http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090111/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_israel
Bush reportedly rejected Israeli plea to raid Iran
Sun Jan 11, 2009
WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush rejected a plea from Israel last year to help it raid Iran's main nuclear complex, opting instead to authorize a new U.S. covert action aimed at sabotaging Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported.
Israel's request was for specialized bunker-busting bombs that it wanted for an attack that tentatively involved flying over Iraq to reach Iran's major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country's only known uranium enrichment plant is located, the Times reported Saturday in its online edition. The White House deflected requests for the bombs and flyover but said it would improve intelligence-sharing with Israel on covert U.S. efforts to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.
The covert efforts, which began in early 2008, involved plans to penetrate Iran's nuclear supply chain abroad and undermine electrical systems and other networks on which Iran relies, the Times said, citing interviews with current and former U.S. officials, outside experts and international nuclear inspectors who spoke on condition of anonymity. The covert program will be handed off to President-elect Barack Obama, who will deciding whether to continue it.
According to the Times, Bush decided against an overt attack based on input from top administration officials such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who believed that doing so would likely prove ineffective and could ignite a broader Middle East war.
Israel made the push for permission to fly over Iraq for an attack on Iran following its anger over a U.S. intelligence assessment in late 2007 that concluded Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons four years earlier. Israel sought to rebut the report, providing evidence to U.S. intelligence officials that they said indicated the Iranians were still working on a weapon.
Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment Saturday.
In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this week, Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, said he believed that Iran is the biggest challenge Obama will face in the Middle East and that more sanctions will be needed to force Tehran to forgo its nuclear ambitions and support for extremists. He said the Bush administration has been trying to "shore up and store up leverage" to bequeath to the Obama administration.
Last month, Obama suggested that a combination of economic incentives and tighter sanctions might work. Tehran rejected the proposal. Obama also has said he would pursue tough-minded diplomacy.
Showing posts with label National Security Council. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Security Council. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Friday, February 8, 2008
The Colossus
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_colossus
The Colossus
Our economic dominance may be threatened by China, India, and the European Union, but when it comes to the instruments of war, nobody else is even close. And it will stay that way no matter who, Democrat or Republican, gets elected.
Paul Waldman January 31, 2008
In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which in addition to creating the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency, consolidated the Army and Navy into a new department, first called the National Military Establishment and finally renamed as the Department of Defense (DoD) in 1949. The Department of War, which had been established in 1789, ceased to exist. As actual threats to American territory grew dimmer and dimmer, we eventually stopped thinking about what the word "defense" actually means -- or what a distant relationship the war-making machinery we constructed really bore to any sane notion of what "defending" our country would require.
And what an awesome machinery it is. The neoconservatives may not have succeeded in their dream of creating a new hegemonic order to rival the glory days of Rome, but we've become so used to the idea of America as the world's sole superpower that we seldom step back and take in the true scope of our capacity for killing people and blowing things up. Our military is a colossus, its tentacles of technology and steel and fire encircling the globe, daring anyone to look at it cross-eyed.
In 2007 the DoD budget exceeded $500 billion -- which doesn't include the $170 billion we spent for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or military-related spending in other departments (like the Energy Department, where much of the spending on nuclear weapons goes). Although worldwide figures for 2007 are not yet available, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's comprehensive data indicate that in 2006, global military spending stood at $1.2 trillion. In other words, we've been spending as much on our military as the rest of the world combined. Our economic dominance may be threatened by the rise of China, India, and the European Union, but when it comes to the instruments of war, nobody else is even close.
Spending that much money takes personnel, of course. There are currently about 1,375,000 men and women in uniform, plus another 671,000 civilians working for DoD, for a total of over 2 million employees. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, another 1.4 million people work in defense-related industries in the private sector -- though we should grant that some of those people produce armaments for the overseas market. After all, America is still the world's leading arms dealer (though Russia is giving us a run for our money).
And if there is any doubt that America is still an empire, consider how far-flung our military power is. According to the Defense Department's 2007 Base Structure Report, we maintain 823 military facilities in 39 foreign countries, and another 86 facilities in seven U.S. territories. According to the document, "DoD occupies a reported 343,867 buildings throughout the world, valued at over $464 billion and comprising almost 2.4 billion square feet." The DoD also owns 32.4 million acres of land (nearly all of it in the U.S.), or over 50,000 square miles, an area about the size of Louisiana (or half of Colorado; or Delaware, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland combined).
