Israeli Military Capabilities - Scenarios For The Third Lebanon War

Via Southfront.org,

The Current State of Affairs

At the present time, Israel’s top political leadership is in the state of outright hysteria regarding Lebanese Hezbollah.  Senior Israeli officials have repeatedly claimed that Israel will not allow Hezbollah and Iran to concentrate its forces in border areas and to expand their influence in the region, particularly in Syria and Lebanon.

The already difficult situation in southern Lebanon and Syria was further complicated by the series of events, which contributed to the growing tensions in the region in November and early December. It started with a resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri announced from Saudi Arabia on November 7, continued with Saudi accusations of military aggression through missile supplies to Yemen against Iran and rose to a new level on December 6 when US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital sparking further escalation.

Some experts also said Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US are conspiring to start a new war in the region. In this light, “The Light of Dagan”, a major military exercise named in honour of the former Director of Foreign Intelligence Service of Israel, Mossad, Meir Dagan, was described as a part of the preparations for armed aggression against Lebanon.

The exercise lasted eleven days, from 4 to 14 September 2017, and involved tens of thousands of troops from all branches of service.

The exercise legend posited that terrorists attacked the village of Shavey Zion, fifteen kilometers from the Lebanese border and, together with hundreds of Hezbollah fighters from the Radwan units, carried out the invasion in the north, captured civilians and occupied the local synagogue. Their ultimate goal was to plant Hezbollah flag of the movement on Israeli soil and send a photo to Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. In response, Israel carried out the evacuation of civilians, then units of the IDF conducted a large-scale operation in southern Lebanon, which was carried out in three stages. The first stage was defensive, including a counter-attack and the deployment of additional units to counter the Hezbollah movements. The second stage consisted of launching an assault on southern Lebanon. The third phase pushed Hezbollah forces back into Lebanon. The exercises were held in southern Galilee to the south from Highway 85 Akko-Carmiel. The goal of the exercises was the full capitulation of the Hezbollah movement, “depriving them of their ability and willingness to resist”. According to the IDF command, the IDF excelled at these tasks.

The IDF Today

Currently the IDF in the regional scale is a formidable force with the budget of 15.9 bn USD.

According to the yearbook Military Balance 2017, IDF numbers 176 thousand servicemembers, of which 133 thousand are in the Army, 34 thousand in the Air Force, 9.5 thousand in the Navy. In addition, there are 465 thousand troops in reserve. The border police (MAGAV) may provide 8000 troops to assist the military.

Land forces are organized into three regional commands (North, Central, South), two armoured divisions, five territorial infantry divisions, three battalions of Special Forces, and a team of special operations forces. Overall they command a number of separate reconnaissance battalions, three tank brigades, three mechanized brigades (consisting of three mechanized battalions, a combat support battalion and a signal company), a mechanized brigade (consisting of five mechanized battalions), a separate mechanized brigade, two separate infantry battalions, an airborne brigade (composed of three airborne battalions, a combat support battalion and a signal company), and a training tank brigade. Three artillery brigades, three engineering battalions, two military police battalions, a company of sappers, a chemical protection battalion and a brigade of military intelligence provide battlefield support.

The Navy consists of a surface ship group, a submarine group, as well as a battalion of commandos.

The Israeli Air Force consist of two fighter squadrons, five attack squadrons, six mixed fighter-attack squadrons (plus two squadrons in reserve), an ASW squadron, a maritime patrol and support squadron (patrol and transport aircraft, tanker aircraft), two EW squadrons, an AWACS squadron, two squadrons of transport and tanker aircraft, two training squadrons, two squadrons of attack helicopters, four squadrons of transport helicopters, an air ambulance division and three squadrons of UAVs. Additionally, on December 6, Israel officially declared its fleet of nine F-35I warplanes operational.

It is believed that Israel has nuclear weapons. The number of nuclear warheads is debatable, but its delivery vehicles include F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, the Jericho-2 ballistic medium-range missiles, and Dolphin/Tanin class diesel-electric submarines capable of carrying cruise missiles.

There are nine orbital military and dual-purpose satellites:

• Three Amos-type satellites.


• One reconnaissance satellite with remote sensing of the Earth of the EROS type, located on the sun-synchronous orbit.


• Four optical reconnaissance satellites of the Ofeq type (No. 7, 9, 10 and 11), located in the low earth orbit.


• One radar-reconnaissance satellite of the TecSAR-1 type, located in low earth orbit.

IDF Problems

The IDF at the moment is a unique and astounding combination of nuclear weapons with delivery vehicles, an arsenal of equipment produced in the 1960s and of modern weapons on par with the leading world powers. This combination has its drawbacks and they do not make themselves wait for long.

For example:

• In September 2016, during the removal of the machine gun from a tank at the training base in Shizafon in the south of Israel several soldiers were severely injured.


• On 5 October 2016 on the approach to the Ramon airbase in southern Israel the pilot was killed as a result of the ejection from the F-16.


• In July 2017 during the course of an exercise, due to his own negligence Lieutenant David Golovenchick was shot dead by a soldier.


• On 8 August 2017 an AH-64 helicopter crashed at the Ramon airbase, as a result the pilot was killed, and others sustained injuries.


• On 9 August 2017 during IDF operations in the suburbs of Bethlehem, an Israeli soldier suffered wounds of moderate severity as a result of friendly fire.


• At the end of August 2017 ten soldiers were lightly injured at the Shizafon base in southern Israel after a smoke grenade exploded.


• At the beginning of September 2017 an Israeli soldier was severely injured by a grenade that exploded during military training on the base in the south of the country.

These incidents indicate that the Israeli military has serious shortcomings in the realm of personnel proficiency and equipment maintenance.

The Gideon Plan

In order to give the IDF the ability to confront modern threats from various armed groups, while implementing budget cuts and minimizing the number of accidents, Israel adopted the five-year Gideon Plan in 2015.

Main Provisions of the Plan:

• Reduction of the number of professional soldiers and officers to 40,000.


• Reduction of military service of male draftees from 36 to 32 months. (Reduction of military service of female soldiers from the draft is not considered so far).


• Reduction of the age of commanders. If the average age of the regiment staff officers, including the commander of the regiment, was 35 to 37 years, now for these positions officers from the age of 32 will be appointed. The staff officers of the brigade, including the brigade commander, 40 to 42 years instead of 45 to 46 years respectively.


• The reduction in the number of reservists to 100 thousand. The reservists who will remain in service will be trained and armed as support troops.


• Reducing the number of artillery and light infantry brigades.


• Eliminating two army divisions.


