U.S. Intel: Water a Cause for War in Coming Decades

By Matthew Lee

Washington D.C. - Drought, floods and a lack of fresh water may cause significant global instability and conflict in the coming decades, as developing countries scramble to meet demand from exploding populations while dealing with the effects of climate change, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report released Thursday.

An assessment reflecting the joint judgment of federal intelligence agencies says the risk of water issues causing wars in the next 10 years is minimal even as they create tensions within and between states and threaten to disrupt national and global food markets. But beyond 2022, it says the use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

The report is based on a classified National Intelligence Estimate on water security, which was requested by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and completed last fall. It says floods, scarce and poor quality water, combined with poverty, social tension, poor leadership and weak governments will contribute to instability that could lead the failure of numerous states.

Those elements "will likely increase the risk of instability and state failure, exacerbate regional tensions, and distract countries from working with the United States on important policy objectives," said the report, which was released at a State Department event commemorating World Water Day.

Clinton, who unveiled a new U.S. Water Partnership that aims to share American water management expertise with the rest of the world, called the findings "sobering."

"These threats are real and they do raise serious security concerns," she said.

The report noted that countries have in the past tried to resolve water issues through negotiation but said that could change as water shortages become more severe.

"We judge that as water shortages become more acute beyond the next 10 years, water in shared basins will increasingly be used as leverage; the use of water as a weapon or to further terrorist objectives, also will become more likely beyond 10 years," it said.

The report predicts that upstream nations — more powerful than their downstream neighbors due to geography — will limit access to water for political reasons and that countries will regulate internal supplies to suppress separatist movements and dissident populations.

At the same time, terrorists and rogue states may target or threaten to target water-related infrastructure like dams and reservoirs more frequently. Even if attacks do not occur or are only partially successful, the report said "the fear of massive floods or loss of water resources would alarm the public and cause governments to take costly measures to protect the water infrastructure."

The unclassified summary of the intelligence estimate does not identify the specific countries most at risk. But it notes that the study focused on several specific rivers and water basins. Those included the Nile in Egypt, Sudan and nations further south, the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq and the greater Middle East, the Mekong in China and Southeast Asia, the Jordan that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories, the Indus and the Brahmaputra in India and South Asia as well as the Amu Darya in Central Asia.

The Dirty War on WikiLeaks

By John Pilger

Worldwide - War by media, says current military doctrine, is as important as the battlefield. This is because the real enemy is the public at home, whose manipulation and deception is essential for starting an unpopular colonial war.

Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers' and viewers' consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.

To the chagrin of many in authority and the media, WikiLeaks has torn down the facade behind which rapacious Western power and journalism collude. This was an enduring taboo; the BBC could claim impartiality and expect people to believe it.

Today, war by media is increasingly understood by the public, as is the trial by media of WikiLeaks' founder and editor Julian Assange.

Assange will soon know if the supreme court in London is to allow his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual misconduct, most of which were dismissed by a senior prosecutor in Stockholm.

On bail for 16 months, tagged and effectively under house arrest, he has been charged with nothing.

His "crime" has been an epic form of investigative journalism: revealing to millions of people the lies and machinations of their politicians and officials and the barbarism of criminal war conducted in their name.

For this, as the United States historian William Blum points out, "dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for [his] execution or assassination".

If he is passed from Sweden to the US, an orange jumpsuit, shackles and a fabricated indictment await him. And there go all who dare challenge rogue America.

In Britain, Assange's trial by media has been a campaign of character assassination, often cowardly and inhuman, reeking of jealousy of the courageous outsider. Bbooks of perfidious hearsay have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or resuscitated on the assumption that he is too poor to sue.

In Sweden, this trial by media has become, according to one observer there, "a full-on mobbing campaign with the victim denied a voice".

For more than 18 months, the salacious Expressen, Sweden's equivalent of the Sun, has been fed the ingredients of a smear by Stockholm police.

Expressen is the megaphone of the Swedish right, including the Conservative party, which dominates the governing coalition. Its latest "scoop" is an unsubstantiated story about "the great WikiLeaks war against Sweden".

On March 6, Expressen claimed, with no evidence, that WikiLeaks was running a conspiracy against Sweden and its foreign minister Carl Bildt.

The political pique is understandable. In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the Swedish elite's vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as sham. (Cable title: "Sweden puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History.")

Another US diplomatic cable reveals that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] co-operation [with NATO] is not widely known", and unless kept secret "would open up the government to domestic criticism".

Swedish foreign policy is largely controlled by Bildt, whose obeisance to the US goes back to his defence of the Vietnam War and includes his leading role in George W Bush's Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

He retains close ties to Republican party extreme right-wing figures such as the disgraced Bush spin doctor, Karl Rove. It is known that his government has "informally" discussed Assange's future with Washington, which has made its position clear.

A secret Pentagon document describes US intelligence plans to destroy WikiLeaks' "centre of gravity" with "threats of exposure [and] criminal prosecution".

In much of the Swedish media, proper journalistic scepticism about the allegations against Assange is overwhelmed by a defensive jingoism, as if the nation's honour is defiled by revelations about dodgy coppers and politicians, a universal breed.

On Swedish public TV "experts" debate not the country's deepening militarist state and its service to NATO and Washington, but the state of Assange's mind and his "paranoia".

A headline in March 6's Aftonbladet declared: "Assange's moral collapse". The article suggests Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks' alleged source, may not be sane, and attacks Assange for not protecting Manning from himself.

