Pentagon Already Planning For Strikes Against Iran And Syria According To Senior Officials

March 12, 2012

End The Lie

By Madison Ruppert

“Don’t think for a second that they are going to ask congress for a real declaration of war.  They are ready to fight now.”  –KTRN

According to senior Pentagon officials, American military forces are already planning for possible strikes against Iran and Syria utilizing both conventional weaponry and cyberwarfare as the situation in both nations only seems to be getting worse by the day.

Lieutenant General Herbert Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements with the U.S. Air Force informed a March 8 investors conference sponsored by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse that the Department of Defense is exploring their options for military actions.

Carlisle’s statement came on the heels of an interview with the U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for the National Journal during which he confirmed that the Pentagon is indeed planning for strikes on Iran.

This also came in the wake of Panetta saying that he thinks that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should begin debating the issue of military intervention in Syria, although NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen claims that that discussion has not yet begun.

While Iran repeatedly denies any intent to develop nuclear weapons and Panetta himself has confirmed that they are not currently developing weapons on two separate occasions, the alleged developments in their program continues to give lawmakers and others the fuel they need to call for war.

In the case of Syria, the entire fiasco has been rife with blatant propaganda (and poor attempts at damage control), predictions of a military coup d’état, reports that the West is already discussing a no-fly zone, reports of cross-border attacks coming from Turkey, reports of Mossad, CIA and Blackwater already operating, even reports of undercover French army officers being captured and much more.

In the case of Iran, Carlisle refused to provide specifics on their planning, citing limitations due to the classified nature of the subject.

“I won’t get into any details on that, obviously, because it’s ongoing operational planning,” he said, according to Defense News.

However, he did confirm that cyberwarfare is an option that they are currently considering.

“There [are] … electronic warfare pieces. There are offensive cyber operations. There are defensive cyber operations. Without stepping over any line of classification, I would say again, everything is on the table. That could be a component,” he said.

Thankfully, it appears that these military officials are aware of the fact that invading Syria would be an entirely different beast than the Libyan operation.

“It requires thought and deliberations,” Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz said at the same conference. “A key challenge is that Syria is not Libya. Syria is a much more demanding air defense environment as a case in point and would require a level of effort far in excess of what we did in Libya.”

The country has a somewhat outdated Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system which would likely require the American military to utilize stealth aircraft like the B-2 bomber and F-22 fighter.

Click here for the full report.

Pentagon Launches Desperate Damage Control Over Shocking Panetta Testimony

March 8, 2012

Info Wars

By Paul Joseph Watson

“Here is proof that the US congress has less power than the American people think they do.”  -KTRN

The Pentagon is engaging in damage control after shocking testimony yesterday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at a Senate Armed Services Committee congressional hearing during which it was confirmed that the U.S. government is now completely beholden to international power structures and that the legislative branch is a worthless relic.

During the hearing yesterday Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey brazenly admitted that their authority comes not from the U.S. Constitution, but that the United States is subservient to and takes its marching orders from the United Nations and NATO, international bodies over which the American people have no democratic influence.

Panetta was asked by Senator Jeff Sessions, “We spend our time worrying about the U.N., the Arab League, NATO and too little time, in my opinion, worrying about the elected representatives of the United States. As you go forward, will you consult with the United States Congress?”

The Defense Secretary responded “You know, our goal would be to seek international permission. And we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this, whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress.”

Despite Sessions’ repeated efforts to get Panetta to acknowledge that the United States Congress is supreme to the likes of NATO and the UN, Panetta exalted the power of international bodies over the US legislative branch.

“I’m really baffled by the idea that somehow an international assembly provides a legal basis for the United States military to be deployed in combat,” Sessions said. “I don’t believe it’s close to being correct. They provide no legal authority. The only legal authority that’s required to deploy the United States military is of the Congress and the president and the law and the Constitution.”

Click here for the full report.

China Increases Military Spending 11.2% in 2012

March 6, 2012

Activist Post

By Madison Ruppert

China has announced that they will be increasing their funding for the military by 11.2 percent in 2012 on top of the 12.7 percent increase in 2011.

This move seems to be quite obviously intended to act as a counterweight to the American military’s shift to focus on the Asia-Pacific region announced by President of the United States Barack Obama last year.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, this policy shift does not involve just the United States, but indeed is actually a global expansion of the U.S.-NATO military machine involving complex multilateral ties.

This would bring the total official spending on the People’s Liberation Army to 670.3 billion yuan, or around $110 billion, for this year, according to Reuters.

This announcement is China’s first military budget since Obama announced the new policy and when tensions are quite high in the South China Sea dispute. I have noted the antagonistic approach taken by the United States in this dispute multiple times now, and it only makes sense that China would seek to arm themselves more heavily.