You will not be surprised to learn that the remaining Republican contenders for the presidency all demonstrate a desire to make the military even bigger. John McCain says that he wants "a larger and more capable military," no shock from a man who barely ever met a military operation he didn't support. The one who actually provides some specificity is Mitt Romney, who wants to increase military spending to 4 percent of gross domestic product. According to the government's current projections, GDP in 2009 will be $15.3 trillion, which means Romney is proposing to boost military spending by about 20 percent, to $612 billion in his first year in office (not counting spending for Iraq). By 2012, four percent of GDP would mean a military budget of over $700 billion. (Incidentally, there is no reason you would want to peg military spending to a particular level of GDP -- after all, if the economy doubled in size, it wouldn't follow that we would need twice as many tanks, guns, and soldiers.)
But even if a Democrat wins the White House, we shouldn't expect any reductions in military spending any time soon. Though the prevailing Democratic wisdom of five years ago -- that the way to appear "strong" on national security is to go along with whatever harebrained scheme Republicans cook up, then hope to change the subject -- has been utterly discredited, no particular vision on military affairs has taken its place, particularly not one that involves overall cuts. The Republican candidates may be offering little but mindless militarism, but the Democrats don't have much to say -- although Barack Obama wants to add 65,000 Army soldiers and 27,000 Marines. A consistent hawk, Hillary Clinton evinces no particular desire to reduce the size of the military, either.
As we've learned in the last decade, an extra dollar of military spending doesn't necessarily buy you an extra measure of security; indeed, depending on how you use it, it can make you far less safe. Our worldwide footprint continually creates more enemies; particularly for people or societies that put a high value on pride and honor, the mere presence of foreign troops is an affront, a daily reminder that we are strong and they are weak. As citizens of the empire, it is hard for us to imagine just what it must be like to know that another nation can plant a military base in your homeland. Those governments may be happy to have Americans invested in their security. But it no doubt feels to many ordinary people as though they're shopkeepers, and the resident Mafioso has strolled into their store, stuffed a few items in his pockets, and told them that he'd like to hold some meetings in the back room. Not only that, they'll be hiring his nephew.
Back in 2003, Howard Dean caused an uproar when he said the United States "won't always have the strongest military." After the predictable faux-outrage from his primary opponents, he attempted to explain that he wasn't talking about his potential presidency or even his lifetime. But less than a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, our permanent military supremacy had already become part of the national identity, something no patriotic American could challenge.
When the only adversary who could seriously threaten us dissolved, we should have given up the pretension that our military is actually involved much in "defense." Outside of the fevered imagination of the Glenn Becks of the world, no sane person truly believes that if we don't play our cards right, our form of government could be overthrown and we could wind up living in an outpost of the world Islamic caliphate. Red Dawn may have been a silly movie in 1984, but think how ridiculous it would be today to imagine that America's enemies would actually take over our territory and herd us into reeducation camps.
Yet we still pretend that what the military does is "keep us safe." But with the exception of missile defense (a colossally stupid boondoggle that doesn't work, probably won't ever work, and couldn't accomplish its mission even if it worked perfectly, but that's a topic for another day), the portion of our "defense" spending that goes to actual defense is miniscule. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines aren't patrolling our borders and training to defend our cities. What they prepare for, and what they're called to do, is to project our extraordinary military power outward. Some of these missions are noble and some are tragically absurd, but no matter who gets elected in November, it won't be changing for a long time to come.
Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success. The views expressed here are his own.
The Colossus
Our economic dominance may be threatened by China, India, and the European Union, but when it comes to the instruments of war, nobody else is even close. And it will stay that way no matter who, Democrat or Republican, gets elected.
Paul Waldman January 31, 2008
In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which in addition to creating the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency, consolidated the Army and Navy into a new department, first called the National Military Establishment and finally renamed as the Department of Defense (DoD) in 1949. The Department of War, which had been established in 1789, ceased to exist. As actual threats to American territory grew dimmer and dimmer, we eventually stopped thinking about what the word "defense" actually means -- or what a distant relationship the war-making machinery we constructed really bore to any sane notion of what "defending" our country would require.
