Messages In This Digest (11 Messages)

7.: Reagan's Ghost: Star Wars Stops START From: Rick Rozoff

8.: Germany To Provide Israel Another Nuclear-Missile Capable Sub From: Rick Rozoff

9.: Afghanistan Gold Mine For U.S. Private Contractors From: Rick Rozoff

10.: Britain Pressures Dutch To Keep Troops In Afghanistan From: Rick Rozoff

11.: Pakistan: U.S. Missile Strikes Kill 10, Wound 8 From: Rick Rozoff

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1.: West's Afghan War: From Conquest To Bloodbath

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Tue Jan 5, 2010 10:57 am (PST)

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/wests-afghan-war-from-conquest-to-bloodbath

Stop NATO
January 5, 2010

West's Afghan War: From Conquest To Bloodbath
Rick Rozoff

---------
"When the commander in Kabul asked Obama for the extra troops, he knew the USA would end up with one achievement, and that is more civilian casualties."

"Every time an American soldier gets killed, they bomb an entire village."

"This thing is going to be $5 billion to $10 billion a month and 300 to 500 killed and wounded a month by next summer. That's what we probably should expect. And that's light casualties."
---------

On December 29 the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released figures demonstrating that Afghan civilian deaths had risen by 10 percent in the first ten months of 2009, from 1,838 during the same period a year earlier to 2,038. The majority of the killings were attributed to insurgent attacks, including those directed against U.S., NATO and government targets, but almost 500 civilians were killed by American and NATO forces.

Matters only grew worse last November and December, culminating in several massacres of Afghan civilians by Western forces at the end of the year.

In early December a NATO air strike killed thirteen civilians in Laghman province. One account also documents a deadly raid by American special forces there. "According to witnesses, US troops entered a number of houses near the provincial capital, Mehtar Lam, in an overnight operation. The victims included Mohammed Ismail, whose 10-year-old son, Rafiullah, described what happened: 'When the soldiers came to our house, my father asked them, "Who are you?" Then they shot him in the head and told us, "Be quiet and tell us where the weapons are."'" [1]

The chairman of the Laghman provincial council presciently commented on the killings that "When the commander in Kabul asked Obama for the extra troops, he knew the USA would end up with one achievement, and that is more civilian casualties." [2]

On the same day that the above-cited UN report was made public an air attack by U.S.-led warplanes killed four Afghans in the northern province of Baghlan. According to one report "A father and his three sons were reportedly among the [fatalities]. The raid also wounded eight others." [3]

A member of parliament from a neighboring province, Haji Farid, said after the aerial onslaught that "Every time an American soldier gets killed, they bomb an entire village." [4]

The following day a NATO missile strike killed seven Afghan civilians in Helmand province. According to the New York Times, "Neither NATO forces nor the Helmand governor's office gave a definitive number of dead, but reports from local people said that five to seven civilians had been killed, including three children." [5] Later a spokesman for the governor of the province confirmed that seven civilians had been slain and another wounded.

Far more atrocious news broke the same day, December 30, when, according to the next day's edition of The Times of London, "American-led troops were accused...of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead" in Kunar province near the Pakistani border. [6]

U.S.-installed and -supported President Hamid Karzai dispatched an investigative team headed by former governor of Helmand province Assadullah Wafa to the scene of the massacre, dubbed by at least one news source as an Afghan My Lai.

A statement was later issued on the official website of the Afghan president that said in part: "The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead."

The delegation's head, Wafa, added that "US soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, suggesting that they were part of a special forces unit," and was quoted as saying "I spoke to the local headmaster. It's impossible they were al-Qaeda. They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent. I condemn this attack." [7]

The investigation he led established that eight of the victims were between the ages of 11 and 17. The slain students' headmaster, Rahman Jan Ehsas, described the details of Barack Obama's and top U.S. and NATO military commander Stanley McChrystal's new special operations-led counterinsurgency approach as it was applied to his pupils:

"Seven students were in one room. A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building.

