Wagging The Dog

I’ve said before that I generally have little use for most of what comes out of Hollywood but there are rare exceptions and “Wag The Dog” is one of those exceptions & for the same reason that allows “Idiocracy”  to make the cut…it is some of the best fictional “truth” that’s out there. As I’ve been feeling the rumble of the War Pigs’ drums getting steadily louder and louder lately, this movie has come to mind more than once. Ordinarily it is easy to tell where the spark will ignite but right now, there is too much noise in the wind to look just in one direction.

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I ask myself over and over…is any of it even REAL? Does N. Korea really want to blast us into oblivion? If so…why…and I mean, really WHY, not the Faux or CoNN news scare versions of why, thanks. If they don’t really want to attack us, how would ‘We The Peons’ know that?  Or…maybe it’s Syria that wants to take us out..? Oh but wait…I saw mention about how going to war with China would be a bad thing…so maybe it’s them we should fear?? And of course, we cannot forget those scary folks down in Mali who…well, I don’t know what their beef is exactly, but by gawd…America will be there, standing strong!!!

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I know I did not list all of the places our government is currently chest-thumping with but it still makes the point…there is too much being thrown out too quickly – and without full background, details or key information so that the average citizen has no damned idea what is going on and what, if any, real threats there are. So much of what I’ve been seeing reads like propaganda and rhetoric…but is it? How can I be certain? Are we intentionally being spun about in all directions so that when something does finally trigger even more massive scale war, we will be so confused as to believe anything our ‘protectors’ tell us?

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Related Videos:

Wag the Dog: Media blamed for covering Libya unrest with fog of war

Will NATO Try a Wag-the-Dog Provocation Against Syria to Keep Sarkozy in Power After May 6?

Wag the Dog: Is China’s Philippines Aggression Merely a Diversion?

Hugo Chavez: What the Mainstream is Hiding

RIP Hugo Chavez…the world will be a much less interesting & colorful place without you in it.

Hugo Chavez’s death is going to radically shift the balance of power in Latin America and the Caribbean but not for the reasons that you are being told on the mainstream media.

Building The Global Special Operation Forces Partnership

This is…well…unnerving…and chilling.

 

ISOF (Photo credit: United States Forces – Iraq (Inactive))

 

(May 2012) Military assault demonstrations at the ISOF 2012 conference in Tampa bay, Florida. The participating SOF teams came from 10 allied nations: Australia, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Jordan, Norway, Poland, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and included American SEALs, Green Berets, Air Force Combat Controllers, and US Marines. This year ISOF’s theme is “Building the Global SOF Partnership.” This is composed of mutually supporting partners working to identify and preemptively address problems, and helping to defeat the appeal of violent extremism.

 

 

 

Like A Phoenix: Power Beyond The Fall

So…you want a revolution, eh? Pissed off…fed up…you know bad things are going bump in the night but don’t know which way to turn for help when officers are murdering people – and pets – all over the place. Your government representatives have gone deaf and blind. Your online activity is not only not private, but can and will be used against you in court…doors are getting bashed in, your milk is no longer legal, your neighbors can vanish and be indefinitely detained & families are being terrorized by armed and masked SWAT men in the middle of the night…

It is time to do something…NOW!!

Enough is enough!! Our founding fathers would not have stood for this and neither should we!! 

The time for a revolution is at hand…!

Or is it..?

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No one can deny that we are in dire straits both as a nation and as part of the global community of human beings…things are not good and changes absolutely must be made before we all end up in darker times and conditions than most of us could ever dream of living in – or even surviving. But…since it is premature to jump into a revolution…and it is obvious that we cannot continue on the path we’re on without serious negative consequences, where does that leave us? 

