As President Trump tweets his Americans into World War III over a gas attack that is most likely staged, the Pentagon admits they have no evidence to prove their claims.
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As President Trump tweets his Americans into World War III over a gas attack that is most likely staged, the Pentagon admits they have no evidence to prove their claims.
The post Pentagon Admits They Have No Evidence on Syria Chemical Attack—Threatens War Anyway appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
(The New American) Last year, the White House announced it would reinstate the ban against transgender individuals serving in the military, but on Monday, the Pentagon confirmed that the first transgender recruit, who wished to remain anonymous, has signed up for military service. Those who support the ban against transgender individuals serving in the military contend that they will only hurt military readiness and unit cohesion, while others point to the financial burden of allowing such individuals to serve in the military.
The recruit’s enlistment may have been premature, as the White House is expected to release its official policy on transgender troops on March 23, a deadline set by President Trump. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary James Mattis’ (shown) recommendations on whether transgender troops should be allowed to serve continue to be under review at the White House.
Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter had announced in 2016 that transgender troops could serve openly in the military and that enlistment could begin in July of that year, but Mattis pushed that deadline to January of 2018 as he reviewed the Obama-era policy.
On Friday, Secretary Mattis’ recommendations were sent to the White House. Defense Department spokesman Army Colonel Rob Manning states Mattis’ recommendations are based on the findings of a department-led review late last year, which found that transgender troops could remain in the military under certain conditions. As of January 1, transgender recruits were allowed to be enlisted.
“This is a complex issue, and the secretary is taking his time to consider the information he’s been given. It’s an important issue, and again, he sees all of his decisions through the lens of lethality,” Pentagon press secretary Dana White told reporters.
In August of 2017, when President Trump directed the Pentagon to reverse President Obama’s policy of accepting transgender recruits in the military and reinstate the ban, he explained that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
The Trump administration had also previously said in legal papers that the armed forces were not prepared to train thousands of personnel on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants and might have to accept “some individuals who are not medically fit for service” if transgenders were allowed in.
The post Military Enlists First Transgender Recruit While White House Ponders Policy appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Is it a coincidence?
In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.
With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly corresponds to March 15. The Ides of March is also known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.
Lest we forget, the month of March (in the Roman Calendar) is dedicated to Mars (Martius), the Roman God of War.
For the Romans, the month of March (Martius) marked “the time to start new military campaigns.”
As in the heyday of the Roman Empire, the US Department of Defense has a mandate to plan and implement a precise “timeline” of military operations.
Does the month of March –identified by the Romans as a “good time” to initiate new military undertakings–, have a bearing on contemporary military doctrine?
Throughout history, seasons including the transition from Winter to Spring have played a strategic role in the timing of military operations.
Do Pentagon military planners favor the month of March?
Do they also –in some mysterious fashion– “idolize” Mars, the Roman God of War?
March 23 (which coincides with the beginning of Spring) was the day “Romans celebrated the start of the military campaign and war fighting season.”
“Homage was paid to Mars the god of war with festivals and feasting. … For the Romans March 23 was a huge celebration known as Tubilustrium”.
Under these festivities which celebrated the Roman god of war, a large part of the month of March “was dedicated to military celebration and preparedness.”
Timeline of March Military Interventions (1965- 2017)
Recent history confirms that with the exception of Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO led military operations over a period of almost half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Vietnam War
The US Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to dispatch ground forces to Vietnam on March 8, 1965.
On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam marking the beginning of “America’s ground war”.
NATO’s War on Yugoslavia
NATO’s war on Yugoslavia was launched on March 24, 1999.
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia code-named by the US Operation “Noble Anvil”. started on March 24, 1999 and lasted until June 10, 1999.
The Iraq War
The War on Iraq was launched on March 20, 2003. (Baghdad time)
The US-NATO led invasion of Iraq started on 20 March 2003 on the pretext that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
(The 1991 Gulf War on Iraq began on 17th January. However, after the 28th February ceasefire was agreed and signed – following the Basra Road massacre of withdrawing soldiers and fleeing civilians on 26th/27th February – the US 24th Mechanised Infantry Division slaughtered thousands on 2nd March.“)
The Covert War on Syria
The US-NATO Covert War on Syria was initiated on March 15, 2011 with the incursion of Islamist mercenaries and death squads in the southern city of Daraa on the border with Jordan. The terrorists were involved in acts of arson as well as the killings of civilians. This incursion of terrorists was from the very outset supported covertly by the US, NATO and its Persian Gulf allies: Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
NATO’s “Humanitarian” R2P War on Libya
NATO commenced its bombing of Libya on March 19, 2011. The United Nations Security Council passed an initial resolution on 26 February 2011 (UNSC Resolution 1970), (adopted unanimously).
A subsequent United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted on 17 March 2011. It authorized the establishment of “a no-fly zone” over Libya, and the use “all necessary measures” “to protect the lives of civilians”.
Libya was bombed relentlessly by NATO warplanes starting on March 19, 2011 for a period of approximately seven months.
Yemen
On 25 March 2015, an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the US launched air strikes against the Huthi armed group in Yemen.
**
March 2018
The US and its NATO allies, not to mention Israel, are on a war footing.
Several military scenarios in March 2018 are on the drawing board of the Pentagon includingLebanon, Syria (military escalation scenario), North Korea and Iran.
Russia is threatened and so is China.
We cannot speculate, however, regarding US-NATO war plans pertaining to the Ides of March 2018.
A vast media propaganda campaign has been launched to provide legitimacy to the US-led military adventure, upholding acts of war as humanitarian peace-making initiatives. In the course of the month of March, fake news has reached a new threshold: US mini nukes are heralded as peacemaking bombs.
