Believe it or not on my last day of discussion military policy I can bring all the issues spoken this week into today's posts. I started by making this statement: The more US citizens feel their public militias are being privatized and staged to work AGAINST WE THE PEOPLE---the more citizens are going to arm themselves and the more lives will be lost in the US. I took the time to show how our US Federal courts and judges were deliberately making a mockery of our US jurisprudence with this IMAGINARY term anti-formalism. Anti-formalism is tied to allowing the rich to maneuver themselves into positions of corporate power and consolidating wealth against under the banner of
HUMAN RIGHTS AND NATURAL LAW GIVES THE RICH THE RIGHT TO ACCUMULATE AS MUCH WEALTH AS THEY CAN ANYWAY THEY CAN.
This led to the breakdown of our US military and its mission per the US Constitution as well as the fact our US militias were to be protecting the American people from just the global power and wealth we have coming from CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS/NEO-CONS today.
For social Democrats thinking the need to have a well-armed public militia is simply the NRA citizens trying to keep their guns----WAKE UP----NO ONE SUFFERS MORE FROM GLOBAL WEALTH AND POWER THAN THE DEMOCRATIC BASE OF LABOR AND JUSTICE.
Note as well the Supreme Court rules to protect the gun rights of citizens BUT we are not seeing our Federal courts and judges ruling AGAINST THE PRIVATIZATION OF OUR US MILITARY AND POLICE FORCE. Thinking states will continue to have state guards----which states across the nation have already gutted funding for just those guards as they allow Homeland Security and county privatized policing become that security.
No militia means more intrusive law enforcement: Column
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 5:24 p.m. EDT March 9, 2014
Our Framers didn't envision a free state with the current level of government control.
(Photo: Jessica Hill, AP)
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
For a while, some argued that the so-called "prefatory clause" — "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" — somehow limited the "right of the people" to something having to do with a militia. In its recent opinions of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Second Amendment does recognize a right of individuals to own guns, and that that right is in no way dependent upon membership in a militia. That seems to me to be entirely correct.
But there is still that language. If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then where is ours? Because if a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, it follows that a state lacking such a militia is either insecure, or unfree, or possibly both.
In the time of the Framers, the militia was an armed body consisting of essentially the entire military-age male citizenry. Professional police not having been invented, the militia was the primary tool for enforcing the law in circumstances that went beyond the reach of the town constable, and it was also the primary source of defense against invasions and insurrection.
Calling out the militia thus meant calling out ordinary citizens, trained in military tactics (that's the "well-regulated" part), bearing their own arms. The Framers — who had a deep and abiding fear of professional standing armies because of abuses by the British Crown — thought this safer. A professional standing army could turn on the people, placing its loyalty with its paymasters rather than with those it was supposed to protect. The militia, on the other hand, couldn't betray the people because it was the people.
Even short of revolutions and coups, the militia had a different character in ordinary law enforcement than professionals possess. If called upon to enforce an unpopular law, or to enforce the law in an oppressive or unpopular way, the militia could drag its feet and fail to perform. (In this sense, the militia was like a jury, which is free to acquit even a guilty defendant if it thinks conviction would be unjust. In fact, Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has likened the militia to jurors with guns because, like the jury, it was an institution made up of the people, through which the government must act, and one not susceptible to the kinds of corruption besetting professional institutions).
As Amar writes:
Like the militia, the jury was a local body countering imperial power — summoned by the government but standing outside it, representing the people, collectively. Like jury service, militia participation was both a right and a duty of qualified voters who were regularly summoned to discharge their public obligations. Like the jury, the militia was composed of amateurs arrayed against, and designed to check, permanent and professional government officials (judges and prosecutors, in the case of the jury; a standing army in the case of the militia). Like the jury, the militia embodied collective political action rather than private pursuits.But although the militia survives in vestigial form in the statute books, as a functional institution, it no longer exists. For law enforcement, the militia has been replaced by professional police, with SWAT teams, armored vehicles and Nomex coveralls; for military purposes, the militia has been replaced by the National Guard, which despite a thin patina of state control is fundamentally a federal military force.
This makes life easier for the federal government. In 1912, when the federal government tried to send militia units into Mexico, the militias balked, noting that the Constitution allowed them to be called out only to repel invasion, suppress insurrection, or enforce the law — not to invade other countries. Surprisingly, perhaps, Attorney General George Wickersham agreed, leading to a change in the law that produced the modern-day National Guard, a force that is not so limited. Since then, America has been far more active abroad.
But this departure from the system the Framers set up has encouraged more intrusive law enforcement at home, and more military action abroad. So I'll ask you: If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then are we insecure? Or unfree? Or both?
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Here we see how the advancement of US military privatization from Reagan/Clinton neo-liberals to Bush neo-cons under Rumfeld----Obama is simpy both Clinton and Bush started slowly and was used to make the American people think the size of military troops were far smaller than actual was. Obama super-sized this in Afghanistan as he said he was withdrawing troops and has placed privatization of the US military on steroids with Hillary as State Department. Below all of this was OK to the far-right Clinton/Obama neo-liberals and the Bush neo-cons as long as the NO BID SUPPORT CONTRACTING WAS IN PLACE WITH A PRIVATE CONTRACTOR.
'If you want more "tooth" than "tail" it isn't all that difficult to rationalize reducing the size of the Military, as long as those "no bid" support contracts are in place with a private contractor..'
This was the same time Joe Biden in 1993 declared his HUMAN RIGHT AND NATURAL LAW to accumulate as much wealth as he wanted anyway he could----and nothing does that more than a global Wall Street unleashing massive frauds and a global corporate mercenary military with nothing but EMPIRE-BUILDING on the mind.
How does this affect the American citizens? Well, we see the march towards making the US just another international economic zone colonial entity all operating under a global ONE WORLD tribunal just as in Asia. So, NO, IT DOES NOT BODE WELL FOR ANY US CITIZEN OR IMMIGRANTS HAVING BEEN IN THE US FOR DECADES.
It was important for Gore to allow what was the most illegal Presidential election when the Supreme Court was allowed to call the election with the nation full of election fraud as with this 2016 election----to allow Bush to win because of this next phase of expanding militarization globally and authoritarianism inside the US. Remember, Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism is far-right so all of this is VERY REPUBLICAN AND ALL ABOUT LOSING FREEDOM as Republican voters like to say. This is why Republican voters should vote social Democratic because we actually do protect freedoms.
SOCIOPATHY--When they collaborate, they feed off one another, and their actions become even more diabolical. No better example of this than the Cheney-Rumsfeld partnerships during the two Bush presidencies.
Under the Rumsfeld doctrine, what proportion of the US Armed Forces' 'tail' has been privatized?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too...
Ken Swift, Major, U.S. Army (Retired) - Iraqi Combat Leader
This is a more or less impossible question to answer, as the differences vary by theater and mission.