And what an awesome machinery it is. The neoconservatives may not have succeeded in their dream of creating a new hegemonic order to rival the glory days of Rome, but we've become so used to the idea of America as the world's sole superpower that we seldom step back and take in the true scope of our capacity for killing people and blowing things up. Our military is a colossus, its tentacles of technology and steel and fire encircling the globe, daring anyone to look at it cross-eyed.
In 2007 the DoD budget exceeded $500 billion -- which doesn't include the $170 billion we spent for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or military-related spending in other departments (like the Energy Department, where much of the spending on nuclear weapons goes). Although worldwide figures for 2007 are not yet available, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's comprehensive data indicate that in 2006, global military spending stood at $1.2 trillion. In other words, we've been spending as much on our military as the rest of the world combined. Our economic dominance may be threatened by the rise of China, India, and the European Union, but when it comes to the instruments of war, nobody else is even close.
Spending that much money takes personnel, of course. There are currently about 1,375,000 men and women in uniform, plus another 671,000 civilians working for DoD, for a total of over 2 million employees. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, another 1.4 million people work in defense-related industries in the private sector -- though we should grant that some of those people produce armaments for the overseas market. After all, America is still the world's leading arms dealer (though Russia is giving us a run for our money).
And if there is any doubt that America is still an empire, consider how far-flung our military power is. According to the Defense Department's 2007 Base Structure Report, we maintain 823 military facilities in 39 foreign countries, and another 86 facilities in seven U.S. territories. According to the document, "DoD occupies a reported 343,867 buildings throughout the world, valued at over $464 billion and comprising almost 2.4 billion square feet." The DoD also owns 32.4 million acres of land (nearly all of it in the U.S.), or over 50,000 square miles, an area about the size of Louisiana (or half of Colorado; or Delaware, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland combined).
You will not be surprised to learn that the remaining Republican contenders for the presidency all demonstrate a desire to make the military even bigger. John McCain says that he wants "a larger and more capable military," no shock from a man who barely ever met a military operation he didn't support. The one who actually provides some specificity is Mitt Romney, who wants to increase military spending to 4 percent of gross domestic product. According to the government's current projections, GDP in 2009 will be $15.3 trillion, which means Romney is proposing to boost military spending by about 20 percent, to $612 billion in his first year in office (not counting spending for Iraq). By 2012, four percent of GDP would mean a military budget of over $700 billion. (Incidentally, there is no reason you would want to peg military spending to a particular level of GDP -- after all, if the economy doubled in size, it wouldn't follow that we would need twice as many tanks, guns, and soldiers.)
But even if a Democrat wins the White House, we shouldn't expect any reductions in military spending any time soon. Though the prevailing Democratic wisdom of five years ago -- that the way to appear "strong" on national security is to go along with whatever harebrained scheme Republicans cook up, then hope to change the subject -- has been utterly discredited, no particular vision on military affairs has taken its place, particularly not one that involves overall cuts. The Republican candidates may be offering little but mindless militarism, but the Democrats don't have much to say -- although Barack Obama wants to add 65,000 Army soldiers and 27,000 Marines. A consistent hawk, Hillary Clinton evinces no particular desire to reduce the size of the military, either.
As we've learned in the last decade, an extra dollar of military spending doesn't necessarily buy you an extra measure of security; indeed, depending on how you use it, it can make you far less safe. Our worldwide footprint continually creates more enemies; particularly for people or societies that put a high value on pride and honor, the mere presence of foreign troops is an affront, a daily reminder that we are strong and they are weak. As citizens of the empire, it is hard for us to imagine just what it must be like to know that another nation can plant a military base in your homeland. Those governments may be happy to have Americans invested in their security. But it no doubt feels to many ordinary people as though they're shopkeepers, and the resident Mafioso has strolled into their store, stuffed a few items in his pockets, and told them that he'd like to hold some meetings in the back room. Not only that, they'll be hiring his nephew.
Back in 2003, Howard Dean caused an uproar when he said the United States "won't always have the strongest military." After the predictable faux-outrage from his primary opponents, he attempted to explain that he wasn't talking about his potential presidency or even his lifetime. But less than a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, our permanent military supremacy had already become part of the national identity, something no patriotic American could challenge.