Here is the latest New York Times (Feb 27) “authoritative” analysis of how North Korea is helping the Syrian government to wage a chemical war against the Syrian people. Nice and not fake, timely (Ides of March) and of course “carefully documented” by the Newspaper of Record.
[image: Screenshot, NYT, Feb 27, 2018]
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He has taught as visiting professor in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. He has served as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has acted as a consultant for several international organizations. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com
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Luis Elizondo, former head of a secret Pentagon program studying UFOs, is now extending his recent remarks about craft witnessed in our skies…
In an interview with the UK Daily Star (2/8), Elizondo made the following boggling comments:
“For the first time, we have a compelling picture that what we are seeing is explained in our current understanding of physics, advanced physics, and quantum mechanics.”
“We do believe all these observables we’ve been seeing, sudden and extreme [UFO] acceleration, hypersonic velocities, low observability, trans medium travel, and last but not least, positive lift, anti-gravity – is really the manifestation of a single technology.”
“So it’s not five exotic technologies we’re trying to figure out, it’s one, and we think we know that one too.”
“We believe it has to do with a high amount of energy and the ability to warp space-time, not by a lot, but by a little.”
The Sun also obtained a comment from Elizondo’s colleague, physicist Hal Puthoff: “Puthoff came to the conclusion that the [UFO] craft can effectively create their own time-space bubble, which allows them to fly at such incredible speeds.”
My, my.
A space-time bubble? Warping space-time?
Elizondo claims such stunning capacities can be understood by Earth physics—but at what level? Speculative? Conceptual? Or in a way that would allow American engineers to build their own craft capable of performing staggering feats and maneuvers? It’s easy to say, “We understand this,” when no assembly is required and you just spin hypotheses. I can come up with a hypothesis which explains how multi-ton stones were transported up a mountain road, centuries ago in Peru, and fitted together perfectly, with primitive technology—as long as I don’t actually have to replicate the feat now, using ancient means. I can blow that kind of smoke.
As I’ve discussed in several previous articles, Elizondo (a former intelligence officer who ran clandestine operations in Latin America), and a host of other former Pentagon and CIA players, are now attached to rock musician Tom DeLonge and his fledgling To the Stars Academy.
This odd marriage raises questions. For example, are the high-level players using DeLonge to disseminate the UFO story as a THREAT-FROM-SPACE SCENARIO, requiring gigantic new sums of money to build defenses against extra-terrestrial attacks?
The Pentagon-CIA nexus has always positioned “UFO disclosure” in those terms. “We have a battle to fight, and we must prepare ourselves against potential alien forces. Give us more money.”
Elizondo has now doubled down. He’s claiming scientists understand how UFOs do what they do.
Let’s see some evidence.
Not just concepts and abstract equations, but hardware—located, perhaps, at the famed and walled-off Lockheed Skunk Works in Palmdale, California.
Or is Elizondo merely passing along sensational-sounding “information,” designed to rope in a new generation of UFO enthusiasts, and lead them to accept a “threat-from-space” story?
Is the “warp” really about a space-drive, or is it about Elizondo’s distortion of facts?
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
The post Head of Secret Pentagon Program Says UFOs Can “Warp Space-Time”—What?? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Google has quietly signed a contract with the Department of Defense to militarize Artificial Intelligence by creating an autonomous drone fleet that will detect faces, images, and behavior patterns.
The post Google Officially Partners With Pentagon to Create Terminator-Style AI Drones to Spy On Everything appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The Pentagon will now be pumping millions of dollars to wage a preemptive information war against "propaganda" that may expose the crimes of the military-industrial complex.
The post Pentagon Just Pledged Millions to Pay Media Companies to Wage a Massive Information War appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon may send a combat marine expeditionary force to deter “growing Chinese influence” while drawing down Middle East force levels.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Logan declined to elaborate, saying “(t)he Department of Defense continually evaluates how we employ our forces throughout the globe but it would be inappropriate to discuss any ongoing planning.”
Defense Priorities analyst/retired army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis/believes the move “plays directly into the concerns and the fears of North Korea that we’re actually preparing for an attack,” adding:
“Effective diplomacy (with China) can’t take place if you have a hammer hanging over the head of your negotiating partner.”
He supports drawing down US forces in the Middle East, calling the region a “money pit and blood pit…with no (US) gain.”
US forces should be brought home, not sent to East Asia “where they could potentially be used in a ground war there that would be even more catastrophic.”
Marine expeditionary forces include about 2,200 combat troops, operating from amphibious assault ships with their own warplanes, tanks and other heavy weapons.
Washington already has about 50,000 troops in Japan, another 30,000 in South Korea, 40,000 in Hawaii, thousands in Guam, along with smaller numbers in Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and elsewhere regionally.
With scores of ships, nuclear-powered submarines, warplanes, and 20,000 sailors, America’s Yokosuka, Japan-based Seventh Fleet is the US navy’s largest deployed sea force.
The Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy prioritizes countering Russia and China. According to the WSJ, bolstering America’s East Asia marine force aims to “persuade Pacific nations to stand with the US.”
According to Commandant of the Marine Corp General Robert Neller, the National Defense Strategy and “other guidance requires us to adopt a more global posture and this will shape our future naval presence, especially in the Indo-Pacific region,” adding:
“We have to be present and engaged to compete.” The National Defense Strategy “will shape our future naval presence, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.”
During a visit to Australia, Joint Chiefs chairman General Joseph Dunford claimed there’s “no stronger way to demonstrate our commitment to our allies than actually being physically present.”
Defense Secretary Mattis said “(g)reat power competition – not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security,” – at a time when the nation’s only threats are invented ones, Mattis adding:
“This strategy is fit for our time, providing the American people the military required to protect our way of life, stand with our allies and live up to our responsibility to pass intact to the next generation those freedoms we enjoy today.”