I have posited that America might actually be trying to goad China in the dispute as they have ignored all of China’s reasonable requests. China has asked countries without a direct interest in the dispute to stop meddling, which is exactly what the United States is doing, but of course that has been ignored.

Numerous countries have maritime disputes with China and the United States has clearly chosen sides in the dispute, even arming some of the nations involved along with carrying out joint military exercises.

Click here for the full report.

Troops Used For Crowd Control At Texas Kite Festival

March 5th, 2012

Info Wars

By: Paul Joseph Watson

Uniformed troops from the Texas State Guard were used for the purposes of crowd control during the Zilker Kite Festival in Austin this past weekend, with video showing the troops ordering parents and children to board school buses at the end of the event.

Disturbing footage of the troops controlling the movement of attendees was filmed by Infowars reporters, in addition to a police helicopter circling above. However, the website of the Zilker Kite Festival attempted to downplay the Guard’s involvement as if it was completely normal.

Under the headline What are Soldiers doing at the Kite Festival!?, the website states that the troops were there to “help to manage the crowds during bus loading and unloading, at parking lots, and around the event.”

According to the Texas State Guard’s website, “The Texas State Guard (TXSG) mission as a branch of the Texas Military Forces is to provide mission-ready military forces to assist State and local authorities in times of state emergencies, with homeland security and community service through Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA).”

No information concerning the TXSG being present at the Kite Festival appears on the website.

The use of the military to oversee domestic roles normally ascribed to police officers is a sign of America’s deepening decline into a state of de facto martial law.

In 2008 it was announced that U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq would be carrying out homeland patrols in America for the purposes of helping with “civil unrest and crowd control”. In recent years, budget cuts have also contributed to the increasing use of military assets to conduct routine law enforcement actions.

Military police were used to detain people at the Kentucky Derby horse race in 2009. In April of the same year, 400 Massachusetts National Guardsmen from the 126th Combat Support Battalion were deployed at the Boston Marathon to “maintain order”.

We have documented innumerable examples of Posse Comitatus being violated with uniformed troops increasingly being used to conduct routine traffic stops and provide security at public events across the nation.

The process of loading children onto buses for the purposes of forced relocation is also a scenario that has cropped up time and time again during exercises focused around responding to terror attacks and national emergencies.

During the Operation Mountain Guardian terrorism exercise undertaken in Denver last year, Colorado authorities issued a news advisory that detailed how children would be “processed” in the event of a terror attack by being taken to Denver’s Mile High Stadium.

Infowars reporters Aaron Dykes and Darrin McBreen, who were covering the drill, confirmed that buses marked “special” were used for that purpose.

As part of the same drill, a SWAT team raided a Denver school, terrorizing children as young as first grade with a traumatic and frighteningly realistic school shooter scenario.

Federal exercises have specifically targeted children on a number of occasions, most infamously in Muskegon, Michigan. In 2004, a Michigan county concocted a scenario in which public school children were threatened by a fictitious radical group that believed everyone should be home-schooled, WorldNetDaily reported. The exercise was funded by homeland security grants to area school districts and Muskegon county.

A 2003 Washington Post article revealed how school administrators in the Washington area had told parents they would be “prevented, or strongly discouraged, from picking up their children” in the event of a terrorist attack.

Under the plan, schools would be locked down and parents would not be able to retrieve their children.

For The Full Story Go To Info Wars

The “Battle of LA,” 70 Years Ago Today: 5 Irrefutable Arguments Why It Was Actually a UFO Attack

February 24, 2012

Houston Press

By Richard Connelly

“The Battle Of LA is one of the most amazing UFO events in history. Just look at the pictures. The idea that the military opened fire on a weather balloon is laughable.” –KTRN

Seventy years ago today, the Battle of Los Angeles occurred, a vicious fight that resulted in three civilian deaths.

Haven’t heard of it? We’re not surprised.

The U.S. government said what happened was nighttime antiaircraft crews protecting Los Angeles got nervous — it was just two months after Pearl Harbor — and opened fire on a weather balloon.

The crews also set off flares, and all the confusion just built on itself. So we’re told.

Others say the night featured an attempted UFO landing, in which the valiant gun crews fought aliens trying to land.

It’s pretty obvious the latter is true.

Obviously the aliens not only attempted to land, they succeeded. Just look at what’s happened in Hollywood since then. The logic becomes inescapable.

5. The quantity of UFO/alien movies has increased dramatically
Between 1911 and 1941, UFOs and flying saucers were occasionally a subject for films. Since then — especially since the 1950s, after a necessary period of time to learn the equipment and infiltrate studio management — movies about UFOs exploded. Coincidence? who’s being naive, Kay?

