by Russell D. Longcore

On Thursday, November 5th, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan used handguns to fire upon fellow soldiers at Fort Hood Texas, killing 13 and wounding 30.

The base commander says soldiers who witnessed the shooting reported that Major Hasan shouted “Allah Akbar!” (God is great) before opening fire. Hasan, an American citizen and a practicing Muslim, himself was shot four times, and is presently hospitalized in stable condition. Originally it was thought that Hasan was killed, but later his survival was confirmed.

Hasan is a physician…a psychiatrist in fact. He recently worked at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Maryland, one of the primary places that wounded Gulf War soldiers are treated for horrific injuries. But those same wounded soldiers bring back deep mental wounds, and Hasan’s specialty was in counseling and helping soldiers suffering the mental anguish from war.

Major Hasan was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan, and reports say that he was angry about his deployment.

Over the coming weeks and months, military investigators will work to determine Major Hasan’s motivation for the murders. If found competent, he will likely stand trial for the murders and injuries. However, you should expect that the findings will be “spun” in a way that absolves Washington and the military from any responsibility for their part in the murders.

Nothing in this article should be misconstrued as a tacit approval of Hanan’s acts. Murder is always murder, and killing 13 and wounding 30 is an horrific slaughter. No justification exists for this act.

Here are some points that likely will be off-limits in the mainstream media:

1. The morality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. George Bush’s administration and Congress lied the US into an Iraq war against their own puppet dictator Saddam Hussein. It was never proven that Hussein or Iraq had ANY involvement in the 9-11 attacks. President Obama has now fully embraced war in Iraq and Afghanistan which continues unabated.

2. The legality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No declaration of war has ever been enacted by the US Congress, which is required in the Constitution.

3. Base security and the Second Amendment. Military personnel do not forsake their rights under the Second Amendment when they take their Oath of Service, do they? The fact that the soldiers on bases across the world are unarmed makes it easy for any assailant to do his work. Universities like Virginia Tech (curiously Hasan’s alma mater, where another mass murder incident took place), public schools, and government buildings are also open kill zones for armed gunmen. Just one soldier carrying his sidearm at Fort Hood could have stopped the slaughter. One soldier. One.

4. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Part of PTSD is the mental anguish military personnel experience when they have done unspeakable things in war that conflicts with their moral code. How do you live with yourself when your actions caused the deaths of women and children who never did anything to deserve death? How do you cope with seeing thousands of people bombed out of their homes and turned into refugees? How do you cope with seeing your buddies blown to bits by IEDs? How do you deal with the disease, displacement and death that your very presence in a foreign country delivers? Most military personnel live through it, albeit mentally tortured. But some choose #5.

5. Suicide rates in the military. News stories about alarmingly high suicide rates in the military have been surfacing since 2001 when the US began its military adventures in Iraq. The fact that military personnel have been deployed multiple times is a giant factor. The fact that National Guard and Reservists have also been deployed to “the sandbox” multiple times is another suicide factor. Finally, soldiers see…and cause…thousands of civilian deaths in both countries. The military personnel ask “what are we doing here?” and find no answer. They can’t escape their service, can’t desert their post and hop a plane for home, find themselves 5,000 miles from home with no solutions, or are scheduled for a mandatory deployment that they cannot avoid without court martial. So, in hopelessness and despair, many kill themselves.

6. Desertion: defined in Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as “Any member of the armed forces who (1) without authority goes or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away therefrom permanently; or the abandonment of military duty without leave and without the intent to return.” Only in the military…or slavery… is a soldier “owned property,” subject to court martial, death or imprisonment for “quitting” his job. Desertion rates are up significantly since 2001, with many deserters heading to Canada or some other nation for asylum.

Major Hasan is a devout Muslim, so his story will likely be spun about Islam and terrorism. Reports say that he has expressed grave concerns about waging war against fellow Muslims. This is a legitimate concern for any devout believer.

But Hanan had other options. He could have refused the deployment for religious reasons (Conscientious Objector status), or simply the reason that he refused to obey an order he believed to be an unlawful order. Lieutenant Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq in 2006. Watada said he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes. The Army lost the initial court martial ruling, dropped the second court martial in 2008 and discharged him from the Army.