"First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That's why his wife wasn't killed." [8]

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) attempted to both widen and evade responsibility for the murders by claiming "the raid was a joint operation and it was still under investigation," a ploy quickly exposed when "Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy said Afghan troops had not taken part." [9]

Demonstrators, particularly university students and their instructors, took to the streets in the provinces of Kabul and Nangarhar denouncing the rapidly escalating and by now routine slaughter of civilians, including children, by U.S. and NATO troops and warplanes. Their chants included "Obama! Obama! Take your soldiers out of Afghanistan!" and "Stop killing us!"

Professors and students at Kabul University passed a resolution demanding that NATO troops leave Afghanistan. [10]

Referring to the first of December's massacres, a Middle Eastern newspaper wrote, "The raid in the eastern province of Laghman this month followed a pattern that has become sadly familiar in Afghanistan over recent years. As is often the case, international forces insisted militants were killed, but local officials and villagers claimed the dead were civilians." [11]

With the increase of U.S. and other NATO nations' and partners' troops to over 150,000 in the near future and the announced shift from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency operations, the killing of Afghan civilians will grow exponentially.

On the other side of the border, Washington's and NATO's proclaimed AfPak war is no less murderous.

On January 2 Dawn News, Pakistan's first 24-hour English news channel, reported on its website that 44 CIA-directed Predator drone missile attacks last year had killed 708 people, only five of them alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban targets. "According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

"For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities....On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day." [12]

There has been no diminution of such attacks. In the waning days of 2009 they were intensified. On December 27 "At least 13 people were killed in a suspected United States drone attack" in North Waziristan. "Following the strike, a U.S. B-52 jet plane, along with other spy planes, continued their flights over the tribal areas...." [13]

The preceding day another U.S. missile attack in North Waziristan killed three and wounded two people. "A statement from the [Pakistani] military Saturday said that a targeted airstrike at a compound in Orakzai had killed some civilians along with eight suspected militants." [14]

The U.S. launched deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan's North Waziristan on both ends of the New Year. On December 31 "Five people were killed and at least two more injured" and on January 1 "A US pilotless aircraft fired a missile into Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district" and "the attack destroyed [a] car and killed three people." [15]

In the second case a regional security official was quoted by Reuters as stating "The bodies were burned beyond recognition. We are trying to determine their identity." [16]

On January 3 five more people were killed in the same part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by American drone attacks. However much the U.S., NATO and the Western media attempt to sanitize these killings, the Pakistani government figure - that over 99 percent of the victims are civilians - is a damning indictment of what can only be characterized as wanton war crimes.

A yearender feature in the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes reflected on 2009 and looked forward to this year.

"When President Barack Obama took office in January, he inherited a drifting and under-resourced war in Afghanistan, being fought with roughly 35,000 U.S. troops.

"Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops in March and then 30,000 more in December.

"In a little over a year, he will have nearly tripled their numbers, taking ownership of what he calls 'the war we must win.'

"[E]very step the president has taken represents an escalation of the war, now in its ninth year." [17]

Afghan and Pakistani civilians deaths have climbed correspondingly. They will rise even more in 2010 as the war, in its tenth calendar year, is broadened further and intensified in earnest.

For all the carnage wreaked on innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, a senior NATO intelligence officer told Western media representatives at a briefing on December 27 that "The Afghan Taliban have expanded their influence across Afghanistan and are now running a 'full-fledged insurgency' with their own 'governors' in all but one of the country's provinces." [18]

"In 33 out of 34 provinces, the Taliban has a shadow government...has a government-in-waiting, with ministers chosen" for the day the government falls in the unnamed official's words. [19]

Over eight years of bombing villages, conducting deadly raids against civilian households, multiplying projected American and NATO troops strength by a factor of fifteen since 2003 and extending the war into Pakistan have produced this result.

NATO's first ground war and its first armed conflict outside Europe has also cost the citizens of its own member states both blood and treasure.

Jeff Loftin, press officer of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, was recently quoted as confirming that last year 512 Western troops were killed in Afghanistan, the highest total for any year in the over eight-year war.

That number is over a third of the 1,481 ISAF fatalities (excluding American troops assigned to Operation Enduring Freedom) since the war began on October 7, 2001. The deaths include those of soldiers from NATO partner states Finland, Sweden and South Korea.