Trump’s National Security Strategy is a blueprint designed for endless wars of aggression, seeking unchallenged global dominance – peace and stability rejected as unacceptable options.
“Our way of life” is all about a permanent state of war, partnering with NATO, Israel and other rogue allies, risking the destruction of planet earth to own it.
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The Pentagon has recklessly contaminated more than 40,000 sites across the United States, exposing hundreds of thousands of Americans to deadly chemicals
From ISIS To US-Backed "New Syrian Army" - "They Change Their Spots" Russia Alleges
According to a new Reuters report, the chief of the Russian General Staff has accused the United States of hosting a training facility for ISIS fighters in Syria along the Syria-Iraq border. Al-Tanf base on Syria"s southeast side has been under the control of the US-backed "New Syrian Army" and their US special forces advisers since the area was captured from ISIS in August of 2016.
Russia has previously called the base a 100km wide “black hole” operated by the US wherein an assortment of unaccountable armed groups and militants can operate freely. That American troops have long been deployed there was previously confirmed through multiple photographs and videos released early in the summer of 2017 which showed US elite soldiers on active patrols with Syrian rebel factions associated with the Free Syrian Army (or FSA, elements of which were more recently renamed the New Syrian Army).
Photos above and below were made public last summer which shows ongoing training of "New Syrian Army" fighters by US military advisers. Russia now alleges ISIS members have sought the protection of the base and area under its control. Russia"s top general said this week, "They are practically Islamic State. But after they are worked with, they change their spots and take on another name." The images were originally published through Hammurabi’s Justice News, a news outlet affiliated with Maghaweir al Thowra (MaT) - a faction which is the latest incarnation of the US-created New Syrian Army. Via the Long War Journal
Image produced by Maghaweir al Thowra (MaT) - the latest incarnation of the US-created New Syrian Army.
The head of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, made the allegations in an interview on Wednesday with Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, saying that the US base is illegal (and presumably the other roughly up to 10 or more known bases) as the Americans have no right to violate Syrian sovereignty and have not been invited to be there by Damascus in the first place. Russian military officials have recently indicated that the Syrian Army has essentially cut off the area and isolated US-backed forces" ability to expand. If true this raises significant doubts concerning how the presumed "anti-ISIL" mission of US coalition forces are valid or relevant, or how a direct US military presence in the remote southeast region could be justified.
Early this month Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the Islamic State had been destroyed and no longer holds cities or significant territory, though insurgent pockets remain. And at the same time the Russian "mission accomplished" announcement was being widely reported, the Pentagon said US forces would stay in Syria "as long as we need to, to support our partners and prevent the return of terrorist groups." Meanwhile, this week Russia has moved forward with plans brokered with the Syrian government to maintain two permanent Russian military bases on the Mediterranean - the naval station at Tartus and Khmeimim airbase outside of Latakia.
General Gerasimov told the Russian newspaper that the defense ministry possessed drone and satellite footage confirming large numbers of ISIS-affiliated fighters at the US base at Tanf. "They are in reality being trained there,” Gerasimov said, and continued “They are practically Islamic State. But after they are worked with, they change their spots and take on another name. Their task is to destabilize the situation."
Thus the allegation appears to be that as ISIS loses territory and is rooted out of various pockets in the east, its fighters then conveniently declare their allegiance to US-backed FSA/New Syrian Army factions, after which they enter training programs hosted by US advisers.
Gerasimov further indicated that some 400 militants recently left a town in the southern al-Hasakah Province for al-Tanf, launching an offensive on the Syrian forces from the eastern bank of Euphrates, after the main ISIS forces were routed there. Russia has over the past months accused the US coalition of essentially relocating ISIS fighters in order to allow their redeploying to locations where they could attack and pressure Syrian and Russian aligned forces.
In one major instance related to the coalition and SDF victory over ISIS in Raqqa, a bombshell investigative report produced by no less than BBC News confirmed that Russia has certainly had reason to be suspicious of the Pentagon"s motives and strategy inside Syria. According the November BBC report:
The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of Islamic State fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city. A convoy included some of IS"s most notorious members and - despite reassurances - dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.
And concerning the latest accusations of US-ISIS complicity in al-Tanf, Gen. Gerasimov further said the pattern continues: "The most important is that we have been seeing the militants advancing from there for several months. When the control [of the Syrian forces] loosened, as many as 350 militants left the area." He further said of the Russian-Syrian fight against ISIS in the area, "We took timely measures…they have suffered a defeat, these forces were destroyed. There were captives from these camps. It is clear that training is underway at those camps."
And he continued, "Instead of the New Syrian Army, mobile ISIS groups, like a jack in the box, carry out sabotage and terrorist attacks against Syrian troops and civilians from there." And though the pretext for the Tanf base’s creation was "the need to conduct operations against ISIS" - the rapid recent demise of ISIS proves that the Americans have ulterior motives, according to the Russian general.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has heightened his rhetoric of late regarding uninvited foreign forces operating on Syrian soil. He said last week in a televised interview which was subsequently posted to multiple Syrian official social media channels: "Those who work with foreigners against their army are traitors." Assad has also on multiple occasions promised to return all of natural Syria to the control of the Syrian government and army.
Russia"s defense ministry has announced it is now in the process of establishing two permanent military bases in war-torn Syria after President Putin authorized prior deals with the Syrian government to move forward. Though Russia maintains merely up to ten military bases on foreign soil, the installations in Tartus and Khmeimim will be the most strategically located, allowing for a growing and permanent Russian presence on the Mediterranean, something which has already raised eyebrows in the West.