• Structures such as the Education Corps, Military Rabbinate, Chief Reserve Officer, the Chief of Staff’s Advisor on Women’s Affairs, Army Radio and the Military Censor must undergo reduction and optimization. The command of the Northern District will be merged with the command of the land forces.


• Creation of the cyber-troops. Jerusalem Post, citing a senior officer of the IDF, reported at the beginning of 2017 that it was decided to postpone establishing the cyber-troops center.


• Bolstering of the Navy group through the procurement and construction of surface ships and a submarine.


• Rearming the Air Force by purchasing the American F-35 and UAVs of American and local production. This includes the retirement of an air-force squadron, and the early retirement of F-16 multirole fighter aircraft.


• Ending deferment to students in yeshivas (religious high schools) is not mentioned in this plan.

These provisions indicate IDF’s leaders had decided to focus on transforming it from conscript army to a professional one, staffed with a large number of trained soldiers as well as young and promising officers, capable to implement and employ in practice new ideas.  The fact that the command of the Northern District will be united with the command of the land forces indicates that this area (south of Lebanon and Hezbollah) is given special attention. The new army will be armed with more modern equipment and thus will be able to withstand modern threats.

The Israeli Missile Defence Systems vs. the Hezbollah Missile Arsenal

Knowing that Hezbollah will not invade Israel itself, its most capable units are involved in the fighting in Syria, and Hezbollah’s armored forces are in the development stages, for the Israeli military the biggest threat is Hezbollah’s missile arsenal.

Israel has a multi-layer missile defense network, which includes the following systems: Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow and Patriot. Furthermore, a ship-mounted version of Iron Dome [Tamir-Adir] was declared fully operational for use on a gunship off coasts on November 27. However, so far, it has been installed only on one vessel, the Sa’ar 5-class INS Lahav.

Click to see the full-size image

There are 17 batteries of MIM-23 I-HAWK available for air defence but presumably due to their obsolescence they are not in active service.

For comparison purposes, the cost of Qassam type rockets of Palestinian production according to Israeli experts is in the neighbourhood of a few hundred dollars. Rockets for the BM-21 Grad cost few thousand. The cost of production of ballistic, anti-ship and medium-range missiles is unknown, but may be assumed that they do not exceed several hundred thousand dollars.

Of course, human life is priceless and the potential loss in this case from Grad rockets, not to mention Scud and Iranian missiles, exceeds the cost of the interceptor missile. While the Iron Dome control system will only launch missiles if incoming missiles are calculated to fall in residential areas, the cost balance is still not in Israel’s favor.

Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War

Over time, IDF’s military effectiveness had declined. Israel has won the 1967 fully and unconditionally. The Egyptian and Syrian armies were dealt a powerful blow, and the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the western shore of the river Jordan were occupied. The war of 1973 was won by Israel with heavy human and material losses; however, neither the Egyptian nor the Syrian army was completely defeated. In the 1982 war, where the IDF had numerical superiority, it had won a tactical victory but the task of reaching Beirut to link up with the right-wing Christian Phalangists was not completed. In the Second Lebanon War of 2006 due to the overwhelming numerical superiority in men and equipment the IDF managed to occupy key strong points but failed to inflict a decisive defeat on Hezbollah. The frequency of attacks in Israeli territory was not reduced; the units of the IDF became bogged down in the fighting in the settlements and suffered significant losses. There now exists considerable political pressure to reassert IDF’s lost military dominance and, despite the complexity and unpredictability of the situation we may assume the future conflict will feature two sides, IDF and Hezbollah. Based on the bellicose statements of the leadership of the Jewish state, the fighting will be initiated by Israel.

The operation will begin with a massive evacuation of residents from the settlements in the north and center of Israel. Since Hezbollah has agents within the IDF, it will not be possible to keep secret the concentration of troops on the border and a mass evacuation of civilians. Hezbollah units will be ordered to occupy a prepared defensive position and simultaneously open fire on places were IDF units are concentrated. The civilian population of southern Lebanon will most likely be evacuated. IDF will launch massive bombing causing great damage to the social infrastructure and some damage to Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, but without destroying the carefully protected and camouflaged rocket launchers and launch sites.

Hezbollah control and communications systems have elements of redundancy. Consequently, regardless of the use of specialized precision-guided munitions, the command posts and electronic warfare systems will not be paralyzed, maintaining communications including through the use of fibre-optic communications means. IDF discovered that the movement has such equipment during the 2006 war. Smaller units will operate independently, working with open communication channels, using the pre-defined call signs and codes.

Israeli troops will then cross the border of Lebanon, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, beginning a ground operation with the involvement of a greater number of units than in the 2006 war. The IDF troops will occupy commanding heights and begin to prepare for assaults on settlements and actions in the tunnels. The Israelis do not score a quick victory as they suffer heavy losses in built-up areas. The need to secure occupied territory with patrols and checkpoints will cause further losses.

The fact that Israel itself started the war and caused damage to the civilian infrastructure, allows the leadership of the movement to use its missile arsenal on Israeli cities. While Israel’s missile defence systems can successfully intercept the launched missiles, there are not enough of them to blunt the bombardment. The civilian evacuation paralyzes life in the country. As soon IDF’s Iron Dome and other medium-range systems are spent on short-range Hezbollah rockets, the bombardment of Israel with medium-range missiles may commence. Hezbollah’s Iranian solid-fuel rockets do not require much time to prepare for launch and may target the entire territory of Israel, causing further losses.

It is difficult to assess the duration of actions of this war. One thing that seems certain is that Israel shouldn’t count on its rapid conclusion, similar to last September’s exercises. Hezbollah units are stronger and more capable than during the 2006 war, despite the fact that they are fighting in Syria and suffered losses there.

Conclusions

The combination of large-scale exercises and bellicose rhetoric is intended to muster Israeli public support for the aggression against Hezbollah by convincing the public the victory would be swift and bloodless. Instead of restraint based on a sober assessment of relative capabilities, Israeli leaders appear to be in a state of blood lust. In contrast, the Hezbollah has thus far demonstrated restraint and diplomacy.

Underestimating the adversary is always the first step towards a defeat. Such mistakes are paid for with soldiers’ blood and commanders’ careers.  The latest IDF exercises suggest Israeli leaders underestimate the opponent and, more importantly, consider them to be quite dumb. In reality, Hezbollah units will not cross the border. There is no need to provoke the already too nervous neighbor and to suffer losses solely to plant a flag and photograph it for their leader. For Hezbollah, it is easier and safer when the Israeli soldiers come to them. According to the IDF soldiers who served in Gaza and southern Lebanon, it is easier to operate on the plains of Gaza than the mountainous terrain of southern Lebanon. This is a problem for armoured vehicles fighting for control of heights, tunnels, and settlements, where they are exposed to anti-armor weapons.