Germany, engaged under NATO command in its first combat operations since World War II, lost five soldiers last year, its highest number to date, and "Some 13,900 German soldiers served in Afghanistan this year [2009], up 1,700 from in 2008." [20]

"At least 70 Western soldiers died each month from July through October, virtually double the rate of the previous summer. In the past year, nearly 500 foreign troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan, including more than 300 Americans." [21]

On December 27 NATO announced the death of an American service member in a bomb attack in Afghanistan and the icasualties.org website calculated it to be the U.S.'s 310th of the year, double the 155 figure for 2008.

That number was also twice that of U.S. military deaths in Iraq in 2009, 148, the first time since 2003 that deaths in the first theater have been higher than in the second, and "Afghanistan is likely to become an even deadlier place for American forces as reinforcements are rushed there to battle insurgents." [22]

How much deadlier was first revealed on January 3 when four U.S. soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in southern Afghanistan.

Former U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, now an adjunct professor of international affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, recently "traveled to the war zone...as an academic from West Point at the invitation of theater commander Gen. David Petraeus, commander of Central Command, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the operational commander in Afghanistan" and upon returning was cited by an armed forces news source as asserting that "Americans should prepare to accept hundreds of U.S. casualties each month in Afghanistan during spring offensives with enemy forces."

Regarding the New Year's surge, which will push U.S. troop strength to over 100,000 and combined U.S. and NATO numbers to over 150,000, he predicted that "this thing is going to be $5 billion to $10 billion a month and 300 to 500 killed and wounded a month by next summer. That's what we probably should expect. And that's light casualties." [23]

As many 500 American soldiers killed and injured monthly is in McCaffrey's estimate light casualties.

Another milestone in U.S. losses was marked on December 30 when a reported suicide bombing at the Forward Operating Base Chapman killed seven CIA agents, including the agency's station chief. The Wall Street Journal quoted a former American intelligence official describing the event as "Pearl Harbor for the agency," the second-largest loss in one day in the CIA's history, only the 1983 attack on the U.S.'s embassy in Lebanon, which resulted in eight agency deaths, exceeding it. "The base played a critical role in the CIA's significant operations in the country, including helping with drone attacks and informant networks in Pakistan." [24]

According to a former agency official interviewed by the newspaper, "That was one of the bases where they were paying people and running people and sending them into Pakistan." [25]

The White House of last year's Nobel Peace Prize recipient and the Pentagon of former CIA director Robert Gates, who in the past boasted of funding and arming the founders of two of the three groups he is now waging war against in Afghanistan and Pakistan [26], have promised to increase the bloodshed in South Asia this year to an unprecedented level. In this instance if in no other the government can be trusted to faithfully fulfill its pledge.

1) The National (United Arab Emirates), December 28, 2009
2) Ibid
3) Press TV, December 29, 2009
4) Ibid
5) New York Times, December 31, 2009
6) The Times, December 31, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6971638.ece
7) Ibid
8) Ibid
9) Reuters, December 30, 2009
10) Pakistan Observer, January 4, 2010
11) The National, December 28, 2009
12) Dawn News, January 2, 2010
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/18-over-700-killed-in-44-drone-strikes-in-2009-am-01
13) Xinhua News Agency, December 27, 2009
14) Associated Press, December 26, 2009
15) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 1, 2010
16) Press TV, January 1, 2010
17) Stars and Stripes, December 31, 2009
18) Reuters, December 27, 2009
19) Agence France-Presse, December 28, 2009
20) Brunei News, Agencies, January 1, 2010
21) Stars and Stripes, December 31, 2009
22) USA Today, December 31, 2009
23) Army Times, January 4, 2010
24) Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2010
25) Ibid
26) Afghan Warlords, Formerly Backed By the CIA, Now Turn Their Guns
On U.S. Troops
U.S. News & World Report, July 11, 2008
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/07/11/afghan-warlords-formerly-backed-by-the-cia-now-turn-their-guns-on-us-troops.html?PageNr=2
===========================
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2.: UK Warship To Lead NATO Operations In Horn, Gulf Of Aden, Somali Wat

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Tue Jan 5, 2010 12:02 pm (PST)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jJP9V5lrdFmOCzjV0ltXK_9Uy1Yg

Press Association
January 5, 2010

Navy ship fights piracy off Somalia

A Royal Navy vessel has set sail from the UK to combat piracy off the Somalian coast.