What was not mentioned was that the source was anonymous, that no connection has been demonstrated between Assange and Manning, and that Aftonbladet, WikiLeaks' Swedish partner, had published the same leaks undeterred.

Ironically, this circus has performed under cover of some of the world's most enlightened laws protecting journalists, which attracted Assange to Sweden in 2010 to establish a base for WikiLeaks. Should his extraditionbe allowed, and with Damocles swords of malice and a vengeful Washington hanging over his head, who will protect him and provide the justice to which we all have a right?

Marine Who Ordered Haditha Attack Gets Plea Bargain

United States - The U.S. Marine who lead his squad into the infamous attack in Haditha which led to the deaths of 24 Iraqi people is getting a paltry sentence of three months, losing two-thirds of his pay, and demoted to private thanks to a plea bargain.

Despite the claims of his former platoon commander and troop members that nothing he did was wrong, the fact remains that Frank Wuterich killed more than a dozen people soon after seeing his friend killed by a bomb. Some of the dead people were women, children, and even an elderly man. None of the military members received any gunfire from those they killed. To this day the deaths, which took place a little more than six years ago, still bring the ire of many Iraqi people and was one of the main reasons Iraqi officials refused to grant immunity to U.S. troops. That refusal caused, in the end, the“withdrawal” of American troops – we still have mercenaries there – from the country, though they still are in the region.

Wuterich said during the trial he “regretted the loss of civilian lives” but still insisted what he was doing was within the rules of the military.

Even though this is one of the most famous cases against the continued occupation of Iraq, not a single member of the squad has been convicted.

Update: Frank Wuterich will not serve ANY jail time.  Instead he will only be demoted to private. For the crime of massacring 24 innocent people for no reason, nobody on that hit squad will see any punishment.

Anti-war Activist Speaks Against U.S. Treatment of Iran

Minneapolis - Anti-war activist Jess Sundin, one of several activists who were raided by the FBI in an attempt to find links between anti-war activists and groups in Colombia and the Middle East, condemned what she calls an “act of war against Iran.”

“The anti-war movement needs to take U.S. threats against Iran very seriously,” said Sundin. “Over the past several months we have seen more military deployments of U.S. forces into the Persian Gulf, a new round of U.S. sanctions - with more threatened from Europe - and the murder of Iranian scientists. The situation is looking a lot like the run-ups to the U.S. wars on Iraq. In and of themselves, the U.S. sanctions on Iran are an act of war. The sanctions are designed to harm Iran’s economy and cause human suffering on a mass scale.”


Despite the treatment she is facing from the FBI as well as a Chicago grand jury, she continues to speak out against state repression. When questioned about repression from the FBI she said “As peace activists, we need to continue to speak out against all U.S. wars and we need to condemn government repression directed against the anti-war movement, like the attack on Carlos Montes in Los Angeles. He is a veteran leader of the Chicano movement, who speaks out against U.S. intervention abroad. The government wants to put him in jail, and we say drop the charges. “People in this country can’t afford to let the government pick our ‘enemies.’ The State Department is trying to demonize Iran and pave the way towards another war. We have to speak out and say, ‘Hands off Iran.’”

Number of Americans Wounded in Iraq is Obscured by Fog of War…and Peace By Noel Brinkerhoff

Most Americans simply don’t want to think about the Iraq War anymore. But that is not an option for hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families.

 

Exactly how many U.S. troops died in Iraq is pretty well established: 4,487 dead. But determining how many U.S. personnel were wounded in the war and during the prolonged occupation that followed is much more uncertain.

 

The Department of Defense says 32,226 were hurt. But this total only includes soldiers who sustained combat-related wounds from an “external agent or cause” (i.e. getting shot or hit with shrapnel).

 

What about the men and women who came home with “invisible” wounds–brain injuries, post-traumatic stress (PTSD), depression, hearing loss, etc?

 

If those injuries are factored in, the U.S. count could soar into the hundreds of thousands, writes Dan Froomkin at Nieman Watchdog.

 

For instance, a RAND study three years ago estimated that 14% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans tested positive for PTSD, 14% for major depression and 19% for possible traumatic brain injury. Using those percentages against the 1.5 million who served in Iraq, Froomkin estimated that 200,000 could have PTSD or major depression and 285,000 may suffer from serious brain injuries.

Panetta Defends "Obama's Decision"

Of course I am paying attention to what's going on in the Occupy Movement after the fall of Occupy Wall Street, but given that just about every other blogger and news organization of merit are doing so as well, I figure my lowly self will cover another story.


Washington D.C. - President Obama's decision to take the troops out of Iraq in a few weeks was defended by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Citing the agreement between George W. Bush and Iraqi officials to get the troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, he said “The bottom line is that this is not about us, it's about what the Iraqis want to do and the decisions that they want to make and secure itself, and hopefully, make the decisions that are in the interests of its people.”

President Obama spun it a different way on October 21^st when he announced on television he is “keeping his campaign promise” to get U.S. forces out of Iraq.

However he did mention even though we are “out of Iraq” we aren't really. He and Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military will still practice counter-terrorism tactics with 10 of Iraq's forces. There is also a claim that some of them will give counter-terrorism training in the camps but not go embed themselves into Iraq's forces.

This goes to show what the end-game is for them. They will help Iraq if they get diplomatic immunity but if not the people are on their own. Chances are they're hoping Iran starts something and starts messes with it through Israel.

At least we are more than sure where Leon Panetta stands.