What I believe is important to take away from this question are the following ideas:
1. Rumsfeld was not the person who developed this "doctrine" of transferring military jobs to civilians - it was President Reagan.
2. The initial move to take Soldiers / Sailors / Airmen / Marines out of support roles was to allow the number of "combat" personnel to actually be increased since the ratio of support to combat is always very high - take those support jobs and make them civilian and now you have more slots for "fighters."
3. The rise of companies that specialized in "military service support" started off small, but once the idea caught on that you could get around Congress, public opinion, and the news media by representing only the number of "service members" on the ground (let's say 175,000 total), that number was much more acceptable than what it would have taken for whatever operation you needed if everyone was a member of the military (take that 175,000 and add another 500,000 on top of it for everyone who would:
* Make your meals and clean the dishes
* Wash your clothes
* Build your living quarters, run power, and maintain all of those systems.
* Improve your fighting positions (build bunkers, string wire around a camp, build guard towers, and all the rest).
If you're trying to "sell" an invasion or occupation, 175,000 people sounds much better than 675,000 people. The joke is that you're paying a substantial premium for that "extra" 500,000 in private contractors, and since they are by law not supposed to fight, the situation can get ugly very quickly.
Another consideration is that the Military, at least in the U.S., is set at certain strength numbers by Congress. If you want more "tooth" than "tail" it isn't all that difficult to rationalize reducing the size of the Military, as long as those "no bid" support contracts are in place with a private contractor...
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I wanted to share a viewpoint from the right and then the left on this issue of US Constitutionality of privatized US military and the idea of standing armies. The founding fathers deliberately wrote that the US would not allow standing armies within its border. The way this right-leaning citizen wants to interpret this is----our own US public military is that standing army. This is absolutely FALSE. All research shows that the founding fathers were referring to standing armies tied to our American colonial nations like England, France, and Spain. So, as colonies England and France would have their standing armies sometimes located in our colonies ----and the US Constitution specifically addressed that FOREIGN STANDING ARMY. Trying to make our public US military sound like that standing army is deliberately misleading. If anything, having global private mercenary corporations bringing THEIR EMPLOYEES into the US would indeed be a standing army. Global corporations like Blackwater may have headquarters in the US----but we need to look closely at that definition of mercenary forces.
Indeed, Western nations have always had mercenary forces in their colonialism----but our founding fathers wanted to keep monopoly and extreme wealth at bay JUST SO WE WOULD NOT HAVE THAT VERY GLOBAL COLONIALISM. Our monopoly laws would not have allowed for such consolidated wealth for these global mercenary corporations to exist.
As well, the constant reference to the brand new United States during revolutionary times and shortly afterwards was completely tied to the fact the colonies could have no such military structures and WERE REQUIRED AT THAT TIME TO OUTSOURCE TO MERCENARIES. This history does not provide precedence towards the kind of global military corporate complex we have today.
We know these private global military corporations joined with the UN troops ARE INDEED training inside the US and as many citizens in the southwest RIGHTLY SAY-----these are standing armies and a threat to US national security. We see where Obama has super-sized Bush's US military privatization and made the life of those mercenaries closer to enslavement because that's the kind of guy he is----a Wall Street 1% far-right global corporate pol.
'Some of it was interesting. For example I hadn’t realized that President Obama had increased our overall mercenary deployment by 29% in only 6 months'.
What’s Unconstitutional About Blackwater?
August 22nd, 2009 ·
This week Bill Maher’s increasingly far left and out of touch show featured repeat guest Jeremy Scahill, who launched into his usual righteous rant against Blackwater and the evils of hiring mercenary troops to augment American forces in our various ill-considered military deployments overseas.
Some of it was interesting. For example I hadn’t realized that President Obama had increased our overall mercenary deployment by 29% in only 6 months. But Scahill also said something which I found troubling. After listing the usual litany of Blackwater crimes and accusing Eric Prince of being a Crazed Christian Crusader, he threw out the idea that using mercenary troops in foreign wars is unconstitutional.
It grabbed my attention, because it is a great example of how little some of these very earnest advocates on both the left and the right really understand what is in the Constitution and what certain passages of it actually mean. It seems as if they decide something is bad and then assume that anything which seems bad to them must inherently be unconstitutional. After all, if they’d written the constitution they wouldn’t have allowed for the hiring of mercenaries, because mercenaries are evil.
The thing is, they didn’t write the Constitution and apparently haven’t read it either. Statements like this display both an ignorance of the Constitution and a dismaying ignorance of American history and the role which mercenaries have played in it.
The ironic truth is that while the Constitution does not authorize the existence of a standing army and many of the founding fathers would have liked a stronger and clearer prohibition on any kind of standing army, the Constitution does explicitly authorize the hiring of mercenaries. What’s more, mercenaries have been a component of some of our most notable military operations throughout our history.
This is all about Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, where it clearly says that Congress can “raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years,”
THIS TO ME STATES THE US SHOULD NOT HAVE A MILITARY COMPLEX----PRIVATE OR PUBLIC.
essentially forbidding the kind of long-term, established army we have had since the Civil War. It also authorizes Congress to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” which is 18th century terminology for hiring mercenaries, bounty hunters, privateers and assassins — essentially any kind of private contractor to exact revenge and attack the nation’s enemies for a reward or a stipend.
So the great institutional army which so many view as legitimate is actually kind of unconstitutional and those evil mercenaries who Scahill and his friends on the left so revile actually enjoy a unique position of Constitutional authority. The vision which the framers of that document actually had for our military was that it would consist of a militia which was never deployed for any long term and would only be called up for specific short-term uses in the direct defense of the nation, while military operations outside of our borders would largely be carried out on a small scale by hired mercenaries.
As one example of how this Constitutionally authorized system worked before it was pushed aside for expediency, consider the role which privateers have played in American military operations. Privateers are privately owned military ships commissioned to attack enemy shipping and in some cases even enemy cities on behalf of the government. Much of our very limited naval strength in the Revilution was composed of privateers. The most famous of them was John Paul Jones. We continued to use privateers into the early 19th century, including in our undeclared war with France and later in the War of 1812. When most of the nations of Europe signed the Declaration of Paris in 1856 outlawing Privateers the United States refused to sign, and as late as World War II the government commissioned the airship Resolute as a privateer operating in the air off the coast of California and used other private contractors like the Liberty Ships to support the military.
Mercenaries like Blackwater, or what they now call Private Military Companies, have a long history going back to the ancient world. Groups of soldiers for hire have played a role in almost every war. They fought for pay on both sides during the Revolution. President Jefferson hired Greek mercenaries to augment his small force of US Marines for his attack on Tripoli. They fought in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The Swiss Guards who guard the Vatican and the Pope are essentially mercenaries. The use of mercenaries fell into disfavor in the West in the late 19th and 20th centuries, but they have continued to be used extensively in the third world. The United Nations and other groups have tried to prohibit the employment of mercenaries with very little success. The United States continues to use mercenaries in some situations and it is done under the authority of that same part of Article 1, Section 8 which authorizes privateers.