Plymouth-based HMS Chatham will lead Nato operations in the Gulf of Aden, the Horn of Africa and Somali Basin....

HMS Chatham and her 250-strong crew sailed from Devonport, Plymouth, for a seven-month deployment and will be the UK Flagship to the Standing Nato Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2).

The Type 22 Frigate will also become the lead vessel for Operation Ocean Shield, the Nato contribution to counter-piracy operations off Somalia.
....
The 492ft ship will join other ships in the Nato task group, including warships from Spain, Turkey, Greece and the US, to patrol round the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden.
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3.: Baltic Sea: Year Seven Of NATO Air Patrols Off Russian Coast

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Tue Jan 5, 2010 12:04 pm (PST)

http://www.defpro.com/news/details/12276

Defense Professionals
January 5, 2010

Rotation of contingents on Baltic air-policing mission

On January 4 shifts of air contingents performing the NATO's Baltic air-policing mission changed at a ceremony held at the Air Base of the Lithuanian Air Force (Siauliai). The German Air Contingent was replaced by a French unit with four Mirage-2000 fighter-jets.

The French unit has taken up the responsibility for the mission for a second time (after 2007). The current shift comprises around 150 military, the majority of which serve with the French Air Force BA 103 Cambrai Air Base (north of the country).

The rotation ceremony was attended by Commander Lithuanian Air Force Brig. Gen. Arturas Leita, Commanding Officer of French Air Defense and Air Operations Command Lt. Gen. Gilles Desclaux, Commander German Air Force Air Operations Command Lt. Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm Ploeger, Senior Advisor to the Ministry of National Defence Andrius Krivas, Commander of Air Base Siauliai Lt. Col. Audronis Navickas, Ambassadors of France to the Baltic States, Ambassador of Germany to the Baltic States, representatives of armed forces of other states and other guests.

NATO member states began sending their air assets and crews to the Baltic Air-policing mission in 2004 when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia entered NATO.

Since then Belgian, Danish, British, Norwegian, Dutch, German, American, and Polish contingents ensured security of airspace above the Baltic States for three months each. Since spring 2006 Turkish, Spanish, Belgian, and French troops were deployed on the mission for four-month rotation cycle, Romanian Air Contingent were in charge of the mission for three months, Portuguese Air Contingent - for a month and a half, troops of Norway, Poland, Germany and the USA - for three months, Danes, Czechs and the leaving Germans, the incoming French Air Contingent will also follow the four-month pattern.

This year a decision was adopted by NATO to prolong the mission to the end of 2014.
===========================
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4.: Afghanistan's NATO force needs top civilian: UN

Posted by: "arn specter" arnpeace@yahoo.com arnpeace

Tue Jan 5, 2010 12:07 pm (PST)

Afghanistan's NATO force needs top civilian: UN
(AFP) – January 4, 2010
UNITED NATIONS — The NATO-led international security force in Afghanistan should appoint a senior civilian official to help improve political and development coordination, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in a report released Monday.
The report also stressed the need to beef up the international coordination structure in the war-torn country "under a United Nations umbrella."
Ban said naming a top civilian official within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) "would help to improve coordination of its political and development efforts, in particular by the provincial reconstruction teams, so as to ensure their greater adherence to Afghan plans and priorities across provincial borders."
He noted that while his outgoing special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide of Norway, maintains overall responsibility for coordinating international civilian efforts, the UN mission there (UNAMA) needs to be bolstered with staff with the required experience and able to have better talks with key donors countries and embassies in Kabul.
Ban's report made clear that to be successful, any form of international coordination must be properly linked to the Afghan government.
"The situation cannot continue as is if we are to succeed in Afghanistan," he warned. "There is a need for a change of mindset in the international community as well as in the government of Afghanistan."
Eide, who was criticized over his handling of the deeply controversial August fraud-marred election and who is to step down when his mission ends in March 2010, is to brief the UN Security Council this week on the activities of his mission.
His time in Afghanistan has seen the Taliban insurgency reach its deadliest since US-led troops ousted their regime in 2001, kickstarting international efforts to build democracy and develop the impoverished nation.
In a related development, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky refused to comment on a December 31 New York Times editorial stating that Ban was considering three candidates to replace Eide.
The three are Jean-Marie Guehenno of France, the former head of UN peacekeeping operations, Staffan de Mistura of Sweden, currently a senior official with the Rome-based UN World Food Program, and Ian Martin of Britain, a former UN special envoy to Nepal.
The New York Times endorsed Guehenno but Nesirky told a press briefing Monday: "The selection process is still under way. It is still not completed."
Record numbers of Afghan civilians and Western soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan over the past year.
NATO and the United States have 113,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban insurgents, who have spread their footprint over the previously peaceful north and east, inflicting record Western military casualties.
Up to 40,000 more US and NATO troops are to arrive over the course of 2010, backed by thousands of civilians, as the war strategy turns from battleground tactics to development and aid.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.
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5.: ISAF Chief: Joint U.S.-Pak Military Actions On Both Sides Of Border

