Dan Sanchez / Medium.com & AntiWar.com & Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com – 2015-11-10 00:50:08
http://original.antiwar.com/Dan_Sanchez/2015/11/09/missile-test-terrorism-over-los-angeles/
Missile Test Terrorism Over Los Angeles
Dan Sanchez / Medium.com & AntiWar.com
(November 10, 2015) — The internet exploded with reports from throughout the west about a UFO, comet, or missile sighting.
As the US military confirmed, it was indeed a missile, and a nuclear-capable one too. What everyone saw was a test-fire of a Trident II intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from a submarine off the coast. The bursts and flare-ups were probably the engine separations of the three-stage rocket.
The Pentagon claimed it was part of “scheduled, ongoing tests.” However, the launch was unannounced, except for being mysteriously foreshadowed the night before when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared that all Los Angeles International airport (LAX) traffic must avoid flying over the nearby waters of the Pacific.
A second test-launch off the West Coast was conducted Monday afternoon.
Following the launches, John M. Daniels, spokesman for what amounts to the Navy’s Armageddon Office, stressed that:
“It’s important that we test these missiles for our national security.”
How exactly would it enhance “national security” to test ICBMs in clear view of the country’s second-biggest city? A hint was provided when The Los Angeles Times reported that:
“The Navy is considering posting additional photos  —  and possibly video  —  of the missile launches after the current exercises are completed, Daniels said, but it has yet to decide.”
This was more a demonstration than a test. That is the only plausible explanation for giving such a public light show.
A demonstration for the benefit of whom? Well it was over the Pacific, across which the US has been playing warship “chicken” with nuclear China in the South China Sea, as part of its “Asian Pivot.”
Then of course there is Russia. The new Cold War with that nuclear power has ratcheted up after Russian entry into the Syrian war. As Justin Raimondo recently wrote:
” . . . the US and its NATO allies are prepositioning heavy weaponry on their eastern frontier and doubling the size of [the US/NATO] ‘Response Force’ in Europe.”
And as Jason Ditz reported, the Pentagon is trying to use tensions with Russia to justify a long-running, “massively expensive plan to revamp the entire US nuclear weapons arsenal.” [See story below — EAW.]
Indeed, Daniels admitted to The Washington Post that:
“As a result of doing these operations, it does show any adversary that would wish to do us harm the capabilities that we have . . . “
Loren Thompson, a military analyst and nuclear strategy expert, thought that the saber-rattling was mishandled:
“‘You could have demonstrated same point to the Russians or the Chinese without getting people really concerned in L.A.,’ Thompson told The Post. ‘I suspect the Navy underestimated the social media reaction they were going to get.'”
Thompson should cure his naivete by reading some Randolph Bourne. The chief reason that governments wage wars, hot or cold, against foreign enemies is to use the “national emergency” to better dominate domestic enemies: its own subjects.
The unnerving spectacle made its biggest impression on the Americans who saw it first-hand. And they were probably its chief intended audience. “Getting people really concerned in L.A.” is exactly what the regime wanted.
Why else would the government clear the skies to paint them with nuclear war games precisely when and where it would have the biggest audience with the best visibility: near a basin full of people in the most densely populated region in the country, at a time (around 6:00 pm) when it is nice and dark, yet millions would be out and about, returning from work, or heading out to dinner?
This was “Shock and Awe” for domestic consumption: an exercise in missile test terrorism. A spooked herd is an easily steered and stampeded herd. And what better way to spook the American herd than by giving it nuclear nightmares?
Also published at Medium.com and DanSanchez.me.
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Years Into Scheme, Pentagon Tries to Use
Russia Tensions to Justify $348 Billion for New Nukes
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(November 8, 2015) — Speaking over the weekend at a defense forum, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter talked up the massively expensive plan to revamp the entire US nuclear weapons arsenal, presenting it as something wholly about “Russian aggression” and the dispute over the status of Ukraine.
Far from a sudden reaction to Ukraine, however, the Obama Administration has been pushing this scheme, and its ever-growing price tag, since early 2010, several years before Ukraine, and amid some of the better US-Russia ties in a generation.
Estimates on the cost grew and grew, with the “official” price tag in the $348 billion range, and many NGOs arguing that the cost will be far more, and well in excess of half a trillion dollars, a budget-breaking amount in a time when Pentagon expenses are already spiraling out of control.
That Russia is a sudden excuse likely reflects the Pentagon’s growing desperation to avoid serious debate about bankrupting another generation with more and more advanced nuclear arms decades after the Cold War’s conclusion. With Russia serving as a ready-made excuse for hasty escalations elsewhere, there’s probably not going to be much pushback in Congress.
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