On The Road To Armageddon

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Robert Singer:

For the last three days the most popular article on OpedNews, a tough progressive website, has been The Road to Armageddon:

“Inside the Beltway” report, “Explosive News,” about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.

By the Honorable Paul Craig Roberts, scholar, academic, journalist and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration.

The Road to Armageddon is a wildly popular story about the most popular story on the Washington Times website.

Roberts was surprised that the news report on “How did three World Trade Center skyscrapers suddenly disintegrate into fine dust?” was treated seriously.

Why is Paul Craig Roberts, and The Washington Times, a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression, reporting:

“A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7,”

This is information deliberately announced publicly or leaked by a government or an intelligence agency to sow confusion and undermine credibility.

Let’s get real, what are these stories doing in the mainstream media 8½ years after the September 11 attacks?

Answer: They promote the erroneous controlled demolition theory on the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Former President George W. Bush’s comment, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories” aired on national television after the attacks of 9/11.

Google “9/11 conspiracy and you get 134,000,000 results.

Google “9/11 outrageous conspiracy you get 556,000 results.

There is a 9/11-truth movement in every major city in the United States.

9/11 conspiracy theories are allowed and even encouraged.

The 9/11 Truth Movement is the Cover for a Metaphysical Catechism (Test)

I’ll get right to the point, I have read the books and watched the documentaries on September 11 for three years and the 9/11 official story:

Nineteen fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, crash airplanes into steel skyscrapers because they “hate our freedom to consume”. Inexplicably the jet fuel, which is basically kerosene that burns at about 400c, took on the qualities of an explosive demolition agent, vaporizing 70 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke and causing 110-story buildings to collapse into a pile of rubble.

Is so stupid that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t really expect you to believe it.

A jet fuel fire brought down two of the tallest buildings in the world: Improbable, to say the least. [1]

Millions believe a LIHOP (Let it Happen on Purpose) version thanks to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, because their brain tells them the U.S. government killed 3,000 American citizens to pass the Patriot Act, build up the military and invade Afghanistan and Iraq. [2]

Everyone else, after you point out the obvious (110 stories of steel and concrete collapsing at free fall speed), thinks about it for a New York Second and realizes the official story is ridiculous and couldn’t be true.

Then, they come to the false conclusion it was a MIHOP (Made it Happen on Purpose): Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons killed 3,000 Americans so they could pass the Patriot Act, build up the military and invade Afghanistan and Iraq, an inside job.
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VIDEO: Will US-NATO Start World War III by Attacking Iran?

A UN nuclear watchdog report suggests Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb, apparently confirming long-held suspicions in the West. But Tehran denies the claims, again insisting that its atomic intentions are peaceful.

Michel Chossudovsky, who’s from an independent Canadian policy research group, believes that what Iran says hardly matters, because the U.S. is planning for war.

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House Of Rothschild: No One Can Understand What Has Happened To The Planet Without Reading This

The History Of The House Of Rothschild

By Andrew Hitchcock


The Rothschilds have been in control of the world for a very long time, their tentacles reaching into many aspects of our daily lives, as is documented in the following timeline. However, before you jump to the timeline, please read this invaluable introduction which will tell you who the Rothschilds are as oppose to who they claim to be. The Rothschilds claim that they are Jewish, when in fact they are Khazars. They are from a country called Khazaria, which occupied the land locked between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which is now predominantly occupied by Georgia. The reason the Rothschilds claim to be Jewish is that the Khazars under the instruction of the King, converted to the Jewish faith in 740 A.D., but of course that did not include converting their Asiatic Mongolian genes to the genes of the Jewish people.

You will find that approximately 90% of people in the world today who call themselves Jews are actually Khazars, or as they like to be known, Ashkenazi Jews. These people knowingly lie to the world with their claims that the land of Israel is theirs by birthright, when in actual fact their real homeland is over 800 miles away in Georgia.

So, next time you hear an Israeli Prime Minister bleating about the so- called persecution of the Jews, consider this, every Prime Minister of Israel has been an Ashkenazi Jew. Therefore when all these Prime Ministers have curried favour with the West for their re-establishment of a Jewish homeland, they have knowingly and deliberately lied to you, as they were never from that region, and they well know it, because it is they who call themselves Ashkenazi Jews.