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Tue Jan 5, 2010 6:12 pm (PST)

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/06-pak-army-strength-and-ability-appreciated-mcchrystal-05

Dawn News
January 5, 2010

Joint Pak-US action against Taliban in the offing
By Baqir Sajjad Syed

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and the United States are working on a plan to take joint military action against Taliban and launch coordinated attacks on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border, according to Gen Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan.

He was talking to reporters at the residence of the US ambassador on Monday evening after holding talks with military commanders here and visiting Swat.

"In fact, we are developing a joint campaign plan so that we approach the entire problem together and as much as possible we can make our efforts synergistic."

Gen McChrystal said strong partnership between the US and Pakistan was critical for counter-insurgency operations on both sides of the border.

"The most important thing we can do is to coordinate our operations with the Pakistan Army and then there is, of course, going to be political coordination."
....
Surprisingly, Gen McChrystal, did not broach either the Haqqani Network or the Quetta Shura – the two problems that have posed serious challenges to cooperation between the two countries.
....
Gen McChrystal, who was all praise for the military's counter-insurgency campaign and the leadership of Army Chief Gen Kayani, said he had no reasons to doubt Pakistan Army's sincerity.

"I'm hopeful of the time when the Haqqani Network, which is causing damage inside Afghanistan, is taken on by both of us jointly to reduce the damage they are causing. It is important that we together do that."

About the Quetta Shura, he said that the best course was cooperation with the Pakistan military. He opposed any direct action against the Shura.
....
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6.: Norwegian Troops In Persistent Afghan Firefights

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Tue Jan 5, 2010 6:16 pm (PST)

http://www.norwaypost.no/content/view/22996/26/

Norway Post
January 3, 2010

Norwegian troops under fire in Afghanistan

Norwegian troops, supporting Afghan police, came under fire from insurgents during a mission on New Year's Eve. Several insurgents were killed, but the Norwegian patrol escaped without injuries.

The fighting started outside the village of Ateh Khan Khwajeh, when the Norwegian patrol came under fire from several directions. The fighting lasted for seven hours, according to the Norwegian Defence.

The Norwegian troops deployed in Afghanistan are part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
----------------------------------------------------------http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/01/03/norwegian-troops-involved-in-frequent-afghan-fighting

IceNews
January 3, 2010

Norwegian troops involved in frequent Afghan fighting
By A. Rienstra

The Christmas period has seen troops from Norway involved in several battles across northern Afghanistan, with the Maimana Norwegian field hospital admitting injured Afghan fighters as the insurgency continues.
....
In the first of the attacks, which took place on 22nd December, a small arms-and-grenade attack on a Norwegian Military Observer Team (MOT) in western Faryab led to NATO being called on to provide assistance from the air. The following day, an MOT patrol vehicle was damaged during a similar attack while two further patrols from the Maimana base camp also were fired upon.

Norwegian training officers, on patrol with an Afghan police and army unit then came under fire on Christmas Eve, west of the Maimana camp with government troops sustaining several injuries. On Christmas Day a mission with drone and helicopter support was deployed to an under siege Afghan border post by Norwegian and Afghan troops with two members of the local border police evacuated.