​4. The quality of UFO/alien movies has increased dramatically
In the 1930s, UFOs were laughably portrayed on screen, obvious frauds. While it understandably took a decade or two to import the necessary technology from the home planet to Earth, all of a sudden you got Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Independence Day and the Transformers series. The aliens’ unstinting desire for complete accuracy in movies is inspiring

Click here for the full report.

McCain To Introduce Cybersecurity Legislation Giving Even More Domestic Control To NSA, Military

February 23, 2012

End The Lie

By Madison Ruppert

“John McCain in an evil man. Let’s not forget he was one of the major players at getting the NDAA signed. Please vote this man out of office.” –KTRN

During the Senate’s major hearing on cybersecurity last week, Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, announced that the Republicans in the Senate would introduce a bill to compete with S. 2105, also known as the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.

McCain seeks to give the NSA and the military previously unimaginable powers over civilian networks, even further expanding the ludicrous power over American citizens given to the military under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA).

This is similar to the conclusions drawn by a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which unsurprisingly had a long list of corporate “advisers” who would directly benefit from such a centralization.

Although, even the legislation as it is currently being considered follows the study’s recommendations by putting the power in the hands of DHS. McCain would apparently rather see that power in the military’s hands.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is currently being supported by the chairmen of not only the Senate’s Homeland Security committee but also the chairs of the commerce and intelligence committees as well.

The current bill is cosponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California.

McCain spoke out against rushing the debate on this legislation and instead called for widening the role of the National Security Agency (NSA) in cybersecurity matters domestically.

On the February 16 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee McCain said that the fact that similar legislation has been introduced in the past by Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, in the past does not mean that this new bill should be rushed to a vote.

“To suggest that this bill should move directly to the Senate floor because it has ‘been around’ since 2009 is outrageous,” McCain said.

“First, the bill was introduced two days ago. Secondly, where do Senate Rules state that a bill’s progress in a previous congress can supplant the necessary work on that bill in the present one?”

Click here for the full report.

U.S. Closer To Arming Syrian Rebels

February 22, 2012

Associated Press

By Matthew Lee and Bradley Klapper

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to ramp up diplomatic efforts against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on a trip to North Africa this week, as some countries begin to explore the possibility of arming Syria’s rebels.

Clinton is traveling to London on Wednesday for a conference on Somalia, but U.S. officials will be using the international gathering to lay the groundwork for a major conference on Syria’s future taking place later this week in Tunisia. The trip comes as the Obama administration is opening the door slightly to international military assistance for Syria’s armed opposition.

In coordinated messages, the White House and State Department said Tuesday they still hoped for a political solution. But faced with the daily onslaught by the Assad regime against Syrian civilians, officials dropped the administration’s previous strident opposition to arming anti-regime forces. It remained unclear, though, what, if any, role the U.S. might play in providing such aid.

“We don’t want to take actions that would contribute to the further militarization of Syria because that could take the country down a dangerous path,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters. “But we don’t rule out additional measures if the international community should wait too long and not take the kind of action that needs to be taken.”

The administration had previously said flatly that more weapons were not the answer to the Syrian situation. There had been no mention of “additional measures,” despite daily reports from Syrian activists of dozens of deaths from government attacks.

At the State Department, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland used nearly identical language to describe the administration’s evolving position.

“From our perspective, we don’t believe that it makes sense to contribute now to the further militarization of Syria,” she told reporters. “What we don’t want to see is the spiral of violence increase. That said, if we can’t get Assad to yield to the pressure that we are all bringing to bear, we may have to consider additional measures.”

Neither Carney nor Nuland would elaborate on what “additional measures” might be taken but there have been growing calls, including from some in Congress, for the international community to arm the rebels. Most suggestions to that effect have foreseen Arab nations such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — and not the West — possibly providing military assistance.

Click here for the full report from the Associated Press.

Returning Military Members Allege Job Discrimination By Federal Government

February 21, 2012

Washington Post

By Steve Vogel

Every year, more than a thousand National Guard, reserve and active-duty troops coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan or other military duties complain of being denied jobs or otherwise being penalized by employers because of their military obligations.

The biggest offender: the federal government.

It is against federal law for employers to penalize service members because of their military service. And yet, in some cases, the U.S. government has withdrawn job offers to service members unable to get released from active duty fast enough; in others, service members have been fired after absences.

In fiscal 2011, more than 18 percent of the 1,548 complaints of violations of that law involved federal agencies, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

“On the one hand, the government asked me to serve in Iraq,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Michael Silva, a reservist who commanded a brigade in Iraq and was fired from his job as a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol contractor on his return. “On the other hand, another branch of government was not willing to protect my rights after serving.”

