As The World Squirmsã

~Serious Comment for Serious People - A Global Perspective for Just a Few Friends~

 

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Wednesday, August 20, 2008

 

 

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 ~ Owen

 

 

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Ross Perot Charts – The Imminent Financial Challenges Facing Americans

 

 

War in The Balkans

Scott Horton of AntiWar.com Radio Interviews Brendan O’Neill

August 12th, 2008

Brendan O’Neill, editor of UK based Spiked Online, discusses the conflict between Georgia and Russia over Ossetia, including the blame due the U.S. for supporting and arming Georgia, the hypocrisy of western leaders and media for condemning Russia while they sow catastrophe in the Balkans and Iraq, Russia’s motivation, U.S. infiltration of the region under the guise of the “War on Terror,” and the bankruptcy of the American-Anglo empires claim of moral authority.

 

 

 

 

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Special Comment

 

 

 

 

 

Georgia on Our Mind: Or, the Search for Truth in a Propagandized and Politically Manipulated Post 9/11 America

 

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“Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.”

 

~ Patrick J. Buchanan

 

 

 

 

Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio Interviews Eric Margolis

August 14th, 2008

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent for Canadas Sun National Media and author of War at the Top of the World, discusses:

·       The complicated politics of the Caucasus region,

·       U.S. and Israeli arming and training of Georgian troops,

·       The Ossetia fiasco,

·       McCains foreign policy handler Randy Scheunemann and his relationship with the Saakashvili regime,

·       The fight within the military industrial pentagon complex over whether to focus on imperial occupations or preparing for war with great powers,

·       The dangerous foolishness of NATO expansion,

·       The self-serving hypocrisy of America and Russias leaders,

·       The ignored U.S. sponsored regime change in Somalia,

·       McCains 3AM moment and emulation of the Kaiser,

·       Kashmir and Afghanistan,

·       Dick Armitages threat to totally destroy Pakistan after 9/11 and

·       The new great game in Central Asia

 

 

NATO Pulls its Punches with Russia: Nato's diplomatic balancing act

 

Jonathan Marcus, the BBC’s diplomatic foreign correspondent in Brussels reports: “Nato has had to carry out a complex diplomatic balancing act: supporting Georgia while trying to contain its rhetoric within the bounds of the possible, and sanctioning Russia while not putting relations back into the deep freeze.

 

This is a mark not so much of Nato's relative weakness in this dispute - it does indeed have few levers with which to play - but it is more an acknowledgement that we live in a much more complex world where ties between Russia and the West have a number of dimensions - not least an energy relationship - and a freeze could hurt the Europeans more than it would hurt Russia.

 

For all the overtones from the past - Russian tank columns on the march evoking memories of Hungary and Czechoslovakia - this was a crisis with parallels more in the 19th Century than in the one that has recently ended.

 

This is not about an expansionist state with an ideology bent on world domination, but a major power eager to establish a sphere of interest in its own backyard and jealously guarding what it sees as the approaches towards its own frontiers - what Russians have traditionally called the ‘near abroad.’" Continue

 

Georgia: the messy truth behind the morality tale: The black-and-white reading of the horrific violence in South Ossetia overlooks the role of the war on terror in destabilising the region.

Editor Brendan O’Neill comments in UK based Spiked e-zine: “The problem with this fairytale script [Washington’s & the MSM’s] that is being cut-and-pasted on to the horrendous massacres of people in South Ossetia and Georgia is that it is almost entirely wrong. Georgia is no free-spirited, democratic republic, but an increasingly authoritarian regime that bans overly critical media outlets and criminalises opposition parties (4). Russia is acting not from an imperialist, expansionist standpoint but out of desperation, behaving recklessly because it feels its sovereign authority challenged by numerous ex-Soviet republics.

And, most importantly, far from Western involvement being the solution in Georgia, there has already been far too much of it: Washingtons arming, goading and cajoling of former Soviet republics has intensified instability across the Caucasus and Central Asia and around the rim of one of the most populous, powerful nations on Earth: Russia.