While the Israeli establishment is in a state of patriotic frenzy, it would be a good time for them to turn to the wisdom of their ancestors. After all, as the old Jewish proverb says: “War is a big swamp, easy to go into but hard to get out”.

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French PM Defends Spending 350,000 Euros On Chartered Flight

Apparently, the chartered flights scandal that enmeshed four Trump cabinet secretaries - eventually leading to the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price - has spread to Paris.

As France 24 reports, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has become entangled in a controversy over his use of a chartered flight to travel from Tokyo to Paris earlier this month. Philippe chartered a private aircraft at a cost of 350,000 euros ($415,000) to bring him and a delegation back from Tokyo earlier this month when a French military transport was flying essentially the same route at roughly the same time.

Philippe on Wednesday defended his decision to charter the Airbus A340 with first-class seats, explaining that he needed to be back in Paris urgently because President Emmanuel Macron was leaving the country, and that the air force plane would’ve been “too uncomfortable” for a nighttime trip.

"It"s complicated to move the prime minister around and it"s expensive," Philippe told RTL radio on Wednesday. "I understand both the surprise and the questions that French people are asking themselves."

Asked by a reporter if his trip had been a mistake, Philippe angrily responded: "I take responsibility for this decision completely, I take responsibility to such an extent that I want to explain it."

Edouard Philippe

Philippe was returning from the far-flung French Pacific territory of New Caledonia on December 5 along with a 60-strong delegation of officials and ministers. For the first leg of the journey from Noumea to Tokyo, they used the air force plane. But instead of continuing on to Paris, Philippe’s office hired the private A340 to complete their journey and arrived home two hours before the army plane which landed in Paris almost empty.

"We knew that there wasn"t a commercial flight at that time and that we needed to get back. We knew we needed to get back for something vital which is that the president was leaving on the Wednesday morning of our return," Philippe added.

The prime minister explained that the requirements of his job made travel expensive, but that he has done everything possible to keep a lid on costs - within reason. As Philippe explained, his travel requirements as prime minister are much more intense compared with those of a private citizen.

"If you had invited Edouard Philippe, I would have come in the metro which would have cost me 1.90 or 2 euros. But... I arrived with four vehicles, motorbikes, 15 people, and a doctor and a transmitter, who stay with me because these are the resources given to a prime minister to enable him to work at all times," he added.

Philippe’s office also pointed out that the trip cost 30% less than the similar trip taken by Prime Minister Manuel Valls in 2016.

Unfortunately for Philippe, his explanation did little to quiet the criticisms. Ex-minister of agriculture Stéphane Le Foll - a member of the Socialist Party - tweeted that "nothing can explain spending 350,000 euros... The Republic"s planes are very good. There"s no need to take private planes just so that you can sleep better."

 

Rien n"explique la dépense de 350 000 euros par @EPhilippePM pour un voyage ! Les avions de la République sont très bien pas besoin de prendre des avions privés pour mieux dormir! ?? #le79inter @franceinter

— Stéphane Le Foll (@SLeFoll) December 20, 2017

 

During his campaign, President Emmanuel Macron committed to running a frugal administration should he win the office. The president inadvertently created a spending-related controversy of his own last weekend by celebrating his 40th birthday at an opulent chateau in France"s Loire Valley.

While the Elysee Palace confirmed that the affair was paid for with private funds, Macron’s critics said the over-the-top party was yet another sign of how France’s youngest president is “cut off from the people.”

US Military Rushes To Study Blockchain As "Hybrid Wars" Loom

President Trump signed into law the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act on Tuesday, a $700 billion defense policy bill that mandates for a “briefing on cyber applications of blockchain technology.” Language within the bill is part of a much wider effort to modernize the United States military, before decades of hybrid wars breakout (see: US Army Is Preparing For Decades Of Hybrid Wars.)

The blockchain study, according to the bill text (Sec.1646), will create “an assessment of efforts by foreign powers, extremist organizations, and criminal networks to utilize such technologies;…[and] an assessment of the use or planned use of such technologies by the Federal Government and critical infrastructure networks.”

Further, the study is to be delivered to Congress “not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this act.”Coin Desk adds while the study is set to be prepared by the Department of Defense, the final report could include input from other federal agencies and departments.

Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the heads of such other departments and agencies of the Federal Government as the Secretary considers appropriate, shall provide to the appropriate committees of Congress a briefing on the cyber applications of blockchain technology.

So you ask, what is blockchain? And why would the Department of Defense be interested in this technology?

Coin Desk further notes,

And though it constitutes a minor element in major funding law, the measure, proposed by Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, could help spur investigation into possible blockchain uses within the U.S. government, some observers say.

 

“Blockchain was clearly one of the technological capabilities that Congress meant for agencies to look at, and what they were trying to do was create dollars with some flexibility to them so that agencies would have their own discretion on what they invest in,” Trey Hodgkins, senior vice president of public sector at the Information Technology Industry Council in Washington, D.C., told CoinDesk last month.

And lastly, a 2016 military doctrine from the United States Airforce (USAF) outlines the future importance of blockchains in cyber defense systems,

The ability of the USAF to prevail in the highly contested environment of 2040 will be dictated by its ability to defend cyber-enabled systems, and the data within them, from compromise and manipulation. Yet contemporary cyber defense is faltering, and incremental improvements seem unlikely to overcome an exponentially growing cyber threat. Thus, an entirely new model for cyber defense strategy is needed.

 

Blockchains are a new information technology that inverts the cyber security paradigm. First, blockchain networks are trustless; they assume compromise of the network by both insiders and outsiders. Second, blockchains are transparently secure; they do not rely on failure-prone secrets, but rather on a cryptographic data structure that makes tampering both exceptionally difficult and immediately obvious. Finally, blockchains networks are fault tolerant; they align the efforts of honest nodes to reject those that are dishonest.

 

As a result, blockchain networks not only reduce the probability of compromise, but also impose significantly greater costs on an adversary to achieve it. The Air Force should research and develop blockchain technology and leverage it for national defense.  

If America wants to maintain her empire, she better adopts blockchain technologies, as what it appears to be the future strategy of the Department of Defense.

Chinese Fighters Violate Taiwanese, Korean And Japanese Airspace

In keeping with China’s strategy of methodically encroaching on its geopolitical rivals via air force and naval drills in the Pacific, both Japan and South Korea scrambled fighter jets earlier this week as China suddenly expanded the scope of naval drills being held in the waters off the Korean peninsula.

The Associated Press reported that China sent a squad of fighter jets and bombers on a long-range military drill to the Sea of Japan. During their journey, the planes traveled through South Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese air defence zones, a move widely seen as China flexing its military muscles and asserting its dominance in the region.