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I wish I could drop a big, happy rainbow here and say that there is no reason to worry, our leaders will all come to their senses soon and everything will be hunky-dory. I’d be a liar if I did. I honestly don’t think that things are going to be “okay” in the sense that we want for a long time to come still. The price of…everything…has risen so it seems. It’s not actually that prices are any higher – it’s that the dollar is lower, worth less…bottom line either way is that you get fewer items for more Monopoly Money than ever before. There is no denying the rise of the police state and ever tightening laws that are strangling us on every level from personal to business. The war machine is rolling over countries left, right and sideways; it is the Hexxus of Fern Gully, out of control and oozing death and destruction everywhere it goes. We find it acceptable to imprison citizens in order to satisfy corpo-political pigs and keep them all feeding at the trough of profit via human slavery…

How To Combat Modern Slavery

“If the rule of law is sound, it protects the poor and it protects the vulnerable. But if corruption creeps in and people don’t have the opportunity to have that protection of the rule of law, then if you can use violence, if you can use violence with impunity, you can reach out and harvest the vulnerable into slavery…”

In this moving yet pragmatic talk, Kevin Bales* explains the business of modern slavery, a multi-billion-dollar economy that underpins some of the worst industries on earth. He shares stats and personal stories from his on-the-ground research — and names the price of freeing every slave on earth right now.

Highlights from the transcript which can be viewed in full Here on TEDTalks

“So, I began to do a research project of my own. I went to five countries around the world. I looked at slaves. I met slaveholders, and I looked very deeply into slave-based businesses because this is an economic crime. People do not enslave people to be mean to them.They do it to make a profit. And I’ve got to tell you, what I found out in the world in four different continents, was depressingly familiar…

…And I want to be very clear. I’m talking about real slavery. This is not about lousy marriages,this is not about jobs that suck. This is about people who can not walk away, people who are forced to work without pay, people who are operating 24/7 under a threat of violence and have no pay. It’s real slavery in exactly the same way that slavery would be recognized throughout all of human history…

…We’re also particularly interested and looking very carefully at places where slaves are being used to perpetrate extreme environmental destruction. Around the world, slaves are used to destroy the environment, cutting down trees in the Amazon; destroying forest areas in West Africa; mining and spreading mercury around in places like Ghana and the Congo;destroying the coastal ecosystems in South Asia. It’s a pretty harrowing linkage between what’s happening to our environment and what’s happening to our human rights.

Now, how on Earth did we get to a situation like this, where we have 27 million people in slavery in the year 2010? That’s double the number that came out of Africa in the entire transatlantic slave trade. Well, it builds up with these factors. They are not causal, they are actually supporting factors. One we all know about, the population explosion: the world goes from two billion people to almost seven billion people in the last 50 years. Being numerous does not make you a slave. Add in the increased vulnerability of very large numbers of people in the developing world, caused by civil wars, ethnic conflicts, kleptocratic governments, disease … you name it, you know it…”

* Kevin Bales is the co-founder of Free the Slaves, whose mission is to end all forms of human slavery within the next 25 years.

Brazilian Troops Bulldoze Homes; Leave Thousands Homeless

I am not really familiar with the current politics of this region but all sides of politics aside, this story is very disturbing and seems very, very wrong. I do know that several multi-national corporations have been working to force their way in to pillage the country for every possible resource…the most disturbing of which would be the human resources required to keep the new Brazilian Private Prison Corporations fully supplied and happy.

If people who were unjustly evicted from their homes decide to do something like…oh…riot or protest…the Intn’l Corporate Police will be there to *assist* and *put down* the riots.  Who knows exactly how many corporations are standing behind this land-grab or what their intentions really are…I just have that chilling kind of hunch that this is bad…very bad, for the people and future of Brazil.

Excerpts from WND

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While the press was barred from documenting much of the battle, local news reports showed the true extent of the human tragedy. Many critics have said it constitutes forced relocation, a crime against humanity under international agreements.

“Thousands of poor Brazilian families are living in wretched conditions at make-shift refugee camps after being evicted from their homes at gunpoint by federal forces, some of whom were sporting United Nations logos, according to sources.

The massive operation, which left an estimated 7,500 or more people, including thousands of children, homeless was justified by authorities under the guise of creating an Indian reservation.

Towns literally have been wiped off the map, and no compensation was offered to the victims. About 400,000 acres of land were expropriated in the latest operation.