Earlier this month it was announced that Norwegian forces, which number around 500 in Afghanistan, were involved in fighting every third day on average. The fighting is centred on the Faryab province, where Norway leads the Provincial Reconstruction Team in what is generally considered one of the quieter regions in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
....
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7.: Reagan's Ghost: Star Wars Stops START

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Wed Jan 6, 2010 5:26 am (PST)

http://ericwalberg.

Reagan's ghost: Star Wars stops START
January 6, 2010

Hopes are fading that the historical treaty between the US and the Soviet Union will be renewed, observes Eric Walberg

Russian confidence that US President Barack Obama might represent a fundamental change in the direction of US foreign policy is fast eroding. Even pro-Western analyst Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre reflects, "The people who see Russia as a problem are still at the Pentagon," and he predicts that even if Obama lasts another seven years, the Russians are coming to the conclusion that "he may not be able to withstand the pressures on him."

The hope, as recently s a month ago was that a new version of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (SALT) might be successfully negotiated. But Obama's two other surges — NATO's expansion in Eastern Europe and the rush to implement the US missile defence system around the world — follow so closely the hawkish policies of his predecessors, that whatever "Atlantists" there might be in the Kremlin have been put on the defensive, so to speak.

To blame Russia for tripping up the START talks, given the facts on the ground, is nonsense. The writing for the present impasse was on the wall even before SALT I was signed. Anyone old enough can remember Reagan in the 1980s with schoolboy enthusiasm showing the media his Disneyesque coloured charts with US satellites zapping UFOs and unnamed enemy rockets.

This was the beginning of the Starwars project which effectively ended the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the US and the Soviet Union sign in 1972 to refrain from developing blanket missile defence systems, the logic being to discourage any thought of launching the unthinkable.

It was only Gorbachev's willingness to throw in the towel and ignore Reagan's duplicity, desperate to show some quick results of his perestroika, that allowed SALT 1 to be signed in the first place. The finishing touch came shortly after 911, when Bush II gave notice that the US was formally withdrawing from what is perhaps the most important disarmament treaty in history. Now that Russia is on its feet again, the ghost of Reagan has come back to haunt us.

Asked by a journalist just before the new year what the biggest problem was in replacing the old START treaty, Russian Prime Minister Putin said: "What is the problem? The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one." "The problems of missile defence and offensive arms are very closely linked. By building such an umbrella over themselves our partners," Putin said, with his trademark sarcasm, referring to the US, "could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want, which upsets the balance." Stating the obvious, he added, "Aggressiveness immediately increases in real politics and economics."

Rumour has it that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Putin disagreed over the new START treaty, with Medvedev and foreign policy advisor Sergei Prihodko inclined to ignore Starwars and sign the treaty as soon as possible to score a major foreign policy success for Medvedev. Putin and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, it is said, opposed rushing the deal, reminding Medvedev of Gorbachev's hasty agreement with Reagan-Bush in the late 1980s and early 1990s which upset the hard-won balance-of-power policies of Stalin through Brezhnev.

But that is unlikely, as almost any Russian will tell you in unprintable language just what he thinks of Gorbachev's follies. Medvedev would hardly want to be seen as following in these ill-starred footsteps. As his recent statements make clear, Putin is the force to reckon with on such weighty matters, and few Russians would take issue with this, as his enduring popularity shows.

So instead of a "surge" in dismantling nuclear weapons, the Russian government is reluctantly calling for more money to be spent on developing new ICBMs that cannot be disabled by US anti-missile defences. The world can only be thankful that there is some force preventing the militaristic hegemone from launching nuclear war at will.

This is not what Obama had in mind last summer when he scrapped the Bush plan to set up bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, a decision Putin called "correct and brave" at the time. But in early December, the US and Poland signed an infamous "status of forces" agreement, allowing the US to station troops in Poland for the first time, as well as, yes, an agreement to build an anti-missile defence system there, now "mobile".

What are the Russians supposed to make of this? Just what country are these troops and missiles to protect Poland from? This move can only be taken as an insult to Russia, and is a foolish and provocative step by Poland. And just role does Obama play in this duplicity? Is he a closet peacenik who is being forced against his will to follow the policy begun by Reagan almost three decades ago?