I’m not going to argue the advisability or the pros and cons of hiring mercenaries to fight your wars for you. It just seems bizarre that we have reached the point where even the most anti-war among us like Jeremy Scahill accept the existence of a standing army as routine and even desirable when compared to the hiring of professional mercenaries for a short term and limited engagement. The Founding Fathers thought a standing army would be an unacceptable threat to the Republic, but had no problem with the idea of some hired troops protecting our interests outside our borders. The Constitution reflects this, and while modern leftist sensibilities may find mercenaries unappealing and politically incorrect, that doesn’t make them unconstitutional.
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The WAR ON GUNS vs common sense gun control is just that movement of global military contractors moving into the US to confiscate weapons in our communities just as we read happening in Iraq under the guise of insurgency. When a BLACKWATER----or now ZE global mercenary staff becomes that US Army in our communities as these economic crash from bond market fraud bring a decade's long deep recession/depression---as this article states---it is one
MASTER PLAN TO TAKE THE US TO COLONIAL STATUS and yes----THESE GLOBAL MILITARY CORPORATIONS ARE AN INVADING STANDING ARMY!
'Characterizing the American People as the New Target of the War on Terror
The U.S. Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 dictates that the military’s “full spectrum operations” will include “operations within American borders.” Scenarios where Americans form into militia groups and become “insurrectionists” as a result of an economic collapse and have to be eliminated by the U.S. Army have already been mapped out by military planners.
A leaked U.S. Army manual also reveals plans for the military to carry out “Civil Disturbance Operations” during which troops will be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest'.
If the American people KNOW the goal below is true---then we know our PUBLIC WELL-ARMED MILITIA the US Constitution states will protect the American people will NOT BE THOSE GLOBAL MILITARY CORPORATIONS.
IT TAKES A GREAT DEAL OF ANTI-FORMALISM AND PRAGMATIC NILISM FOR OUR FEDERAL COURTS AND JUDGES NOT TO DECLARE ALL OF THIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND DEMAND DISMANTLING OF THIS PRIVATIZED MILITARY COMPLEX.
Why The Banking 'CARTEL' Want Riots in America
May 04, 2013 Kristen Watts
Why The Banking Elite Want Riots in America Civil War 2:
The economic imperative for mass social unrest
Every indication clearly suggests that authorities in the United States are preparing for widespread civil unrest. This trend has not emerged by accident – it is part of a tried and tested method used by the banking elite to seize control of nations, strip them of their assets, and absorb them into the new world order.
There is a crucial economic imperative as to why the elite is seeking to engineer and exploit social unrest.
As respected investigative reporter Greg Palast exposed in 2001, the global banking elite, namely the World Bank and the IMF, have honed a technique that has allowed them to asset-strip numerous other countries in the past – that technique has come to be known at the “IMF riot.”
In April 2001, Palast obtained leaked World Bank documents that outlined a four step process on how to loot nations of their wealth and infrastructure, placing control of resources into the hands of the banking elite.
One of the final steps of the process, the “IMF riot,” detailed how the elite would plan for mass civil unrest ahead of time that would have the effect of scaring off investors and causing government bankruptcies.
“This economic arson has its bright side – for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices,” writes Palast, adding, “A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.”
In other words, the banking elite creates the very economic environment – soaring interest rates, spiraling food prices, poverty, lower standards of living – that precipitates civil unrest – and then like a vulture swoops down to devour what remains of the country’s assets on the cheap.
We have already seen this process unfold in places like Bolivia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Greece and Argentina. Next on the chopping block are Spain, Italy, Britain and France – all of which have seen widespread riots over the last two years.
As Ha-Joon Chang explains in the Guardian, the roots of Europe’s riots were sparked by “governments inflicting an old-IMF-style programme on their own populations,” namely the same programs of “austerity, privatisation and deregulation,” that caused the riots of the 80′s and 90′s in poorer countries.
Although the likes of the IMF and the World Bank have pillaged half of the globe with their economic terrorism, America remains the ultimate prize. The first step of the four step process for bankster seizure of a country – privatization of state-owned assets – is already well under way in America, with infrastructure being sold off to foreign corporations, with the aid of Goldman Sachs, at a frightening pace.
A key component of the banking elite’s insidious agenda to bring about an economic collapse in America by design also centers around the process of de-industrializing the country, eviscerating the nation’s platform for self-sufficiency and replacing it with dependence on banker bailouts. This has already been largely achieved in Europe – with just about every major economy on the continent run by Goldman Sachs-affiliated technocrats.
In the United States, 32 per cent of manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000, while 56,000 manufacturing facilities have been mothballed since 2001. The Obama administration has also declared war on the coal industry, with Obama himself promising to “bankrupt” anyone who tries to build a new coal plant. Meanwhile, China builds a new coal plant every two weeks.
Given the clear economic motive for stirring unrest in the United States, we’d expect to see preparations for domestic disorder in numerous different guises – and indeed the signs are everywhere.
National Defense Authorization Act
The Obama administration’s passage of NDAA legislation that authorizes kidnapping and indefinite detention without trial of American citizens on U.S. soil serves to create the framework for mass arrests of protesters and journalists in a time of declared national emergency.
Obama’s War on Whistleblowers
The Obama administration’s brazen and aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers for divulging government corruption in the public interest is clearly a device designed to intimidate whistleblowers from speaking out when the proverbial hits the fan.
Spying on Social Media for Signs of Unrest
The Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies are actively engaged in spying on social mediaas well as news websites to look for reports or comments that “reflect adversely on the U.S. government and the DHS.” The government is on the lookout for the ‘tipping point’ when heated online rhetoric spills onto the streets in the form of unrest.
Building Huge Spy Centers to Track UnrestThe NSA is building the country’s biggest spy center in the middle of the Utah desert. The purpose of the data facility is to intercept, “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”
By creating a gigantic database of every communication imaginable, the NSA hopes to monitor and pre-empt the spread of mass civil unrest in America.
Preparing Drones for Domestic Oppression
Last week, the Justice Department re-affirmed its position that the Obama administration can use armed drones to assassinate Americans. Under the NDAA, the whole of the United States has been declared a “battlefield,” meaning that drones may soon be used to execute American citizens on U.S. soil.
A government that resorts to killing its own citizens without any legal process whatsoever is clearly a dictatorship engaged in domestic oppression. The only imaginable scenario under which this program would be justifiable was if the U.S. was under a state of martial law and the government was on the verge of collapse.
Preparing for Martial Law
The Department of Homeland Security has purchased over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the last 10 months alone. At the height of combat operations in Iraq, the U.S. Army only used 5.5 million bullets a month. Why has the DHS stockpiled enough bullets for a 30 year war if it is not preparing for some form of domestic disorder?