Though Putin formally announced the planned withdrawal of Russian forces from active operations in Syria in early December, there were parallel plans going back to at least early summer to maintain a smaller permanent presence based on an agreement with the Damascus government to host Russian forces for at least 49 more years, which includes the option of being prolonged further. Personnel and military hardware will be stationed at permanent Russian bases in Tartus and Khmeimim - both of which are on or near the Mediterranean.
Satellite image of Russia"s facility at Tartus Navy docks. Left: (Source: WikiMapia); Right: (Source: GoogleMaps)
According to Russian media reports, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu stated at a ministry meeting on Tuesday, “We have started the process of formation of our permanent forces [in Syria]." Though Tartus has operated as a Russian naval port since 1971 (referred to as a Material-Technical Support Point and not a "base") and was until recently minimally staffed mostly by civilian contractors, it will reportedly undergo a massive transformation and expansion, which is to include the capability of hosting nuclear-powered ships.
Notably, though mainstream media is currently reporting the permanent Russian military presence as something "new" and dangerous in terms of an enduring Russian footprint in the Middle East, the Russian military relationship with Baathist Syria goes back decades into the Soveit era with the Tartus facility having been long key to Russian naval movements in the Mediterranean.
According a summary of the planned expansion in RT News:
Under the agreement with Syria, the future base would be allowed to host up to 11 Russian warships, including those with a nuclear power plant. At the moment there is only one Russian nuclear-propelled military surface ship, the 24,000-ton battlecruiser ‘Pyotr Velikiy’, although Russia will soon have a nuclear icebreaker – albeit which is unlikely to be given a mission in the Mediterranean – while a brand new Lider-class destroyer project is at the design stage.
Khmeimim is located near Latakia - the major northwest Syrian city on the Mediterranean, and was built adjacent to the civilian Bassel Al-Assad International Airport to serve as "the strategic center of Russia"s military operation against Islamic State." It has primarily served as an airbase and prime troop logistical support location out of which Russian sorties have been flown since 2015, which ultimately served to overwhelmingly shift the momentum of the war in favor of the Assad government, which has now taken about 90% of all territory formerly held by terrorists, though the future of the country"s northeast - held by the Kurdish dominated and US-backed SDF remains to be seen.
Deployed Russian forces, via Lancashire News
Meanwhile as plans for the permanent bases have been confirmed, Russia says that the bulk of its forces in Syria have already been reduced, though this is currently being contested by both the Pentagon and Syrian opposition groups, who say Russian airstrikes and operations have actually been on the increase of late. On Wednesday the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that over 48,000 Russian military personnel were deployed to Syria between 2015 and 2017, and that at least half of this number have been withdrawn after Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Khmeimim Military Airport earlier this month. And according to a previous statement from the Russian MoD, their forces claimed to help eliminate more than 62,000 militants during their two years inside the country.
However, the Pentagon remains predictably skeptical of Russian effectiveness against ISIS and other terrorists, with the US recently claiming that it alone is responsible for the defeat of the terror group, which resulted in Moscow pushing back against such claims. Washington hawks are likely to argue that Russian permanent bases in Syria are justification enough for the Pentagon to perpetually maintain its own more than dozen small military bases in the country"s north and northeast.
At the same time from the Russian perspective, American policy as well as that of major regional US allies like Israel have been aggressive and erratic, and appear to still include regime change as a long-term policy goal in Syria. An equally long-term Russian military presence will allow Moscow to immediately deploy or build-up its forces in Syria should Damascus come under direct threat from external countries at any point in the near or distant future.
The U.S. government went from missing $2.3 trillion on the day before 9/11, to missing more than $30 trillion today—costing Americans $58,386 every second.
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon papers which exposed the government’s lies during the Vietnam war is vocalizing a warning. He says the United States is really close to a nuclear Armageddon.
Ellsberg, now 86-years-old, leaked the Pentagon papers back in 1969 and he’s now got a new book out which serves a warning to those who care to listen.
According to the Daily Mail, Ellsberg’s 7,000-page report was the WikiLeaks disclosure of its time, a sensational breach of government confidentiality that shook Richard Nixon’s presidency and prompted a Supreme Court fight that was supposed to advance press freedom.
In his new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Ellsberg details how easy nuclear bombs can be triggered and shot off on a false alarm – and that the president isn’t the only who can launch the nukes, as we are often told.
Low-level military commanders are capable of launching nuclear weapons too...
“All out-nuclear war - an irreversible, unprecedented and almost unimaginable calamity for civilization and most life on earth - has been, like the disasters of Chernobyl, Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, Fukushima Daiichi, and before these, World War I, a catastrophe waiting to happen, on a scale infinitely greater than any of these,” writes Ellsberg in his new book.
Adding to fears of a nuclear armageddon is North Korea’s insistence on building a nuclear weapon. This has created a mass panic in nations all around the globe. Not to mention, last month, President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that allows the US to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tension over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
North Korea then denounced Trump’s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling the move a “serious provocation and violent infringement,” as the rogue nation sentenced the US president to death, saying he “hurt the dignity” of the “supreme leadership.” All of this is alarming, according to Ellsberg, who believes a nuclear war can be started simply by a false alarm.
Nuclear bombs “are susceptible to being triggered on a false alarm, a terrorist action, unauthorized launch or a desperate decision to escalate,” Ellsberg wrote in his book.
“They would kill billions of humans, perhaps ending complex life on earth. This is true even though the Cold War that rationalized their existence and hair-trigger status - and their supposed necessity to national security - ended 30 years ago.”
Many US citizens falsely believe that only the US president, in this case, Donald Trump can order the use of nuclear weapons. But Trump isn’t the only military commander authorized to launch nuclear weapons, according to the New York Post.