Washington’s leaders and minions set the stage for this tragedy. But don’t look to them to take any responsibility for the toxic environment that our military personnel are forced to live under. Isn’t this akin to abusing a dog over years, and then feigning surprise when the dog attacks someone? Should we not treat our fellow humans better than our pets?

Think about this. Do you believe that any military personnel, constitutionally deployed within the borders of the Unites States of America in a purely defensive status would ever have reason to react in this manner?

Does this have anything to do with state secession? Yes, it does.

Hanan’s actions are what is commonly referred to as “blowback”…the unintended consequences of government policy. Nations that don’t invade other nations don’t have these kinds of tragic events as a rule. And states that eventually secede from the US, and keep their militias within their own borders, defending the new nation from invasion, won’t have them either.

by Kurt Nimmo

In a report posted on the Wired website, Noah Shachtman mentions a CIA plan to hunt down and kill “jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state.” Shachtman cites a report produced by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University suggesting a global assassination team. “Report author and retired Lt. Col. George Crawford instead would like to see a permanent group with clear authority, training, doctrine and technology to go after these dangerous individuals,” writes Shachtman.

The National Guard has trained to take on “militias” as dangerous domestic terrorists.

Beyond the obvious illegality of such a program — executing assumed terrorists and drug dealers without the benefit of trial — the suggested murder program has another big problem. It would allow the government to define who is an enemy of the state.

The now infamous DHS report on domestic terrorism defines militias, returning veterans, and Second Amendment activists as dangerous extremists who pose a threat to the national security of the country. For several months the corporate mockingbird media has engaged in a concerted campaign to characterize “rightwing” activists as an ominous threat. Open-carry activists protesting at Obama events were characterized as a threat to the president.

In July, the Missouri National Guard trained to engage in combat with militia groups. The Kansas City-based 205th Area Support Medical Company and the Springfield-based 206th Area Support Medical Company trained to fend off attacks while performing their medical duties,” a Pentagon writer reported on June 30.

In April, the Maryland National Guard was put on alert in anticipation of Tea Party protests, revealing that the government considers constitutional activists to be “insurgents” and “militants,” Infowars reported.

In March, the United States Army Reserve Command published a Force Protection Advisory recommending “situational awareness” and “mitigation measures” in response to End the Fed protests.

On November 22, 2008, Alex Jones led a rally at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas Texas. The Dallas protest is specifically mentioned in the official Army document. Ron Paul’s brother was also in attendance. The event was monitored by the Pentagon.

On June 15, Infowars reported on a Department of Defense multiple choice test that defined constitutionally protected protests as “low-level terrorism.”

Rex 84, Operation Chaos, COINTELPRO, Garden Plot, Rose Bush, Punch Block, Steep Hill, Lantern Spike, Quiet Town, Gram Metric, Cable Splicer, and numerous other military and intelligence programs and operations have consistently characterized law-abiding Americans as terrorists and “enemies of the state.”

The CIA may kill a few patsies in the “global war on terror” in order to create the impression of a threat to the homeland. The CIA not only created, organized, and funded al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other false flag terrorist organizations, it also runs deadly drugs for the banksters on Wall Street. Carlos Lehder, Pablo Escobar, Amado Fuentes, Matta Ballesteros and Hank Rohn — these are employees for the offshore bankers that make billions laundering illegal drug money. The CIA and proxy governments may assassinate them for propaganda purposes, but they will not shut down the lucrative international drug cartel business.

The real “enemies of the state” are the American people, not African pirates and drug dealers. It remains to be seen if the government will assassinate leaders of the patriot movement in the United States.

We may be one major staged false flag terror event away from finding out, especially if such an event is attributed to American citizens.

by Kurt Nimmo

Earlier in the week, Chris Matthews attempted to portray Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers as a paranoid conspiracy nut for suggesting the presence of foreign troops in the United States.

France’s RAID or Les Hommes en Noir — the Men in Black, appropriate for a militarized police unit.

Matthews, as a supposed news anchor, should read the newswires instead of relying on his CIA Mockingbird script. But then, of course, MSNBC is not interested in reporting the news.

On October 22, two days after his disgraceful attack on the Oath Keepers, The Oakland Tribune reported on just that — foreign troops inside the United States.

