BernieLopez- sinking the fifth fleet / georgia - media manipulation

BY BERNARDO V. LOPEZ
BUSINESS WORLD columnist
eastwind_777@yahoo.com
www.bworldonline.com

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SINKING THE FIFTH



UPSHOT column, 7 aug 2008



The sinking of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain was predicted by one of the largest and most expensive wargames in history called "2002 Millennium Challenge". As a result, Admiral William Fallon, former US Centcom Commander and head of the Fifth Fleet, said "There will be no attack on Iran on my watch."

This article is based on a paper by Dr. Michael Salla, US foreign policy expert from the American University in Washington DC and from the Center for Global Peace.

After defying neo-conservatives Bush and Cheney, Fallon, the first Navy officer to head the Central Command which oversees the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Suez Canal and parts of the Indian Ocean, was quietly sacked and replaced by one considered to have blind loyalty to neo-con ideology, namely, General David Petreaus. The $250-million Millennium Challenge was conducted by the best brains in the Pentagon. The generals are now on a head-on collision course with the neo-cons, who are creating an environment to induce a total war on Iran. It is ironic that the doves are from the Pentagon who believe in the insanity of attacking Iran and the hawks are from the White House who believe it is the only option. The neo-con ideology is described by Salla as "a political philosophy that US dominance of the international system as the world's sole superpower needs to be extended indefinitely into the 21st century. Part of the neoconservative agenda is to identify and overthrow states that are opposed to the current U.S. dominated international system."

In 2002, Russia pulled out of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Protocol, a US-Russia agreement limiting sale of military hardware to Iran. Immediately, Iran started purchasing air defense systems and anti-ship cruise missiles from Russia to bridge the vast US naval superiority. Earlier, when Russia could not match the US weapons program "ship for ship, gun for gun, and dollar for dollar", it conceived of a new strategy to bridge the weapons gap in an ingenious way. Instead of making expensive sophisticated warships, it developed relatively cheap sophisticated anti-warship missiles.

The result was the Sunburn and Yakhonts anti-ship supersonic cruise missiles, which were factored into the Millennium wargame computer simulations. The Sunburn was described as "the most lethal missile in the world", having a speed of Mach 2.5 and a range of`130 miles, and able to deliver a 750-lb conventional bomb, which can destroy most warships. The even deadlier Yakhonts has a range of 185 miles, covering the entire Persian Gulf border between Iraq and Iran. The Fifth Fleet naval base in Bahrain is only 150 miles from the Iranian coast. It is unable to maneuver well in the confined waters of the Persian Gulf, and is vulnerable to missiles launched from atop the rugged Iranian coastline. The Pentagon knows all this, but the neo-cons prefer to either be blind or to make the Fifth Fleet a sacrificial lamb to induce an all out war against Iran Pearl-Harbor style.

The Sunburn and Yakhonts were designed to defeat the Aegis defense missiles in US Navy ships by using stealth technology, ground hugging flight patterns, and evasive maneuvers when they near the target. The best defense against the Russian missiles is the Sea-RAM but this has not yet been tested against the Sunburn and Yakhonts. It was tested with 95% success rate against the Vandal missile, also with a Mach 2.5, but without the evasive capability of the Sunburn and Yakhonts. So we do not know what will happen until it happens. A 2003 military study reported that only 27 ships were fitted with the Sea-RAM. The threat of the Sunburn and Yakhonts is so great that the Pentagon decided to halt all aircraft carrier production until they find an effective defense system. This was why Fallon, after the Millennium Challenge results came out, said "not on my watch".

The Fifth Fleets premier carrier is the aging Enterprise which is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2015 and which carries a personnel of 5,000. It was the very first nuclear powered carrier and is now almost a senior citizen at 47 years old. To flaunt its US naval superiority, Bush had commissioned two aircraft carrier groups to the Fifth Fleet but it is now down to one. The Fleet also has two helicopter carriers. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Fifth Fleet had a staggering five aircraft carrier groups and six helicopter carriers, some borrowed from the Seventh Fleet in Diego Garcia.

Millennium Challenge involved a titanic three-week naval exercise involving 13,500 troops spread out over 17 locations, relying heavily on computer simulations. It involved an 'assymetrical warfare strategy' by US forces against an unnamed Persian Gulf state. In spite of pitting the Fifth Fleet against the older generation Silkworm missiles, famous for sinking British ships in the Falklands in 1980 (together with the Exocet), 16 US vessels were sunk. What more with the Sunburn.