“There has to be a delegation of authority and capability to launch retaliatory strikes, not only to officials outside the Oval Office but outside Washington too,” Ellsberg wrote.
Ellsberg says that the only way to avoid a nuclear holocaust is full disarmament by the United States and Russia.
“The risk that one city will be destroyed by a single (perhaps terrorist) weapon in the next year or the next decade cannot, unfortunately, be reduced to zero,” Ellsberg writes.
“But the danger of near-extinction of humanity - a continuous possibility for the past 65 years - can be reduced to zero by the dismantlement of most existing weapons in both the United States and Russia.”
America’s only enemies are invented ones to maintain a permanent state of war – so war-profiteers can gorge at the public trough, a deplorable state of affairs worsening, not improving.
Militarism and warmaking define America’s agenda.
Campaigns in multiple theaters are being waged, new ones certain to be launched, numerous covert and other operations ongoing secretly.
The Pentagon and misnamed Defense Department operate below the radar, the public kept uninformed, mainstream media reporting nothing. What they know, they won’t say.
Weeks after Trump took office, his administration stopped disclosing information on US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
Trump claimed it’s to maintain an “element of surprise.” The Pentagon said it won’t routinely announce or confirm information on numbers of US forces, their locations or movements in US war theaters.
Americans have a right to know if US service men and women are in harm’s way. The Trump administration believes otherwise.
The Pentagon failed to disclose thousands of airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere – by warplanes, attack helicopters and drones.
Thousands of US special forces are deployed in scores of countries on every continent. According to Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy director William Hartung, “it is fair to say that the larger US military presence has, at a minimum, served as a recruiting tool for the growing number of terrorist groups operating in West Africa.”
The same is true in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere. So-called counterterrorism operations are more about fostering what Washington claims to oppose.
On December 7, Stars and Stripes discussed a DOD Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) report, saying about 44,000 “unknown” US military personnel are deployed worldwide.
According to Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning, “(w)e are not at a point where we can give numbers other than those officially stated,” adding:
The Defense Department aims to “balance informing the American public with the imperative of operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.”
Commenting on his administration’s strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia last August, Trump said “America hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq” in 2011, adding:
It’s “counterproductive…for the United States to announce in advance the dates we intend to begin, or end, military options. We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities.”
“Conditions on the ground – not arbitrary timetables – will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.”
It was a declaration of escalated war against fictitious enemies, in current and new theaters, without explaining Washington supports the scourge of terrorism it claims to oppose.
The DMDC report indicated US military forces operate nearly everywhere, ranging from two liaison officers in Fiji to tens of thousands elsewhere.
Manning admitted US forces in Syria are fourfold the number reported. Greater numbers are in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere than publicly known.
The Pentagon claiming it doesn’t know precisely how many US forces are deployed abroad and where is part of its culture of secrecy – refusing to disclose information about its covert and various other operations.
America spends trillions of dollars on militarism, warmaking and state terror – the public, Congress and maybe Trump kept uninformed about ongoing operations.
The post US Secrecy on Military Operations appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
When tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theories cross paths with massive "defense" budgets and excited politicians, "stranger things" happen.
Welcome to The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
As The New York Times exposes, within the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the program was almost impossible to find.
Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.
For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.
The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.
The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena.
Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.
And while the clapping of crony capitalism screams alod from those two last sentences, one watch of the following video (just one of many), suggests the boondoggle may be based in some kind of reality after all... (the footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they are seeing. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one exclaims. Defense officials declined to release the location and date of the incident.)
Mr. Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the program.
“I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in Nevada.
“I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”
While not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin of an object does not mean that it is from another planet or galaxy.
“When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously,” she said.
But, she added, “what people sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained.”
First, the bragging dummies
Trump and Haley are still at it. They want to force China to take action against the DPRK by threatening to take North Korea “into their hands” if China refuses to comply. Haley said, “But to be clear, China can do more, (…) and we’re putting as much pressure on them as we can. The last time they completely cut off the oil, North Korea came to the table. And so we’ve told China they’ve got to do more. If they don’t do more, we’re going to take it into our own hands and then we’ll start to deal with secondary sanctions.”
First, let’s reset this scene in a kindergarten and replay it.
Kid A has a fight with Kid B. Kid A threatens to beat up Kid B. Kid B then tells Kid A to go screw himself. Kid A does nothing, but issues more threats. Kid B keeps laughing. And then Kid A comes up with a brilliant plan: he threatens Kid C (who is much much bigger than Kid B and much much stronger too!) by telling him "if you don’t make Kid B comply with my demands, I will take the issue in my own hands!". The entire schoolyard erupts in hysterical laughter.
Question: how would you the gauge the intelligence of Kid A? Anyway...
This would all be really funny if this was a comedy show. But what this all is in reality is a slow but steady progression towards war. What makes this even worse is the media’s obsession with the range of North Korean missiles and whether they can reach Guam or even the USA. With all due respect for the imperial “only we matter” (and nevermind the "gooks"), there are ways “we”, i.e. the American people can suffer terrible consequences from a war in the Korean Peninsula which have nothing to do with missile strikes on Guam or the USA.
Image via The Saker
The lucrative target: Japan
This summer I mentioned one of the most overlooked potential consequences of a war with the DPRK and I want to revisit this issue again. First, the relevant excerpt from the past article:
While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if I am wrong? What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or, which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families and friends? What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate? Well, let me tell you: forget about Guam; think Tokyo! Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems, DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the Keihanshin region encompassing Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the Hanshin Industrial Region. The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated (37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain an immense number of industries, many of which would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles. Not only that, but a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of international economic collapse. So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis for the entire planet. During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind. The Japanese landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war would lay waste to the entire country. This is still true today, only more so. And just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles! The South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear, by the way. As for the Japanese, they are officially placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!). So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible indeed, nukes or no nukes.
