Obama Is Secretly Deploying Elite U.S. Forces to Countries Across the Globe

[laststeamtrain]

Obama Is Secretly Deploying Elite U.S. Forces to Countries Across the Globe
By Jeremy Scahill, TheNation.com
Posted on June 4, 2010, Printed on June 4, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147104/

The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama administration has substantially expanded the role of U.S. special operations forces across the globe as part of what the paper calls Washington's "secret war" against al Qaeda and other radical organizations. Obama, according to the paper, has increased the presence of special forces from 60 countries to 75 countries. U.S. Special Forces, the paper reports, have about 4,000 people in countries besides Iraq and Afghanistan. "The Special Operations capabilities requested by the White House go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them," according to the Post. "Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group."

The expansion of special forces includes both traditional special forces, often used in training missions, and those known for carrying out covert and lethal, "direct actions." The Nation has learned from well-placed special operations sources that among the countries where elite special forces teams working for the Joint Special Operations Command have been deployed under the Obama administration are: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Balochistan) and the Philippines. These teams have also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC has also supported U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico. The frontline for these forces at the moment, sources say, are Yemen and Somalia. "In both those places, there are ongoing unilateral actions," said a special operations source. "JSOC does a lot in Pakistan too." Additionally, these U.S. special forces at times work alongside other nations' special operations forces in conducting missions in their home countries. A U.S. special operations source described one such action where U.S. forces teamed up with Georgian forces hunting Chechen rebels.

One senior military official told The Washington Post that the Obama administration has given the green light for "things that the previous administration did not." Special operations commanders, the paper reports, have more direct access to the White House than they did under Bush. "We have a lot more access," a military official told the paper. "They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly."

According to the Post: "The clearest public description of the secret-war aspects of the doctrine came from White House counterterrorism director John O. Brennan. He said last week that the United States 'will not merely respond after the fact' of a terrorist attack but will 'take the fight to al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond.'"

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http://www.alternet.org/world/147104/obama_is_secretly_deploying_elite_u.s._forces_to_countries_across_the_globe

[Ozymanithrax]

1. If it is posted in the Nation it doesn't qualify anymore as secret. n/t

[emulatorloo]

3. Washington Post too! n/t

[chill_wind]

13. That's kind of the goal. Unreported or under-reported stories get exposure

and more people in a get to know what their government is doing. It becomes less and less secret.

Whether there's already been more than one source of information brewing about this, it doesn't make it any less worthy of attention and scrutiny.

[zipplewrath]

2. Special forces as cops

I understand the concept of taking the fight to the enemy. But if we are taking "pre-emptive" action, why isn't it with InterPol? Why aren't we setting up various regional versions of this? Why are we training special forces in other countries instead of more of a SWAT training or FBI kind of training to arrest and prosecute these people?

In other words; Why are we waging war, instead of waging law enforcement?

[chill_wind]

4. *Budget for this has increased 40 percent. * "It's brilliant."

Under the Obama administration, according to sources,TF-714 has expanded and recently changed its classified name. The Task Force's budge has reportedly expanded 40 percent on the request of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and has added additional forces. "It was at Mullen's request and they can do more now," according to a special forces source. "You don't have to work out of the embassies, you don't have to play nice with (the State Department), you can just set up anywhere really."

While some of the special forces missions are centered around training of allied forces, often that line is blurred. In some cases, "training" is used as a cover for unilateral, direct action. "It's often done under the auspices of training so that they can go anywhere. It's brilliant. It is essentially what we did in the 60s," says a special forces source. "Remember the 'training mission' in Vietnam? That's how it morphs."

:puke: :puke: :puke:

[amandabeech]

14. It's how some nasty business started in Central America as well.

I guess there will be jobs afterall--the type that gets the employees killed.

What in the hell did we elect? The Manchurian candidate?

[nichomachus]

5. I'm guessing Obama is a closet PNAC-er

[chill_wind]

6. "That rhetoric is not much different than Bush's pledge

to "take the battle to the enemy . . . and confront the worst threats before they emerge." The elite Special Operations units, drawn from all four branches of the armed forces, became a frontline counterterrorism weapon for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Obama has made such forces a far more integrated part of his global security strategy. He has asked for a 5.7 percent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011, for a total of $6.3 billion, plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding.

Bush-era clashes between the Defense and State departments over Special Operations deployments have all but ceased. Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saw them as an independent force, approving in some countries Special Operations intelligence-gathering missions that were so secret that the U.S. ambassador was not told they were underway. But the close relationship between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is said to have smoothed out the process.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965_pf.html

[Hawkowl]

7. I want BP's head on a stick

I would be on board for all this special forces bullshit, (which is nothing more than repackaged 20th century CIA deathsquads), if they were actually dispatched to bring true villains, such as banksters and oil executives, to justice.

Instead, there probably offing goat herders and poppy growers who won't pay protection. U! S! A! U! S! A!

[chill_wind]

8. .

[irislake]

9. Wonderful!

Now we're safer than ever. Can't understand why Japan wanted U.S. bases to get the hell out.

[Fox_Hunter]

10. Unfortunately not surprising

We're pretty much Rome now!

[sce56]

11. Expanding School Of The Americas? Death squad training at Ft Benning

This is not the change we voted for!

[Judi Lynn]

12. This threat to these countries' elected governments, of their way of life is so damned wrong.

It's nothing but aggression toward people who have NEVER harmed us. Filthy.

[Xavyman]

15. I sort of agree with that move

Instead of sending our armies there we might as well have special forces collecting data quietly, etc.