The drills marked the first time China has sent warplanes through the strait that lies between South Korea and Japan.

Chinese air force spokesman Shen Jinke said the air force dispatched bombers, fighters and reconnaissance planes through the Tsushima Strait to the Sea of Japan to "test its ocean combat ability."

"This is a regular annual training arrangement of China"s air force that accords with the relevant international laws and practices and it isn"t aimed at any particular state, region and target," Shen said in a statement.

Seoul"s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed that five Chinese warplanes — two bombers, two fighter jets and one reconnaissance plane — entered South Korea"s air defense identification zone off a southern South Korean island all at the same time.

The plane then flew to the Japanese air defense zone above the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, a JCS official said on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.

In what’s perhaps the most galling detail of the story, South Korea used a military hotline to warn China of its planes" entrance to the zone, according to an anonymous official. China replied that the unannounced intrusion was part of its routine training.

Self-ruled Taiwan"s military says China"s air force held a separate drill Monday morning through the Bashi Channel separating Taiwan from the Philippines and then through the Miyako Strait, which lies north of Taiwan and to the south of Japan.

The Taiwanese defense ministry said Japan dispatched F-15 fighter jets to intercept the Chinese planes. Japan had no immediate comment on Monday"s drill.

It was the second time this week that China had conducted drills around Taiwan.

As US generals have warned, China is pursuing an extremely aggressive military presence in the Pacific to assert itself as a dominant power in the region. China’s willingness to test boundaries has caused the number of confrontations between Japanese and Chinese fighter jets to escalate dramatically...

To be fair, China has also been alarmed by US naval vessels conducting so-called “freedom of navigation” missions near the contested Spratley Islands in the South China Sea.

US officials have described China’s repeated confrontations as part of a strategy of normalization, whereby Chinese officials repeatedly test boundaries until regional rivals gradually come to accept their expanded presence. Ultimately, the strategy is aimed at forcing the international community to accept “the nine-dash line” – the contest maritime border surrounding islands in the South China Sea that China has claimed and developed, but has been the subject of an international dispute with several of China’s regional neighbors.
 

Pentagon To Undergo First Ever Audit After Decades Of Sloppy Accounting And Missing Trillions

After decades of waste, overpayments, trillions of missing or improperly accounted for dollars, and most recently losing track of 44,000 US soldiers, the Pentagon is about to undergo its first audit in history conducted by 2,400 auditors from independent public accounting firms to conduct reviews across the Army, Navy, Air Force and more - followed by annual audits going forward. 

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis speaks with DoD Comptroller David L. Norquist, June 15, 2017

The announcement follows a May commitment by Pentagon comptroller David Norquist, who previously served as the CFO at the Department of Homeland Security when the agency performed its audit. "Starting an audit is a matter of driving change inside a bureaucracy that may resist it," Norquist told members of the Armed Services Committee at the time when pressed over whether or not he could get the job done at the DHS. 

According to the DoD release: 

The audit is massive. It will examine every aspect of the department from personnel to real property to weapons to supplies to bases. Some 2,400 auditors will fan out across the department to conduct it, Pentagon officials said.

 

"It is important that the Congress and the American people have confidence in DoD"s management of every taxpayer dollar," Norquist said. -defense.gov

The Pentagon is no stranger to criticism over serious waste and purposefully sloppy accounting.  A DoD Inspector General"s report from 2016 - which appears to be unavailable on the DoD website (but fortunately WAS archived)- found that in 2015 alone a staggering $6.5 trillion in funds was unaccounted for out of the Army"s budget, with $2.8 trillion in "wrongful adjustments" occurring in just one quarter.

In 2015, the Pentagon denied trying to shelve a study detailing $125 billion in waste created by a bloated employee counts for noncombat related work such as human resources, finance, health care management and property management. The report concluded that $125 billion could be saved by making those operations more efficient. 

On September 10th, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," after a Pentagon whistleblower set off a probe. A day later, the September 11th attacks happened and the accounting scandal was quickly forgotten.

And twenty years before that, DoD analyst Franklin C. Spinney exposed what he called "accounting games," saying "Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year." In a 2002 testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform, Spinney laid out the DoD"s accounting quagmire of un-auditable books and budget projections which don"t match reality. 

Franklin Spinney, 2002

Finally, those of us old enough to remember the 80"s, let"s not forget the bombshell report on overpayments the Pentagon made for simple items, such as $37 screws, $7,622 coffee makers, and $640 toilet seats which Sen. William Roth Jr (R-DE) was able to whittle down to $200. 

The announcement of the audit comes amid a looming government shutdown battle which was given a two-week extension last week until December 22. If this occurs, military personnel would report to work as usual, but the DoD would not pay them until the shutdown ends. 

 "I cannot emphasize too much how destructive a shutdown is," Norquist said. "We"ve talked before about the importance of maintenance on weapons systems and others, but if it"s not an excepted activity, there"ll be work stoppage on many of those maintenance functions."

With both parties standing to lose more than gain from a shutdown, that is unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, with decades of lost confidence in the Pentagon"s accounting practices, we eagerly await the results of this "massive" audit to see exactly how much dirt - and where - previous administrations have swept under the rug.

In "Largest-Ever" Military Drill, US Orders 16,000 Troops, 230 Jets To Simulate War With North Korea

Just days after Pyongyang launched its most advanced ICBM, one which experts warned has the potential to hit a target anywhere on the territory of the United States, North Korea said the U.S. is “begging” for a nuclear war by planning the “largest-ever” joint aerial drill with South Korea just after concluding an exercise with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Bloomberg reported.

“Should the Korean peninsula and the world be embroiled in the crucible of nuclear war because of the reckless nuclear war mania of the U.S., the U.S. will have to accept full responsibility for it,” North Korea’s state-run KCNA said Saturday, citing a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The statement came after Yonhap News reported that six U.S. Raptor stealth fighters planes arrived in South Korea on Saturday for a joint air drill named "Vigilant Ace 18" scheduled for Dec. 4 to 8. The F-22s flew into South Korea together in a show of force. The stealth fighters, however, were just a small part of the upcoming show of force: according to local media, some 230 aircraft and up to 16,000 soldiers and airmen are taking part in the drill, which is one of the biggest ever of its kind.

As part of "Vigilant Ace", US and South Korean forces will be rehearsing for a full-scale war with North Korea, with Yonhap noting that "allies plan to stage simulated attacks on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets."

Despite Pyongyang"s harsh rhetoric, US commanders have downplayed the drill – claiming it is “regular” and not a direct response to North Korea.

