Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

WW4 Report
November 11, 2009

While the US Embassy in Bogotá says the new agreement for expanded US access to Colombian military bases enters into force immediately, a Colombian court ruling finds the agreement is “broad and unbalanced” in favor of the United States and not based on any previous treaty, so therefore must be reviewed by Colombia’s Congress and Constitutional Court. The agreement puts no limits on the number of US personnel to be deployed in Colombia nor on the number of military bases they will use.

The Colombian State Council, a court created to issue opinions on the presence of foreign troops, stated in its ruling Oct. 13 that the agreement gives the US the power to decide what operations will occur, gives immunity to US troops, allows access to bases beyond the seven named in the agreement’s text, and defers the most important questions about military operations to future “operational agreements.”

The Council reviewed 15 prior treaties and declarations cited by the Colombian government as the foundation for the current base agreement, and found that none of them offer a basis for the current agreement on stationing of military troops and use of military bases. It concludes that the agreement is a treaty, and so must be approved by the Colombian Congress and reviewed by the constitutional court. Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez, in signing the deal, said the government would bypass legislative approval of the agreement.

Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro Nov. 4 called on the government to renounce the pact. Petro asserted, “because it didn’t go through Congress, the pact is ineffectual, and any occupation by [US] soldiers in Colombia is illegal.”

In addition, 27 European non-governmental organizations called on President Barack Obama to reconsider the agreement, and urged him to prioritize human rights in US relations with Colombia. “The militarization of Colombia,” the groups wrote, “will lead to an increase in internal destabilization, will involve even more of the civilian population in the war, increasing the violations of human rights and strengthening the resurgence of the paramilitary groups and the receding guerrilla groups.” …

www.ww4report.com/node/7923

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ABC: Radio Australia
November 9, 2009

The US President, Barack Obama heads off on his Asian tour this week, and he’ll fly straight into a storm in Japan about American military bases.

Tens of thousands of Japanese have rallied on the main island of Okinawa to protest against a controversial US base, putting strain on one of Washington’s key defence and security alliances. The new centre-left government in Tokyo says the issue will not be resolved before President Obama lands in Japan later this week.

Listen to this archived report on Radio Australia

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The Wall Street Journal
By Yochi J. Dreazen
November 6, 2009

Fort Hood, the base stricken in Thursday’s shooting rampage, is the largest U.S. military facility in the world — and a base that has a large share of the military’s overall instances of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.

Army officials say that roughly 30,000 troops are stationed at the sprawling facility north of the Texas capital of Austin, while an additional 20,000 troops from the base are deployed to Iraq. Tens of thousands of military spouses and children live on the base and in adjacent suburbs. …

Since the start of the Afghan war in 2001, the base has lost hundreds of soldiers in combat. More alarmingly to many senior commanders there, the base has also lost at least 75 of its soldiers to suicide, one of the heaviest such tolls in the U.S. military. …

The base’s former commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, used his tenure at the helm of the sprawling post to mount a broad campaign to reduce the incidence of PTSD and suicide among the soldiers on the post. …

Despite the efforts, however, Fort Hood continues to be hit hard by suicide, PTSD and other related problems. Through October, 10 Fort Hood soldiers had taken their lives in 2009, the second-highest tally in the Army behind Kentucky’s Fort Campbell, which had 16 suicides.

In full at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125747341095832795.html

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The New York Times
By Elisabeth Bumiller
November 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top military officer said Wednesday that he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though President Obama has pledged to end the Bush administration practice of paying for the conflicts with so-called supplemental funds that are outside the normal Defense Department budget.

The financing would be on top of the $130 billion that Congress authorized for the wars just last month.

Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the House appropriations defense subcommittee, cited $40 billion last week as a hypothetical amount for the supplemental financing request. The number represented a standard calculation of $1 billion for every 1,000 troops deployed. …

Mr. Obama did include the $130 billion for the wars as part of his regular $668 billion defense budget this year, the first time that has happened since 2001. President George W. Bush regularly financed the wars with emergency requests that usually came after the Pentagon budget was introduced. …

www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/05military.html?_r=4&ref=world

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All Headline News
October 31, 2009
By Windsor Genova

Bogota, Colombia (AHN) – The Colombian and U.S. government signed a pact Friday that will allow American soldiers to station in the Latin American country’s seven military bases.

Colombian officials led by Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez, Defense Minister Gabriel Silva and Interior and Justice Minister Fabio Valencia Cossio as well as U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield signed the pact in Bogota, Colombia’s capital.

Under the deal, the troops will fight terrorists, drug traffickers and Colombian rebels to secure both countries.

The U.S. have the same arrangement with El Salvador and Aruba-Curacao. Other troops were stationed in a U.S. base in Ecuador but the facility was shut down a few months ago.

Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016858082#ixzz0VhAhhVIx

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foreignpolicy.com
October 28, 2009

President Obama today nominated of Philip Coyle, a leading critic of Bush administration missile defense schemes, to be a top White House scientific advisor.

Coyle, who was the head weapons tester at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, was nominated to become the Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. There he will lead a team tasked with giving scientific advice to Obama on a range of national security issues and will report to Director John Holdren.

