. The Defense Ministry calls on the public to show understanding for the exercises,” the ministry said in a statement cited by the TVnet website.
The Riga ‘firefight’ came as a part of the NATO Namejs 2021 war games, which are running from August 30 to October 3 across multiple locations in Latvia. The exercises involve some 9,300 soldiers from different countries of the bloc. Three soldiers were injured during the drills in a separate unspecified accident on Saturday, with the Defense Ministry stating that two servicemen from the “allied armed forces” had ended up hospitalized in “stable” condition.
Report: US plans Arab-Israeli maritime unit in Persian Gulf for proxy missions
Press TV – September 11, 2021
A new report says a recent decision by the US Navy’s 5th Fleet to launch a drone task force is a step towards the establishment of a joint maritime unit comprising Persian Gulf Arab countries and Israel for proxy missions in the region.
On Wednesday, the 5th Fleet based in Bahrain announced that it will launch the new task force that incorporates airborne, sailing and underwater drones after years of maritime attacks linked to ongoing tensions with Iran.
US Navy officials declined to identify which systems they would introduce from their headquarters in Bahrain, but said the coming months would see the drones stretch their capabilities across the region.
“We want to put more systems out in the maritime domain above, on and below the sea,” said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the 5th Fleet. “We want more eyes on what’s happening out there.”
“These measures are in line with the launch of a joint maritime unit between Persian Gulf Arab countries and the Zionist regime. Using the equipment announced, the unit is supposed to play a role in proxy missions thanks to the support of the United States,” Iran’s Nour News agency wrote on Saturday.
“Successive failures in costly military campaigns in West Asia have led to a new US national security strategy, under which the American military focus in the region will change in favor of the development of presence in East Asia and the Chinese Sea,” it added.
According to the report, Washington is expected to hand over part of the missions of its military units in West Asia to Arab states and Israel to make its absence in West Asia and the Persian Gulf not conspicuous.
On September 1, the Tel Aviv regime officially moved into the US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) area of responsibility, taking over from the European Command (EUCOM).
Nour News said the move paved the way for Israel to design and implement evil acts in the region with the help of some of the Persian Gulf Arab states.
“The new strategy, which lays the ground for the pursuit of the new national security doctrine, began by creating artificial tensions in the region based on a pre-designed scenario,” it added.
In late July, the US, the UK and Israel blamed Iran for a deadly drone attack on an Israeli-managed oil tanker, the Mercer Street, off the coast of Oman.
A few days later, Reuters claimed that “Iran-backed forces” were believed to have seized the Panama-flagged Asphalt Princess tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Associated Press, citing information from MarineTraffic.com, reported that four tankers – the Queen Ematha, the Golden Brilliant, Jag Pooja and Abyss – broadcast over the Automatic Identification System (AIS) that their vessels were “not under command.”
Later, however, it emerged that all those contradictory reports of maritime incidents were circulated by the Zionists to justify their own evil acts in the region and portray Iran as the country that is causing insecurity, Nour News said.
“The depth of the Zionists’ lies became more evident after the Golden Brilliant docked at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port days after rumors about its possible hijacking.”
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
http://www.presstv.ir
http://www.presstv.co.uk
http://www.presstv.tv
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