Preparation for martial law can be seen in numerous different guises, but perhaps the most chilling is a nationwide FEMA program which is training pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to “obey the government” in preparation for the implementation of martial law, property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.
Characterizing the American People as the New Target of the War on Terror
The U.S. Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 dictates that the military’s “full spectrum operations” will include “operations within American borders.” Scenarios where Americans form into militia groups and become “insurrectionists” as a result of an economic collapse and have to be eliminated by the U.S. Army have already been mapped out by military planners.
A leaked U.S. Army manual also reveals plans for the military to carry out “Civil Disturbance Operations” during which troops will be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.
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As someone living in Baltimore and watching citizens having their homes invaded by militarized SWAT teams acting just as the military in Iraq doing home searches and seizures with no attention to civil rights and liberties----AND OUR OWN BALTIMORE POLS PUSHING FOR THOSE SWAT ABILITIES-----it is the continuous slide of public policy and actions that should lead all citizens to feeling this is not simply preparation for foreign military actions or simply to guard against those pesky terrorists.
It was the declaration that the 1% had the RIGHT to ignore US Constitutional laws and citizens' rights in the march to extreme wealth and power by any means they wanted that created this loss of trust and respect from the American people.
Southwestern US The Site Of Massive Military Exercise- Is It The Beginning Of Martial Law?
March 28, 2015| by Robert Gehl
March to martial law? Undercover Special Forces to sweep US Southwest
Published time: 29 Mar, 2015 11:27Edited time: 30 Mar, 2015 07:10
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Reuters / Lucas Jackson / Reuters
As elite branches of the US military prepare to hold military training in seven southwest states, with some troops operating incognito among civilians, some Americans fear the training is actually preparation for imposing martial law.
Operation Jade Helm, which is scheduled to kick off in July and run for eight weeks, will involve the participation of 1,200 troops from the US military’s most elite fighting forces, including Green Berets, Navy SEALS and Special Operations from the Air Force and Marines.
The troops will be participating in what has been called Realistic Military Training in towns in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Utah.
In an effort to simulate the type of battlefield conditions soldiers may face in foreign countries, the US military has designated the remote training areas where they will operate as in a “hostile" territory, a description that has irked some residents.
Meanwhile, Texans living in close proximity to the operation will be asked to report any “suspicious activity” during the exercise, a request that seems to contradict the belief laid out in the US military training document, leaked by The Houston Chronicle, that Texans are “historically supportive” of military efforts to “fight the enemies of the United States.”
The training exercise, according to Shadow Spear, a publication of USASOC, “will be conducted on private and public land with the permission of the private landowners, and from state and local authorities.”
“The most noticeable effect the exercise may have on the local communities is an increase in vehicle and military air traffic and its associated noise,” Shadow Spear said.
Army Special Operation Command spokesman Mark Lastoria attempted to allay fears that the training is a actually an effort on the part of the military to practice “covert warfare tactics and martial law.” He said the domestic military operations are designed to develop "emerging concepts in special operations warfare," and were not part of some kind of dark plans to take over the United States.
“That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,” he told Stripes, a US Army publication. “This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.”
Paul Pape, a Bastrop County judge, also downplayed fears that the domestic military training was in reality rehearsal for full-blown martial law on the streets of America following some sort of major catastrophe.
“What I see here is an opportunity for a portion of our military to be better prepared and better trained to do work that has to be done to secure America’s interests around the world and here at home,” Pape told KEYE television in Austin, Texas.
The explanations given for the training, however, has not stopped fierce speculation among a number of citizen groups and alternative media sites as to why the entire states of Texas and Utah, as well as a section of southern California, have been declared “hostile,” while portions of the military detachment will be operating in the shadows of communities.
“They're having Delta Force, Navy SEALS with the Army trained to basically take over,” Info Wars' Alex Jones railed Sunday. “Texas is listed as a hostile sector, and of course, we are... here defending the republic.”
This is not the first time that American urban areas have served as the training areas for US forces.
In December 2014, Americans were unsettled by the spectacle of US Special Forces black helicopters buzzing the skylines of major US cities, including Dallas and Los Angeles, part of what it described as training in “realistic urban sites.”
Now, the Special Forces boots will be on the ground in cities and towns across the country, and that has some people asking a lot of questions.
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Anyone watching the Congressional AUSTERITY budget cuts saw the restructuring of our US Army, Marines, and Special Forces from one that was light on US troops to ones that were privatized and this especially hit our US SPECIAL FORCES. So, we know these military forces infiltrating nations all over the world would without hesitation occupy our US cities if the likes of civil unrest occurs. Whether civil war or a 1960s-style mass protest----we are controlled by far-right 1% Wall Street global corporate pols seeing all of this as ACTS AGAINST A CORPORATE GOVERNMENT----not the people---
It is sad Republican voters will see an administration controlled by a Clinton neo-liberal like Obama as more threatening than a Bush/Cheney crew in the regard of martial law and takeover of US cities DEEMED INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES.
All Americans must WAKE UP----the simple designation of our US cities as International Economic Zones with a buildup of more and more global security and policing forces added to these several years of hyper-privatization of what was left of our public US military should have more than those CRAZY RIGHT WING NUTS suspicious of motives.
Again, all of this is tied to ANTI-FORMALISM and PRAGMATIC NILISM with HUMAN RIGHTS AND NATURAL LAW saying Bill Clinton has the civil right to accumulate extreme wealth ANYWAY HE CAN----under 1% Wall Street LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.
'In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where the US' elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger. Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available'.
OpinionPolitics8 August 2011
The US military's secret military
Special US commandos are deployed in about 75 countries around the world - and that number is expected to grow.
ByNick Turse
Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist.
Somewhere on this planet a US commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of much of the general American public, a secret force within the US military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, and deserves further attention.
After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the US military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the
US special forces, like the Navy Seals, are now more actively engaged in more overseas operations[GALLO/GETTY]Somewhere on this planet a US commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of much of the general American public, a secret force within the US military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, and deserves further attention.
After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the US military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has often remained out of the public scrutiny.
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of travelling - a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence - in about 60 per cent of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - is evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.
The rise of the military's secret military
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.
Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialised helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialised and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes US citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine".
This assassination programme has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.
Growth industry
From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3bn to $6.3bn. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8bn in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.
Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 - indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000," he said at a June breakfast with defence reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.
During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3 per cent to 5 per cent a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.
A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite US forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that "as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia".
During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet - mostly the industrialised nations of the global north - were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade," he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south ... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."
To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence", an effort to increase cultural proficiencies - like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs - for overseas operations. The programme is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever".
While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government. According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85 per cent of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.
Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at," says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have - it may be internal, it may be regional."
But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the US spends $50m a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.
Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, the US' most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.
So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. "Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises."
