WHAT A JOKE

20 comments

Posted on 15th March 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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This is beyond ridiculous. Do they really think North Korea is going to attack the West Coast? Really?

So let me get this straight. Obama had to close the White House to public tours because of budget cuts but we can afford to place 14 additional anti-missile systems on the West Coast to protect against a 3rd world nation that couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a missile from 50 yards away. This country gets more surreal by the day. Have you been surviving those devastating sequestration cuts? The horror!!!!

Run for cover. The North Korean missiles are about to be launched.

Korea tensions push U.S. to up missile defenses

By Don Nissenbaum and Julian Barnes


Getty Images

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un salutes as he watches a military parade in 2012.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Pentagon is preparing to strengthen its missile-defense systems on the West Coast in response to increased threats from North Korea and rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

The U.S. plans to boost its ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska and California by one-third, adding 14 additional systems to the 30 in place on the West Coast, a senior defense official said Friday. Interceptors are vehicles that are launched to intercept intercontinental missiles in flight.

The expansion in the system was due to be announced by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at a news conference Friday.

The decision comes as North Korea has issued a series of threats to attack the U.S. and South Korea over new international sanctions and joint military exercises in the region.

Earlier this month, North Korea threatened to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the U.S. and South Korea. While American officials don’t believe North Korea is capable of launching a long-range attack, the threat is seen as a concerning sign of the nation’s state of mind.

Pentagon officials signaled the possible expansion days earlier. “North Korea’s shrill public pronouncements underscore the need for the U.S. to continue to take prudent steps to defeat any future North Korean ICBM,” James Miller, undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a speech last week at the Atlantic Council.

The administration decision comes four years after President Barack Obama put a hold on the deployment plan soon after he took office. Republican lawmakers said Friday they agreed with the enhancement, but said the administration was wrong to freeze the system in 2009.

MEDAL OF DRONER

16 comments

Posted on 14th February 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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Pentagon creates special medal for drone pilots

Published: 13 February, 2013, 22:42

Reuters / Rick Wilking

Reuters / Rick Wilking

Soon receiving military honors might be as easy as adjusting a joystick. The Pentagon is reportedly planning on awarding the pilots of remotely controlled drones.
According to official defense sources speaking with the Associated Press, future recipients of the new Distinguished Warfare Medal could include the men and women of the US military who control unmanned aerial vehicles, sometimes from thousands of miles away, in America’s accelerating drone wars.

The medal, reports the AP, “will be awarded to individuals for ‘extraordinary achievement’ related to a military operation.” Unlike other combat medals, though, winning this one wont’ require a soldier to ever step away from a control panel, let alone serve directly on the battlefield.

“The medal could go to service members who never set foot in a combat zone, but launch drone strikes or cyberattacks that can kill or disable an enemy,” the AP reports.

Rumors of an award for heroic drone pilots circulated last July, when the Washington Post caught the head of the Army Institute of Heraldry saying that the Pentagon had been briefed on a “unique concept” for a medal the celebrates UAV drivers. At the time, Charles V. Mugno of the institute said that his group had already completed six alternate designs for the medal but was waiting final approval from Pentagon. According to the AP’s latest report, though, the Defense Department has decided on the look of the item.

An analysis of recent drone attacks conducted last year by the non-profit, non-partisan New America Foundation found that the Obama administration has ordered drone strikes more than four times as frequently as during the George W. Bush White House. According to the organization’s latest analysis, US drone strikes in Pakistan have already killed as many as 58 people in only this year. A separate study from the UK’s Bureau for Investigative Journalism has concluded that those strikes under Pres. Obama have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians, despite US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s recent claim that those kills are in the single-digits.

When news of the medal first broke, journalist Glenn Greenwald, then with Salon, wrote, “Justifying drone warfare requires pretending that the act entails some sort of bravery, so the U.S. military is increasingly taking steps to create the facade of warrior courage for drone pilots.”

On his part, Pres. Obama has said the US drone program is kept on “a very tight leash” and his administration does not conduct “a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly.” Pakistani sources have claimed that US drone attacks have caused the death of around 50 civilians for every militant fatality.