The bloodshed that occurred over the weekend, as Georgian forces bombed the breakaway territory of South Ossetia and Russia responded by attacking Georgia, can be seen as the destructive outcome of Washingtons increasingly hungry and erratic foreign policy. What is missing from much of the Western morality tale of Georgia vs Russia is any serious assessment of Washingtons role in militarising former Soviet republics and giving a green light to their anti-Russian posturing. From the Ukraine to Uzbekistan to Georgia, Washington has backed a string of dodgy ruling parties and dictatorial leaders as they have upped the ante with their former rulers in the Kremlin. The end result has been more authoritarianism in the East and unpredictability in world affairs.

Georgia, like many of the former Soviet republics, is a state with no real reason to exist. Lacking a unified national elite or identity, it is another of those Caucasian and Central Asian states that were born by default when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It is fragile, changeable, and has various ethnic or national groups within its borders not only in South Ossetia (which wants to join with North Ossetia) but also in Abkhazia, a Black Sea region that has largely run its own affairs since defeating Georgian forces in a war in 1992-1993.

Over the past decade, Washington’s foreign policy – increasingly patternless and self-defeating – has helped to make the unstable state of affairs in the former Soviet republics worse. America has sought to turn these republics into outposts in its ‘war on terror’. On the ostensible basis of protecting Georgia, and the world more broadly, from the threat of al-Qaeda-style Chechen terrorism, Washington has pumped more than £100million into Georgia’s security forces (5). It has provided the Georgian military with Huey helicopters, tonnes of weaponry, and high-level training – just last month it was reported that 1,200 US servicemen and 800 Georgians were undergoing intensive ‘joint military training’ at the Vaziani military base near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi (6). Continue

 

What Is the White House Smoking?

Eric Margolis comments on Washington’s most recent folly: “On 7 August, Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, ordered his US and Israeli-advised and equipped army to invade the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has been struggling for independence from Georgia since 1992. Most of its people were Russian citizens who wanted union with Russian North Ossetia.

 

If not directly behind Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, Washington had to have been at least fully aware of Saakashvili’s plans. The Georgian Army was trained and equipped by US and Israeli military advisors stationed with its troops down to battalion level. CIA and Israel’s Mossad operated important intelligence stations in Tbilisi and coordinated plans with the Saakashvili, whose political opponents have long accused him of being very close to CIA and the Pentagon.

 

Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia was launched while the world was absorbed by the Beijing Olympics, and Prime Minister Putin was in the Chinese capital. The attack was clearly planned to be a lightening strike that would occupy all of South Ossetia and then Abkhazia before Moscow could react, presenting the Kremlin with a fait accompli.”

Continue

 

Washington’s Cynical Politicals Install U.S. “Tripwire” Forces in Israel - American crews will control US FBX-band radar granted Israel

 

Israeli based DebKa File reports:In granting Israel the powerful FBX-T radar system to enhance its early warning resources against incoming missiles, Washington laid down a strict hands-off proviso. The system will be installed at a US base in the southern Israeli Negev. It will be off-limits to Israelis and managed exclusively by American personnel.” Continue

 

The Neocons: The Greatest Danger Ever Faced By The United States And The World

By Paul Craig Roberts

 

The success of the Bush Regime's propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

 

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

 

It certainly worked with Americans.

 

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

 

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.

 

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops.

 

We don't know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

 

What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their undeclared agenda.

 

That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity.

 

America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.

 

The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime's criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises "change" is too intimidated by the neocon's success in brainwashing the American population to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.

 

This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed "Russian invasion" to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.

 

Only this time, the rest of the world didn't buy it. The many years of lies--9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, "the United States doesn't torture," the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children's soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated "terrorist plots," the determined assault on civil liberties--have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.

 

The rest of the world reported the facts--an assault on Russian civilians by American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian troops.

 

The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to accept this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian military was sent fleeing for its life.

 

The neoconned Republican response to the Russian failure to follow the script and to be intimidated by the "unipower" was so imbecilic that it shattered the brainwashing to which Americans had succumbed.