Yet, for some reason, the western media rarely mentions Japan or the possible global economic consequences on a strike against Japan. Very few people know for sure whether the North Koreans truly have developed a usable nuclear weapon (warhead and missile) or whether the North Korean ballistic missile truly can reach Guam or the USA. But I don’t think that there is any doubt whatsoever that North Korean missile can easily cover the roughly 1000km (600 miles) to reach the heart of Japan. In fact, the DPRK has already lobbed missiles over Japan in the past. Some red blooded US Americans will, no doubt, explain to use that the US THAAD system can, and will, protect South Korea and Japan from such missile strikes. Others, however, will disagree. We won’t know until we find out, but judging by the absolutely dismal performance of the vaunted US Patriot system in the Gulf War, I sure would not place my trust in any US made ABM system. Last, but not least, the North Koreans could place a nuclear device (not even a real nuclear warhead) on a regular commercial ship or even a submarine, bring it to the coast of Japan and detonate it. The subsequent panic and chaos might end up costing even more lives and money than the explosion itself.
Then there is Seoul, of course. US analyst Anthony Cordesman put is very simply “A battle near the DMZ, directed at a target like Seoul, could rapidly escalate to the point at which it threatened the ROK’s entire economy, even if no major invasion took place."
[Sidebar: Cordesman being Cordesman, he proceeds to hallucinate about the effects of a DPRK invasion of the ROK and comes up with sentences such as “Problems drive any assessment of the outcome of a major DPRK invasion of the ROK, even if one only focuses on DPRK- ROK forces. The DPRK has far larger ground forces, but the outcome of what would today be an air – land battle driven heavily by the overall mobility of DPRK land forces and their ability to concentrate along given lines of advance relative to the attrition technically superior ROK land and air forces could inflict is impossible to calculate with any confidence, as is the actual mix of forces both sides could deploy in a given area and scenario“. Yup, the man is seriously discussing AirLand battle concepts in the context of a DPRK invasion of the South! He might as well be discussing the use of Follow-on-Forces Attack concept in the context of a Martian invasion of earth (or an equally likely Russian invasion of the Baltic statelets!). It is funny and pathetic how a country with a totally offensive national strategy, military doctrine and force posture still feels the need to hallucinate some defensive scenarios to deal with the cognitive dissonance resulting from clearly being the bad guy.]
Why does Cordesman say that? Because according to a South Korean specialist “DPRK artillery pieces of calibers 170mm and 240mm “could fire 10,000 rounds per minute to Seoul and its environs.” During the war in Bosnia the western press spoke of “massive Serbian artillery strikes on Sarajevo” when the actual rate of fire was about 1 artillery shell per minute. It just makes me wonder what they would call 10,000 rounds per minute.
The bottom line is this: you cannot expect your enemy to act in a way which suits you; in fact you should very much assume that he is going to do what you do not expect and what is the worst possible for you. And, in this context, the DPRK has many more options than shooting an ICBM at Guam or the USA. The nutcases in the Administration might not want to mention it, but an attack on the DPRK risks bringing down both the South Korean and the Japanese economies with immediate and global consequences: considering that rather shaky and vulnerable nature of the international financial and economic system, I very much doubt that a major crisis in Asia would not result in the collapse of the US economy (which is fragile anyway).
We should also consider the political consequences of a war on the Korean Peninsula, especially if, as is most likely, South Korea and Japan suffer catastrophic damage. This situation could well result in such an explosion of anti-US feelings that the US would have to pack and leave from the region entirely.
How do you think the PRC feels about such a prospect? Exactly. And might this not explain why the Chinese are more than happy to let the USA deal with the North Korean problem knowing full well that one way or another the USA will lose without the Chinese having to fire a single shot?
The terrain
Next I want to re-visit a threat which is discussed much more often: North Korean artillery and special forces. But first, I ask you to take a close look at the following three maps of North Korea:
These full-size maps can be downloaded from here.
What I want you to see is that the terrain in North Korea is what the military call “mixed terrain”. The topography of North Korea article in Wikipedia actually explains this very well:
The terrain consists mostly of hills and mountains separated by deep, narrow valleys. The coastal plains are wide in the west and discontinuous in the east. Early European visitors to Korea remarked that the country resembled “a sea in a heavy gale” because of the many successive mountain ranges that crisscross the peninsula. Some 80 percent of North Korea’s land area is composed of mountains and uplands, with all of the peninsula’s mountains with elevations of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) or more located in North Korea. The great majority of the population lives in the plains and lowlands.
Being from Switzerland I know this kind of terrain very well (it’s what you would see in the Alpine foothills called “Oberland” or “Préalpes”) and I want to add the following: dense vegetation, forests, rivers and creek with steep banks and rapid currents. Small villages and *a lot* of deep, underground tunnels. There are also flat areas in North Korea, of course, but, unlike Switzerland, they are composed mostly of rice fields and marshes. In military terms this all translates into one simple and absolutely terrifying word: infantry.
Why should the word infantry scare so much? Because infantry means on foot (or horses) with very little airpower (AA and MANPADS), satellites (can’t see much), armor (can’t move around), gunships, submarines or cruise missiles can do. Because infantry means “no lucrative targets” but small, dispersed and very well hidden forces. Company and even platoon-level warfare. Because infantry in mixed terrains means the kind of warfare the US Americans fear most.