According to the WSJ, at least 230 US and Southg Korean warplanes will take part, alongside 12,000 US troops from the Air Force, Marines and Navy and airmen with another 4,000 expected to represent Seoul." The drill, which lasts from December 4 until December 8, will see aircraft flying over eight airbases in across the Korean Peninsula.

US warplanes including fighters and bombers often blast over the Korean Peninsula

The stars of the drill will be the state-of-the-art F-35 Lightning IIs and F-22 Raptors leading the US’s wing. Both fighter jets outmatch anything in North Korea’s arsenal and could win most of the war against Kim by themselves.

F-35s can fly at speeds of 1,200mph and are capable of carrying nuclear bombs and bunker busters.

 

Meanwhile, the F-22 can hit speeds of up to 1,500 mph and are armed with Vulcan miniguns and Sidewinder missiles.

Commenting on the historic exercise, the US military said that "Vigilant Ace 18 highlights the longstanding military partnership, commitment and enduring friendship between two nations. It is designed to ensure peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, and reaffirms the U.S. commitment to stability in the Northeast Asia region."

F-22s will be dispatched to take part in Vigilant Ace

In reality, it will likely provoke North Korea into yet another ICBM launch.  To be sure, while the Kim regime traditionally rages over the drills on its border, claiming they are rehearsals for invasion, although it may well be right: US forces have been flooding into the Pacific this year with warships, warplanes, missiles and the army all on standby.

Vigilant Ace comes after Donald Trump warned he would “take care” of North Korea following the missile test.

Meanwhile, showing no signs of de-escalation, North Korea has tested dozens of missiles this year, and claimed its nukes can now hit the US. Kim is also feared to be readying the dreaded Juche Bird missile – a live nuke fired out into the heart of the Pacific.

"The President Is Gone" - Zimbabwe Ruling Party Officially Ousts Mugabe

Update 3: After a meeting with military officials, Mugabe"s resignation appears imminent...

 

Intense speculation in Harare that #Zimbabwe President Mugabe will announce his resignation within hours. https://t.co/0kOBd7Nvh2

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) November 19, 2017

 

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Update 2: Mugabe, who remains under house arrest, is meeting with the commanders of the country"s military shortly after lawmakers approved an ultimatum for the long-time strongman to either resign, or be forced...

 

Mugabe is meeting heads of security forces. This is the first time we"re seeing the participation of Air Force Commander Perence Shiri, Police commissioner Chihuri and Prisons chief Zimondi.

(Pics via @HeraldZimbabwe) pic.twitter.com/J44vK0hYWL

— Zim Media Review (@ZimMediaReview) November 19, 2017

 

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Update: Initial media reports about Mugabe"s ouster were confusing: While the country"s ruling party had voted to expel him, several sources quoted by western media outlets said the vote was only the trigger to start the process of removing Mugabe, and that he is still technically president of Zimbabwe. 

Fortunately, the ruling Zanu-PF party has issued a quick clarification: Mugabe - who has obstinantly refused to officially abdicate in accordance with the military"s demands - has until noon tomorrow to resign. If he doesn"t, he will be impeached.

 

Mugabe given until noon Monday to resign as #Zimbabwe president or impeachment proceedings to begin, says Zanu PF official. https://t.co/TdNuMnbj1C

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) November 19, 2017

Zimbabwe"s ruling party confirmed the news in a tweet...

 

Former president Robert Mugabe has been given until 12 tomorrow to resign from his government deployment. He must now step down as president of Zimbabwe or we will be forced to remove him.

— ZANU PF (@zanu_pf) November 19, 2017

 

 

* * *

A day after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Harare to celebrate the imminent removal of Robert Mugabe, the country’s 93-year-old dictator who’d been effectively deposed during a surprise coup earlier this week, the country’s ruling party has officially voted to remove him from office and install his former deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, as interim leader.

As we’ve pointed out, Mugabe triggered his own downfall when he fired Mnangagwa last week to try and clear a path for his much-younger wife, Grace, to succeed him as leader of Zimbabwe. Mugabe tried to appoint his 52-year-old wife to Mnangagwa"s former position, which would"ve positioned her to be his successor. However, Mnangagwa’s sudden ouster outraged the leaders of Zimbabwe’s military, who decided to intervene and place Mugabe under house arrest.

Mugabe had resisted the military’s request to step down, so on Friday, the country’s 10 provincial committees resolved to oust Mugabe. That decision was ratified Sunday at a meeting of Zimbabwe’s central executives, according to the head of the country"s influential liberation war veterans.

Meanwhile, ABC reported that Mugabe"s wife Grace - who reportedly fled the country after the coup - has been officially expelled by ZANU-PF, the ruling party. Veterans leader Chris Mutsvangwa said now that Mugabe’s ouster is official, processes to remove the 93-year-old as President could now begin.

Attendants at the meeting sang and danced in celebration after unanimously voting to remove Mugabe.

 

It is done pic.twitter.com/Z6wSX4quoG

— andrew harding (@AndrewWJHarding) November 19, 2017

 

After the vote, members of the central committee started singing “Chengetedza” by Jah Prayzah, a popular Zimbabwean musician. According to local media, the song has become an anthem for the de facto anthem of the movement to oust Mugabe.

 

As soon as the decision to remove Mugabe as ZanuPF leader was announced, officials started singing "Kutonga Kwaro" by Jah Prayzah. It has been an anthem

— Zim Media Review (@ZimMediaReview) November 19, 2017

 

Before voting, members of Zimbabwe’s central committee sung the national anthem.

 

Zimbabwe national anthem sung as Zanu-PF prepares to oust Mugabe pic.twitter.com/chUFJCBCRP

— andrew harding (@AndrewWJHarding) November 19, 2017

 

According to one BBC reporter, journalists were asked to leave the room after the vote as the party set about formalizing the decision.

 

Journalists asked to leave again. Seems like the decisions have yet to be formalised, but they"ve been taken... Mugabe"s party has thrown him out.

— andrew harding (@AndrewWJHarding) November 19, 2017

    In his opening remarks at a meeting of ZANU-PF"s Central Committee, Obert Mpofu, the official chairing the gathering, said the party had come together with "a heavy heart,” adding that Mugabe’s wife, Grace, and others in his orbit had taken advantage of his age and feebleness to loot the country’s national resources. Mpofu then hailed the beginning of "a new era, not only for our party but for our nation Zimbabwe,” according to ABC.    

Mpofu said Mugabe was responsible for "many memorable achievements.”

Mugabe, who remains under house arrest, was reportedly supposed to meet Sunday with the military for a second round of talks to negotiate his departure. It’s unclear if this meeting has taken place.