Residents in the Siua-Missu area in the state of Mato Grosso battled heavily armed federal police and military forces for weeks using sticks, rocks, Molotov cocktails and other crude weapons.

In the end, however, the powerful national government forces were overwhelming.

Virtually all of the residents have now been displaced, living in squalor, packed into school gymnasiums in nearby towns. Others are living on charity under plastic tarps propped up with sticks with no clean water or sewage services.

Leaders of the feeble resistance, meanwhile, are being hunted down by authorities for punishment…

…“The conflicts between the productive sector and Indians are assuming greater proportions,” he added. “Countless non-governmental organizations have appeared, many from abroad, to involve themselves in the question.”

Authorities also told WND that the U.N. was not involved in the eviction efforts but that the organization’s logos were on the military equipment and personnel because they had recently returned from “peace-keeping” abroad.

“The evicted victims are now living at schools in Alto da Boa Vista and camps, with some being sheltered by relatives,” Naves Bispo, a local resident and victim of the land-grab scheme, told WND, adding that the situation was dire and deteriorating…

…Like other victims and analysts who spoke with WND, Bispo was unsure about why Brazilian authorities had decided to create an Indian reservation on land that was never occupied by Indians and was already lawfully owned.” Full Story on WND

Dirty Deals In Afghanistan Contracts

Well, well, well…what a complete and total shocker, eh? It seems there has been some underhanded & financial misdeeds going on in the Afghan National Police (ANP) contract; according to a report by the Department of Defense Inspector General a neat little contract was not awarded in accordance with DoD guidelines – and millions of dollars seem to have been wasted with no accountability or repercussions for those involved in this mess. It has been ‘recommended’ that no further expense or money-costing changes be made to the contract without approval…

Uh-huh. I see. A contract is illegally awarded to a private security firm, upgrades and additional changes are made just 2 months later resulting in millions of dollars being spent above and beyond what was in the initial contract…and the only recommendation being made is that various department heads of military and foreign coalitions just please ask next time before they pull more money from taxpayers? Suhweet deal, isn’t it? I do hope you appreciate a nice screwing without the foreplay or lube because that is exactly what we’ve gotten out of this latest fiasco in our effort to ‘rebuild’ Afghanistan.

Afghan national policemen demonstrate their tactical maneuvers at the Helmand Police Training Centre, Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Jan. 28, 2010. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oh! That the name DynCorp is involved in the contract and ended up pulling quite a tidy profit from the job should come as no real surprise, should it? Just business as usual folks, nothing to see here a’tall…(Emphasis throughout the report excerpts is mine.)

Full Report on PDF Available Here – “Army contracting officials at Army Contracting Command-Aberdeen Proving Ground (ACC-APG) did not appropriately award and administer the ANP contract in accordance with Federal and DoD guidance. Combined Security Transition CommandAfghanistan (CSTC-A) personnel made substantial changes to the statement of work immediately after contract award and the contractor more than doubled the size and cost of its program management office. CSTC-A, International Security Assistance Force Joint Command, and Army contracting officials did not adequately define contract requirements or identify that the contractor omitted key program office positions from its proposal during the source selection process. As a result, the cost of the ANP contract increased by $145.3 million in the first 4 months of the contractor’s performance and contractor officials still had not reached the staffing levels required in the contract at the time of our review…”

The Afghan national police commander marches to greet distinguished visitors at the graduation of Afghan National Police Academy cadets. Upon graduating the three year course, cadets become ANP officers and earn a degree in criminal justice. The academy trains men and women from more than 34 provinces. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Brian Ybarbo/RELEASED) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The report goes on to state -

“The increased costs of $16.1 million for additional program management personnel may have resulted in the Government not receiving the best value. Several offerors were found to be technically capable of filling the ANP contract requirements, and as a result, the contract was awarded based on the lowest proposed cost. In modification 005 to the contract, the contractor added 44 personnel to their

Report Assesses World’s Water Supply

I wonder how much longer it will be until water theft becomes a federal crime?

Excerpts from SacBee – “Floods and water shortages in the next 30 years will make it hard for many countries to keep up with growing demand for fresh water, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. intelligence community reported Thursday.

