1.

SPACE SUPPORT TO ARMY OPERATIONS
By Steven Aftergood

Secrecy News
May 4, 2005

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

The role of space technology in supporting U.S. military operations is discussed on an unclassified basis in a new Army field manual.

In short: "The Army is critically dependent on space capabilities to enable and enhance land warfare. Virtually every Army operation uses space capabilities to some degree. Today, we use space largely for its ability to enhance the effectiveness of our combat forces. We can communicate; navigate; target, find, and fix the enemy; anticipate weather; and protect our forces based on combat and support assets available from space. We also strive to control space so adversaries cannot overcome our asymmetrical advantages in space."

See "Space Support to Army Operations," Field Manual (FM) 3-14, May 2005 (130 page, 5 MB PDF file):

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-14.pdf

2.

MISSILE DEFENSE AND A SPACE PEARL HARBOR
By David Ray Griffin

From Ch. 7, "Did U.S. Officials Have Reasons for Allowing 9/11?" in The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2004), pp. 96-100.

It is important to realize that the centerpiece of the "revolution in military affairs" is a program to weaponize and hence dominate space. This program will require much of the massive increase in funding for "defense" for which Brzezinski and the Project for the New American Century have called. The purpose of this program is spelled out quite explicitly in a document called "Vision for 2020," which begins with this mission statement: "U.S. Space Command -- dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment." [Note 40: This document is available at www.speacecom.af.mil/usspace. It is discussed in Jack Hitt, "The Next Battlefield May Be in Outer Space," New York Times Magazine, August 5, 2001, and Karl Grossman, Weapons in Space (New York: Seven Stories, 2001).] Its primary purpose, in other words, is not to protect the American homeland, but to protect American investments abroad. It makes this point even more explicit by comparing the importance of Space Command today with the fact that in previous times "nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests." It is to dominate space to protect the commercial interests of America's elite class that, according to current projections, over $1 trillion will be required from American taxpayers. [Note 41: This figure is reported in the Global Network Space Newsletter #14 (Fall 2003), which is posted on the website of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (www.space4peace.org).]

The "Vision for 2020" document engages in no sentimental propaganda about the need for the United States to dominate space for the sake of promoting democracy or otherwise serving humanity. Rather, it says candidly, if indiscreetly: "The globalization of the world economy . . . will continue with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots.'" In other words, as America's domination of the world economy increases, the poor will get still poorer while the rich get still richer, and this will make the "have-nots" hate America all the more, so we need to be able to keep them in line. We can do this through what the advocates of this program originally called "Global Battlespace Dominance." Because some people found this term too explicit, the preferred term today is "Full Spectrum Dominance" (which provided the title for a previously quoted book by Rahul Mahajan). This term means not only being dominant on land, on the sea, and in the air, as the U.S. military is already, but also having control of space. Discussing this "American project of global domination associated with the weaponization of space," Richard Falk says: "The empire-building quest for such awesome power is an unprecedented exhibition of geopolitical greed at its worst, and needs to be exposed and abandoned before it is too late." [Note 42: Falk, The Great Terror War, xxvii. Falk continues: "If this project aiming at global domination is consummated, or nearly so, it threatens the entire world with a kind of subjugation, and risks encouraging frightening new cycles of megaterrorism as the only available and credible strategy of resistance."]

The only part of this program that has received much public discussion is the defensive aspect of it, which in the Reagan Administration was called the Strategic Defensive Initiative and is today called the Missile Defense Shield. Although these names suggest that America's only goal in space is purely defensive, this so-called shield is only one part of a three-part program. One of the other parts is putting surveillance technology in space, with the goal of being able to zero in on any part of the planet with such precision that every enemy of U.S. forces can be identified. This part is already well on the way to realization. [Note 43: The developments achieved already by 1998 are described In George Friedman and Meredity Friedman, The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Domination in the 21st Century (New York: St. Martin's, 1998).] The third part of the program -- which shows that the informal name for this program, "Star Wars," is more accurate than its technical name -- is putting actual weapons in space, including laser cannons. These laser cannons have the offensive potential, as one writer put it, to "make a cruise missile look like a firecracker." [Note 44: Jack Hitt, "The Next Battlefield May be in Outer Space."] With laser weapons on our satellites, the United States will be able to destroy the military satellites any adversarial country would try to send up, and this is, indeed, part of the announced intention: "to deny other the use of space." The U.S. Space Command could thereby maintain total and permanent dominance. The aggressive purpose of the U.S. Space Command's program is announced in the logo of one of its divisions: "In Your Face from Outer Space." [Note 45: Ibid. For a brief overview of this project, see Karl Grossman's Weapons in Space.]