The missiles are scheduled to arrive in Poland in a few months' time. And yet US Russian-watchers feign dismay at Putin's warning. "It would be a huge obstacle in the talks if Putin now says we need limits on missile defence as part of this treaty," frets Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution. "It would be a huge setback, and it would make the treaty very hard, if not impossible, to conclude," he moans.

Vladimir Belaeff at the Global Society Institute in San Francisco notes the obliviousness in Washington to its credibility gap with Russia regarding armaments, citing "NATO's expansion eastward, non-compliance with signed treaties to control conventional armaments in Europe, assurances that American weapons delivered to Georgia would not be used offensively, and the persistence in deploying American weapons in Poland."

With Obama's diving popularity (60 per cent of Americans disapproved of his Nobel Prize) and an increasingly ornery Senate, the probability of US ratification of any treaty is not much above zero, so the Russians have nothing to lose by staking out their position to defend the Motherland and waiting for things military to further unravel in the US empire.

What the Russians are up to is well known among Western defence experts. They hailed the failed 13th test of the Bulava submarine-launched ICBM Bulava on 9 December. They were chagrined a week later when an RS-20V ICBM missile was successfully test-fired. The latter is a new version of a Soviet-era missile known in the West as the SS-18 Satan, one of the Soviet Union's most effective nuclear weapons. The Russian military grimly argue that extending the life of its Soviet-era missiles is a "cost-effective" way to preserve nuclear parity with the US.

US official response has been unimpressive, from the bizarre suggestion that Russia join NATO to the demand that Russia cut its defence and nuclear ties with Iran in exchange for more information about US Starwars plans. Putin brushed such prattle aside by challenging Obama: "Let the Americans hand over all their information on missile defence and we are ready to hand over all the information on offensive weapons systems," making no reference to any longing to join NATO or to shaft Iran.

Sadly, the present scenario is the classic arms race one: vast sums will be spent by both sides uselessly as their respective economies crumble.

But, maybe all this is a tempest in a teapot, or as the Arab saying has it, salt, which disappears in a drop of water. Andrei Liakhov of Withers Worldwide, London, argues that since the 1960s, "the destructive force of nuclear weapons made them the best deterrent against another global war." That the proliferation of nuclear states since then merely reinforces this MAD (mutual assured destruction) logic. That rather than a grandiose plan targetting only US-Russian nuclear weapons, strengthening the non-proliferation treaty — which would of necessity include Israel — is the way to go.

***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/
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8.: Germany To Provide Israel Another Nuclear-Missile Capable Sub

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Wed Jan 6, 2010 5:44 am (PST)

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115478&sectionid=351020202

Press TV
January 6, 2010

Germany to sell Israel another nuclear submarine

Germany starts talks with Israel over the sale of a new submarine, capable of firing nuclear missiles, despite having received no payment for previous deliveries.

Israeli and German officials have reached an "advanced" stage in their negotiations about the new Dolphin class attack submarine, a "senior" Israeli source told Israel's Maariv daily.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are expected to agree on the deal's details on January 18, the source said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was supposed to finalize the deal with the German Chancellor last November, but that meeting never took place as Netanyahu fell ill.

The German-made Dolphin ballistic missile submarines are capable of firing cruise missiles.

The Israeli marine already has three Dolphin submarines that it received from Germany three years ago.

The new submarines have been built at a cost of one-point-three billion euros, with Germany covering one-third of the bill.

Tel Aviv has reportedly not paid for the previous deliveries despite German demands, but Berlin wants Israel to pay up this time.
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9.: Afghanistan Gold Mine For U.S. Private Contractors

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Wed Jan 6, 2010 5:53 am (PST)

http://rt.com/Politics/2010-01-06/afghanistan-gold-mine-security.html

Russia Today
January 6, 2010

Afghanistan a gold mine for security companies

Private military companies are being criticized for profiteering from the conflict in Afghanistan while the number of deadly attacks keeps rising and the local population remains in an insecure environment.

General Khatool Mohammadzai from the Afghan National Army notes, "This is war. President Karzai says it will take fifteen years for our army to be able to stand on its own. When the President talks, I know he has considered everything, so he must be right."