“Armed officers in full battle gear will be scattered throughout the Bay Area this weekend, rescuing hostages, fighting bank robbers and quelling terrorism at the Oakland Airport, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, the NASA Ames Research Center and 22 other high profile sites,” writes Sophia Kazmi. “For the first time in the three-year history of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department-sponsored exercise, there will be a foreign team of officers taking part and international observers. An eight-member team representing the French National Police’s Research, Assistance, Intervention, and Dissuasion unit will compete” (emphasis added).

French police are technically speaking not troops. However, the French RAID unit — Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence) — is a militarized SWAT team that uses special forces techniques. It is accused of triple tapping a mentally disturbed man who took school children hostage in 1993. RAID killed the man while he slept.

It is interesting to note how terrorism is conflated with bank robbery in the article. It’s part of a federal effort to characterize all crime — from marijuana possession to bank robbery — as terrorism.

“There will be the sound of gunfire and blasts — all part of Urban Shield, one of the biggest domestic terrorism drills in the country. The $1 million, two-day event begins Saturday and will test the training of 27 crack teams from throughout the state, elsewhere in the country and the world,” the Tribune article reports.

Urban Shield is funded by the Department of Homeland Security and at least one large corporation — BAE, a death merchant based in Britain. BAE stands accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to secure contracts in Africa and Eastern Europe.

BAE’s “generous contributions” to Urban Shield will get the residents of Alameda County acclimated to the “sound of gunfire and blasts” and the presence of militarized cops “in full battle gear ” roaming the streets of the Bay Area this weekend.

by Fred, Son of Tzu

In Afghanistan, why, you might ask, is the world’s hugest, expensivest, most begadgeted military unable to defeat a few thousand angry tribesmen armed with AKs and RPGs?

Easy: Character. The men running the war are mentally the wrong ones to do it.

Think about this for a moment. Suppose that your boss at the lab or law firm or newsroom demanded that, when he entered the room, you leapt spasmodically to your feet, stood rigidly erect with your feet at a forty-five degree angle like a congenitally deformed duck, and stared straight ahead until he gave you permission to relax. You would think, correctly, that he was crazy as a bedbug. If he then required reporters to stand in a square so he could inspect their belt buckles, you would either figure he was a gay blade or call for a struggle buggy and some big orderlies. This weird posturing is not normal, nor are those it appeals to.

Suppose you showed up for freshman orientation at Princeton and your professors bellowed at the tops of their voices, three inches from your face, “Your shoes ain’t shined good, puke. Get down and give me fifty.” (Pushups, that is, which in the military doesn’t mean the better sort of bra.) You would decide that the loon had lost whatever mind he had ever had, and call Domino’s for a cheese pizza, double Haldol.

Should you be so unwary as to suggest the foregoing in print, the response will usually be that militaries need discipline. True, and so do newspapers. However, there is a distinction between discipline and ritualized lunacy. At every publication for which I have worked, the editor was clearly and absolutely in charge. Yet I, seldom senior, could say, “Yeah, Wes, but if we do that, won’t thus-and-so bad thing happen?” His decision was law, but he was happy to hear from subordinates, who might know something he didn’t. Editors do not require vaguely sadomasochistic submissiveness.

This hoopla is not of use in combat. The Taliban seem to be doing rather well. Do you suppose their commanders check their beds to be sure that a quarter will bounce from their blankets?

Now, what kind of kid wants to go for robot training at West Point or boat school at Annapolis? Statistically these kids are bright, gregarious, “motivated” (a favorite military word), athletic, perhaps Eagle Scouts. Psychologically they want (need?) to live under a regime of rigid conformity and obedience that would appear as absurd as it is if we were not accustomed seeing it among soldiers. That is, they are autoselected not to think for themselves or question decisions from above. They are exactly what universities exist not to produce.

The service academies reinforce these unfortunate characteristics. Their schooling consists of four years of learning what to think, not how to think. There are hours of running in formation (“If I die on the Russian front….”), close-order drill, manual of arms (“Hen-spection…harms!”). Why? There is no military value in being able to shift your rifle from shoulder to shoulder crisply. Like the endless inspections of everything, all of this participation in the hive inculcates groupishness and a curious sense of safety in conformity.

