Reuters: As Obama weighed patrol to counter China, Pentagon urged faster action
The U.S. naval challenge to China's territorial assertiveness in the South China Sea this week came after months of frustration within the Pentagon at what some defense officials saw as unnecessary delays by the White House and State Department in approving the mission.
As early as mid-May, the Pentagon was considering sending military aircraft and ships to assert the principle of freedom of navigation around China's artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago after Defense Secretary Ash Carter requested options to respond to their rapid construction.
That patrol eventually took place on Tuesday when the USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, triggering an angry rebuke from China and threatening to ratchet up tensions between the world's two biggest economies.
Update: Q&A: Impact of US Warship Sailing Near China-Held Island (NYT/AP)
WNU Editor: President Obama has to look at the bigger picture .... the Pentagon's responsibility and advice is just one part of that bigger picture. But this revelation does blow out of the water the White House's claims that this was just a routine naval mission .... this leak reveals that it clearly was not.
Update #2: U.S., Chinese naval officials to discuss South China Sea situation: U.S. official (Reuters).
And another fun tip:
ReplyDeletehttps://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/whistleblower-al-qaeda-chief-u-s-asset/
"In interviews with this author in early March, Edmonds claimed that Ayman al-Zawahiri, current head of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s deputy at the time, had innumerable, regular meetings at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, with U.S. military and intelligence officials between 1997 and 2001, as part of an operation known as ‘Gladio B’. Al-Zawahiri, she charged, as well as various members of the bin Laden family and other mujahideen, were transported on NATO planes to various parts of Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations.
According to two Sunday Times journalists speaking on condition of anonymity, this and related revelations had been confirmed by senior Pentagon and MI6 officials as part of a four-part investigative series that were supposed to run in 2008. The Sunday Times journalists described how the story was inexplicably dropped under the pressure of undisclosed “interest groups”, which, they suggest, were associated with the U.S. State Department."
Thank you for the link Jay.
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