Water problems in the next decade will add to instability in countries that are important to U.S. national security, the report said. Floods and shortages also will make it hard for some countries to grow enough food or produce enough energy, creating risk for global food markets and slowing economic growth…

…Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton who requested the report last year, announced a new U.S. Water Partnership, made up of private companies, philanthropy and advocacy groups, academics and government. The group will coordinate efforts to solve water problems and make U.S. expertise more accessible…”

Read more at the SacBee

The Beat of War Drums

“War Pigs” came up on my playlist and fit my mood (as it usually does) for reading and posting about most of our military ‘actions’ and non-wars in far flung places for only the most murky & self-serving reasons known only to congressional – and corporational – kind of people.

Generals gathered in their masses,

just like witches at black masses…

$$$

Evil minds that plot destruction

Sorcerers of death’s construction…

Excerpts from Bloomberg article, “U.S. Reviews Military Options for Syria as Clinton Urges Russia to Shift“

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. is reviewing military action to ease the crisis in Syria even as he cautioned that the opposition and international support aren’t unified enough to intervene now.

The Obama administration is consulting with other nations and considering “an array of non-lethal assistance,” Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington yesterday…

He also cited U.S. concerns over Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons, which he said is “100 times worse than what we dealt with in Libya.”

In the fields the bodies burning,

as the war machine keeps turning…

So long as we ‘know what the mission is’ it’s okay to put our uniformed sons and daughters in harm’s way; remember that, folks. Just s’long as we know that we’re there to topple another regime and promote our own interests in the mid-east, it’s all just A-okay…

 “What doesn’t make sense is to take unilateral action right now,” Panetta said. “Before I recommend that we put our sons and daughters in uniform in harm’s way, I’ve got to make very sure that we know what the mission is, I’ve got to be very sure that we know whether we can achieve that mission and at what price.”

Death and hatred to mankind,

poisoning their brainwashed minds…

Something about this next paragraph seems a bit repetitive to me…I feel like I’ve already watched this scene before but I just can’t place the movie…Oh YEAH! Wasn’t this the intro to, “The Hunt for Bin Laden and The Ever Expanding War (On Terror)”..? Gosh, no one told me that we were making a sequel..! Or would it be more like a tri-quel?

“I declare that I am joining the revolution,” Hussameldin said in the video from an undisclosed location. Hussameldin, seated in an armchair dressed in a black suit and tie, accused the government of atrocities and “of driving the country to the brink of the abyss.”

The video, whose authenticity couldn’t be independently verified, was also cited by news organizations including the BBC, the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.

Politicians hide themselves away.

They only started the war…

“Americans should lead in this,” said Arizona Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the panel.

“Mass atrocities are going on.”

After McCain called March 5 for U.S.-led airstrikes to create civilian safe havens, other lawmakers disagreed. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, described U.S. intervention as premature “until there’s a clear direction as to what’s happening there.”

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor, yeah…

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, was among committee members who cited the potential “strategic benefit” to the U.S. of toppling the Assad regime because of its links to Iran. American intervention would help unify the international community and the opposition, he said.

Time will tell on their power minds,

making war just for fun…

“The clock is running,” Lieberman said. Failure to act may lead to regret that “not only we didn’t do the right thing morally to stop innocents from being killed, we missed an extraordinary strategic opportunity to strengthen our position” in the Middle East, he said.

 Full Story Can Be Read Here On The Bloomberg Report

 And, if you’re in the mood for it, an excellent rendition of War Pigs -

Related articles

• So, What Is Kony 2012? (q104.radio.com)
• Talk of US military in Syria divides Congress (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Panetta: Syria intervention risky, but possible – CBS News (cbsnews.com)
• Panetta Lectures McCain And Lieberman On Syria Intervention: ‘When We Do It, We’ll Do It Right’ (thinkprogress.org)

Necessary Spending

Where oh where does our (war) money go..?

Apparently it goes where ever the hell DoD decides it should…

Who are we mere debt mules to question the great & wise (corporate owned) congressional budget committees?