When the only adversary who could seriously threaten us dissolved, we should have given up the pretension that our military is actually involved much in "defense." Outside of the fevered imagination of the Glenn Becks of the world, no sane person truly believes that if we don't play our cards right, our form of government could be overthrown and we could wind up living in an outpost of the world Islamic caliphate. Red Dawn may have been a silly movie in 1984, but think how ridiculous it would be today to imagine that America's enemies would actually take over our territory and herd us into reeducation camps.
Yet we still pretend that what the military does is "keep us safe." But with the exception of missile defense (a colossally stupid boondoggle that doesn't work, probably won't ever work, and couldn't accomplish its mission even if it worked perfectly, but that's a topic for another day), the portion of our "defense" spending that goes to actual defense is miniscule. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines aren't patrolling our borders and training to defend our cities. What they prepare for, and what they're called to do, is to project our extraordinary military power outward. Some of these missions are noble and some are tragically absurd, but no matter who gets elected in November, it won't be changing for a long time to come.
Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success. The views expressed here are his own.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=IG1ZSIRJ0UOFPQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/12/30/wbhutto230.xml
Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'
By Philip Sherwell in New York
31/12/2007
Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
But the plans collapsed because President Pervez Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, according to senior aides.
"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," said Mark Siegel, her US representative. "In fact she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan."
Ms Bhutto's entourage discussed deals with the American Blackwater operation, this newspaper has learnt. Sources within the British private security industry said that she also had negotiations with the London-based firm Armor Group, which guards UK diplomats in the Middle East - last night the company said that it had no knowledge of any talks.
A Blackwater spokesman confirmed the negotiations. "We were approached to provide prime minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached," she said. She declined to go into the precise details.
Ms Bhutto contacted officials, diplomats and friends in America, Europe and the Gulf to urge Gen Musharraf to improve her security following the suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 140 during her homecoming parade on Oct 19.
Indeed, US diplomats took the highly unusual step of providing her directly with confidential US intelligence about militant threats to her life.
Pakistan's interior ministry also passed on details of plots against her and aides said that letters containing death threats had been smuggled into her home.
Husain Haqqani, a US-based Bhutto adviser, confirmed that she wanted to use private international security contractors but said that the Musharraf regime would not approve the plan.
He added that America, which has arranged for private contractors to guard the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and leaders in Iraq, was reluctant to press Gen Musharraf, its ally, to change his mind. This was despite Washington seeing Ms Bhutto as a lynchpin in its crucial diplomatic attempt to encourage Pakistan to return to democracy.
Mr Siegel's comments will add to the long-running controversy over Ms Bhutto's security arrangements, which were widely regarded as woefully inadequate given the seriousness of the threats against her from al-Qaeda, the Taliban and others.
She relied largely on using a "human shield" of loyal followers who would form a ring around her, but as Thursday's attack proved, it was little real protection against a determined assailant.
Some security industry specialists have suggested, however, that there may have been other reasons why the help of foreign security firms was not enlisted.
Being surrounded by foreign bodyguards would have added to criticisms that Ms Bhutto was in the pocket of the West - an accusation levelled at President Karzai - and might not have been welcomed by her own Pakistani security staff. But the companies could have taken a back role as consultants and trained locals in bodyguard techniques to maintain a Pakistani face to her entourage.
"It's odd and disturbing that the Pakistan government did not do a better job of protecting her and that the US apparently could not do more to persuade them," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former National Security Council director for South Asia. "She made it very clear privately and publicly that she did not have enough security. That was abundantly clear after the attack on her return.
"I can't explain why the Bush administration didn't pressure Musharraf to do more. Her death leaves the US with a Pakistan policy that is completely bankrupt."
Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'
By Philip Sherwell in New York
31/12/2007
Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
But the plans collapsed because President Pervez Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, according to senior aides.
"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," said Mark Siegel, her US representative. "In fact she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan."
Ms Bhutto's entourage discussed deals with the American Blackwater operation, this newspaper has learnt. Sources within the British private security industry said that she also had negotiations with the London-based firm Armor Group, which guards UK diplomats in the Middle East - last night the company said that it had no knowledge of any talks.
A Blackwater spokesman confirmed the negotiations. "We were approached to provide prime minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached," she said. She declined to go into the precise details.
Ms Bhutto contacted officials, diplomats and friends in America, Europe and the Gulf to urge Gen Musharraf to improve her security following the suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 140 during her homecoming parade on Oct 19.