While Zimbabwe lawmakers have voted to begin the process of Mugabe’s ouster, he technically remains the president of Zimbabwe. However, the vote greatly increases the pressure on him to abdicate, the BBC reported.

Veterans leader Mutsvangwa expressed his excitement over Mugabe’s ouster in an interview with local media.

“The president is gone! Long live the new president!”

 

"The President is gone..."
Mutsvangwa is over the moon after Mugabe is voted out. pic.twitter.com/UuntMDJPLp

— Zim Media Review (@ZimMediaReview) November 19, 2017

 

Shortly before the vote, local media captured this iconic video of demonstrators tearing down a billboard advertising the Zimbabwe Youth League, a pro-Mugabe group.

 

An iconic moment. pic.twitter.com/I4tIEcihSo

— Zim Media Review (@ZimMediaReview) November 19, 2017

 

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since the country won its independence from the UK in 1980. Under his watch, the economy has imploded, leaving 95 percent of the workforce unemployed, according to Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions estimates, and forcing as many as 3 million people into exile.

While Zimbabwe"s ruling party led the effort to oust Mugabe, opposition lawmakers had threatened to begin impeachment proceedings if he was not swiftly removed, according to Fox News.

"If Mugabe is not gone by Tuesday, then as sure as the sun rises from the east, impeachment process will kick in," said Innocent Gonese, a member of the opposition MDC-T party.

Hope for a better future crested on Sunday. But whether life will measurably improve for the people of Zimbabwe remains to be seen…

 

A bigger crowd cheered Gen. Idi Amin"s rise in Uganda. 46 violenence-and-corruption-laden years & 7 coups on, Ugandans are still clamouring for a saviour. Hope against hope Zimbabweans fare a little better. pic.twitter.com/H2Ei34itTJ

— Sam Akaki (@AkakiSam) November 18, 2017

 

 

"We"re Not Stupid" - Top US Nuclear Commander Would Disobey "Illegal" Trump Orders

A few short months after Admiral Scott Swift, Commander of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, said he would obey a hypothetical order to launch a nuclear strike against China if the president chose to give it, Air Force Gen. John Hyten - America"s top nuclear commander - said Saturday he would push back against President Trump if the president ordered a nuclear launch the general believed to be "illegal."

When an audience member asked Hyten, who was speaking at a national security conference in Halifax Canada, about the hypothetical scenario, he responded by assuring his interlocutor that military commanders “aren’t stupid.”

Here"s CBS:

Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told an audience at the Halifax International Security Forum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saturday that he has given a lot of thought to what he would say if Mr. Trump ordered a strike he considered unlawful.

 

"I think some people think we"re stupid," Hyten said in response to a question about such a scenario. "We"re not stupid people. We think about these things a lot. When you have this responsibility, how do you not think about it?"

 

Hyten explained the process that would follow such a command. As head of STRATCOM, Hyten is responsible for overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

 

"I provide advice to the president, he will tell me what to do," Hyten added. "And if it"s illegal, guess what"s going to happen? I"m going to say, "Mr. President, that"s illegal." And guess what he"s going to do? He"s going to say, "What would be legal?" And we"ll come up with options, with a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that"s the way it works. It"s not that complicated."

Hyten said he has been trained every year for decades in the law of armed conflict, which takes into account specific factors to determine legality - necessity, distinction, proportionality, unnecessary suffering and more. Running through scenarios of how to react in the event of an illegal order is standard practice, he said.

And Hyten is not the only one who’s been thinking about how they might react to a hypothetical order to launch a nuclear strike. A few months ago, Vanity Fair reported that Defense Secretary Mattis, Chief of Staff John Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had discussed the issue, though it’s unclear, exactly, how they would respond.

Hyten apparently believes that an order from the president could be illegal, under certain unspecified circumstances. And if you execute an illegal order, he said, you could be prosecuted.

John Hyten

"If you execute an unlawful order, you will go to jail. You could go to jail for the rest of your life," Hyten said.

As CBS pointed out, Hyten’s comments come at a time when Congress is reexamining the authorization of the use of military force and power to launch a nuclear strike.

In a hearing earlier this week, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, said Mr. Trump "can launch nuclear codes just as easily as he can use his Twitter account."

Hyten said the military is always ready to respond to the threat of North Korea, even at that very moment. Trump has been embroiled in a war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un since shortly after taking office, and has repeatedly threatened to respond with overwhelming force if he the North continues to threaten the US.

"And we are ready every minute of every day to respond to any event that comes out of North Korea. That"s the element of deterrence that has to be clear, and it is clear," Hyten said.

But Hyten also said handling North Korea and its unpredictable leader Kim Jong Un has to be an international effort. Mr. Trump has continued to put pressure on China to help manage its tempestuous neighbor.

"President Trump by himself can"t change the behavior of Kim Jong Un," Hyten said. "But President Trump can create the conditions that the international community can reach out in different ways where we can work with the Republic of Korea, where we can work with our neighbors in the region."

However, Admiral Swift, who has led the Pacific Fleet since 2015, has a very different view of the obligations that come with being a military commander in charge of the US’s nuclear arsenal.

“Every member of the US military has sworn an oath to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey the officers and the president of the United States as commander and chief appointed over us.”

When it comes to nuclear war, North Korea, for many, is the first adversary that comes to mind. But in the long run, China, which is reportedly developing hypersonic fighter jets that would be able to reach the Continental US within 14 minutes and has been slowly expanding its military footprint in the Pacific, may pose the bigger threat.

"Israel Will Not Let This Happen": Iran Is Reportedly Building A Military Base In Syria

On Friday, the "western press" started to set the stage for war between Lebanon (and Iran) and Saudi Arabia (and Israel).

First, it was the third reminder in a row that, despite no presentation of evidence, the ballistic missile that was fired last Saturday by Houthi rebels in Yemen, and supposedly meant to strike the Riyadh airport before it was intercepted by Saudi defense forces, the ballistic missile belonged to Iran. As the AP reported this morning, "the ballistic missile fired by Yemeni rebels that targeted the Saudi capital was from Iran and bore “Iranian markings,” the top U.S. Air Force official in the Mideast said Friday." Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, who oversees the Air Forces Central Command in Qatar and made the comments at a news conference in Dubai, declined to offer any specifics on what type of missile they believed it was.

It was unclear what, exactly, constitutes "Iranian markings": perhaps - we mused - a stamp on the side saying "this ballistic missile was made in Iran, if found please return to PO Box 666, Tehran."