The adversary
And with that in mind, let’s repeat that besides its huge regular armed forces (about a million soldiers plus another 5 million plus in paramilitary organizations) the DPRK also has 200,000 special forces. Let’s assume that the Western propaganda is, for once, saying the truth and that the regular armed forces are poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly commanded and even hungry and demotivated (I am not at all sure that this is a fair assumption, but bear with me). But spreading that amount of soldiers all over the combat area would still represent a huge headache, even for “the best and most powerful armed forces in history” especially if you add 200,000 well-trained and highly motivated special forces to the mix (I hope that we can all agree that assuming that special forces are also demotivated would be rather irresponsible). How would you go about finding out who is who and where the biggest threat comes from? And consider this: it would extremely naive to expect the North Korean special forces to show up in some clearly marked DPRK uniforms. I bet you that a lot of them will show up in South Korean uniforms, and others in civilians clothes. Can you imagine the chaos of trying to fight them?
You might say that the North Koreans have 1950"s era weapons. So what? That is exactly what you need to fight the kind of warfare we are talking about: infantry in mixed terrains. Even WWII gear would do just fine. Now is time to bring in the North Korean artillery. We are talking about 8,600 artillery guns, and over 4,800 multiple rocket launchers (source). Anthony Cordesman estimates that there are 20,000 pieces in the “surrounding areas” of Seoul. That way is more than the US has worldwide (5,312 according to the 2017 “Military Balance”, including mortars). And keep in mind that we are not talking about batteries nicely arranged in a flat desert, but thousands of simple but very effective artillery pieces spread all over the “mixed terrain” filled with millions of roaming men in arms, including 200,000 special forces. And a lot of that artillery can reach Seoul, plenty enough to create a mass panic and exodus.
Think total, abject and bloody chaos
So when you think of a war against North Korea, don’t think “Hunt for Red October” or “Top Gun”. Think total, abject and bloody chaos. Think instant full-scale FUBAR. And that is just for the first couple of days, then things will get worse, much worse. Why?
Because by that time I expect the North Korean Navy and Air Force to have been completely wiped-off, waves after waves of cruise missiles will have hit an X number of facilities (with no way whatsoever to evaluate the impact of these strikes, but nevermind that) and the US military commanders will be looking at the President with no follow-up plan to offer. As for the North Koreans, by then they will just be settling in for some serious warfare, infantry-style.
There is a better than average that a good part of the DPRK elites will be dead. What is sure is that the command and control of the General Staff Department over many of its forces will be if not lost, then severely compromised. But everybody will know that they have been attacked and by whom. You don’t need much command and control when you are in a defensive posture in the kind of terrain were movement is hard to begin with. In fact, this is the kind of warfare where “high command” usually means a captain or a major, not some faraway general.
You might ask about logistics? What logistics I ask you? The ammo is stored nearby in ammo dumps, food you can always get yourself and, besides, its your home turf, the civilians will help.
Again, no maneuver warfare, no advanced communications, no heavy logistical train – we are talking about a kind of war which is much closer to WWII or even WWI than Desert Storm.
[Sidebar: as somebody who did a lot of interesting stuff with the Swiss military, let me add this: this kind of terrain is a battlefield were a single company can stop and hold an entire regiment; this is the kind of terrain where trying to accurately triangulate the position of an enemy radio is extremely hard; this is the kind of terrain where only horses and donkeys can carry heavy gear over narrow, zig-zagging, steep paths; entire hospitals can be hidden underground with their entrance hidden by a barn or a shed; artillery guns are dug in underground and fire when a thick reinforced concrete hatch is moved to the side, then they hide; counter-battery radar hardly works due to bouncing signals; radio signals have a short range due to vegetation and terrain; weapon caches and even company size forces camps can only be detected by literally stepping on them; underground bunkers have numerous exits; air-assault operations are hindered by the very high risk of anti-aircraft gunfire or shoulder-fired missiles which can be hidden and come from any direction. I could go on and on but I will just say this: if you want to defeat your adversary in such a terrain there is only one technique which works: you do what the Russians did in the mountains in southern Chechnia during the second Chechen war – you send in your special forces, small units on foot, and you fight the enemy on his own turf. That is an extremely brutal, dangerous and difficult kind of warfare which I really don’t see the Americans doing. The South Koreans, yes, maybe. But here is where the number game also kicks in: in Chechnia the Russians Spetsnaz operated in a relatively small combat zone and they had the numbers. Now look at a map of North Korea and the number of North Korean special forces and tell me – do the South Koreans have the manpower for that kind of offensive operations? One more thing: the typical US American reaction to such arguments would be “so what, we will just nuke them!". Wrong. Nuke them you can, but nukes are not very effective in that kind of terrain, finding a target is hard to begin with, enemy forces will be mostly hidden underground and, finally, you are going to use nukes to deal with company or platoon size units?! Won’t work.]
If you think that I am trying to scare you, you are absolutely correct. I am. You ought to be scared. And notice that I did not even mention nukes. No, not nuclear warheads in missiles. Basic nuclear devices driven around in common army trucks. Driven down near the DMZ in peacetime amongst thousands of other army trucks and then buried somewhere, ready to explode at the right time. Can you imagine what the effect of a “no-warning” “where did it come from?” nuke might be on advancing US or South Korean forces? Can you imagine how urgent the question “are there any more?” will become? And, again, for that the North Koreans don’t even need a real nuclear weapon. A primitive nuclear device will be plenty.
I can already hear the die-hard “rah-rah-rah we are number 1!” flag-wavers dismissing it all saying “ha! and you don’t think that the CIA already knows all that?”. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t – but the problem is that the CIA, and the rest of the US intelligence community, has been so hopelessly politicized that it can do nothing against perceived political imperatives. And, frankly, when I see that the US is trying to scare the North Koreans with B-1B and F-22s I wonder if anybody at the Pentagon, or at Langely, is still in touch with reality. Besides, there is intelligence and then there is actionable intelligence. And in this case knowing what the Koreans could do does not at all mean know what to do about it.