Indeed, US diplomats took the highly unusual step of providing her directly with confidential US intelligence about militant threats to her life.
Pakistan's interior ministry also passed on details of plots against her and aides said that letters containing death threats had been smuggled into her home.
Husain Haqqani, a US-based Bhutto adviser, confirmed that she wanted to use private international security contractors but said that the Musharraf regime would not approve the plan.
He added that America, which has arranged for private contractors to guard the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and leaders in Iraq, was reluctant to press Gen Musharraf, its ally, to change his mind. This was despite Washington seeing Ms Bhutto as a lynchpin in its crucial diplomatic attempt to encourage Pakistan to return to democracy.
Mr Siegel's comments will add to the long-running controversy over Ms Bhutto's security arrangements, which were widely regarded as woefully inadequate given the seriousness of the threats against her from al-Qaeda, the Taliban and others.
She relied largely on using a "human shield" of loyal followers who would form a ring around her, but as Thursday's attack proved, it was little real protection against a determined assailant.
Some security industry specialists have suggested, however, that there may have been other reasons why the help of foreign security firms was not enlisted.
Being surrounded by foreign bodyguards would have added to criticisms that Ms Bhutto was in the pocket of the West - an accusation levelled at President Karzai - and might not have been welcomed by her own Pakistani security staff. But the companies could have taken a back role as consultants and trained locals in bodyguard techniques to maintain a Pakistani face to her entourage.
"It's odd and disturbing that the Pakistan government did not do a better job of protecting her and that the US apparently could not do more to persuade them," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former National Security Council director for South Asia. "She made it very clear privately and publicly that she did not have enough security. That was abundantly clear after the attack on her return.
"I can't explain why the Bush administration didn't pressure Musharraf to do more. Her death leaves the US with a Pakistan policy that is completely bankrupt."
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Culling the herd
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2757.shtml
Culling the herd
By Sheila Samples
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Dec 19, 2007
"Everything you can imagine is real" --Pablo Picasso
In 1974, a year after orchestrating a mass terror bombing of Cambodia -- after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize -- Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his National Security Council completed “National Security Study Memo 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This document, whose sharp edges are dulled by page after leaden page of how to reduce overpopulation in the Third World through birth control and "other" population-reduction programs, was classified until 1989, but was almost immediately accepted as US policy, and remains the US blueprint for ethnic cleansing today.
It is difficult to imagine the staggering number of innocent humans who have perished through war or famine as a direct result of Kissinger's half-century obsession with, and lust for, genocide. It's even more difficult to imagine the cruel indifference with which Kissinger, and those like him in positions of political and corporate power -- the elite -- continue to plan the elimination of millions, even billions. All under the guise of national security, or to spread freedom . . . democracy . . .
Kissinger targeted a number of "key countries" whose populations, he said, must be curtailed and controlled lest they gain economic, political and military strength, and thus threaten US strategic interests. "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the Third World," Kissinger said, "because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”
Then, as now, any nation refusing to surrender its natural resources was an ominous threat to our national security and was dealt with initially through birth control and other population-reduction programs such as food rationing. But that was too slow for Kissinger, for Brent Scowcroft who replaced Kissinger as national security adviser and was put in charge of thinning out the Third World population, and for his eager enabler, CIA Director George H.W. Bush who trotted like a love-starved puppy at Kissinger's heels for decades.
At first, they used food as "an instrument of national power" to coerce the dumb masses to stop copulating and populating, and then as a deadly weapon because widespread famine not only dealt death quicker, but it was cost-effective. And it made more sense. Like Kissinger said, "To give food aid to a country just because they [sic] are starving is a pretty weak reason."
If we could imagine the suffering endured by victims of such perverse inhumanity, we might feel a twinge of outrage or, as George Washington so succinctly put it, a "little spark of celestial fire called conscience." Or not. Perhaps we are so far removed from reality because our minds cannot grasp the horror of that reality. Those who seek to destroy the denizens of this planet are totally without compassion or remorse. They are grotesque mutants who kill indiscriminately in their relentless drive for world conquest and domination.