But does this mean for the next 15 years the country will be unstable until the government gets it right? That is the reason foreign security companies give to explain why they are in the country. At least 17 of them are operating in Afghanistan, including the infamous Blackwater, which was accused in 2007 of killing civilians in Iraq.

Regardless, not even foreign contractors are still unable to prevent bomb explosions, so the feeling of fear and panic is everywhere. Yama Saifi, former owner of Shield Security Company, says that sentiment wasn't around when it was his job to provide security for the cabinet.

That was before the Taliban came to power and people then were not afraid of random suicide bombings like they are today.

"I really don't believe most foreign security companies are actually here to provide security. It is very clear they come here to make money. I am sure Afghan security companies can provide better security than them. And anyway, they use our people; it's just that all the directors are from abroad," thinks Yama Saifi.

There are big bucks to be made in Afghanistan. Each of the hundreds of non-governmental organizations working in the country put aside between thirty and forty percent of their budget for security. Even the US army and foreign militaries use private security companies.

"The longevity of instability is good business for security companies. So, security companies working for profit, this brings a lot of questions," Daoud Sultanzoy, chairman of Economic Committee of the Afghan parliament believes.

No stranger to Afghanistan, former CIA officer Jack Rice believes NATO troops and security services don't know what the country's people really need.

"Afghani people themselves are interested in such things as schools, clean water and hospitals." Saying that the problem is that the authorities do not pay attention to what people want, he added: "It makes the US military and NATO troops essentially blind and that is a disaster."

Dr Tajuddin Millatmal from the Afghan Doctors' Society divides his time between America and Afghanistan. He is a citizen of both countries – and as an American he does not want his tax payer money spent on security he says is not needed; as an Afghan he complains the situation is getting worse.

He thinks that "It is very interesting when you see one man traveling from one place to another how much security arrangements they make for it, for which it does nothing. If bomb goes off there is nothing they can do about it, but they are the things they are charging for."

American security companies continue to keep silent, so the questions remain unanswered.
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10.: Britain Pressures Dutch To Keep Troops In Afghanistan

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Wed Jan 6, 2010 6:00 am (PST)

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/british-envoy-wants-dutch-stay-afghanistan

Radio Netherlands
January 5, 2010

British envoy wants Dutch to stay in Afghanistan

The British envoy to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has called on the Dutch government to maintain its military presence there.

In an interview with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the British envoy said he had been impressed by the approach taken by the Dutch troops in Afghanistan. "Outsiders ought not to meddle in the decision, but we are keen to have the Dutch in Afghanistan", Sir Sherard said. Mr Cowper-Coles is currently in the Netherlands ahead of the Afghanistan summit due to be held at the end of this month in London.

The Dutch cabinet is expected to make a decision by that time. Two parties in the three-party coalition, Labour and the Christian Union, want the mission to end in 2011. Christian Union Defence Minister Eimert Middelkoop, however, disagrees with his party and wants the mission to be extended, albeit on a smaller scale. Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen, a Christian Democrat shares his view.

The two ministers are considering either a new, smaller mission in the southern province of Uruzgan, or in another province. Another option is for Dutch military personnel to train the Afghan army or police.
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11.: Pakistan: U.S. Missile Strikes Kill 10, Wound 8

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Wed Jan 6, 2010 6:09 am (PST)

http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31275&Itemid=57

Kuwait News Agency
January 6, 2010

Two missile strikes in Pakistan kill 10

ISLAMABAD: At least ten people were killed and eight others were injured in two missile strikes in Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan on Wednesday, said officials.

The two strikes hit a suspected militant compound within one hour of each other. According to security officials, a pilotless US aircraft fired two missiles at a suspected militant compound in Datakhel area of the agency.

They told KUNA that the first strike killed five militants and wounded about five others.

In the second strike, the officials said further, a missile hit a house of a local tribesman, known for his links with Taliban militants, in the same area. The officials said that the second strike also killed about five people and wounded three others.

The strikes took place amid hostility against America is increasing in Pakistan owing to unabated drone attacks. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmoud Qureshi on Tuesday taking notice of such hostility said that the government was pursuing pro-Pakistan policy and that national interests will be safeguarded.
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