Speaking of chaos – do you know what the Chinese specifically said about it?
Can you guess?
That they will “not allow chaos and war on the peninsula."
Enter the Chinese
Let’s talk about the Chinese now. They made their position very clear: “If North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States then China should stay neutral, but if the United States attacks first and tries to overthrow North Korea’s government China will stop them." Since there is no chance at all of a unprovoked North Korean attack on the South or the USA, especially with this threat by the Chinese to remain neutral if the DPRK attacks first, let’s focus on the 2nd part of the warning.
What could the Chinese do if the US decides to attack North Korea? There basic options depend on the nature of the attack:
That second scenario would create a dangerous situation for China, of course, but it would be even far more dangerous for US forces in Asia who would find themselves stretched very thin over a very large area with no good means to force either adversary to yield or stop. Finally, just as China cannot allow the USA to crush North Korea, Russia cannot allow the USA to crush China. Does that dynamic sound familiar? It should as it is similar to what we have been observing in the Middle-East recently:
This is a very flexible and effective force posture where the smallest element is at the forefront of the line-up and the most powerful one most removed and at the back because it forces the other side to primarily focus on that frontline adversary while maximizing the risks of any possibly success because that success is likely to draw in the next, bigger and more powerful adversary.
Conclusion: preparing for genocide
The US has exactly a zero chance of disarming or, even less so, regime changing the DPRK by only missile and airstrikes. To seriously and meaningfully take the DPRK “in their hands” the US leaders would need to approve of a land invasion. However, even if that is not the plan, if the DPRK decides to use its immense, if relatively antiquated, firepower to strike at Seoul, the US will have no choice to move in ground forces across the DMZ. If that happens about 500,000 ROK troops backed by 30,000 US military personnel will face about 1 million North Korea soldiers backed by 5 million paramilitaries and 200,000 special forces on a mix terrain battlefield which will require an infantry-heavy almost WWII kind of military operations. By definition, if the USA attacks the DPRK to try to destroy its nuclear program such an attack will begin by missile and air strikes on DPRK facilities meaning that the USA will immediately strike at the most valuable targets (from the point of view of the North Koreans of course). This means that following such an attack the US will have little or no dissuasive capabilities left and that means that following such an attack the DPRK will have no incentive left to show any kind of restraint. In sharp contrast, even if the DPRK decides to begin with an artillery barrage across the DMZ, including the Seoul metropolitan area, they will still have the ability to further escalate by either attacking Japan or by setting off a nuclear device. Should that happen there is an extremely high probability that the USA will either have to “declare victory and leave” (a time-honored US military tradition) or begin using numerous tactical nuclear strikes. Tactical nuclear strikes, by the way, have a very limited effectiveness on prepared defensive position in mixed terrain, especially narrow valleys. Besides, targets for such strikes are hard to find. At the end of the day, the last and only option left to the USA is what they always eventually resort to would be to directly and deliberately engage in the mass murder of civilians to “break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure” of the enemy’s forces (another time-honored US military tradition stretching back to the Indian wars and which was used during the Korean war and, more recently, in Yugoslavia). Here I want to quote an article by Darien Cavanaugh in War is Boring:
On a per-capita basis, the Korean War was one of the deadliest wars in modern history, especially for the civilian population of North Korea. The scale of the devastation shocked and disgusted the American military personnel who witnessed it, including some who had fought in the most horrific battles of World War II (…). These are staggering numbers, and the death rate during the Korean War was comparable to what occurred in the hardest hit countries of World War II. (…) In fact, by the end of the war, the United States and its allies had dropped more bombs on the Korean Peninsula, the overwhelming majority of them on North Korea, than they had in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II.
“The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating U.N. forces,” historian Charles K. Armstrong wrote in an essay for the Asia-Pacific Journal. “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others. American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea—that is, essentially on North Korea—including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II.” As Armstrong explains, this resulted in almost unparalleled devastation. “The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”
Twelve to fifteen percent of the entire population was murdered by US forces in Korea during the last war (compare these figures to the so-called ‘genocide’ of Srebrenica!). That is what Nikki Haley and the psychopaths in Washington DC are really threatening to do when they speak of taking the situation “in their own hands” or, even better, when Trump threatens to “totally destroy” North Korea. What Trump and his generals forget is that we are not in the 1950"s but in 2017 and that while the Korean War and a negligible economic impact on the rest of the planet, a war the middle of Far East Asia today would have huge economic consequences. Furthermore, in the 1950"s the total US control over the mass media, at least in the so-called “free world” made it relatively easy to hide out the murderous rampage by US-lead forces, something completely impossible nowadays. The modern reality is that irrespective of the actual military outcome on the ground, any US attack on the DPRK would result is such a massive loss of face for the USA that it would probably mark the end of the US presence in Asia and a massive international financial shock probably resulting in a crash of the currently already fragile US economy. In contrast, China would come out as the big winner and the uncontested Asian superpower.
All the threats coming out of US politicians are nothing more than delusional hot air. A country which has not won a single meaningful war since the war in the Pacific and whose Army is gradually being filled with semi-literate, gender-fluid and often conviction or unemployment avoiding soldiers is in no condition whatsoever to threaten a country with the wide choice of retaliatory options North Korea has. The current barrage of US threats to engage in yet another genocidal war are both illegal under international law and politically counter-productive. The fact is that the USA is unlikely to be able to politically survive a war against the DPRK and that it now has no other option than to either sit down and seriously negotiate with the North Koreans or accept that the DPRK has become an official nuclear power.
