[P2P-F] A Secret War in 120 Countries

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Mike, forwarding to the list,

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 10:37 AM, mike stagman <artemesium at yahoo.co.uk>wrote:

>  Hi Michel,
>
> This is an extremely important article regarding the New Fascist World
> Order.  This info really ought to get around!!!
>
> Mike
>
>
> Published on Thursday, August 4, 2011 by TomDispatch.com<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175426/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_uncovering_the_military%27s_secret_military/>
> A Secret War in 120 Countries: The Pentagon’s New Power Elite
>  by Nick Turse <http://www.commondreams.org/nick-turse>
>
> Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission.
> Now, say that 70 times and you’re done... for the day.  Without the
> knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is
> undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.  This new
> Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never
> been revealed, until now.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.
>
> After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another
> in his head<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle?currentPage=all>,
> one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly
> found* *its mission in the public spotlight.  It was atypical.  While it’s
> well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones
> of Afghanistan and Iraq<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html>,
> and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict
> zones like Yemen<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle?currentPage=all>and
> Somalia<http://www.nationinstitute.org/featuredwork/fellows/2283/the_cia%27s_secret_sites_in_somalia/?page=entire>,
> the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.
>
> Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the *Washington Post* reported<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965.html>that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from
> 60 at the end of the Bush presidency.  By the end of this year, U.S. Special
> Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will
> likely reach 120.  “We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan
> or Iraq,” he said recently.  This global presence -- in about 60% of the
> world’s nations <http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/4250.htm> and far larger
> than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new 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 U.S. service members died, U.S. 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
> specialized 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 specialized
> 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<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604239.html>suspected terrorists.  Reporting to the president and acting under his
> authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American
> citizens<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604239.html>.
> 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<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kill-capture/what-is-kill-capture/>"an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."
>
> This assassination program 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<http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/us-drones-target-two-leaders-of-somali-group-allied-with-al-qaeda/2011/06/29/AGJFxZrH_story.html?wprss=rss_national-security>,
> Pakistan, and Yemen<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/cias-drones-join-shadow-war-over-yemen/>.
> In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/04/commandos-hold-afghan-detainees-in-secret-jails/>,
> perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating
> high-value targets<http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/04/ap-secret-detention-040811/>
> .
>
> *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 $2.3
> billion to $6.3 billion.  If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and
> Afghanistan, it has actually* *more than* *quadrupled<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-07/special-operations-spending-quadruples-with-commando-demand.html>to $9.8 billion in these years.  Not surprisingly, the number of its
> personnel deployed abroad has also jumped<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-03/navy-seal-raid-on-bin-laden-reflects-tradition-of-grit-secrecy.html>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<http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/07/marine-marsoc-hejlik-grow-get-air-assets-072411w/>,
> 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<http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/07/marine-marsoc-hejlik-grow-get-air-assets-072411w/>at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington.  Long-term plans
> already call for the force to increase by 1,000.
>
> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844674517/ref=nosim/?tag=commondreams-20>During
> his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/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% to
> 5% 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 U.S 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
> industrialized nations of the global north -- were considered the key areas.
> "But the world changed over the last decade," he said<http://www.socom.mil/News/Pages/Specialoperationsunlitspaces.aspx>.
> "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,"<http://www.soc.mil/UNS/Releases/2011/February/110211-02.html>an effort to increase cultural proficiencies -- like advanced language
> training and better knowledge of local history and customs -- for overseas
> operations.  The program 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% 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 U.S. spends $50
> million a year<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-03-30-secretwar30_ST_N.htm?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d9374a3b423728e%2C0>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<http://nationalsecurityzone.org/specialops/maps/>compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of
> Journalism’s National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America’s
> 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
> authorized 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<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/in-wake-of-bin-laden-kill-congress-smooches-spec-ops/>,
> 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<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-07/special-operations-spending-quadruples-with-commando-demand.html>into people’s heads or developing stealth-like cloaking
> technologies<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/04/socom-wants-invisible-commandos/>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
> theater* *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<http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2011/03%20March/Olson%2003-01-11.pdf>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, specialized Humvees and Mine
> Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other
> state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43859070/ns/technology_and_science-future_of_technology/>),
> 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<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174824/%20chalmers_johnson_agency_of_rogue>,"
> 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<http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-laden-killed/story?id=13505703>,
> low-level targeted killings<http://www.nationinstitute.org/featuredwork/fellows/2283/the_cia%27s_secret_sites_in_somalia/?page=entire>,
> capture/kidnap operations<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/floating-gitmo/#more-50999>,
> kick-down-the-door night raids<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/24/us-afghanistan-raids-idUSTRE71N15U20110224>,
> joint operations with foreign forces<http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/06/28/world/middleeast/20110629-IRAQ-7.html>,
> 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<http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/seal-spotting-becomes-local-sport-in-virginia-beach-after-navy-commandos-return-from-bin-laden-raid/2011/05/10/AFhWdI1G_story.html>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<http://aspensecurityforum.org/>,
> Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information,
> too, claiming<http://www.aspeninstitute.org/video/admiral-eric-olson-aspen-security-forum>that U.S. 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 emphasized, U.S.
> 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 America’s 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.”
>
> *This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.
> *
> © 2011 Nick Turse
>  [image: Nick Turse] <http://www.commondreams.org/nick-turse>
>
> Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The
> Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805078967/ref=nosim/?tag=commondreams-20>and The
> Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844674517/ref=nosim/?tag=commondreams-20>.
> Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His
> website is Nick Turse.com <http://www.nickturse.com/>. You can follow him
> on Twitter @NickTurse <http://twitter.com/NickTurse>, on Tumblr<http://nickturse.tumblr.com/>,
> and on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/nick.turse>.
>
> *To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the *
> *latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.*<https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:43308/acctId:25612>
>



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