The federal government is the largest employer of citizen-soldiers. About 123,000 of the 855,000 men and women currently serving as Guard members and reservists, or about 14 percent, have civilian jobs with the federal government. Over a fourth of federal employees are veterans.

Click here for the full report.

Consequences To Expect If The U.S. Invades Iran

February 21, 2012

Alt Market

By Brandon Smith

Let’s be honest, quite a few Americans love a good war, especially those Americans who have never had to bear witness to one first hand. War is the ultimate tribally vicarious experience. Anyone, even pudgy armchair generals with deep-seated feelings of personal inadequacy, can revel in the victories and actions of armies a half a world away as if they themselves stood on the front lines risking possible annihilation at the hands of dastardly cartoon-land “evil doers”. They may have never done a single worthwhile thing in their lives, but at least they can bask in the perceived glory of their country’s military might.

This attitude of swollen ego through proxy is not limited to the “Right” side of the political spectrum as some might expect. In fact, if the terrifyingly demented presidency of Barack Obama has proven anything so far, it is that elements of the “Left” are just as bloodthirsty as any NeoCon, and just as ready to blindly support the political supremacy of their “side” regardless of any broken promises, abandoned principles, or openly flaunted hypocrisies. No matter how reasonable or irrefutable the arguments against a particular conflict are, there will ALWAYS be a certain percentage of the populace which ignores all logic and barrels forward to cheerlead violent actions which ultimately only benefit a select and elite few.

They do this, though they rarely openly admit it, because of unbalanced and irrational biases which drive their decision making processes. In the case of the wars in the Middle East, the common public argument boils down to one of “self defense”. “They are coming to get us!” At least, that is what we are constantly told. And I’m sure that some Americans out there truly believe this. However, in their heart of hearts, others instead relish the idea of imposing their world views and philosophical systems upon others, even if it means using cluster bombs and predator drones.

Some people simply hate Muslims, for one reason or another. Some people believe that war will bring with it economic gain. Some are so afraid of what they do not comprehend that they only feel secure by attacking it. Some believe that the U.S. citizenry is morally obligated to become entangled with governments like Israel’s, and support them without question as if they are infallible, though they are often just as corrupt as the governments we are directed to despise. And yet others (for religious purposes), actually clamor for Middle Eastern destruction in the desperate hopes that their version of biblical prophecy will be vindicated. Ultimately, most Americans who support continued destruction in the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter, do so out a selfish need for private absolution and elevation, not out of a sincere sense of patriotism, and not because nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, or Iran present a legitimate danger to their safety.

These men and women have invested their very identities into the mechanizations of collective war. They will not be swayed by evidence or honorable arguments. Any criticism of the actions of the collective will immediately be treated as a personal attack on their individual character, causing their minds to shut down completely.

As far as Iran is concerned, I am not here to convince the war-drum pounding zombie hoards infesting the mentally impotent sewage soaked wastelands of my country that their rationalizations for raining laser guided death on the third world is a “reprehensible thing”. Given their impenetrable biases, which I listed above, that would be a complete waste of time.

Click here for the full report.

Returning Veterans Level Job Discrimination Accusations At Federal Government

February 20, 2012

Washington Post

By Steve Vogel

Every year, more than a thousand National Guard, reserve and active-duty troops coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan or other military duties complain of being denied jobs or otherwise being penalized by employers because of their military obligations.

The biggest offender: the federal government.

It is against federal law for employers to penalize service members because of their military service. And yet, in some cases, the U.S. government has withdrawn job offers to service members unable to get released from active duty fast enough; in others, service members have been fired after absences.

In fiscal 2011, more than 18 percent of the 1,548 complaints of violations of that law involved federal agencies, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

“On the one hand, the government asked me to serve in Iraq,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Michael Silva, a reservist who commanded a brigade in Iraq and was fired from his job as a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol contractor on his return. “On the other hand, another branch of government was not willing to protect my rights after serving.”

The federal government is the largest employer of citizen-soldiers. About 123,000 of the 855,000 men and women currently serving as Guard members and reservists, or about 14 percent, have civilian jobs with the federal government. Over a fourth of federal employees are veterans.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), enacted in 1994 to ensure that members of the military do not face a disadvantage in their civilian careers because of their service, calls on the federal government be “a model employer” for service members.

But critics contend that the federal government has been far from perfect, and they fear that with troops back home from Iraq and more on the way from ­Afghanistan, violations of the law could increase.

Click here for the full report from the Washington Post.

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