 

McCain declared: "In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations." Imagine the laughs Jon Stewart will get out of this on the Daily Show. In the early years of the 21st century the United States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for attacking a third. President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century, echoed McCain's claim that nations don't invade other nations. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7556857.stm

 

This dissonant claim shocked even brainwashed Americans, as readers' emails reveal. If in the 21st century countries don't invade other countries, what is Bush doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what are the naval armadas and propaganda arrayed against Iran about?

 

Have two of the worst warmongers of modern times--Bush and McCain--called off the US/Israeli attack on Iran? If McCain is elected president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as "nations don't invade other nations," or is President Bush going to beat him to it?

 

We all know the answer.

 

The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on the basis of good will.

 

Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be thanking God they blocked Georgia's membership in NATO.

 

The Ukraine, where a sick nationalism has taken hold funded by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, will be the next conflict between American pretensions and Russia. Russia is being taught by the neocons that freeing the constituent parts of its empire has not resulted in their independence but in their absorption into the American Empire.

 

Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with Russia.

 

The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.

 

The US Starts a Cold War Again

Patrick J. Buchanan comments: The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.

Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.

And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?

As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?

For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.

If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?” Continue

 

 

McCain's War: Playing With Nuclear Fire

 

Steve Weissman, comments for Truthout: "John McCain calls the conflict in Georgia 'the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War,' and he is doing everything he can to make it his own, even at the cost of upstaging the shrinking President Bush. But the tragedy in Georgia also reveals the most embarrassing foreign policy blunder since - well, since the Bush administration decided to wage a preemptive war in Iraq. If deep thinkers in Washington insist on setting up a string of client states to encircle Russia, they should never let the puppets pull their own strings, as [Georgian President] Mikheil Saakashvili appears to have done when he sent his army into rebellious South Ossetia."Continue

 

Blowback from Bear-Baiting - Is Not Western Hypocrisy Astonishing?

 

Patrick J. Buchanan comments: “American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was ‘disproportionate’ and ‘brutal,’ wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more ‘disproportionate’?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province,
Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?
Continue

 

 

Ex German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Blames Saakashvili For Conflict

 

Deutsche World reports: “The former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has blamed Georgia for starting the conflict in South Ossetia and described its President as a ’gambler’. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, he criticised President Mikhail Saakashvili and warned against speeding up the country's accession to NATO.

 

‘Imagine that we had been forced into military action on the side of Georgia as a NATO member, on the side of an obvious gambler, as one must describe Saakashvili,’ he said. Continue

 

Sergei Ivanov: In a BBC HARDtalk interview broadcast on 14th August, Stephen Sackur talks to Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Ivanov about the conflict in Georgia.

 

Click here to watch the full interview

 

It was the most one sided of conflicts.

 

In five days the Russian military crushed Georgia's armed forces. Georgia's secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are in effect under complete Russian control.

In Tbilisi there is anguish, in Europe and Washington consternation.

In an interview for HARDtalk, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister tells Stephen Sackur that South Ossetians and Abkhazians must be allowed to determine their own future.

 

He denied Russian forces were moving further into Georgia and said the comments by Britain's Foreign Secretary about Russia's imperial ambitions were "total rubbish."

 

HARDtalk is broadcast on BBC World News at 03:30 GMT, 08:30 GMT, 14:30 GMT, 20:30 GMT and 22:30 GMT

 

Hardtalk can also be seen on BBC News at 04:30 BST & 23:30 BST

 

Saakashvili May Be Put On Trial In Russia

 

Bush Rebuking Russia? Putin Must Be Splitting His Sides

 

Simon Jenkins comments for the London Guardian: “Putin would die laughing if he read this week's American newspapers. The president, George Bush, declared the Russian invasion of Georgia ‘disproportionate and unacceptable’. This is taken as a put-down to the vice-president, Dick Cheney, who declared the invasion ‘will not go unanswered’, apparently something quite different. Bush says that great powers should not go about ‘toppling governments in the 21st century’, as if he had never done such a thing. Cheney says that the invasion has ‘damaged Russia's standing in the world’, as if Cheney gave a damn. The lobby for sanctions against Russia is reduced to threatening to boycott the winter Olympics. Big deal.” Continue

 

 

Rice: Military power is "not the way to deal in the 21st century" [????]