The Book of Revelation, Chapter 2, Verse 9, states the following which would appear to be about these Ashkenazi Jews:

“I know thy works, and tribulation and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, butare the synagogue of Satan.” The most wealthy bloodline in the world bar none and the leader of the Ashkenazi Jews in the world today is the Rothschild family. As you will see in the timeline, the Rothschilds have obtained this position through lies, manipulation and murder. Their bloodline also extends into the Royal Families of Europe, and the following family names: Astor; Bundy; Collins; duPont; Freeman; Kennedy; Morgan; Oppenheimer; Rockefeller; Sassoon; Schiff; Taft; and Van Duyn. However, these are not the only bloodlines to worry about. You are probably aware of the centuries old pratice undertaken by many Ashkenazi Jews whereby they would change their name, in order for them to appear part of the dominant race of the country in which they lived, so as they could obtain influential positions in that country, which they would then exploit to serve their real masters elsewhere. There is plenty of evidence to prove the Rothschilds continue that deceptive tradition.

Furthermore the Rothschilds are known to sire many children secretly that they can put into positions of power when required. This started with the very first man who took the name Rothschild, who had a secret sixth son. Finally, remember the world is a diverse place, I could if I wanted change my name to Rothschild, or any of the names listed above, and that would not make me part of this family anymore than converting to Judaism in 740 A.D. will make these Ashkenazis Jewish.

Please, therefore, do not automatically assume someone you see with the name Rothschild or any of the names listed above are part of the Rothschild criminal network. Furthermore and most importantly, the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are innocent and not part of this network. Check the facts out for yourself first, this article is designed to inform people who the enemy is, not single out people of a particular race or people with a particular surname, who may have nothing to do with this Rothschild criminal network.

1743: Mayer Amschel Bauer, an Ashkenazi Jew, is born in Frankfurt, Germany, the son of Moses Amschel Bauer, a money lender and the proprietor of a counting house.

Moses Amschel Bauer places a red sign above the entrance door to his counting house. This sign is a red hexagram (which geometrically and numerically translates into the number 666) which under Rothschild instruction will end up on the Israeli flag some two centuries later.

1753: Gutle Schnaper, an Ashkenazi Jew (future wife of Mayer Amschel Bauer), born to respected merchant, Wolf Salomon Schnaper.

1760: During this decade Mayer Amschel Bauer works for a bank owned by the Oppenheimers’ in Hanover, Germany. He is highly successful and becomes a junior partner. Whilst working at the bank he becomes acquainted with General von Estorff.

Following his father’s death, Bauer returns to Frankfurt to take over his father’s business. Bauer recognises the significance of the red hexagram and changes his name from Bauer to Rothschild, after the red hexagram or sign signifying 666 hanging over the entrance door (“Rot,” is German for, “Red,” “Schild,” is German for, “Sign”).

Now Mayer Amschel Rothschild, he discovers that General von Estorff is now attached to the court of Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau, one of the richest royal houses in Europe, which gained its’ wealth by the hiring out of Hessian soldiers to foreign countries for vast profits (a practice that continues today in the form of exporting, “peacekeeping,” troops throughout the world).

He therefore makes the General’s re-acquaintance on the pretext of selling him valuable coins and trinkets at discounted prices. As he plans, Rothschild is subsequently introduced to Prince William himself who is more than pleased with discounted prices he charges for his rare coins and trinkets, and Rothschild offers him a bonus for any other business the Prince can direct his way.

Rothschild subsequently becomes close associates with Prince William, and ends up doing business with him and members of the court. He soon discovers that loaning money to governments and royalty is more profitable than loaning to individuals, as the loans are bigger and are secured by the nation’s taxes.

1769: Mayer Amschel Rothschild is given permission by Prince William to hang a sign on the front of his business premises declaring that he is, “M. A. Rothschild, by appointment court factor to his serene highness, Prince William of Hanau.”

1770: Mayer Amschel Rothschild draws up plans for the creation of the Illuminati and entrusts Ashkenazi Jew, Adam Weishaupt, a Crypto-Jew who was outwardly Roman Catholic, with its organization and development. The Illuminati is to be based upon the teachings of the Talmud, which is in turn, the teachings of Rabbinical Jews. It was to be called the Illuminati as this is a Luciferian term which means, keepers of the light.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild marries Gutle Schnaper.

1773: Amschel Mayer Rothschild born, the first of Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s sons. He like all his brothers who follow him, will enter the family business at the age of 12.

1774: Salomon Mayer Rothschild born.