It's naive to think the carnage will stop once predators such as Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Robert McNamara, George H.W. Bush, and other One World advocates, many of whom are in their 80s or 90s, are no longer in our midst. With the release of thousands of tons of depleted uranium in both Bush Gulf wars and Afghanistan, they have poisoned food, water and air, and turned the entire region into massive radioactive death camps. Without fear of accountability, they have ensured the slow, agonizing extermination of entire populations, to include the American military, whom Kissinger views as "dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy" -- and their families -- that will continue for many generations.
We're like herds of cattle, grazing placidly, unable or unwilling to imagine that we might share the same fate as the millions throughout the Third World targeted by the elite as "bottom feeders," contributing nothing -- eating into their profit -- gluttons who must be dispensed with. Any rancher or farmer will tell you that it's good business to cull the herd for a variety of reasons, such as market outlook, cash flow, or just to maintain a healthier, more easily controlled mass of cattle. It makes no sense to keep problem cows, the elderly, the ill or nonproductive around. There comes a time when you must cut your losses and cull the herd.
There are those who, unlike Kissinger and his co-conspirators, are not interested in profit or power, but believe fervently that human population is destroying the planet. Perhaps the most outspoken is University of Texas evolutionary scientist Dr. Eric R. Pianka, who gave a speech in March 2006 advocating the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population.
According to Forrest M. Mims III, chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science and the editor of The Citizen Scientist, Pianka shrugged aside war and famine -- too slow -- and said "the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die" is disease. Pianka advocates airborne Ebola because, he explained, "it is highly lethal, and it kills in days, instead of years."
Pianka drew rounds of enthusiastic applause throughout his speech, and a standing ovation when he threw in the Bird Flu for good measure, and quipped gleefully, "We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth." Five hours later, the university presented Pianka with a plaque, not for winning hands down as "Mad Scientist of the Year," but in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
It doesn't take a wild imagination to know that genocide is real, and it's underway in America. The most blatant example is the barbaric response to Hurricane Katrina victims -- withholding food, blocking aid, ignoring those clinging to rooftops while crying out in vain for help, leaving corpses to float in the flooded streets or to rot in the Superdome. If you start with the poor, minorities, elderly, the ill or nonproductive, the culling becomes much easier the next time around. Those who wait become inured to the inhumanity and, rather than rise up against it, breathe sighs of relief that it's others and not them who are rounded up and herded to the slaughterhouse.
Imagine what life would be like if the Food and Drug Administration did not ensure the safety of our food chain . . . if our creeks and rivers were polluted by sewage and industrial waste . . . if vaccines forced on our children caused mental deficiencies, even death . . . if mothers were afraid to breast-feed their babies because the environmental toxin perchlorate present in our food and water supply accumulates in mother's milk . . . if our air was contaminated . . . if we had a government cold-hearted enough to withhold food and aid from the needy and health care from poor children . . . if we were spied upon and incarcerated, tortured, disappeared without charges . . .
Oh yeah. I forgot. That is what our life is like. All that, and more, is grinding relentlessly away at our safety, our health and our lives.
We have the power to remove these madmen. They are criminals under Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and they must pay for their crimes. One more year wherein millions more throughout the world are slaughtered is, as they say, not an option.
The culling must stop, even if we are forced to stampede. They must be impeached.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@wichitaonline.net.
Culling the herd
By Sheila Samples
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Dec 19, 2007
"Everything you can imagine is real" --Pablo Picasso
In 1974, a year after orchestrating a mass terror bombing of Cambodia -- after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize -- Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his National Security Council completed “National Security Study Memo 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This document, whose sharp edges are dulled by page after leaden page of how to reduce overpopulation in the Third World through birth control and "other" population-reduction programs, was classified until 1989, but was almost immediately accepted as US policy, and remains the US blueprint for ethnic cleansing today.
It is difficult to imagine the staggering number of innocent humans who have perished through war or famine as a direct result of Kissinger's half-century obsession with, and lust for, genocide. It's even more difficult to imagine the cruel indifference with which Kissinger, and those like him in positions of political and corporate power -- the elite -- continue to plan the elimination of millions, even billions. All under the guise of national security, or to spread freedom . . . democracy . . .
Kissinger targeted a number of "key countries" whose populations, he said, must be curtailed and controlled lest they gain economic, political and military strength, and thus threaten US strategic interests. "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the Third World," Kissinger said, "because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”
Then, as now, any nation refusing to surrender its natural resources was an ominous threat to our national security and was dealt with initially through birth control and other population-reduction programs such as food rationing. But that was too slow for Kissinger, for Brent Scowcroft who replaced Kissinger as national security adviser and was put in charge of thinning out the Third World population, and for his eager enabler, CIA Director George H.W. Bush who trotted like a love-starved puppy at Kissinger's heels for decades.