Ultimately, it was irrelevant, because just a few hours later, a far more provocative report was published by the BBC, according to which Iran is establishing a permanent military base inside Syria, citing a Western intelligence source. The report, predictably, comes amid growing tensions over Iranian influence in Syria and across the region, and as the Saudi-Israel "alliance" is desperate to find a pretext to begin war.

As the BBC adds, the Iranian military is said to have established a compound at a site used by the Syrian army outside El-Kiswah, 14 km (8 miles) south of Damascus.

Needless to say, for Israel this would constitute the crossing of a "red line" by Iran: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu recently warned that Iran wanted to establish itself militarily in Syria. "Israel will not let that happen," he said.

Satellite images commissioned by the BBC "seem to show" construction activity at the site referenced by the intelligence source between January and October this year. The images shows a series of two dozen large low-rise buildings - likely for housing soldiers and vehicles.

According to the satellite images, in recent months additional buildings have been added to the site. However, the BBC at least concedes that it is impossible to independently verify the purpose of the site and the presence of the Iranian military. Still, that did not prevent someone, arguably the CIA, to "conclude" what is going on.

An official from another Western country told the BBC that ambitions for such a long-term presence in Syria would not be illogical for Iran. Its adversaries have accused Iran of seeking to establish not just an arc of influence but a logistical land supply line from Iran through to the Shia Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. With so-called Islamic State having sufffered terminal defeats on the battlefield and losing its last strongholds, attention is increasingly turning to what comes next and the new map of power and influence in Syria.

This means focusing on Iran.

Iran has been a consistent backer of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs published on social media in the past few days also showed a senior Iranian general in Deir Ezzor shortly after IS was driven out of the town. The photos show Maj Gen Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) alongside members of a militia.

Qassem Soleimani on a front line visit with Liwa Al-Baqir in Deir Ezzor. pic.twitter.com/Wd7S21gbHl

— Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider) November 4, 2017

With a significant number of IRGC fighting - and in some cases dying - in Syria, there has already been a significant presence in the country but the question is now whether they are preparing to remain in the long term.

Going back to the satellite images of the alleged base, they do not reveal any signs of large or unconventional weaponry which means if it was a base it would most likely be to house soldiers and vehicles. One source said it was possible that senior Iranian military officials may have visited the compound in recent weeks. Independent analysis of the images commissioned by the BBC says the facility is military in nature. The analysis also suggests there are a series of garages that can hold six to eight vehicles each.

The analysis suggests new buildings have been constructed and other buildings renovated in the past six months although the exact role of the new structures cannot be determined. Analysts estimate up to 500 troops could be based at the site. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the facility is currently occupied. Shia fighters from other countries - including Pakistan and Afghanistan - are also alleged to be operating in Syria under the control of the IRGC and it is possible the base could be used by them, however for the purposes of the loudly beating wardrums which demand a war with Iran soon, that would not be practical.

According to the developing narrative, while the presence of Iranian forces in Syria has been reported for some time, the claim of a potentially more permanent Iranian base raises the possibility of military action by Israel which has repeatedly warned it will not tolerate such a development.

Assuring that when once confirmed the base belongs it Iran Netanyahu will be forced the respond, the base lies just about 50 km from the Golan Heights - Syrian territory occupied and then annexed by Israel and where it now has a significant military presence.  

And just to underscore that Iran is now the new ISIS, Netanyahu tweeted on Sunday that "As Isis [IS] moves out, Iran moves in."

"Iran wants to establish itself militarily in Syria, right next to Israel. Israel will not let that happen," he added.

In an interview on the BBC"s Andrew Marr show on the same day he said Iran wanted to bring its air force and submarines as well as military divisions right next to Israel.

Israel has raised further concerns of Iran seeking to use Syrian ports and bases for its submarines. When asked whether Israel would use military force to stop such developments, Mr Netanyahu told the BBC: "You know, the more we"re prepared to stop it, the less likely we"ll have to resort to much greater things. There is a principle I very much adhere to, which is to nip bad things in the bud."

 

However, international pressure is likely to be the first avenue pursued by Israel. Other countries have also raised concerns over potential long-term Iranian presence in the region.

It"s not just Israel whose opinion matters, however.

The issue of potential Iranian military bases is likely to have been raised by Israeli officials with Syria"s ally Russia. In October, Russia"s defence minister was in Jerusalem and was told by Netanyahu that Israel would not allow the Iranian military "to gain a foothold in Syria", according to reports at the time.

While it is not clear how that conversation ended, last week Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iran and Russian media suggested Syria - including Iran"s influence in the country - would be on the agenda.

Finally, closing the loop on the recent escalation in tensions between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, over the past year, the Israeli air force has struck targets in Syria a number of times which it has linked to Hezbollah.

And with that one base - which may or may not belong to Iran - the media now has the narrative "alibi" it will need to push for popular support for the Israel-Saudi axis in the upcoming military conflict against Iran and Lebanon.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Reuters reported that Iran"s president Hassan Rouhani said Saudi Arabia had made a “strategic mistake” by considering the United States and Israel as friends and Iran as an enemy. The next few weeks should confirm if he is correct.

Hate Crime Hoax: Air Force Cadet Admits To Faking Racial Crime

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

A black Air Force cadet has admitted to writing racial slurs targeting blacks attempting to generate hate crime outrage.

You may remember the epic speech given by Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy...

“There is absolutely no place in our Air Force for racism. It’s not who we are, nor will we tolerate it in any shape or fashion,”  Silveria said.

 

“I’ve said it before, the area of dignity and respect is my red line. Let me be clear; it won’t be crossed without significant repercussions.”

 

"If you can"t treat someone with dignity and respect, then get out,"

Along with garnering national coverage and condemnation from politicians, the incident sparked outrage from students at the school and their parents.

In a now-deleted Facebook post, the mother of one of the cadets who said he was a victim of the racist message shared a photo of the whiteboard, calling it "disgusting."

Her post read:

This is why I"m so hurt! Someone left this disgusting message on my sons door at the Airforce Academy in Colorado! I"m angry that people are teaching their children such hate.

 

These young people are supposed to bond and protect each other and the country. Who would my son have to watch out for? The enemy or the enemy?

 

I know this is hard to see but it"s the reality my family and the country is dealing with. We cannot tolerate such hatred! Keep your head up son!

In another Facebook post, the cadet"s father wrote, "My son is not playing a victim...The real victim is the person raised with that kind of hate."

The Air Force immediately began investigating the incident after it occurred in September.

And on Tuesday, The Air Force Academy announced that the black cadet who was supposedly the victim of the racial slurs was, in fact, responsible for writing them.

"We can confirm that one of the cadet candidates who was allegedly targeted by racist remarks written outside of their dorm room was actually responsible for the act," the Academy said in a statement.