What kind of legacy are we living future generations if we continue to spend beyond our means in both dollars and human lives in order & continue to feed the profiteering war mongers?

“We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together…” 

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

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~ Nonexistent Fiscal Accountability ~

In January 2011 Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates stated: “This department simply cannot risk continuing down the same path – where our investment priorities, bureaucratic habits and lax attitude towards costs are increasingly divorced from the real threats of today, the growing perils of tomorrow and the nation’s grim financial outlook.” 

(Wiki) The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) was unable to provide an audit opinion on the 2010 (and 2011) financial statements of the US Government because of ‘widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations’. The GAO cited as the principal obstacle to its provision of an audit opinion ‘serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements unauditable’. 

Chief Financial Officer and Under Secretary of Defense Robert F. Hale acknowledged enterprise-wide problems with systems and processes, while the DoD’s Inspector General reported ‘material internal control weaknesses … that affect the safeguarding of assets, proper use of funds, and impair the prevention and identification of fraud, waste, and abuse‘. Further management discussion in the FY 2010 DoD Financial Report states ‘it is not feasible to deploy a vast number of accountants to manually reconcile our books’ and concludes that ‘although the financial statements are not auditable for FY 2010, the Department’s financial managers are meeting warfighter needs’.

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~ Globalization ~ 

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta Speaking about meeting of NATO defense minsters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 2, 2012:

 ”It was important to make clear to our European allies that even as our posture there evolves, we remain committed to NATO – the most successful military alliance in history – and we’ll continue to maintain an innovative, robust, and visible presence in Europe. As part of that robust presence, I told our allies that we will soon begin rotating a battalion-sized task force to Germany for exercises and training, as part of the rapidly deployable NATO Response Force, and we will also establish an aviation detachment in Poland to provide better training opportunities. We are also moving ahead with European missile defense – establishing land-based SM-3 missile sites in Romania and Poland, deploying Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ships to Spain, and a radar in Turkey.”

Now is a time for every NATO nation to make the most of the fiscal and security challenges we face to become more united as an Alliance and to strengthen our collective capabilities through such initiatives as Smart Defense. We took a big step forward on this front with an agreement to fund the Alliance Ground Surveillance system – consisting of five Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles and a ground control station. AGS has been in the works for many years, and is the first ISR capability NATO has ever purchased as a pooled resource.

Unified Combatant Command

A Unified Combatant Command is a single force composed of personnel and equipment

from at least two Military Departments, which has a broad and continuing mission.

The United States currently has 9 Combatant Commands:

U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)

U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM)

U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM)

U.S. European Command (USEUCOM)

U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM)

U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM)

U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM)

U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)

U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM)

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The Silent Colonization? 

U.S. Africa command received $274 million in Fiscal Year 2010.

The Obama administration has requested $298 million for the command for Fiscal Year 2011.

AFRICOM Mission: Africa Command protects and defends the national security interests of the United States by strengthening the defense capabilities of African states and regional organizations and, when directed, conducts military operations, in order to deter and defeat transnational threats and to provide a security environment conducive to good governance and development. 

AFRICOM  Activities & Factsheets

 Washington Times 2-6-2012 - “They train host nation’s forces, and include units from each service, such as the Green Berets, who specialize in irregular warfare and work in small teams no larger than 12. The Green Berets also build roads, schools, provide health care and live among locals, speaking their language.”

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The Promise of Endless War (Profits)

Why is it that at a time when America can barely keep her own economy afloat, we have officials who are continuing to make costly promises of a long-term international nature? I don’t see how or why it is our job to, “build a Europe” as Mrs. Clinton recently stated or why we should be looking towards spending more and more money on ‘important conflicts’ in every far-flung corner of the earth.

It will not matter what type of ‘global agenda’ we choose to ‘vigorously promote’ if we fail as a country and fall to an even lower level of  financial recession or depression. Our leaders seem to be hell-bent on digging us into a (global) hole that we are going to end up burying ourselves in – and We The People seem content to just allow them to do it. 