At first, they used food as "an instrument of national power" to coerce the dumb masses to stop copulating and populating, and then as a deadly weapon because widespread famine not only dealt death quicker, but it was cost-effective. And it made more sense. Like Kissinger said, "To give food aid to a country just because they [sic] are starving is a pretty weak reason."
If we could imagine the suffering endured by victims of such perverse inhumanity, we might feel a twinge of outrage or, as George Washington so succinctly put it, a "little spark of celestial fire called conscience." Or not. Perhaps we are so far removed from reality because our minds cannot grasp the horror of that reality. Those who seek to destroy the denizens of this planet are totally without compassion or remorse. They are grotesque mutants who kill indiscriminately in their relentless drive for world conquest and domination.
It's naive to think the carnage will stop once predators such as Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Robert McNamara, George H.W. Bush, and other One World advocates, many of whom are in their 80s or 90s, are no longer in our midst. With the release of thousands of tons of depleted uranium in both Bush Gulf wars and Afghanistan, they have poisoned food, water and air, and turned the entire region into massive radioactive death camps. Without fear of accountability, they have ensured the slow, agonizing extermination of entire populations, to include the American military, whom Kissinger views as "dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy" -- and their families -- that will continue for many generations.
We're like herds of cattle, grazing placidly, unable or unwilling to imagine that we might share the same fate as the millions throughout the Third World targeted by the elite as "bottom feeders," contributing nothing -- eating into their profit -- gluttons who must be dispensed with. Any rancher or farmer will tell you that it's good business to cull the herd for a variety of reasons, such as market outlook, cash flow, or just to maintain a healthier, more easily controlled mass of cattle. It makes no sense to keep problem cows, the elderly, the ill or nonproductive around. There comes a time when you must cut your losses and cull the herd.
There are those who, unlike Kissinger and his co-conspirators, are not interested in profit or power, but believe fervently that human population is destroying the planet. Perhaps the most outspoken is University of Texas evolutionary scientist Dr. Eric R. Pianka, who gave a speech in March 2006 advocating the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population.
According to Forrest M. Mims III, chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science and the editor of The Citizen Scientist, Pianka shrugged aside war and famine -- too slow -- and said "the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die" is disease. Pianka advocates airborne Ebola because, he explained, "it is highly lethal, and it kills in days, instead of years."
Pianka drew rounds of enthusiastic applause throughout his speech, and a standing ovation when he threw in the Bird Flu for good measure, and quipped gleefully, "We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth." Five hours later, the university presented Pianka with a plaque, not for winning hands down as "Mad Scientist of the Year," but in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
It doesn't take a wild imagination to know that genocide is real, and it's underway in America. The most blatant example is the barbaric response to Hurricane Katrina victims -- withholding food, blocking aid, ignoring those clinging to rooftops while crying out in vain for help, leaving corpses to float in the flooded streets or to rot in the Superdome. If you start with the poor, minorities, elderly, the ill or nonproductive, the culling becomes much easier the next time around. Those who wait become inured to the inhumanity and, rather than rise up against it, breathe sighs of relief that it's others and not them who are rounded up and herded to the slaughterhouse.
Imagine what life would be like if the Food and Drug Administration did not ensure the safety of our food chain . . . if our creeks and rivers were polluted by sewage and industrial waste . . . if vaccines forced on our children caused mental deficiencies, even death . . . if mothers were afraid to breast-feed their babies because the environmental toxin perchlorate present in our food and water supply accumulates in mother's milk . . . if our air was contaminated . . . if we had a government cold-hearted enough to withhold food and aid from the needy and health care from poor children . . . if we were spied upon and incarcerated, tortured, disappeared without charges . . .
Oh yeah. I forgot. That is what our life is like. All that, and more, is grinding relentlessly away at our safety, our health and our lives.
We have the power to remove these madmen. They are criminals under Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and they must pay for their crimes. One more year wherein millions more throughout the world are slaughtered is, as they say, not an option.
The culling must stop, even if we are forced to stampede. They must be impeached.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@wichitaonline.net.
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