The Pentagon's power elite
Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorised to create its own Joint Task Forces - like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines - a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.
With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses - those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons - have jumped six-fold.
Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theatre commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself. As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies".
Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialised Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.
Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.
In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces … are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."
Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"
What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasised, US Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where the US' elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.
Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it," he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants "to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do".
HUMAN RIGHTS AND NATURAL LAW GIVES THE RICH THE RIGHT TO ACCUMULATE AS MUCH WEALTH AS THEY CAN ANYWAY THEY CAN.
This led to the breakdown of our US military and its mission per the US Constitution as well as the fact our US militias were to be protecting the American people from just the global power and wealth we have coming from CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS/NEO-CONS today.
For social Democrats thinking the need to have a well-armed public militia is simply the NRA citizens trying to keep their guns----WAKE UP----NO ONE SUFFERS MORE FROM GLOBAL WEALTH AND POWER THAN THE DEMOCRATIC BASE OF LABOR AND JUSTICE.
Note as well the Supreme Court rules to protect the gun rights of citizens BUT we are not seeing our Federal courts and judges ruling AGAINST THE PRIVATIZATION OF OUR US MILITARY AND POLICE FORCE. Thinking states will continue to have state guards----which states across the nation have already gutted funding for just those guards as they allow Homeland Security and county privatized policing become that security.
No militia means more intrusive law enforcement: Column
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 5:24 p.m. EDT March 9, 2014
Our Framers didn't envision a free state with the current level of government control.
(Photo: Jessica Hill, AP)
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
For a while, some argued that the so-called "prefatory clause" — "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" — somehow limited the "right of the people" to something having to do with a militia. In its recent opinions of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Second Amendment does recognize a right of individuals to own guns, and that that right is in no way dependent upon membership in a militia. That seems to me to be entirely correct.
But there is still that language. If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then where is ours? Because if a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, it follows that a state lacking such a militia is either insecure, or unfree, or possibly both.
In the time of the Framers, the militia was an armed body consisting of essentially the entire military-age male citizenry. Professional police not having been invented, the militia was the primary tool for enforcing the law in circumstances that went beyond the reach of the town constable, and it was also the primary source of defense against invasions and insurrection.
Calling out the militia thus meant calling out ordinary citizens, trained in military tactics (that's the "well-regulated" part), bearing their own arms. The Framers — who had a deep and abiding fear of professional standing armies because of abuses by the British Crown — thought this safer. A professional standing army could turn on the people, placing its loyalty with its paymasters rather than with those it was supposed to protect. The militia, on the other hand, couldn't betray the people because it was the people.
Even short of revolutions and coups, the militia had a different character in ordinary law enforcement than professionals possess. If called upon to enforce an unpopular law, or to enforce the law in an oppressive or unpopular way, the militia could drag its feet and fail to perform. (In this sense, the militia was like a jury, which is free to acquit even a guilty defendant if it thinks conviction would be unjust. In fact, Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has likened the militia to jurors with guns because, like the jury, it was an institution made up of the people, through which the government must act, and one not susceptible to the kinds of corruption besetting professional institutions).
As Amar writes:
Like the militia, the jury was a local body countering imperial power — summoned by the government but standing outside it, representing the people, collectively. Like jury service, militia participation was both a right and a duty of qualified voters who were regularly summoned to discharge their public obligations. Like the jury, the militia was composed of amateurs arrayed against, and designed to check, permanent and professional government officials (judges and prosecutors, in the case of the jury; a standing army in the case of the militia). Like the jury, the militia embodied collective political action rather than private pursuits.But although the militia survives in vestigial form in the statute books, as a functional institution, it no longer exists. For law enforcement, the militia has been replaced by professional police, with SWAT teams, armored vehicles and Nomex coveralls; for military purposes, the militia has been replaced by the National Guard, which despite a thin patina of state control is fundamentally a federal military force.
This makes life easier for the federal government. In 1912, when the federal government tried to send militia units into Mexico, the militias balked, noting that the Constitution allowed them to be called out only to repel invasion, suppress insurrection, or enforce the law — not to invade other countries. Surprisingly, perhaps, Attorney General George Wickersham agreed, leading to a change in the law that produced the modern-day National Guard, a force that is not so limited. Since then, America has been far more active abroad.
But this departure from the system the Framers set up has encouraged more intrusive law enforcement at home, and more military action abroad. So I'll ask you: If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then are we insecure? Or unfree? Or both?
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Here we see how the advancement of US military privatization from Reagan/Clinton neo-liberals to Bush neo-cons under Rumfeld----Obama is simpy both Clinton and Bush started slowly and was used to make the American people think the size of military troops were far smaller than actual was. Obama super-sized this in Afghanistan as he said he was withdrawing troops and has placed privatization of the US military on steroids with Hillary as State Department. Below all of this was OK to the far-right Clinton/Obama neo-liberals and the Bush neo-cons as long as the NO BID SUPPORT CONTRACTING WAS IN PLACE WITH A PRIVATE CONTRACTOR.
'If you want more "tooth" than "tail" it isn't all that difficult to rationalize reducing the size of the Military, as long as those "no bid" support contracts are in place with a private contractor..'
This was the same time Joe Biden in 1993 declared his HUMAN RIGHT AND NATURAL LAW to accumulate as much wealth as he wanted anyway he could----and nothing does that more than a global Wall Street unleashing massive frauds and a global corporate mercenary military with nothing but EMPIRE-BUILDING on the mind.
How does this affect the American citizens? Well, we see the march towards making the US just another international economic zone colonial entity all operating under a global ONE WORLD tribunal just as in Asia. So, NO, IT DOES NOT BODE WELL FOR ANY US CITIZEN OR IMMIGRANTS HAVING BEEN IN THE US FOR DECADES.
It was important for Gore to allow what was the most illegal Presidential election when the Supreme Court was allowed to call the election with the nation full of election fraud as with this 2016 election----to allow Bush to win because of this next phase of expanding militarization globally and authoritarianism inside the US. Remember, Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism is far-right so all of this is VERY REPUBLICAN AND ALL ABOUT LOSING FREEDOM as Republican voters like to say. This is why Republican voters should vote social Democratic because we actually do protect freedoms.
SOCIOPATHY--When they collaborate, they feed off one another, and their actions become even more diabolical. No better example of this than the Cheney-Rumsfeld partnerships during the two Bush presidencies.
Under the Rumsfeld doctrine, what proportion of the US Armed Forces' 'tail' has been privatized?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too...
Ken Swift, Major, U.S. Army (Retired) - Iraqi Combat Leader
This is a more or less impossible question to answer, as the differences vary by theater and mission.
What I believe is important to take away from this question are the following ideas:
1. Rumsfeld was not the person who developed this "doctrine" of transferring military jobs to civilians - it was President Reagan.
