{"id":28755,"date":"2013-05-20T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=28755"},"modified":"2015-05-06T12:53:05","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T11:53:05","slug":"u-s-currently-fighting-74-different-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/05\/u-s-currently-fighting-74-different-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Currently Fighting 74 Different Wars \u2026 That It Will Publicly Admit"},"content":{"rendered":"

And Many More Covert Wars Without Congressional Oversight \u2026 Let Alone Public Knowledge<\/em><\/p>\n

Fire Dog Lake\u2019s Kevin Gosztola notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Linda J. Bilmes and Michael D. Intriligator, ask in a recent paper<\/a>, \u201cHow many wars is the US fighting today?\u201d<\/p>\n

Today US military operations are involved in scores of countries across all the five continents. The US military is the world\u2019s largest landlord<\/strong>, with significant military facilities in nations around the world, and with a significant presence in Bahrain, Djibouti,Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan<\/strong>, in addition to long-established bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the UK<\/strong>.\u00a0 Some of these are vast, such as the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, which has recently been expanded to accommodate up to 10,000 troops and 120 aircraft.<\/p>\n

Citing a page at US Central Command\u2019s (CENTCOM) website, they highlight the \u201careas of responsibility\u201d publicly listed:<\/p>\n

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) is active in 20 countries across the Middle Eastern region, and is actively ramping-up military training, counterterrorism programs, logistical support, and funding to the military in various nations. At this point, the US has some kind of military presence in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, and Yemen<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

US Africa Command (AFRICOM), according to the paper, \u201csupports military-to-military relationships with 54 African nations<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Gosztola points out that the U.S. military is also conducting operations of one kind or another in Syrian, Jordan, South Sudan, Kosovo, Libya, Yemen, the Congo, Uganda, Mali, Niger and other countries.]<\/p>\n

Altogether, that makes 74 nations where the US is fighting or \u201chelping\u201d<\/strong> some force in some proxy struggle that has been deemed beneficial by the nation\u2019s masters of war.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides an accounting<\/a> of all the\u00a0publicly\u00a0<\/em>acknowledged deployments of US military forces<\/p>\n

But those are just the public<\/i><\/strong> operations.<\/p>\n

Gosztola notes that the covert operations are uncountable:<\/p>\n

Beyond that, there are Special Operations forces in countries. Jeremy Scahill in\u00a0Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, writes, \u201cBy mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Scahill also reports, based on his own \u201cwell-placed special operations sources\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u2026[A]mong the countries where [Joint Special Operations Command] teams had been deployed under the Obama administration were: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Baluchistan) and the Philippines<\/strong>. These teams also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain<\/strong>. JSOC was also supporting US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n

Since President Barack Obama has been willing to give the go ahead to operations that President George W. Bush would not have approved<\/strong>, operations have been much more aggressive and, presumably, JSOC has been able to fan out and work in way more countries than ever expected.<\/p>\n

Global assassinations have been embraced by the current administration, opening the door to night raids, drone strikes, missile attacks where cluster bombs are used<\/strong>, etc. Each of these operations, as witnessed or experienced by the civilian populations of countries, potentially inflame and increase the number of areas in the world where there are conflict zones.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The world is literally a battlefield with conflicts being waged by the US (or with the \u201chelp\u201d of the US). And, no country is off-limits to US military forces.<\/p>\n

Of course, JSOC is not accountable to Congress \u2026 let alone the public<\/a>:<\/p>\n

JSOC operates outside the confines of the traditional military and even beyond what the CIA is able to do.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

But it goes well beyond the war zones. In concert with the Executive\u2019s new claims on extra-judicial assassinations via drone strikes, even if the target is an American citizen, JSOC goes around the world murdering suspects without the oversight of a judge or, god forbid, granting those unfortunate souls the right to defend themselves in court against secret, evidence-less government decrees about their guilt. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh said at a speaking event in 2009:<\/p>\n

Congress has no oversight of it.\u00a0It\u2019s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it\u2019s been going on and on and on.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

There are legal restrictions on what the CIA can do in terms of covert operations. There has to be a finding, the president has to notify at least the \u201cGang of Eight\u201d [leaders of the intelligence oversight committees] in Congress. JSOC doesn\u2019t have to do any of that. There is very little accountability for their actions. What\u2019s weird is that many in congress who\u2019d be very sensitive to CIA operations almost treat JSOC as an entity that doesn\u2019t have to submit to oversight. It\u2019s almost like this is the president\u2019s private army<\/strong>, we\u2019ll let the president do what he needs to do.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 washingtonsblog.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And Many More Covert Wars Without Congressional Oversight \u2026 Let Alone Public Knowledge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}