The lone superpower through time may most often win a protracted war with its vast superiority, even if they did not in Vietnam, and not yet in Iraq. Superiority breeds brinkmanship based on arrogance and overconfidence, manifested by the neo-cons controlling US foreign and military policies today. Observers say, with McCain, they surely will be around, but some say they will persist even with Obama. The Bush-Cheney legacy lives on, haunting the destiny of humanity in a crowded Earth.



eastwind_777@yahoo.com



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article 2 of 2
MEDIA MANIPULATIONS



UPSHOT column, THURS 28 aug 2008



The Western media did not mention in initial reports that Georgia drew first blood by shelling Ossetia. That was why the Russians came to the rescue, to protect Russian civilians there. Western media reported 2,000 civilian casualties, citing Russia's viciousness, when those were the casualties from Georgian shellings.

This mis-reporting made the world believe Russia was the first aggressor and Georgia the victim, when it was the opposite. Western media highlighted Georgian accusations that Russia was guilty of 'ethnic cleansing' when the Georgians were the culprits.

Western media downplayed the crucial information that the Georgian shelling of Ossetia was 'with Washington's approval', according to Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin. This would make the Georgian crisis an American doing. Of course, Georgia would be brave enough to attack with American go-signal. This intelligence information probably came from the inner circle of the Georgian government. The US thought the Russians would not dare launch an all-out retaliation because Georgia was under NATO's mutual defense umbrella. They were wrong.

The bias of the Western media is shown consistently in daily reports. They highlighted Russian atrocity and 'disproportionate attacks' and Georgian helplessness. They came out with a farfetched theory that the Russian offensive was a 'revenge' for Putin's 'humiliation' from the recognition of Kosovo independence and former Russian republics now NATO members. To them, Putin had "to restore lost power and pride of the Soviet era". They could not see that the driving force was not ego or pride, but rescue for beleaguered comrades. It is easy for the Western media to twist the issues when it reports about the East. The bias is subtle and they exude an air of impartiality.

To show to the world their support for a 'bullied' ally, the US sent food aid to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, another PR victory via the Western media, which failed to report that there were few refugees in Tbilisi and the bulk who really needed food were in Ossetia, the very refugees shelled by the Georgians. But would the US feed the 'enemy'?

Western media interviewed American generals who criticized the 'behavior' of the Russians and the 'madness' of Putin. But they downplayed the madness of Bush who seduced former Russian republics like Georgia with NATO memberships, a geopolitical strategy to 'encircle' Russia. Then came plans to put 'defensive' missiles around Russia such as in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The missiles are for offense, not defense. The Western media downplayed angry Russian protests.

The Georgian incident can ultimately be blamed on American aggression to encircle Russia. Western media mis-reporting goes a long way in swaying worldwide viewers, governments, diplomats, UN and NATO officials to make decisions based on media bias. Because of this media misperception, NATO wants sanctions against Russia, but the EU is quiet because without Russian oil and gas, it would freeze to death in winter and go into a recession.

US-EU encirclement and the Georgian conflict may trigger a new cold war. With US missiles in Poland, Russia may put counter-missiles in the Baltics, which they deny. Russian missiles in Cuba made America panic, but they have the gall to place missiles at the doorstep of Russia, pooh-pooh their protests, and blame aggression on them.

Pipeline geopolitics shows that as soon as the Soviet empire fell, US multinationals moved quickly to control Russian oil-gas fields and to build pipelines, one of them in Georgia, the Baku/Tbilisi/Ceyhan (BTC), portion of which the Russians recently bombed. The BTC is the only major Western-controlled pipeline to supply oil from the Caspian (Azerbaijan) and Central Asia (Kazahkstan) to Europe.

The Americans loved Boris Yeltsin for giving them major oil and gas projects on a silver platter. Yukos Oil was given to a Jewish frontman for Exxon Mobil, Khodorkovsky, for a song. Shell, Conoco and Chevron took over rich oil and gas fields.

When Putin took over, he jailed Khodorkovsky and repossessed Yukos. Western media portrayed him as a vicious dictator for being a nationalist. Shell was thrown out of Siberia. Exxon and Chevron were forced to abandon their projects. Two major US-EU pipeline networks out to challenge Russia's state-owned giant, Gazprom, were pushed aside. Georgia's BTC pipeline is a white elephant, operating at 10% of capacity last year. A bigger pipeline through Turkey to Austria was pre-empted by Gazprom, which cornered the gas and oil supplies of Turkmenistan. Russia turned east to China and Asia for its energy market, which irked the West more.

The Western media pounced on Putin for suppressing Western energy ambitions. Russia metamorphosed overnight from a sick donkey to a race horse. The Americans are the true 'axis of evil' for arming its allies in the Middle East in preparation to energy wars, because what it cannot get peacefully, it will get by force. The US gave nukes to Israel and now they fear Iran may also get nukes. The US will cause World War III, and with the help of Western media. Western media plays a key role in American global presence and domination.



eastwind_777@yahoo.com