2. The initial move to take Soldiers / Sailors / Airmen / Marines out of support roles was to allow the number of "combat" personnel to actually be increased since the ratio of support to combat is always very high - take those support jobs and make them civilian and now you have more slots for "fighters."
3. The rise of companies that specialized in "military service support" started off small, but once the idea caught on that you could get around Congress, public opinion, and the news media by representing only the number of "service members" on the ground (let's say 175,000 total), that number was much more acceptable than what it would have taken for whatever operation you needed if everyone was a member of the military (take that 175,000 and add another 500,000 on top of it for everyone who would:
* Make your meals and clean the dishes
* Wash your clothes
* Build your living quarters, run power, and maintain all of those systems.
* Improve your fighting positions (build bunkers, string wire around a camp, build guard towers, and all the rest).
If you're trying to "sell" an invasion or occupation, 175,000 people sounds much better than 675,000 people. The joke is that you're paying a substantial premium for that "extra" 500,000 in private contractors, and since they are by law not supposed to fight, the situation can get ugly very quickly.
Another consideration is that the Military, at least in the U.S., is set at certain strength numbers by Congress. If you want more "tooth" than "tail" it isn't all that difficult to rationalize reducing the size of the Military, as long as those "no bid" support contracts are in place with a private contractor...
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I wanted to share a viewpoint from the right and then the left on this issue of US Constitutionality of privatized US military and the idea of standing armies. The founding fathers deliberately wrote that the US would not allow standing armies within its border. The way this right-leaning citizen wants to interpret this is----our own US public military is that standing army. This is absolutely FALSE. All research shows that the founding fathers were referring to standing armies tied to our American colonial nations like England, France, and Spain. So, as colonies England and France would have their standing armies sometimes located in our colonies ----and the US Constitution specifically addressed that FOREIGN STANDING ARMY. Trying to make our public US military sound like that standing army is deliberately misleading. If anything, having global private mercenary corporations bringing THEIR EMPLOYEES into the US would indeed be a standing army. Global corporations like Blackwater may have headquarters in the US----but we need to look closely at that definition of mercenary forces.
Indeed, Western nations have always had mercenary forces in their colonialism----but our founding fathers wanted to keep monopoly and extreme wealth at bay JUST SO WE WOULD NOT HAVE THAT VERY GLOBAL COLONIALISM. Our monopoly laws would not have allowed for such consolidated wealth for these global mercenary corporations to exist.
As well, the constant reference to the brand new United States during revolutionary times and shortly afterwards was completely tied to the fact the colonies could have no such military structures and WERE REQUIRED AT THAT TIME TO OUTSOURCE TO MERCENARIES. This history does not provide precedence towards the kind of global military corporate complex we have today.
We know these private global military corporations joined with the UN troops ARE INDEED training inside the US and as many citizens in the southwest RIGHTLY SAY-----these are standing armies and a threat to US national security. We see where Obama has super-sized Bush's US military privatization and made the life of those mercenaries closer to enslavement because that's the kind of guy he is----a Wall Street 1% far-right global corporate pol.
'Some of it was interesting. For example I hadn’t realized that President Obama had increased our overall mercenary deployment by 29% in only 6 months'.
What’s Unconstitutional About Blackwater?
August 22nd, 2009 ·
This week Bill Maher’s increasingly far left and out of touch show featured repeat guest Jeremy Scahill, who launched into his usual righteous rant against Blackwater and the evils of hiring mercenary troops to augment American forces in our various ill-considered military deployments overseas.
Some of it was interesting. For example I hadn’t realized that President Obama had increased our overall mercenary deployment by 29% in only 6 months. But Scahill also said something which I found troubling. After listing the usual litany of Blackwater crimes and accusing Eric Prince of being a Crazed Christian Crusader, he threw out the idea that using mercenary troops in foreign wars is unconstitutional.
It grabbed my attention, because it is a great example of how little some of these very earnest advocates on both the left and the right really understand what is in the Constitution and what certain passages of it actually mean. It seems as if they decide something is bad and then assume that anything which seems bad to them must inherently be unconstitutional. After all, if they’d written the constitution they wouldn’t have allowed for the hiring of mercenaries, because mercenaries are evil.
The thing is, they didn’t write the Constitution and apparently haven’t read it either. Statements like this display both an ignorance of the Constitution and a dismaying ignorance of American history and the role which mercenaries have played in it.
The ironic truth is that while the Constitution does not authorize the existence of a standing army and many of the founding fathers would have liked a stronger and clearer prohibition on any kind of standing army, the Constitution does explicitly authorize the hiring of mercenaries. What’s more, mercenaries have been a component of some of our most notable military operations throughout our history.
This is all about Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, where it clearly says that Congress can “raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years,”
THIS TO ME STATES THE US SHOULD NOT HAVE A MILITARY COMPLEX----PRIVATE OR PUBLIC.
essentially forbidding the kind of long-term, established army we have had since the Civil War. It also authorizes Congress to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” which is 18th century terminology for hiring mercenaries, bounty hunters, privateers and assassins — essentially any kind of private contractor to exact revenge and attack the nation’s enemies for a reward or a stipend.
So the great institutional army which so many view as legitimate is actually kind of unconstitutional and those evil mercenaries who Scahill and his friends on the left so revile actually enjoy a unique position of Constitutional authority. The vision which the framers of that document actually had for our military was that it would consist of a militia which was never deployed for any long term and would only be called up for specific short-term uses in the direct defense of the nation, while military operations outside of our borders would largely be carried out on a small scale by hired mercenaries.
As one example of how this Constitutionally authorized system worked before it was pushed aside for expediency, consider the role which privateers have played in American military operations. Privateers are privately owned military ships commissioned to attack enemy shipping and in some cases even enemy cities on behalf of the government. Much of our very limited naval strength in the Revilution was composed of privateers. The most famous of them was John Paul Jones. We continued to use privateers into the early 19th century, including in our undeclared war with France and later in the War of 1812. When most of the nations of Europe signed the Declaration of Paris in 1856 outlawing Privateers the United States refused to sign, and as late as World War II the government commissioned the airship Resolute as a privateer operating in the air off the coast of California and used other private contractors like the Liberty Ships to support the military.
Mercenaries like Blackwater, or what they now call Private Military Companies, have a long history going back to the ancient world. Groups of soldiers for hire have played a role in almost every war. They fought for pay on both sides during the Revolution. President Jefferson hired Greek mercenaries to augment his small force of US Marines for his attack on Tripoli. They fought in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The Swiss Guards who guard the Vatican and the Pope are essentially mercenaries. The use of mercenaries fell into disfavor in the West in the late 19th and 20th centuries, but they have continued to be used extensively in the third world. The United Nations and other groups have tried to prohibit the employment of mercenaries with very little success. The United States continues to use mercenaries in some situations and it is done under the authority of that same part of Article 1, Section 8 which authorizes privateers.
