Apr 11 2010

Defense of the Realm:

(2PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

This report about the Brits and their long history of military service and history, and want to dominate others in many cases, is a mirror into our own National Security and National Defense as these two occupations have stretched beyond the limits many issues connected to both.

We gave those that developed the hatreds from our long running World Policies towards them exactly what they wanted, that’s Guerrilla Insurgency, only on a world scale and fought with criminal terror from all involved.

Britain’s Armed Forces Crisis

Self created major problems! Creating more and more hatreds within regions and beyond those of this planet towards the so called powerful nations while pushing those that serve their countries over the limits of that service and with, at least in our country the U.S., the majority of the citizens that cheered on these wars losing interest in them and those serving. Except when they are needed by some and their politicians, called patriotism, to claim how strong they are as to defense of the country, same not wanting to pony up the costs for especially the long term  results of the service of the few and the failed policies of these hired to represent and lead the Nations!

Battle Politicians say troops in Afghanistan deter terror at home. But the war is unpopular Eros Hoagland / Redux

Rebecca Marsden, a 25-year-old cadet, says there will be no problem with that: “We can’t wait to go to Afghanistan.” But it’s not just the Taliban that Sandhurst’s alumni will have to worry about. As it prepares for a general election on May 6, Britain is having to come to terms with a grim reality: its armed forces are in a state of crisis. Soldiers are profoundly battle weary. Grim statistics tell one part of the story: 179 British soldiers killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2009; 280 lost to the conflict in Afghanistan since 2001. Silent crowds gather to pay respects each time casualties are repatriated to an air base on the edge of a town in southwest England called Wootton Bassett, but displays of public sympathy for the troops mask plunging support for British involvement in faraway wars.

(See pictures of British soldiers in Afghanistan.)

Politicians continue to justify the adventures in Iraq and in Afghanistan, where British troop levels now stand at 9,500, in terms of national security. Britain, it is said, must take the fight to the bad guys to keep its citizens safe. Yet as the list of rickety states and terror havens has continued to expand, defense spending has failed to keep pace even as equipment costs have spiraled upward. The prospect of lean times as Britain reins in its budget deficit has pitched army, navy and air force commanders into open turf wars. Lower down the ranks, the endemic overstretch expresses itself in a stark statistic: according to Britain’s Ministry of Defence, 1 in 5 troops is unfit for frontline duty, often as a result of injury or psychological damage. –>–>–>

The past decade, and continuing, has only enhanced what was and will continue into the coming decades. This is the legacy we’re leaving the coming generations!

This should not be a call to more defense spending and the corruption and waste from, but a call to live in a world of “Winning the Hearts and Minds of others!” for better security, ours and theirs!

Many Nations talk a good game while playing that game with rules just the opposite and condemning others while doing what we condemn ourselves. That ‘game’ is extremely destructive and deadly!  

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    • jimstaro on April 11, 2010 at 14:24
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    The country that cheers Invasions on, but would rather watch reality tv then face reality!!

    Interest in photographing return of war dead to U.S. wanes


    The remains of a service member are returned to Dover Air Force Base in October.

    One year after the ban on photographing war dead returning to the U.S. was lifted, it is rare to see those images in the mainstream media.

    Last April, the first images of a fallen service member’s return were allowed by the Pentagon after more than 20 years. The ban was put in place by then-President George H.W. Bush but done away with by the Pentagon under the Obama administration.

    In the first days after the ban was lifted, the media gave widespread coverage of the neatly choreographed procedure of removing a service member, killed just hours before in Iraq or Afghanistan, from a cargo aircraft to a waiting vehicle. –>–>–>

    More important to give credence to a radical fringe movement, teabagging, who never even mention Iraq or Afghanistan!

    Just think if the media had given the same credence, and listened, to a much Bigger movement of ‘focus groups’ who were speaking truth to the failed policies nine years ago!!!!!!!!

    • jimstaro on April 11, 2010 at 14:25
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    DAYS BEFORE LETELIER BOMBING IN WASHINGTON D.C.

    KISSINGER BLOCKED DEMARCHE ON INTERNATIONAL ASSASSINATIONS TO CONDOR STATES

    RESCINDED ORDERS TO WARN MILITARY REGIMES DAYS BEFORE LETELIER BOMBING IN WASHINGTON D.C.

    Overruled Aides who Wanted to “Head Off” a “Series of International Murders”

    Washington, DC, April 10, 2010 – Only five days before a car-bomb planted by agents of the Pinochet regime rocked downtown Washington D.C. on September 21, 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions sent to, but never implemented by, U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone to warn military leaders there against orchestrating “a series of international murders,” declassified documents obtained and posted by the National Security Archive revealed today.