It is not only in this document that such aggressive aims are frankly stated. As Mahajan points out, the Project for the New American Century's document makes the following "remarkable admission":

"In the post-Cold-War era, America and its allies . . . have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities. Projecting conventional military forces . . . will be far more complex and constrained when the American homeland . . . is subject to attack by otherwise weak rogue regimes capable of cobbling together a minuscule ballistic missile force. Building an effective . . . system of missile defenses is a prerequisite for maintaining American preeminence." [Note 46: The Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, 54; quoted in Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003, 53-54).]

In other words, although the name "missile defense shield" suggests that the system is designed to shield America from attacks, its real purpose is to prevent other nations from deterring America from attacking them. This statement further suggests that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were later determined by President Bush to deserve the title "axis of evil" because of their perverse with to develop the capacity to deter the United States from projecting military force against them. The Project's description of the U.S. military's role in these offensive terms is fully in accord with the Bush administration's National Security Strategy, published in 2002, which, besides embodying most of the recommendations of Rebuilding America's Defenses [published in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century], says that "our best defense is a good offense." [Note 47: The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington: September 2002), 6. As John Pilger has concluded (see note 38, above), most of the suggestions made in the Project for the New American Century's document were enacted by the Bush administration. This is not surprising, of course, given the overlap of personnel.] The most important new component of this offense is to be the "full spectrum dominance" afforded by complementing America's land, air, and sea forces with a full-fledged Space Force.

Shortly before becoming Secretary of Defense in January of 2001, Donald Rumsfeld completed his work as chairman of the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization. This "Rumsfeld Commission," as it was informally known, published its report in the second week of January. [Note 48: Report of the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization (www.defenselink.mil/cgi-bin/dlprint.cgi).] The aim of its proposals, it said, was to "increase the asymmetry between U.S. forces and those of other military powers." Besides advocating the termination of the 1972 ABM Treaty (which the Bush administration acted on promptly), this report recommended substantial changes, including the subordination of all the other armed forces and the intelligence agencies to the Space Force. Recognizing that such a drastic reorganization of the armed forces and intelligence agencies would normally evoke great resistance, the report added:

"History is replete with instances in which warning signs were ignored and change resisted until an external, 'improbable' even forced resistant bureaucracies to take action. The question is whether the U.S. will be wise enough to act responsibly and soon enough to reduced U.S. space vulnerability. Or whether, as in the past, a disabling attack agains the country and its people -- a 'Space Pearl Harbor' -- will be the only event able to galvanize the nation and cause the U.S. Government to act." [Note 49: Ibid., quoted in 9/11: The Big Lie, 151-52.]

We have, accordingly, yet another suggestion by a central figure in the Bush administration that another "Pearl Harbor" may be necessary to "galvanize the nation."

This report was released on January 11, 2001, exactly nine months before the U.S. suffered attacks from the air that our defenses appeared to be helpless to prevent. And the primary response evoked by these attacks was a sense of America's vulnerability. The chairman of the commission that issued the above report was, furthermore, well placed to take advantage of those attacks and the resulting sense of "U.S. space vulnerability." As Meyssan points out, at a press conference that began at 6:42 PM on 9/11 itself, Rumsfeld, now Secretary of Defense, used the attacks to browbeat Democratic Senator Carl Levin, who was then chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee (during the brief period of the Bush Administration during which Democrats had control of the Senate). Before live cameras, Rumsfeld said:

"Senator Levin, you and other Democrats in Congress have voiced fear that you simply don't have enough money for the large increase in defense that the Pentagon is seeking, especially for missile defense, and you fear that you'll have to dip into the Social Security funds to pay for it. Does this sort of thing convince you that an emergency exists in this country to increase defense spending, to dip into Social Security, if necessary, to pay for defense spending -- increase defense spending?" [Note 50: Departement of Defense News Briefing on Pentagon Attack (www.defenslink.mil/cgi-bin/dlprint.cgi), quoted in 9/11: The Big Lie, 152.]

It does appear that the attacks of 9/11 provided Rumsfeld with what he thought could pass for "a Space Pearl Harbor," and he seemed remarkably prepared to take advantage of it.

Furthermore, if U.S. officials were involved in facilitating the attacks of 9/11, Rumsfeld was not the only one with great interest in the Space Command. Its other primary advocate was its current commander, General Ralph E. Eberhart, who in his role as commander of NORAD was in charge of air traffic control on 9/11. Also, General Richard Myers, who was in the process of becoming the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was the Acting Chairman on 9/11, had previously been head of the U.S. Space Command. Known by some as "General Starwars," he was in charge during the writing of "Vision for 2020," with its quite explicit expression of the intent to get absolute control of space so that the Pentagon can protect American commercial interests while they are increasing the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" of the world. Accordingly, the three men who have been most identified with advocacy of the U.S. Space Force are also the three figures woul would have been most directly involved in promulgating and overseeing a "stand down" order on 9/11, if such was given."