I’m not going to argue the advisability or the pros and cons of hiring mercenaries to fight your wars for you. It just seems bizarre that we have reached the point where even the most anti-war among us like Jeremy Scahill accept the existence of a standing army as routine and even desirable when compared to the hiring of professional mercenaries for a short term and limited engagement. The Founding Fathers thought a standing army would be an unacceptable threat to the Republic, but had no problem with the idea of some hired troops protecting our interests outside our borders. The Constitution reflects this, and while modern leftist sensibilities may find mercenaries unappealing and politically incorrect, that doesn’t make them unconstitutional.
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The WAR ON GUNS vs common sense gun control is just that movement of global military contractors moving into the US to confiscate weapons in our communities just as we read happening in Iraq under the guise of insurgency. When a BLACKWATER----or now ZE global mercenary staff becomes that US Army in our communities as these economic crash from bond market fraud bring a decade's long deep recession/depression---as this article states---it is one
MASTER PLAN TO TAKE THE US TO COLONIAL STATUS and yes----THESE GLOBAL MILITARY CORPORATIONS ARE AN INVADING STANDING ARMY!
'Characterizing the American People as the New Target of the War on Terror
The U.S. Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 dictates that the military’s “full spectrum operations” will include “operations within American borders.” Scenarios where Americans form into militia groups and become “insurrectionists” as a result of an economic collapse and have to be eliminated by the U.S. Army have already been mapped out by military planners.
A leaked U.S. Army manual also reveals plans for the military to carry out “Civil Disturbance Operations” during which troops will be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest'.
If the American people KNOW the goal below is true---then we know our PUBLIC WELL-ARMED MILITIA the US Constitution states will protect the American people will NOT BE THOSE GLOBAL MILITARY CORPORATIONS.
IT TAKES A GREAT DEAL OF ANTI-FORMALISM AND PRAGMATIC NILISM FOR OUR FEDERAL COURTS AND JUDGES NOT TO DECLARE ALL OF THIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND DEMAND DISMANTLING OF THIS PRIVATIZED MILITARY COMPLEX.
Why The Banking 'CARTEL' Want Riots in America
May 04, 2013 Kristen Watts
Why The Banking Elite Want Riots in America Civil War 2:
The economic imperative for mass social unrest
Every indication clearly suggests that authorities in the United States are preparing for widespread civil unrest. This trend has not emerged by accident – it is part of a tried and tested method used by the banking elite to seize control of nations, strip them of their assets, and absorb them into the new world order.
There is a crucial economic imperative as to why the elite is seeking to engineer and exploit social unrest.
As respected investigative reporter Greg Palast exposed in 2001, the global banking elite, namely the World Bank and the IMF, have honed a technique that has allowed them to asset-strip numerous other countries in the past – that technique has come to be known at the “IMF riot.”
In April 2001, Palast obtained leaked World Bank documents that outlined a four step process on how to loot nations of their wealth and infrastructure, placing control of resources into the hands of the banking elite.
One of the final steps of the process, the “IMF riot,” detailed how the elite would plan for mass civil unrest ahead of time that would have the effect of scaring off investors and causing government bankruptcies.
“This economic arson has its bright side – for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices,” writes Palast, adding, “A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.”
In other words, the banking elite creates the very economic environment – soaring interest rates, spiraling food prices, poverty, lower standards of living – that precipitates civil unrest – and then like a vulture swoops down to devour what remains of the country’s assets on the cheap.
We have already seen this process unfold in places like Bolivia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Greece and Argentina. Next on the chopping block are Spain, Italy, Britain and France – all of which have seen widespread riots over the last two years.
As Ha-Joon Chang explains in the Guardian, the roots of Europe’s riots were sparked by “governments inflicting an old-IMF-style programme on their own populations,” namely the same programs of “austerity, privatisation and deregulation,” that caused the riots of the 80′s and 90′s in poorer countries.
Although the likes of the IMF and the World Bank have pillaged half of the globe with their economic terrorism, America remains the ultimate prize. The first step of the four step process for bankster seizure of a country – privatization of state-owned assets – is already well under way in America, with infrastructure being sold off to foreign corporations, with the aid of Goldman Sachs, at a frightening pace.
A key component of the banking elite’s insidious agenda to bring about an economic collapse in America by design also centers around the process of de-industrializing the country, eviscerating the nation’s platform for self-sufficiency and replacing it with dependence on banker bailouts. This has already been largely achieved in Europe – with just about every major economy on the continent run by Goldman Sachs-affiliated technocrats.
In the United States, 32 per cent of manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000, while 56,000 manufacturing facilities have been mothballed since 2001. The Obama administration has also declared war on the coal industry, with Obama himself promising to “bankrupt” anyone who tries to build a new coal plant. Meanwhile, China builds a new coal plant every two weeks.
Given the clear economic motive for stirring unrest in the United States, we’d expect to see preparations for domestic disorder in numerous different guises – and indeed the signs are everywhere.
National Defense Authorization Act
The Obama administration’s passage of NDAA legislation that authorizes kidnapping and indefinite detention without trial of American citizens on U.S. soil serves to create the framework for mass arrests of protesters and journalists in a time of declared national emergency.
Obama’s War on Whistleblowers
The Obama administration’s brazen and aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers for divulging government corruption in the public interest is clearly a device designed to intimidate whistleblowers from speaking out when the proverbial hits the fan.
Spying on Social Media for Signs of Unrest
The Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies are actively engaged in spying on social mediaas well as news websites to look for reports or comments that “reflect adversely on the U.S. government and the DHS.” The government is on the lookout for the ‘tipping point’ when heated online rhetoric spills onto the streets in the form of unrest.
Building Huge Spy Centers to Track UnrestThe NSA is building the country’s biggest spy center in the middle of the Utah desert. The purpose of the data facility is to intercept, “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”
By creating a gigantic database of every communication imaginable, the NSA hopes to monitor and pre-empt the spread of mass civil unrest in America.
Preparing Drones for Domestic Oppression
Last week, the Justice Department re-affirmed its position that the Obama administration can use armed drones to assassinate Americans. Under the NDAA, the whole of the United States has been declared a “battlefield,” meaning that drones may soon be used to execute American citizens on U.S. soil.
A government that resorts to killing its own citizens without any legal process whatsoever is clearly a dictatorship engaged in domestic oppression. The only imaginable scenario under which this program would be justifiable was if the U.S. was under a state of martial law and the government was on the verge of collapse.
Preparing for Martial Law
The Department of Homeland Security has purchased over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the last 10 months alone. At the height of combat operations in Iraq, the U.S. Army only used 5.5 million bullets a month. Why has the DHS stockpiled enough bullets for a 30 year war if it is not preparing for some form of domestic disorder?
Preparation for martial law can be seen in numerous different guises, but perhaps the most chilling is a nationwide FEMA program which is training pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to “obey the government” in preparation for the implementation of martial law, property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.