    The Secretary “has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter,” stated a September 16, 1976, cable sent from Lusaka (where Kissinger was traveling) to his assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, Harry Shlaudeman. The instructions effectively ended efforts by senior State Department officials to deliver a diplomatic demarche, approved by Kissinger only three weeks earlier, to express “our deep concern” over “plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad.” Aimed at the heads of state of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the demarche was never delivered.

    “The September 16th cable is the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger’s role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots,” according to Peter Kornbluh, the Archive’s senior analyst on Chile and author of the book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. “We know now what happened: The State Department initiated a timely effort to thwart a ‘Murder Inc’ in the Southern Cone, and Kissinger, without explanation, aborted it,” Kornbluh said. “The Kissinger cancellation on warning the Condor nations prevented the delivery of a diplomatic protest that conceivably could have deterred an act of terrorism in Washington D.C.” –>–>–>

    • jimstaro on April 11, 2010 at 14:27
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    The 35th Anniversary of the fall of Saigon

    It is estimated that between 2,495,000 and 5,020,000 human lives were lost between the years 1959 and 1975 in Vietnam. These numbers include those who died as a result of combat, disease, famine and yes, murder.

    What follows is a compilation from various sources as well as eye-witness accounts from friends, of what occurred during the days just prior to and the day of, The Fall of Saigon. My comments and opinions are inserted as well.

    On April 30th, 2010, we commemorate two extraordinary events in United States as well as World history. The first marks the capture of Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, by the North Vietnamese Army. The end of the Vietnam War was realized and the transition leading to the reunification of Vietnam had begun.

    The final days of the Fall of Saigon began when the North Vietnamese forces commenced their final attack on April 29th, 1975. Heavy artillery bombardment ensued for most of that day and night. On April 30th, North Vietnamese Troops had occupied most strategic points of the city and finally overtook the South Vietnamese presidential palace. In spite of various allied intelligence reports, including those from our own CIA that stated South Vietnam could not be taken by the North through the current dry season and well into 1976, the city had indeed fallen.

    These reports were being sent to our Commander In Chief, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Ranked Command Officers as recently as March 5th. The strategy of the allied warring commanders was based on those reports. The eventual fall of a Nation was based on those reports. The United States and South Vietnam were defeated less than 60 days later – one would argue, the intelligence we were provided was inaccurate at best… perhaps purposely funneled, at worst.

    Most Americans wanted to leave Saigon, as did many South Vietnamese, before the fall. Many had indeed left prior to the fall. The North had already started to push southward and the fall was imminent. Evacuations during the end of March and throughout April had increased. Flights from Tan Son Nhut International Airport were over-booked. The Defense Attaché’s Office started to fly undocumented Vietnamese to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. –>–>–>

    Chuck Palazzo is a Marine Corps Vietnam Veteran, the Interim Editor for Agent Orange, and a longtime Vietnam Veterans Against the War Member. Chuck Palazzo has spent years since the war studying the impacts and effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant chemical sprayed by the U.S. govt. on the jungles of Vietnam. He says Dioxins have been re-discovered to cause all sorts of damage to humans. These include Heart Disease, Parkinsonism, Diabetes etcetera. Dioxins are already known to produce serious birth defects and a variety of cancers. The chemical is still sold in Third World Countries and causing the same problems.

    We at Salem-News.com welcome Chuck aboard and look forward to sharing more of his stories with our readers in the future.

    • jimstaro on April 11, 2010 at 14:30
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    An Opening to Indictments and Accountability?

    Turning the innocent, not only those who were grabbed and held for years but their countrymen and women, into potential foreign criminal terrorist, not winning hearts and minds and not being the law abiding country we not only claim but attack others for doing same!

    Indecent treatment at Gitmo?


    April 9: According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former President George Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld knew that many of the detainees held at the prison at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, and did nothing to stop their torture.

    George W. Bush ‘knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent’

    State Secrets Privilege

    Detainee Treatment Act

    What the Detainee Treatment Act Really Means for Guantanamo Detainees

    We as a Country are already going to live with the results of the extremely failed policies done in Our Names for the coming decades, but if we don’t try and minimize that blowback by seeking the Justice we supposedly espouse the potential for that blowback grows even more dangerous and destructive!

    Some, like Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, recognize the implications for this country and it’s citizens, some!

  5. they wanted to create, foreign threats. If you don’t feign fear, then you’re a heretic. We’re watching the same old story over and over and over again. War is the true opium of the State. This afternoon I feel like an anarchist.

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