The effects are remarkable and, from a standpoint of civilization, undesirable. Large authoritarian organizations make easier the compartmentalization of morality. A colonel typically will be a good neighbor, civic-minded, responsible, unlikely to steal your silverware or kick your dog. If the Pentagon tells him to bomb a city he has never heard of and has no reason to bomb, killing people who pose no threat to him, he will. He feels no individual responsibility for atrocious behavior ordered from above. “I vas only followink orders,” the Nuremberg defense, is the bedrock of military ethics, if any.

Men trained in conformist obedience can work marvels. They just don’t care whether the marvel is good or evil. If you need to handle some vast natural disaster, call on the military. They have the manpower, the aircraft, the medics, the co-operation to get things done now. They will stay on their feet for forty-eight hours without sleep. They take the “mission” (another favorite military word) seriously.

What they do not do particularly well is wage war. Why? Because they have in their minds a view of war that is partly that of offensive linemen—you close with the enemy and destroy him—and partly martial romanticism. They speak of duty, honor, country, bravery, fallen comrades, proving oneself. Military history is rife with silly pageantry, nobility of spirit, glorious charges, and impracticality. Having been trained to think rigidly, they do.

Before Agincourt, there were things the French might profitably have learned about long bows, but didn’t bother because chivalry didn’t concern itself with peasants. It was the glory of the thing, not whether they were committing suicide. English generals killed 20,000 young Brits in one day at the Somme; they hadn’t compared the ideas in their heads with then-current military reality (such as that infantry charges over long distances against massed machine guns, artillery, and barbed wire are not especially productive, unless you manufacture embalming fluid.) Authoritarian group-think, love of ritual, romanticism, inattention: not a happy brew.

Further, military service encourages an often-catastrophic sense of masculine potency. Running in formation with fifty other men (“lef-rye-lef-rye-lef-rye-layeff….”) or watching a fighter cat-shot from a carrier deck—the thrill is gonadal, appealing to something deep in the male psyche, a challenge flung at life. It is wonderful, but not a sound basis for judgement.

A consequence is a tendency for militaries of the First World to gravely overestimate themselves, and thus underestimate their enemies. This is why they usually expect wars to be far shorter and cheaper than they turn out to be. As recent examples, the French did not expect those slanty-eyed little zipperheads (les jaunes) to win in Viet Nam, nor did the Pentagon have any idea they the US could possibly lose 60,000 dead and the war in that country, Iraq would be a cakewalk, and those louse-infested towel-heads in Afghanistan had no hope against American swoosh-kerpows. The US military in particular has a compulsory can-do attitude, with slogans like “The difficult we can do today, the impossible takes a bit longer.” This substitution of morale for comprehension is regularly disastrous.

Having no idea what they are getting into is almost doctrine among professional officers. A major does not become a colonel by saying, “General, the French didn’t do all that well at Dien Bien Phu. Maybe we ought to, you know, do something else. We could invade Vanuatu.”

America’s problem is not that its generals prepare for the last war, but that they don’t prepare for it, and then fight it again the same way.

by Michael Gaddy

We can all look back at the wonderful decision that was made to send more troops to Korea. If we had not, we could have been bogged down in a quagmire there that would have required 50 plus years of American lives, involvement and money. What a wonderful decision it was to send more troops to Vietnam. If we had not, we could have lost over 58,000 soldier’s lives; killed millions of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and been forced to flee the country with our tails between our legs, deserting our allies to the horrors of communist retribution. Good thing our wonderful leaders had the wisdom and courage to send “more troops.” Now we are forced with the same dilemma; send more troops or face military defeat.

The question is: why are we in Afghanistan in the first place? Now that time has erased the emotions of retaliation for the events of 9/11 and our country elected a new leader who campaigned on the principle of bringing an end to our involvement in these costly wars, why the call for more troops? Could it be we are again simply following the dictates of the power cabal as Major General Smedley Darlington Butler so eloquently outlined in his outstanding work, War is a Racket?