Characterizing the American People as the New Target of the War on Terror
The U.S. Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 dictates that the military’s “full spectrum operations” will include “operations within American borders.” Scenarios where Americans form into militia groups and become “insurrectionists” as a result of an economic collapse and have to be eliminated by the U.S. Army have already been mapped out by military planners.
A leaked U.S. Army manual also reveals plans for the military to carry out “Civil Disturbance Operations” during which troops will be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.
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As someone living in Baltimore and watching citizens having their homes invaded by militarized SWAT teams acting just as the military in Iraq doing home searches and seizures with no attention to civil rights and liberties----AND OUR OWN BALTIMORE POLS PUSHING FOR THOSE SWAT ABILITIES-----it is the continuous slide of public policy and actions that should lead all citizens to feeling this is not simply preparation for foreign military actions or simply to guard against those pesky terrorists.
It was the declaration that the 1% had the RIGHT to ignore US Constitutional laws and citizens' rights in the march to extreme wealth and power by any means they wanted that created this loss of trust and respect from the American people.
Southwestern US The Site Of Massive Military Exercise- Is It The Beginning Of Martial Law?
March 28, 2015| by Robert Gehl
March to martial law? Undercover Special Forces to sweep US Southwest
Published time: 29 Mar, 2015 11:27Edited time: 30 Mar, 2015 07:10
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Reuters / Lucas Jackson / Reuters
As elite branches of the US military prepare to hold military training in seven southwest states, with some troops operating incognito among civilians, some Americans fear the training is actually preparation for imposing martial law.
Operation Jade Helm, which is scheduled to kick off in July and run for eight weeks, will involve the participation of 1,200 troops from the US military’s most elite fighting forces, including Green Berets, Navy SEALS and Special Operations from the Air Force and Marines.
The troops will be participating in what has been called Realistic Military Training in towns in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Utah.
In an effort to simulate the type of battlefield conditions soldiers may face in foreign countries, the US military has designated the remote training areas where they will operate as in a “hostile" territory, a description that has irked some residents.
Meanwhile, Texans living in close proximity to the operation will be asked to report any “suspicious activity” during the exercise, a request that seems to contradict the belief laid out in the US military training document, leaked by The Houston Chronicle, that Texans are “historically supportive” of military efforts to “fight the enemies of the United States.”
The training exercise, according to Shadow Spear, a publication of USASOC, “will be conducted on private and public land with the permission of the private landowners, and from state and local authorities.”
“The most noticeable effect the exercise may have on the local communities is an increase in vehicle and military air traffic and its associated noise,” Shadow Spear said.
Army Special Operation Command spokesman Mark Lastoria attempted to allay fears that the training is a actually an effort on the part of the military to practice “covert warfare tactics and martial law.” He said the domestic military operations are designed to develop "emerging concepts in special operations warfare," and were not part of some kind of dark plans to take over the United States.
“That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,” he told Stripes, a US Army publication. “This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.”
Paul Pape, a Bastrop County judge, also downplayed fears that the domestic military training was in reality rehearsal for full-blown martial law on the streets of America following some sort of major catastrophe.
“What I see here is an opportunity for a portion of our military to be better prepared and better trained to do work that has to be done to secure America’s interests around the world and here at home,” Pape told KEYE television in Austin, Texas.
The explanations given for the training, however, has not stopped fierce speculation among a number of citizen groups and alternative media sites as to why the entire states of Texas and Utah, as well as a section of southern California, have been declared “hostile,” while portions of the military detachment will be operating in the shadows of communities.
“They're having Delta Force, Navy SEALS with the Army trained to basically take over,” Info Wars' Alex Jones railed Sunday. “Texas is listed as a hostile sector, and of course, we are... here defending the republic.”
This is not the first time that American urban areas have served as the training areas for US forces.
In December 2014, Americans were unsettled by the spectacle of US Special Forces black helicopters buzzing the skylines of major US cities, including Dallas and Los Angeles, part of what it described as training in “realistic urban sites.”
Now, the Special Forces boots will be on the ground in cities and towns across the country, and that has some people asking a lot of questions.
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Anyone watching the Congressional AUSTERITY budget cuts saw the restructuring of our US Army, Marines, and Special Forces from one that was light on US troops to ones that were privatized and this especially hit our US SPECIAL FORCES. So, we know these military forces infiltrating nations all over the world would without hesitation occupy our US cities if the likes of civil unrest occurs. Whether civil war or a 1960s-style mass protest----we are controlled by far-right 1% Wall Street global corporate pols seeing all of this as ACTS AGAINST A CORPORATE GOVERNMENT----not the people---
It is sad Republican voters will see an administration controlled by a Clinton neo-liberal like Obama as more threatening than a Bush/Cheney crew in the regard of martial law and takeover of US cities DEEMED INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES.
All Americans must WAKE UP----the simple designation of our US cities as International Economic Zones with a buildup of more and more global security and policing forces added to these several years of hyper-privatization of what was left of our public US military should have more than those CRAZY RIGHT WING NUTS suspicious of motives.
Again, all of this is tied to ANTI-FORMALISM and PRAGMATIC NILISM with HUMAN RIGHTS AND NATURAL LAW saying Bill Clinton has the civil right to accumulate extreme wealth ANYWAY HE CAN----under 1% Wall Street LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.
'In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where the US' elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger. Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available'.
OpinionPolitics8 August 2011
The US military's secret military
Special US commandos are deployed in about 75 countries around the world - and that number is expected to grow.
ByNick Turse
Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist.
Somewhere on this planet a US commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of much of the general American public, a secret force within the US military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, and deserves further attention.
After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the US military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the
US special forces, like the Navy Seals, are now more actively engaged in more overseas operations[GALLO/GETTY]Somewhere on this planet a US commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of much of the general American public, a secret force within the US military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, and deserves further attention.
After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the US military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has often remained out of the public scrutiny.
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of travelling - a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence - in about 60 per cent of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - is evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.
The rise of the military's secret military
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.
Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialised helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialised and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes US citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine".
This assassination programme has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.
Growth industry
From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3bn to $6.3bn. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8bn in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.
Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 - indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000," he said at a June breakfast with defence reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.
During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3 per cent to 5 per cent a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.
A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite US forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that "as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia".
During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet - mostly the industrialised nations of the global north - were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade," he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south ... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."
To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence", an effort to increase cultural proficiencies - like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs - for overseas operations. The programme is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever".
While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government. According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85 per cent of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.
Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at," says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have - it may be internal, it may be regional."
But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the US spends $50m a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.
Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, the US' most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.
So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. "Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises."
The Pentagon's power elite
Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorised to create its own Joint Task Forces - like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines - a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.
With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses - those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons - have jumped six-fold.
Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theatre commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself. As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies".
Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialised Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.
Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.
In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces … are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."
Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"
What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasised, US Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where the US' elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.
Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it," he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants "to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do".
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