 

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com writes: “It's hardly news that the U.S., like many countries, espouses standards that it routinely violates, but still, even in light of such routine hypocrisy, wouldn't you think that this, from Condoleezza Rice today, on an airplane to U.S. reporters while traveling to a NATO meeting, would be too brazen to utter:

 

Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power. That's not the way to deal in the 21st century.

 

Whatever one's views are on the justifiability of each isolated instance, it's simply a fact that the U.S. invades, bombs, occupies, and interferes in the internal affairs of other countries far more than any other country on the planet. It's not even a close competition. Continue

 

Is Condoleeza Rice stupid?

Pravda (Moscow) columnist Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY asks:Is Condoleeza Rice stupid? She claims to be a Russian expert but her command of the language was recently exposed as being basic/elementary level on a Russian radio programme, just as her grasp of what is going on in Russia today seems beneath the informed blogger level.

Is Condoleeza Rice stupid? How can this female purport to broker events between an evil regime in Tblisi supported by her own evil regime in Washington, and Russia, while not mentioning one single time the war crimes committed by Georgia against Russian peacekeepers and civilians?

So we come to the conclusion that she is either stupid, or incompetent, or downright evil. If she didnt know about Georgias war crimes, when everyone else did, she is incompetent (as she proved as National Security Advisor during 9/11). If she knows about the war crimes and fails to mention them, as Secretary of State, she is plain stupid and if she purposefully covers them up, maybe because her own armed forces were involved, then she is one evil piece of work, as many of us suspected all along.

Is Condoleeza Rice stupid? Or incompetent? Or just plain evil?” Continue

 

War in Georgia Shows U.S. Foreign Policy Is a Bust

 

The Future of Freedom Foundation’s Richard Sheldon writes: “The tragic events in the nation of Georgia show that U.S. foreign policy is a bust. In particular, NATO must go. This may seem counterintuitive, but this relic of the Cold War has nothing to contribute to peace. On the contrary, it is a destabilizing tool of America’s provocative imperial foreign policy.

 

Let us stipulate that the Russian government would undoubtedly be interested in having Georgia in its camp even if NATO did not exist. The Russian elite has always seen itself destined for a major role in world events, and that dream of course included a large sphere of influence where friendly regimes saw things the Russian way.

 

Nevertheless, NATO — and the U.S. empire for which it stands — is a major aggravating factor in the tensions between Russia and its neighbors. Not long after the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War ended, the U.S. foreign-policy elite began talking about expanding NATO to include former Soviet Satellites and republics. Considering that NATO was ostensibly created to counter the Soviet Union in Europe, how could expanding the organization up to the Russian border not be provocative? What was the point, except to show the Russians who’s boss?” Continue

 

 

 

 

 

Israeli Mercenary Says Georgian Attack Was Suicide

 

Israeli contract mercenary Tomer (alias) quoted in Israel’s Ynet News:  "The training companies [Israeli] wanted to finish the projects as quickly as possible in order to create more projects and make more money," he said. ‘We knew the training had to be completed quickly because the soldiers would soon have to get into real military activity.’

 

He added that the Georgian officers told their soldiers they would be going to help NATO forces in Iraq, while the real objective was Ossetia and Abkhazia.

 

According to Tomer, Gal Hirsch came to visit the trainers now and then, but was mostly absent. And when the training was officially over, Tomer did not feel that his soldiers were ready for war. ‘By Israeli standards, the soldiers had almost zero capability and the officers were mediocre,’ he said. ‘It was clear that taking that army to war was illogical.’

