April 24, 2006


"Our enemies never stop trying to come up with new ways to harm our people, and neither do we."
President George W. Bush

Like everything else, Rumsfeld’s promise to "transform" the military has been a lie. The Defense Secretary never had any intention of converting the military into "smaller, more agile units". From the very onset his goal has been to create a global strike-force that operates as the enforcement-arm of the multinational corporations.

Rumsfeld has done everything in his power to remove the military from congressional oversight or accountability to the people it is supposed to serve. Under his stewardship, the Pentagon has lurched from one humiliating scandal to the next. From Abu Ghraib to Falluja, from Guantanamo to Bagram; his record has been a dismal chronicle of one disgrace heaped upon another. No wonder the generals are so eager to see him get his walking papers.

An article in Sunday’s Washington Post "Rumsfeld OKs wider anti-terror role for Military" shows that Rumsfeld’s powers are expanding rather than contracting. The article by Ann Scott Tyson outlines the Defense Secretary’s strategy for making the entire world a "free-fire" zone for agents of the empire. The details of the plan are still classified, but the documents envision "a significantly expanded role for the military — and in particular a growing force of elite Special Operations troops — in continuous operations to combat terrorism outside of war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Developed over about three years by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, Fla., they reflect a beefing up of the Pentagon's involvement in domains traditionally handled by the CIA and State Department."

Just as Rumsfeld initiated Northcom and lowered the standards for using the military in domestic affairs (check the debacle in Katrina) so too, he intends to eschew the conventions restricting the use of the military in foreign countries by deploying "small teams of Army Green Berets and other Special Operations troops to U.S. embassies …to conduct military operations where the United States is not at war."

This ambitious plan has been the military’s "top priority" for over three years and is ready to be activated pending another "terrorist attack" on American soil.

Even Rumsfeld apologists are probably shocked at the breadth and arrogance of this sinister plan. The military is being hijacked in full view of the American people and turned into the world’s most-lethal security apparatus. Under Rumsfeld’s direction, special units operating clandestinely around the globe will perform criminal renditions, assassinations, sabotage, and acts of piracy all in the name of corporate profiteering.

53,000 paramilitaries and Green Berets now operate within Special Operations Command (SOCOM) The next terrorist attack will allow the Pentagon to quickly mobilize these troops to "disrupt and respond" to potential threats across the planet ignoring national sovereignty or the laws of war. The surprise appearance of Bin Laden in a video which aired yesterday on Al Jazeera (another Rumsfeld psy-ops?) must have been warmly received by the Pentagon warlords who would like to see their plan executed pell mell.

There should be little doubt that Don Rumsfeld’s dream of a global military empire, accountable only to the league of corporate mandarins, hasn’t dimmed by his abysmal record of failure in Iraq. Left to his own devices, Rumsfeld is determined to put the US military under private control and turn the world into one massive war zone