1776: Adam Weishaupt officially completes his organisation of the Illuminati on May 1 of this year. The purpose of the Illuminati is to divide the goyim (all non-Jews) through political, economic, social, and religious means. The opposing sides were to be armed and incidents were to be provided in order for them to: fight amongst themselves; destroy national governments; destroy religious institutions; and eventually destroy each other.

Weishaupt soon infiltrates the Continental Order of Freemasons with this Illuminati doctrine and establishes lodges of the Grand Orient to be their secret headquarters. This was all under the orders and finance of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and the concept has spread and is followed within Masonic Lodges worldwide to the present day.

Weishaupt also recruits 2,000 paid followers including the most intelligent men in the field of arts and letters, education, science, finance,and industry. They were instructed to follow the following methods in order to control people.

1) Use monetary and sex bribery to obtain control of men already in high places, in the various levels of all governments and other fields of endeavour. Once influential persons had fallen for the lies, deceits, and temptations of the Illuminati they were to be held in bondage by application of political and other forms of blackmail, threats of financial ruin, public exposure, and fiscal harm, even death to themselves and loved members of their families.

2) The faculties of colleges and universities were to cultivate students possessing exceptional mental ability belonging to well-bred families with international leanings, and recommend them for special training in internationalism, or rather the notion that only a one- world government can put an end to recurring wars and strife. Such training was to be provided by granting scholarships to those selected by the Illuminati. Read more of this post

The Next Possible Global Conflict

We have a nuclear armed Israel itching to attack Iran. We have Iran engaged in a defense pact with Syria against Israel. We have Syria with Russian navy bases and weapons on its soil, and we have the U.S. rampaging through the Middle East encroaching on the borders of Pakistan and Yemen, essentially pissing off everyone. What we have is a Globalist made recipe for disaster, using the same ingredients they have used for the last several major wars.

By Giordano Bruno: World War III is the most iconic event in American culture that never happened. Since the early 1950’s, generations have been preparing for it, writing books about it, producing films and fictional accounts on it, and even playing video games based on it. The concept of another world war is so ingrained into our popular consciousness that it has become almost mythological. It is a legend, a fantasy story of something far away and incomprehensible, often associated with Tim Lahaye novels and action adventure narratives of religious prophecy and Armageddon. World War III has become “entertainment.”

The cartoon-ization of a “last great global conflict” is due to a natural tendency of human beings to cope with terrifying ideas, often by intellectually trivializing them, and thereby making them easily digestible, much like the proverbial public speaking tactic of imagining the audience with their clothes off.

The problem with this development in our society is that it causes us to become cynical to the point of idiocy when confronted with very real threats. By convincing ourselves that such an event is an impossibility we leave ourselves unguarded and without a conceptual point of reference, because we have not thought about the scenario in a practical levelheaded manner. This is akin to a man who has never even considered the likelihood of being mugged on the street, versus a man who has trained in self defense for just such a situation. When the event occurs, the two men will have totally different psychological reactions; the first man utterly surprised and out of his element with little to no constructive response, and the latter man far less mentally phased and thus more likely to survive.

With this fact in mind, we will endeavor to explore recent world events, along with international agreements and tensions, and how they could be used by Global Elites to trigger a war reaching around the planet.

Most Wars Happen To The Benefit Of Globalists


Elites often attempt to paint a pretty picture, a glossy flower filled love-fest, when it comes to the creation of World Government. The truth however has been and always will be that the road to globalization is paved with the death of innocents and civilizations. Every movement towards the formation of centralized global government has been preceded by unthinkable destruction. This may seem futile and horribly regressive to us, but to Globalists, war is a highly effective and useful tool.

Conflict on a massive scale creates an atmosphere of tension and terror, giving the average man, even men who are nowhere near danger, a sort of perpetual tunnel vision. World War has the ability to trigger the “fight or flight” psychological response and sustain it in an entire society over long periods of time. Maintaining such a mental state in a human being can cause severe exhaustion and emotional imbalance. Imagine the process of interrogation and torture used on a prisoner in places such as Guantanamo Bay, then, apply that to an entire nation of people. War breaks down our psychological defenses as a society, and makes us vulnerable to suggestion.

By creating war, Globalists change not only the political landscape of nations, but also the emotional and rational checks and balances of every individual who has not prepared himself to handle the pressures of fear. In this way, people can be made to forget how things were before, and accept a new world, a world designed around the corrupt appetites of elite minorities, if only to make the fear stop.