 

By keeping in touch with one of his soldiers, Tomer discovered that most of the men he had trained had indeed been killed in the war.  Continue

 

 

 

 

The US missile defence system is the magic pudding that will never run out

 

George Monbiot comments in the Guardian, London: “Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in Washington.” Continue

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basic Premises: “The American Government is Corrupt from Top to Bottom”

 

Charley Reese comments in LewRockwell.com: “As for government corruption, it's all around us. Sure, there are honest public officials, but the system itself is corrupt. It now requires so much money to run for office that the field is narrowed to bored millionaires and office-seekers willing to take as much money as they can from anywhere they can get it. That's why Congress pays no attention to the people. It pays attention to the suppliers of campaign funds – not to mention junkets, fancy vacations and off-the-radar business deals.” Continue

 

 

 

 

 

Ron Suskind’s Sensational New Book  Reveals Bush Administration Ordered Iraq-9/11 Fakery: House Judiciary Chair John Conyers Opens Congressional Probe

 

DemocracyNow.org reports: “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind joins us for part two of an interview on his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind reports that in 2003 the White House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. While much of the attention on the book has focused on the forged letter, Suskind also reveals that the Bush administration and the British government knew prior to the war that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. We also speak to Rep. John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating some of the explosive findings in Suskind’s book.” Continue

 

 

 

The Lobby Like No Other Wants a War Like No Other

 

Michael Scheuer, 22 year CIA veteran and former head of the Agency’s bin-Laden Unit writes: The U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seems, was not enough for the Israel-firsters. Now, according to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a U.S.-launched war on Iran is needed because ‘the threat that the U.S. and Israel face from the Islamic Republic of Iran is today greater than ever.’ Though based on the fantasy that Ahmedinejad's tin-pot regime is a threat to the world's only superpower, this is a perfectly commonsense position for Israel and its U.S.-citizen backers in AIPAC to champion. In their view, U.S. wars with Muslims are the ultimate good for Israel. Recall, if you will, the perfectly accurate April 2008, words of Benjamin Netanyahu, likely Israel's next prime minister: ‘We [Israel] are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.These wars, Netanyahu said, have ‘swung American public opinion in our favor.’ How much more must Netanyahu and AIPAC believe that a U.S. war with Iran would add to this ‘swing’ in Israel's favor?

 

My own anger falls not on Israel, then, or on Palestine, for that matter; as I have written elsewhere, America would do just fine and would be better off without either or both. It falls rather on the lobbying efforts of AIPAC, that organization's blatant purchasing of fealty from U.S. politicians in both parties, and the media's obsequious parroting of specious canards about ‘Israel's right to exist’ and ‘the duty of Americans to support an island of democracy in the Middle East.’"  Continue

 

 

 

"The Long Range Blowtorch" Washington Has a New Terror Weapon: Boast of New Weapon’s “Plausible Deniability”

 

David Hambling writes for NewScientist.com: “An airborne laser weapon dubbed the ‘long-range blowtorch’ has the added benefit that the US could convincingly deny any involvement with the destruction it causes, say senior officials of the US Air Force (USAF).

 

The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is to be mounted on a Hercules military transport plane. Boeing announced the first test firing of the laser, from a plane on the ground, earlier this summer.

 

Cynthia Kaiser, chief engineer of the US Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, used the phrase "plausible deniability" to describe the weapon's benefits in a briefing (powerpoint format) on laser weapons to the New Mexico Optics Industry Association in June.

 

John Corley, director of USAF's Capabilities Integration Directorate, used the same phrase to describe the weapon's benefits at an Air Armament Symposium in Florida in October 2007 (see page 15, pdf format).

 

As the term suggests, ‘plausible deniability’ is used to describe situations where those responsible for an event could plausibly claim to have had no involvement in it.

 

Corley and Kaiser did not respond to requests from New Scientist to expand on their comments. But John Pike, analyst with defence think-tank Global Security, based in Virginia, says the implications are clear.

 

‘The target would never know what hit them,’ says Pike. ‘Further, there would be no munition fragments that could be used to identify the source of the strike.’ Continue

 

 

 

 

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“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder

respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

 

~George Orwell~

 

 

 

PERSPECTIVE

 

HE'S BACK! Ross Perot Sponsors New Public Interest Website

 

 

 

 

A Ray of Sunshine

 

 

 

Dreams Come True!

 

 

 

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An extraordinarily prescient video interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security Advisor to Former President George Bush Sr.

 

Why Invading Iraq Was A Very Stupid Idea…

 

(Click on blinking dot above for video)