Since his last tour at the Pentagon, Coyle has been a leading analyst on weapons systems for the Center for Defense Information, a component of the World Security Institute, a defense-minded think thank. From that perch, he’s been actively involved in several of the national security debates involving advanced technology and a staunch watchdog on the missile defense system the Bush administration rushed to deploy throughout its tenure.

Coyle has often pointed out that the testing done by the Pentagon on ballistic missile defense components since 2001 has been either shoddy or thin. Moreover, he has repeatedly questioned the basic rationale for investing billions to deploy ballistic missile defense around the world, especially in Eastern Europe.

“In my view, Iran is not so suicidal as to attack Europe or the United States with missiles,” he testified before the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee in February, “But if you believe that Iran is bound and determined to attack Europe or America, no matter what, then I think you also have to assume that Iran would do whatever it takes to overwhelm our missile defenses, including using decoys to fool the defenses, launching stealthy warheads, and launching many missiles, not just one or two.”

Coyle has often argued that the Bush administration rushed to deploy missile defense systems around the world to build momentum and keep money flowing into the program. He has repeatedly said that the Missile Defense Agency has been amassing hardware that is either not aligned with the threat or can’t be relied on in case of an actual emergency.

Over $120 billion has been spent on ballistic missile defense since its inception during the Reagan administration. …

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/28/obama_chooses_leading_missile_defense_critic_for_advisory_post

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tothecenter.com
October 24 2009

Following a report by Japan’s Asahi newspaper, it seems that the odds are improving for Japan’s newly christened left-leaning government to approve the movement of a US military base, Reuters reported.

The movement would combine the facility, currently located in the southernmost part of Okinawa, with other military facilities in the area, allowing for realignment and reaffirming US-Japanese relations. Ideally, the plan is to close the helicopter airfield and minimize or eliminate troop deployments entirely.

Futenma, the base in question, is actually located in the certain of a major urban area of the region. A series of incidents, including plane and helicopter crashes as well as violent crime stemming from US personnel, have prompted much civil unrest in the area.

Some of the farther left-leaning factions in the Japanese government, including the ruling Democratic Party’s primary coalition partner, have instead called for the base to be moved off the island entirely, suggesting that the base is one of the primary reason that Okinawa is so far behind, economically speaking, from the rest of the country.

http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=11589

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By yahyasheikho786

AFRICOM…..Establishments in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other African nations, the US will gradually establish a network of military bases to cover the entire continent« Niqnaq

Oct 1 marked the one-year anniversary of the activation of the first US overseas military command in a quarter of a century, Africa Command. AFRICOM was established as a temporary command under the wing of US European Command a year earlier and launched as an independent entity on Oct 1 2008. Its creation signalled several important milestones in plans by the US and its NATO allies to expand into all corners of the earth and to achieve military, political and economic hegemony in the Southern as well as the Northern Hemisphere. AFRICOM is the first US regional military command established outside of North America in the post-Cold War era. The Pentagon set up Northern Command in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks to take in the US, Canada and Mexico. Its area of responsibility includes more nations than any other US military command: 53.

http://yahyasheikho786.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/africom-establishments-in-tunisia-morocco-algeria-and-other-african-nations-the-us-will-gradually-establish-a-network-of-military-bases-to-cover-the-entire-continent%C2%AB-niqnaq/

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PRESS TV
October 18, 2009

While Washington is weighing its options on sending more troops to Afghanistan, the US army is spending billions of dollars on upgrading its bases in the war-torn country.

The Washington Post said on Sunday that the US military has wanted to spend 1.3 billion dollars on more than one-hundred military projects across Afghanistan.

Based on the report, 30 million dollars of the money will be spent on the main US base located near the northern Afghan city of Bagram.

The move is aimed at ensuring that Afghanistan’s infrastructure can support US and NATO forces for years to come.

The US military has already spent roughly 2.7 billion dollars on construction in the last three years.

This comes as Washington says it closed its 2009 fiscal year with a record 1.4 trillion dollar budget deficit.

The report comes as US President Barack Obama is weighing a request for the deployment of an additional 40,000 troops in Afghanistan.

www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=109029&sectionid=351020403

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RIA Novosti
October 21

Prague expects the U.S. to present new specific U.S. missile defense proposals, Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Tomas Pojar has told RIA Novosti.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced in September that Washington was scrapping the Bush administration’s plans for a missile shield in Central Europe due to a re-assessment of the threat from Iran. The missile shield would have seen the deployment of a radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland. Russia had fiercely opposed the plans as a national security threat.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is expected to present the Obama administration’s new missile defense proposals to Czech Republic during his visit to the country later this week.

“The U.S. delegation has already presented new modified missile defense architecture on September 17 in Prague. We said we were ready to further negotiate on the issue and are ready to take part in establishing a new modified missile defense system,” Pojar said.

The Czech leadership “expects the U.S. to put forward specific proposals: we expect the Americans to give us their own perspective of further cooperation with Prague,” he said.

“As soon as the Czech Republic receives these proposals, we would undoubtedly begin studying them. We have not yet received… such specific proposals from Washington,” the diplomat went on.

He added that his country was in favor of close cooperation with Russia on missile defense.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20091021/156536893.html

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