I often hear arguments that war is simply a product of temporary mass insanity. That it is often a “blunder,” an “oversight.” Make no mistake, governments and the power brokers behind them WANT war. Indeed, they commonly design wars that never would have happened without their help. Here are only a few of the many examples:

The Spanish American War:

The Spanish American war was one of the first to be a wholly media driven event, created out of thin air and forced on the American public. Elites in Washington, including Theodore Roosevelt, wanted to move the U.S. into an expansionist policy and the realm of empire building. Most American citizen wanted nothing to do with expansionism. Our country had been built in opposition to empires after all. Enter William Randolph Hearst; newspaper mogul and elitist. Hearst papers across the country went on a tabloid spree, reporting on battles between the Spanish government and Cuban guerrilla fighters that were not actually happening, along with exaggerated dramatizations of Spanish government mistreatment of civilians. Of course, the Spanish were certainly not treating the Cuban people well, but the fact that Hearst made stories up in order to paint a grave picture with which to manipulate Americans at home is what is important here.

Upon his arrival in Cuba, Hearst correspondent Fredrick Remington cabled to Hearst: “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst reportedly replied: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

Hearst’s propaganda though was not quite enough to make the people want to forcefully overtake another country or adopt expansionism. So, on February 15, 1898, an explosion was set on the USS Maine off the coast of Havana, Cuba. 260 out of 355 sailors lost their lives, though strangely, only two ranked as officers were killed. Hearst papers went into overdrive claiming the Spanish had sunk her with a mine or torpedo, and the pretext for war in Cuba was established. Ever since, the U.S. has held an ever more prominent policy of expansionism and empire building.

Interestingly, recent studies, including those of National Geographic, show that the debris from the Maine explosion pointed outward, indicating an explosion from INSIDE the ship, not outside. The government still maintains that this must have been “accidental”:

http://loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf

World War I:

The beginning of WW I is often blamed on a “mindlessly mechanical series of events,” but this is simply nonsense. The embroilment of America in the affairs of Europe was carefully orchestrated and far from accidental.

Norman Dodd, former director of the Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations of the U.S. House of Representatives, testified that the Committee was invited to study the minutes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the Committee’s investigation. The Committee stated: “The trustees of the Foundation brought up a single question. If it is desirable to alter the life of an entire people, is there any means more efficient than war…. They discussed this question… for a year and came up with an answer: There are no known means more efficient than war, assuming the objective is altering the life of an entire people. That leads them to a question: How do we involve the United States in a war. This is in 1909.”

http://www.threeworldwars.com/world-war-1/ww1.htm

Once again, Americans had no interest in expansionism or fighting wars along side Monarchies that we with good reason despised. The key to how we were fooled once again into going against our better instincts lay in the sinking of yet another ship; the Lusitania.

The Lusitania was attacked by a German U-boat and sunk on May 7, 1915, killing 1198 passengers and was later used as a pretext for drawing the U.S. into WWI; this is the commonly held view taught in every high school history class. The problem is that it is only half the story. What it does not mention is the fact that the British goaded the Germans into the attack.

In that era, there still existed “rules of war,” one of which was the expectation that German U-boats should surface before destroying any merchant vessel and allow the passengers to flee the ship. The Germans adhered to this standard until the British began arming merchant ships and ordering them to fly the colors of neutral countries. They were then to sink any U-boat that surfaced to deliver a warning. The good faith of the understanding was ruined, and the Germans decided it was safer to sink the ships without warning and be done with it.

The British also began smuggling arms and explosives using regular merchant ships as cover, making them participants in the war, and therefore targets. The Lusitania was no exception.

When the Lusitania was hit by a German torpedo, the initial explosion was certainly destructive, but not as destructive as the massive secondary explosion passengers witnessed as they were fleeing the scene, which ripped the ship apart. For decades the U.S. and British governments denied that the Lusitania was carrying arms, until divers exploring the wreckage discovered cases of nearly 4 million rounds of ammo! Meaning according to the articles of war, the Lusitania was in fact classified as a combatant, not a non-threatening ocean liner:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1098904/Secret-Lusitania-Arms-challenges-Allied-claims-solely-passenger-ship.html

The most shocking element to this engineered disaster however was the fact the U.S. and British governments were well aware that the ship would be attacked, and ALLOWED it to occur.

The German Embassy took out ads in 50 U.S. newspapers warning that the Lusitania could be made a target. The U.S. State Department in turn contacted each of the newspapers and in a threatening fashion suggested that they refrain from printing the ad. A small portion of the newspapers ignored the State Department and printed anyway, but most of the passengers of the Lusitania never saw it.