Officials said the cadet admitted to being behind the racist messages that appeared outside the doors of five black cadets’ rooms, KMGH-ABC reported.

The Air Force Academy has also confirmed that the cadet responsible for the messages is no longer at the school, but they failed to clearly state whether or not he left of his own free will.

*  *  *

But these incidents keep happening.

Hate crimes should not be tolerated, but neither should faking them. According to the Daily Wire, a similar incident happened just last week. An African American man alleged that someone wrote racial slurs all over his car when he was the one who wrote the slurs. The man, 21-year-old Dauntarius Williams, came forward and admitted that he staged the entire event.

One should be outraged as Silveria says.  Not just as an “airman” but as human beings.

Not only do we treat each other with condemnation and hostility, but we also fake horrible things, like this hate crime hoax in the name of creating more outrage.

America Cracks Up: The Anatomy Of A National Nervous Breakdown

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

Another shooting, another day in America.

Or so it seems.

With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s fragile ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

Take this latest mass shooting that took place at a small church in a small Texas town.

The lone gunman—a former member of the Air Force—was dressed all in black, wearing body armor, a tactical vest and a mask, and firing an assault rifle.

Devin Patrick Kelley, the 26-year-old gunman, was described as a “regular guy” by those who knew him.

This “regular” guy’s shooting rampage left at least 26 people.

President Trump and the Governor of Texas have chalked the shooting up to mental illness.

That may well be the case here.

Still, there’s something to be said for the fact that this shooting bore many of the same marks of other recent attacks: the gunman appeared out of the blue without triggering any alarms, he was dressed like a soldier or militarized police officer, he was armed with military-style weapons and clearly trained in the art of killing, and the attacker died before any insight could be gained into his motives.

As usual, we’re left with more questions than answers and a whole lot more fear and anxiety.

That sense of unease is growing.

How do you keep a nation safe when not even seemingly “safe places” like churches and rock concerts and shopping malls are immune from violence?

The government’s answer, as always, will lead us further down the road we’ve travelled since 9/11 towards totalitarianism and away from freedom.

Those who want safety at all costs will clamor for more gun control measures (if not at an outright ban on weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population and greater scrutiny of military veterans, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.

All of these measures play into the government’s hands.

As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that has no basis in the truth.

Still, why do these things happening?

Clearly, America is in the midst of a national nervous breakdown.

Things are falling apart, and the inmates in the asylum are starting to turn on each other.

This breakdown - triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government’s alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by - is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long.

When things start to fall apart or implode, as they seem to be doing lately, I have to wonder who stands to benefit from it. In most cases, it’s the government that stands to benefit by amassing greater powers at the citizenry’s expense.

See, we’re like lab mice, conditioned to respond appropriately to certain stimuli.

Right now, we’re being conditioned to be reactionaries capable of little more than watching and worrying. Indeed, we are fast becoming a nation of bad news junkies, addicted to the steady and predictable drip-drip-drip of news—be it sensational, devastating, demoralizing, disastrous, or just titillating—that keeps us plastered to our screen devices for the next round of breaking news.

So much is happening on a daily basis that the average American understandably has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality.

We are suffering from “the crisis of the now.”

All the while, the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry.

This is how the corporate elite controls a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, and advances their agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

Rod Serling, the creator of the Twilight Zone, imagined just such a world in which the powers-that-be carry out a social experiment to see how long it would take before the members of a small American neighborhood, frightened by a sudden loss of electric power and caught up in fears of the unknown, will transform into an irrational mob and turn on each other.

It doesn’t take long at all.

So you see, Devin Patrick Kelley may have pulled the trigger that resulted in the mayhem in that small Texas church, but something else is driving the madness.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re caught in a vicious cycle right now between terror and fear and distraction and hate and partisan politics and an inescapable longing for a time when life was simpler and people were kinder and the government was less of a monster.

Our prolonged exposure to the American police state is not helping.

As always, the solution to most problems must start locally, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our communities. We’ve got to refrain from the toxic us vs. them rhetoric that is consuming the nation. We’ve got to work harder to build bridges, instead of burning them to the ground. We’ve got to learn to stop bottling up dissent and disagreeable ideas and learn how to agree to disagree. We’ve got to de-militarize our police and lower the levels of violence here and abroad, whether it’s violence we export to other countries, violence we glorify in entertainment, or violence we revel in when it’s leveled at our so-called enemies, politically or otherwise.

Unless we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters and fellow citizens, we will perish as tools and prisoners of the American police state.

“False Flags” Are So Common that U.S. Officials Commonly Discuss Them

Despite the attempt to marginalize the concept, "false flags" are so common that U.S. officials frequently use that phrase.

For example, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell:

Former Director for Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council, Roger Cressey:

Former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Mudd:

Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, a high ranking Air Force official:

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and Neocon warmonger) John Bolton:

The Washington Post notes that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved as an acceptable interrogation method

A technique known as "false flag," or deceiving a detainee into believing he is being interrogated by someone from another country.

NBC News points out:

In another document taken from the NSA by Snowden and obtained by NBC News, a JTRIG official said the unit’s mission included computer network attacks, disruption, “Active Covert Internet Operations,” and “Covert Technical Operations.” Among the methods listed in the document were jamming phones, computers and email accounts and masquerading as an enemy in a “false flag” operation. The same document said GCHQ was increasing its emphasis on using cyber tools to attack adversaries.

Washington’s Blog asked high-level NSA official Bill Binney* if he had heard of the term “false flags” when he was with the NSA. Binney responded:

Sure, they were under deception and manipulation programs. I was not involved in doing them; but, I did have to figure out some that the other side was doing. The other side called them “dezsinformatsiya” and Manipulatsiya.” The Brits have been doing this for several hundred years and are quite good at it.

Washington’s Blog asked Philip Giraldi - a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA - the same question with regards to his experience with the CIA. Giraldi responded:

Yes, of course. We did false flags, and called them that, frequently in the operations directorate using false documentation to indicated that we were nationals of a country that was not the United States. Almost every CIA officer had false third country identification when operating overseas....

We followed up by asking:

Is it fair to say some of the false flags were for the purpose (i.e. premeditated) of blaming another country or group ... not only just in case caught?

Giraldi replied:

Sometimes if it were a covert action attempting to do just that but more often just for cover reasons to make one appear to not be American...

Robert David Steele – a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer - said:

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services.

***

In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI.

Steele has repeatedly and publicly said (and also confirmed to Washington"s Blog) that he personally carried out a "false flag" attack while working as a U.S. intelligence officer.

Indeed, false flags are so common that there are official rules of engagement prohibiting false flags in naval, air and land warfare.

* William Binney is the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history. Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).