Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com & Sorcha Faal / What Does It Mean? – 2015-08-24 22:15:00
Defense Secretary:
Russia an ‘Existential Threat’ to US
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(August 20, 2015) — Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is parroting a number of top Pentagon officials on the issue of Russia today, affirming that he too believes Russia is an “existential threat” to the United States simply by virtue of being a very large country with a lot of nuclear weapons.
Speaking at the Pentagon, Carter insisted Russia’s status as a threat is nothing new, but that Putin is suddenly acting “as an antagonist” to the US on certain issues, and said the US is changing their playbook with NATO to “harden” areas along the Russian frontier.
So far this “hardening” has consisted of the US “pre-positioning” massive amounts of combat vehicles in Eastern Europe, to save themselves the trouble of having to ship them during an actual war. It has also involved massive military drills directly on the Russian border, which several groups have warned risk provoking a conflict neither side really wants.
Several Pentagon officials have talked up Russia’s threat during the recent budget battles, with Army Chief Gen. Ray Odierno calling them America’s “most dangerous threat” only last week, and officials warning that defeating Russia in a “sustained” ground war wouldn’t be a “sure bet” without more military spending.
Though Pentagon officials have been on about Russia since last year’s Ukraine regime change, and the subsequent eastern civil war, with assorted generals predicting an imminent Russian invasion of Europe that never came about, the recent round seems more cynically directed at Congressional testimony, with an eye on securing money for more high-priced projects that don’t make a lot of sense for America’s current wars, nominally to maintain a “qualitative” advantage over Russia.
The US spends roughly 10 times as much on its military as Russia does, but Pentagon officials say that the sheer number of other wars America is constantly fighting and their vision of the war happening almost entirely in Russian territory makes the difference much less dramatic.
The talk of Russia as a “primary” threat has come amid calls from Congress to put the assorted threats in order, with Pentagon officials all putting ISIS far below where Congress expected them to go, and favoring military planning against conventional nation-states, putting Russia and China up at the top.
Russia Disseminates “September War” Battle Plan
As 90,000 Ukrainian Troops Set To Invade
Sorcha Faal / What Does It Mean?
(August 21, 2015) — A truly apocalyptic Ministry of Defense (MoD) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that strategic battle plans have now been disseminated to all military and special forces commands in response to the expected mass invasion by US-led Ukrainian troops of separatist held region Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Autonomous Republic of Crimea ahead of what is expected to be an “Armageddon-like blow” to Western financial capitols on 23 September.
Dubbed the “September War” by Federation defense planners, this report notes that on 23 September, Ukraine is due to pay a massive $500 million bond payment it is not able to do . . . which would then cause their default on a $3 billion bond payment to Russia meaning it would have to be paid immediately too.
Rather than risking the collapse of their already falling apart global economic system due to Ukraine falling into default, this report explains, Western capitols, led by the Obama regime, are “factoring” into this already fraught with danger situation a war with Russia as an “outlet” to divert their population’s attention away from the devastation of their own economies.
Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev warned the West against this war earlier today by stating, “Both Ukraine and the forces currently governing the country from the outside should realize that the resumption of hostilities leads to further decline in the Ukrainian economy, a greater number of hostilities, destruction of infrastructure and affects negatively the regional and international situation,” but further noted that pro-Kiev armed units in eastern Ukraine now total 90,000 men and officers, 450 tanks, 203 salvo artillery units, and five Tochka-U missile complexes.
The Defense Ministry of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Eduard Basurinearlier, yesterday grimly noted the “master plan” to be used by Ukraine in launching their “September War” by stating:
Kiev plans to deliver two converging blows in the direction of the settlement of Uspenka to defeat the DPR and advance to the border with Russia and subsequently prevent civilians from reaching the Russian territory. Along with this, two groupings [of Kiev’s forces] are intended to launch an offensive in the Donetsk direction north and south of Donetsk towards Ilovaisk, close the circle around the republic’s capital and encircle the city.
Further on, active offensive operations will be launched in the Luhansk direction with the aim to advance to the border with Russia.”
As these 90,000 US-led Ukraine forces are preparing to usher in World War III to protect Western “banksters” against 40,000 separatist fighters, this MoD report continues, NATO “comically” warned the DPR against grabbing anymore land, while at the same time, “equally as comical”, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter warned the Pentagon that Russia is now an “existential threat” to America.
As to how Russia could possibly be an “existential threat” to the United States, this report notes, is never explained by the Obama regime whose military spending is a staggering nearly $600 billion a year (compared to Russia spending $70-80 billion) . . . and as President Putin warned this past June: “Publish a map and mark all the US bases on it. You will see the difference between the US and Russia.”
Even the highly respected American press organization CounterPunch has noticed the sheer insanity of the Obama regime wanting war with Russia, this report says, and who in their article today titled Deadly Cheering for War in Ukraine by Western Press stated:
“The editors of the [Washington] Post are pulling off a ruse. Kyiv has not abided by a single clause of Minsk-2, and the regime’s foreign backers, including in the editorial offices of the nearly all of Western media, keep a careful silence on the subject. So let’s pause for a moment to reflect.
The Washington Post (and some other mainstream media) publishes articles and photo stories by journalists in and around Kyiv-controlled eastern Ukraine.
But the Post’s journalists can’t seem to provide examples of how “Russia’s forces continue to shell and rocket Ukrainian positions on a daily basis”.
Surely, if the situation is that severe, there must be no shortage of visual examples to provide to readers? And surely the U.S. government can provide satellite images to mainstream media of the “9,000 Russian soldiers” in eastern Ukraine as well as other examples of Russian intervention? Unless . . . it’s all, or mostly, make believe.
On the rebel side of eastern Ukraine, there is no shortage of examples of grim, daily shelling by Ukrainian armed forces, which are backed by NATO. Alas, and not by accident, such reports never, ever grace the pages of the Western media.”
And as the “grim daily shelling” of civilians by US-led Ukrainian forces continues in Western media silence, this report further states, it goes without its irony that the American right-wing hawk Henry Kissinger and left-wing British Labour Leader socialist Jeremy Corbyn have now united together warning the West of their insanity in launching this “September War” . . . and which Kissinger actually stated what it was really about, “Breaking Russia has become the objective for US”.
Though not stated in this MoD report, it is worth noting that even the left-leaning American political website Vox Media is now warning of this “September War” too, and as they chillingly stated in their article titled How World War III Became Possible:
Its leaders have given vague signals for what would and would not lead to war. Its political tensions have become military buildups. Its nations are teetering on an unstable balance of power, barely held together by a Cold War–era alliance that no longer quite applies.”
August 21, 2015 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
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