Finally, and most importantly, is a fascinating discussion from the book “The Intimate Papers of Colonel House,” between House; an advisor (some would say puppeteer) to Woodrow Wilson, and Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary of England before the attack on the Lusitania occurred. The coldness of the exchange is haunting:

Grey: “What will America do if the Germans sink an ocean liner with American passengers on board?”

House: “I believe that a flame of indignation would sweep the United States and that by itself would be sufficient to carry us into the war.”

World War II:

World War II was perhaps the first war in which Globalists created an enemy completely from scratch. That’s right; the Nazis were organized and funded by Elites from across the world, including those here in America.

Hitler himself was considered a joke among Germans when he first began his tirades for an “Aryan Empire,” and was shrugged off by the mainstream as a lunatic. But Germany was also in the middle of the worst economic collapse in recent memory, and when Hitler gained support from the Thule Society, a Freemason-like secret society in Europe, and also began receiving investment from Wall Street interests, including the Rockefeller family, the German people started taking notice. Hitler’s new aristocratic friends could bring to Germany what the people desperately wanted; jobs and cold hard cash.

The collusion between the Rockefellers and the Nazis is well documented, and was first exposed by the discovery of the Von Knieriem Documents during the Nuremberg Trials. The documents outline how the Rockefellers, through their company Standard Oil, supplied investment, as well as secret fuel technology, without which Nazi warplanes would have been inoperable:

http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=22

http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/07/NMT07-C001.htm

The Rockefellers also started the first eugenics population control program here in the U.S. in 1909, forcefully sterilizing over 60,000 “genetically inferior” Americans long before Hitler put the idea into practice in Germany:

http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

And how about the exposure of George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, as a Nazi collaborator and launderer of Nazi funds:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

This is only a small portion of the evidence which proves that the Nazi’s were an elitist creation, and World War II deliberately engineered.

Iraq / Afghanistan War:

I won’t go into the long and sordid background of the 9/11 attacks and how they were used to foment a never-ending war in the Middle East. To do so would take an entirely separate article. What I will say is, the “official story” of that event has been shown on numerous occasions by thousands of researchers, many of whom are architects and engineers, to be riddled with holes and completely unsatisfactory by any measure of logic. The collapses themselves have been left scientifically unexplained by NIST, the government agency tasked with constructing “answers” for the many oddities surrounding the structural failure of WTC 1, 2 and 7. NIST continues to refuse to release the source data for their computer models they claim prove that the towers fell naturally due to burning jet fuel. Without this source data, none of their conclusions hold any validity. They are simply opinions backed by nothing. Read more of this post

Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Moves Missiles And Troops To Russian Border

Nuclear and Conventional Arms Pacts Stalled

Rick Rozoff | 2010 is proceeding in a manner more befitting the third month of the year, named after the Roman god of war, than the first whose name is derived from a pacific deity.

On January 13 the Associated Press reported that the White House will submit its Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress on February 1 and request a record-high $708 billion for the Pentagon. That figure is the highest in absolute and in inflation-adjusted, constant (for any year) dollars since 1946, the year after the Second World War ended. Adding non-Pentagon defense-related spending, the total may exceed $1 trillion.

The $708 billion includes for the first time monies for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which in prior years were in part funded by periodic supplemental requests, but excludes what the above-mentioned report adds is the first in the new administration’s emergency requests for the same purpose: A purported $33 billion.

Already this month several NATO nations have pledged more troops, even before the January 28 London conference on Afghanistan when several thousand additional forces may be assigned for the war there, in addition to over 150,000 already serving or soon to serve under U.S. and NATO command.

Washington has increased lethal drone missile attacks in Pakistan, and calls for that model to be replicated in Yemen have been made recently, most notably by Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who on January 13 also advocated air strikes and special forces operations in the country. [1]

The Pentagon will begin the deployment of 1,400 personnel to Colombia to man seven new bases under a 10-year military agreement signed last October 30. [2]

This year the U.S. will also complete the $110 million dollar construction of new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania to house at least 4,000 American troops. [3]

The Pentagon’s newest regional command, Africa Command, will expand its activities on and off the coasts of that continent beyond current counterinsurgency operations in Somalia, Mali and Uganda and drone flights from a newly acquired site in Seychelles. [4]

But this month has brought even more dramatic and dangerous news. The Pentagon has authorized the completion of a $6.5 billion arms deal with Taiwan with an agreement to deliver 200 Patriot Advanced Capability anti-ballistic missiles. The People’s Republic of China is infuriated, as Washington would be if the situation were reversed and Beijing provided a comparable arsenal of weapons to, for example, an independent Puerto Rico. [5]

As though that action was not provocative enough however, on January 20 the Polish Defense Ministry announced that a U.S. Patriot missile battery, and the 100 American soldiers who will operate it, would not be based on the outskirts of the capital of Warsaw as previously announced but in the Baltic Sea city of Morag, 35 miles [6] from Poland’s border with Russia.