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of our quest for empire over the past six decades realizes that Obama’s contemplation of whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan is simply those who control him providing Obama with the opportunity to look “presidential.” The decision to send additional troops was reached prior to the situational comedy of General McChrystal’s leaked “confidential report” to the Washington Post and Obama’s National Security Advisor’s public admonishment of McChrystal’s failure to follow the chain of command. All of this is nothing but a well-rehearsed, though poorly camouflaged hoax. Additional troops will be sent to Afghanistan within a very short period of time and Obama really has no say in the matter. The question is: why?

Could it be the US-installed puppet government in Afghanistan has new suitors who represent a very real threat to the United State’s control of Afghanistan and her abundant natural resources? Is the entry of Russia and Chinese influence into Afghanistan the real reason for the need for more troops? Russia reportedly made its entry back in 2007 with the reopening of its embassy in Kabul. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Ivanov, met privately with President Karzai and offered military assistance through the Collective Security Treaty Organization. (CSTO) The CSTO is made up of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Russia is the driving force in this organization, as one might understand, due to the economic and military weakness of the other members. There were meetings with CSTO delegation in Kabul and neither the US nor the UK were invited. Were the US/UK coalition (NATO) allowed to solidify its position in Afghanistan, it would create a territorial split between Russia, China and Iran. Russia will do whatever is necessary to prevent this growth of power and influence in the region, I believe.

Moscow is certainly concerned with the Pentagon’s plan to deploy Special Operations forces into the Central Asian States to conduct “foreign internal defense missions.” This translates into increasing military activity, which is better known as the “spreading of democracy,” by military force.

NATO, following the CFR-introduced agenda, is campaigning for increased cooperation with Moscow in the region to “facilitate the fading of Russia’s lingering imperial ambitions.” These are the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, author of the NATO report. Surely, Putin will see through this smokescreen.

Russia has also cancelled all of Afghanistan’s Soviet-era debts and is moving to help Kabul rebuild the Afghan infrastructure. The increase of trade between Afghanistan and Russia, which was at the $190 million mark in 2008, is also a move to create a vision of Russia as an ally to the people of Afghanistan with the US and NATO appearing as the foreign invader.

What has prompted the governments in Moscow and Beijing to converge with the forces of NATO in Afghanistan? Is it purely a protectionist strategy or are those governments there for the same reason we initiated the war in 2001: an abundance of natural resources?

China has made its moves to secure as many of the natural resources located in Afghanistan as it can. Almost one year ago, in November of 2008, China, acting through the China Metallurgical Group Corporation and the Jiangxi Copper Company, secured the Aynak Copper Mine in Logar Province. This copper mine is reported to be the largest in the world and has been basically inoperative since the Soviet Invasion in 1979. China has agreed to a 2.9-billion dollar investment in the infrastructure of the area including a power plant and possible railroad into Pakistan. If I were an Afghan citizen, whom would I support in my country, a nation that is actually contributing to a better life or one that is indiscriminately bombing my fellow citizens?

Now, when it appears our puppet Karzai may have been influenced by a better offer from Russia, China, or both, the Obama administration, strongly supported by the neocons, is seeking to perhaps replace Karzai with a new election, suddenly proclaiming the election the US just supervised to have been corrupt. Members of both political/criminal parties now openly support the war in Afghanistan as being necessary to our national defense, with the question being, not, do we send more troops to Afghanistan to bleed and die for oil and minerals, but how many? I’m sure our influence in NATO will bring about the necessary conclusions in order to facilitate our attempt to replace our own political puppet. Karzai has obviously jumped the traces of US control by participating in meetings outside of the US political purview with China, Russia and even in this agreement, which included Iran and Pakistan. The construction of this pipeline was due to start last month. Russia and China see this new pipeline as crucial to their retention of power in the region and will make the necessary military movements to insure their investments.

Financially crippled due to our continued wars for empire and the printing of billions of new dollars to repay political cronies in the financial world has left us in a precarious position in Afghanistan. We will try to counter the financial prowess of China, to whom we owe billions and their military ties to Russia with the blood and lives of tens of thousands of new US military forces. When China calls in our financial markers, and they will if challenged, what will become of our country? We are about to escalate a war we cannot win. How long will it be before Americans care more for the lives of their children than they do for the state and refuse to participate in the madness?