After reading the speeches given by Leon Panetta and Hilary Clinton at the Munich Security Conference, I couldn’t help but wonder how many more of our young men and women are they planning on sending off to die in the name of ‘common interest’ with our global allies? If our leaders really wanted to cut defense spending, not to mention save lives, would they really be using phrases like, “innovative rotational deployments”..? 

Image via Wikipedia

Department of Defense News Release

February 04, 2012

Remarks by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta

 & Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

48th Munich Security Conference, Bayerischer Hof, Munich, Germany

(Emphasis Mine)

Excerpts- Leon Panetta:

“There is still a war in Afghanistan.  We confront the threat of terrorism, nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, turmoil in the Middle East, rising powers, cyber attacks.  We designed a strategy to deal with these threats.

                 Let me summarize the key elements of the new U.S. defense strategy.  First, the United States military will be smaller and we will be leaner.  That was something, frankly, that was going to happen under any circumstances by virtue of the drawdown that we were involved in.  But what we wanted to stress was a force that would be agile, that would be flexible, that would be rapidly deployable, and that would be technologically advanced.  It must be a cutting edge force for the future.

Second, we will enhance our presence in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, where we see the greatest challenges and the greatest opportunities in the 21^st century.  Third, we will maintain a robust presence in Europe and elsewhere in the world by investing in existing alliances, by helping to make them stronger, by developing new partnerships, and by developing new innovative rotational deployments that will give us the capability to have a presence not only in Europe, but in Africa and Latin America and elsewhere.

Fourth, we will ensure that we can quickly confront and defeat aggression from any adversary, any time, any place.  It is essential that we have the capability to deal with more than one adversary at a time, and we believe we have shaped a force that will give us that capability.

And fifth, we will protect and prioritize key investments – key investments in technology and new capabilities from special operations forces to cyber and space and unmanned systems, as well as our capacity to surge, adapt and grow as needed…

…Let me lay out how we intend to strengthen transatlantic security cooperation by describing what European allies and partners can expect from the United States and our new defense strategy.  First, we will focus on the most pressing security challenges by investing in ballistic missile defense capability for Europe in response to the emerging threats beyond Europe.

As part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach and NATO’s missile defense capability, we have established a radar system in Turkey.  We will be stationing SM-3 missiles in Romania and Poland.  And we will deploy four BMD – ballistic missile defense-capable ships, Aegis ships to Rota, Spain.  President Obama has made clear that the United States is firmly committed to building a missile defense system in Europe.  The new defense strategy and our budget priorities reflect that commitment.

Second, we will invest in shared capabilities that will ensure NATO remains the strongest and most capable military alliance on earth.  To address intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance shortfalls, some of which the Libya operation exposed, NATO has agreed as of yesterday to fund the new Alliance Ground Surveillance system.

I want to thank the secretary general and all of my fellow defense ministers in NATO for having made that very important decision, that is in many ways the foundation of smart defense.  For that reason, we in the United States have protected funding for AGS in our new defense budget. 

Safeguarding critical capabilities was a core objective of our budget and strategy review of the United States, and it is important that we send a strong message that we remain committed to this system and bolstering NATO’s cutting edge capabilities…

…Today, I can announce that the United States will make a new commitment to the security of our NATO partners by reinvigorating our contribution to the NATO Response Force that we value so much.  The NRF was designed to be an agile, rapidly deployable, multinational force that can respond to crises when and where necessary.  The United States had endorsed the NRF but has not made a tangible contribution due to the demands of the wars – until now.

                 In the coming months, we will identify a U.S.-based brigade from which we will provide the United States land force contribution to the NATO Response Force, and we will rotate a battalion-sized task-force to Germany for exercises and training.  Not only will this open up new opportunities for U.S. troops to train and exercise with our European counterparts, it will ensure NATO has the capability to conduct expeditionary operations in defense of our common interests…”

Second, what emerged from a series of meetings with my NATO counterparts this past week was a recommitment to finishing the job in Afghanistan.  Our bottom line, as the foreign minister pointed out, is in together, out together.  As an Alliance, we are fully committed to the Lisbon framework and transitioning to Afghan control by 2014.