The missile battery and troops are scheduled to arrive in March or April. As part of the Obama administration’s new missile shield project, one which will be integrated with NATO to take in all of Europe and extend into the Middle East and the Caucasus, the Patriots will be followed by Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptor deployments on warships in the Baltic Sea and, for the first time ever, a land-based version of the same. “The Pentagon will deploy command posts of SM-3 missiles, which can intercept both short- and mid-range missiles…” [7] An SM-3 was used by the Pentagon to shoot a satellite out of orbit in February of 2008 to give an indication of its range.

Further deployments will follow.

The new, post-George W. Bush administration, interceptor missile system will employ “existing missile systems based on land and at sea… Deployment of the revised missile defense would extend through 2020. The first step is to put existing sea-based weapons systems on Aegis-class destroyers and cruisers. [8]

“Subsequently, a mobile radar system would be deployed in a European nation… More advanced, mobile systems would be put in place later elsewhere in Europe. Their centerpiece would be… Lockheed’s Terminal High Altitude Defense interceptor missiles and improved Standard Missile-3 IB missiles made by… Raytheon.” [9]

Last December Washington signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that formalizes plans for “the United States military to station American troops and military equipment on Polish territory” and “opens the way for the promised Patriot missiles and US troops to be stationed in Poland… as part of an upgrading of NATO air defences in Europe.” [10]

In October, shortly after U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden visited Warsaw to finalize the plan, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski met with his opposite number from the U.S., Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow, and announced that the American missiles “will be combat-ready, not dummy varieties as Washington earlier suggested.” The same report added that “Earlier, Ukrainian and American officials stated that Ukrainian territory may be used in some way in the new antimissile shield.” [11] Poland borders Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, but Ukraine has a 1,576 kilometer (979 mile) border with Russia.

The State Department issued a press release on the agreement to deploy American troops to Poland, the first foreign forces to be based there since the end of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, which stated “The agreement will facilitate a range of mutually agreed activities including joint training and exercises, deployments of U.S. military personnel, and prospective Ballistic Missile Defense deployments.” [12]

A Pentagon spokesperson said “U.S. Army Europe will help the Polish Armed Forces develop their air and missile defense capabilities. Considering the cooperative training we already do with the Polish Armed Forces, this Patriot training program is just another extension of that effort.” [13]

If earlier plans to deploy ground-based midcourse missiles to Poland evoked, however implausibly, an alleged Iranian missile threat, the Patriots can only be meant for Russia.

Russian Lieutenant-General Aitech Bizhev, former commander of the United Air Defense System of the Commonwealth of Independent States, told one of his nation’s main news agencies:

“It’s completely unclear why the air defense group of the northern flank of NATO needed strengthening – NATO has manifold superiority over Russian conventional armaments as it is.

“It can’t be ruled out that the stationing of the Patriots in Poland may be followed by other actions in building up the American military infrastructure in Eastern Europe…” [14]

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms expired on December 5 and has been extended, but no agreement has been reached on a new pact, 48 days later.

At the end of last year Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was asked about the delay and identified the main impediment to resolving it: “What is the problem? The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one.”

He further defined the problem: “If we are not developing an anti-missile shield, then there is a danger that our partners, by creating such ‘an umbrella,’ will feel completely secure and thus can allow themselves to do what they want, disrupting the balance, and aggressiveness will rise immediately.”

In respect to how prospects for the reduction, much less elimination, of nuclear arms in Europe and North America were faring, Putin added, “In order to preserve balance… we need to develop offensive weapons systems,” [15] reiterating a statement by his nation’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, a week before. The timing of the announcement that the Pentagon will soon station Patriot missiles so close to Russian territory will not help matters. Nor was the State Department’s contention that “the START follow-on agreement is not the appropriate vehicle for addressing” the issue of “missile offense and defense.” [16] Read more of this post