Israeli agents posed as CIA to recruit terrorists. Pentagon defends plan for leaner military. WASHINGTON – Top Pentagon officials stressed Thursday that even the shrinking military they envision under President Obama's new strategy will be strong enough to take on all comers, a view not shared by some leaders on Capitol Hill.
For decades, fighting and winning two wars at once has been an underlying tenet for Pentagon planners. The strategy announced Thursday foresees a smaller Army and Marine Corps, far less appetite for wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, greater emphasis on special operations forces and intelligence-gathering, and shifting focus to China and the Pacific. The new strategy was necessitated by the need to cut military spending by at least $480 billion over the next decade and the winding down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. STORY: Obama takes flak on defense downsizing Even the downsized military will be strong enough, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Army Gen. US 'turns page on a decade of war' Obama's New Defense Plan: Drones, Spec Ops and Cyber War.
The President announced his vision for the future of the U.S. military today.
The Elite's Military Problem. Obama defense plan would end ability to fight two conventional wars at once Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP President Obama speaks during a news briefing Thursday.
WASHINGTON — Declaring that "the tide of war is receding," President Obama Thursday ordered a shift from the nation's longstanding capability to fight two major conflicts at once. The new strategy, which critics will surely brand as a retreat, calls for being able to fight one major conventional conflict while conducting numerous unconventional operations elsewhere, such as policing actions, counterterrorism and disaster relief. Obama praised the military services for its successes, including last year's completion of its mission in Iraq and the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The Pentagon must, however shed lingering and costly Cold War capabilities to live within new constraints set by Congress to cut debt and budget deficits, he said in remarks at the Pentagon briefing room.
Republican front-runner and former Massachusetts Gov. Obama sought to preempt his critics. With News Wire Services. New Pentagon strategy stresses Asia, cyber, drones. Pentagon-backed 'time cloak' stops the clock. Pentagon-supported physicists on Wednesday said they had devised a "time cloak" that briefly makes an event undetectable.
Pentagon's non-lethal weapon projects leaked - including a laser beam that 'steers enemy planes' Descriptions of the Pentagon’s very latest non-lethal weapon projects have been leaked online. Publicintelligence.org recently published the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate’s ‘Non-Lethal Weapons Reference Book’, which includes devices in use and some that have been dreamed up for the future. One of the fantasy weapon systems is a laser device fitted to a plane that can actually steer an enemy aircraft away from a restricted area – somehow. The Disarmament of America, Part 1. By Dennis L.
Cuddy, Ph.D. January 9, 2012 NewsWithViews.com Shortly after U.S. combat soldiers left Iraq, on December 22 the Associated Press reported 14 terrorist attacks in Baghdad killing 69 people, and an Al-Qaeda front group in Iraq claimed responsibility. Then on January 5, 2012, bombings targeting Shiite killed at least another 78 people, so there are growing concerns that Iraqi security forces are not up to the job. The result is that the nation could fall apart in another civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.
On December 25 in Nigeria for the second Christmas in a row, Boko Haram (some of whose members have links to Al-Qaeda) launched terrorist attacks. Air Force Will Lose Hundreds of Planes in New Pentagon Plan. Updated 4:45 p.m.
The Air Force is preparing to trim hundreds of aircraft from its aging fleet in order to meet an Obama administration austerity order. The move will strike many Air Force supporters as ironic. Because just as the fleet is set to shrink, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is getting ready to argue, at least implicitly, that the country needs it more than ever. Danger Room has learned that around 200 airplanes, mostly older models, will eventually be retired without replacement. United States the Ununited Empire.
Politics / US PoliticsDec 23, 2011 - 09:14 AM GMT By: STRATFOR The American president is the most important political leader in the world.
The reason is simple: he governs a nation whose economic and military policies shape the lives of people in every country on every continent. Human experiments: First, do harm. Image Slideshow EVOLVING ETHICS Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) were a prime concern for health officials in the 1940s, and many medical studies — including the US experiments in Guatemala — used methods that would be considered unethical today.
Although standards improved over the decades, clinical researchers continued to push the boundaries of acceptable science.Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues 1941 A 12-month-old baby in California is deliberately infected with herpes as part of an experiment. One editor objects to publishing the work, but it appears in 1942 in the Journal of Pediatrics.R. J. Green/SPL 1940s During the Second World War, the US military and Public Health Service combat STDs through an all-out campaign of research, treatment programmes and advertising.US Natl Lib. Pentagon May Oust Troops Involuntarily to Meet Reductions in Budget Plan. The Defense Department may have to force soldiers, Marines or other members of the military out of the services for the first time since the aftermath of the Cold War to achieve the spending reductions in its budget proposal.
The Pentagon plans to cut 67,100 soldiers from active and reserve Army units and the Army National Guard in the five years starting Oct. 1, as well as 15,200 from the active and reserve ranks of the Marine Corps as part of an effort to save $487 billion over a decade, according to the budget sent to Congress today.