Rumsfeld Offers to Scrap MX 2 Years Early

By Joel Skousen

In a move that promises to shift the US window of vulnerability to a Russian nuclear strike two years earlier, the Bush administration, led by Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfield, is offering to do what Bill Clinton could never get away with--dismantle our premiere nuclear missile system, the MX "Peacekeeper," next year, instead of by the end of 2003. The MX is a crucial factor in the balance of nuclear deterrence for several reasons and should not be dismantled. First, it is our only missile armed with 10 MIRVed warheads, each capable of hitting and destroying hardened Russian and Chinese targets. Second, it is our most modern and accurate missile. Third, even though only 50 MX missiles exists, with 10 warheads on each missile that’s a loss of 1500 potential targets--a huge loss in deterrence capability. Fourth, with PDD-60 (orders to our missileers NOT to launch on warning and absorb an enemy "first strike") still governing our military’s nuclear response, the loss of all 50 MX missiles frees up at least 250 Russian warheads to target other US facilities. This is because the Russians would have to blanket a hardened MX silo with at least 5 ground burst weapons in order to ensure a kill.

This unilateral move comes at a time when Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is not only NOT disarming but is building and deploying 3 of the new SS-27 (Topol-M) ICBMs per quarter. (There could be more being produced in underground factories.) Putin is openly threatening to place 3 warheads on this new 6th generation ICBM (rumored to possess ABM jamming capabilities and maneuvering warheads), even though the START II treaty only allows Russia one warhead per missile. In fact, Putin’s threat is disinformation for the media. Both he and US intelligence know that Russia has already begun mounting multiple warheads on the Topols as of last year. An SS-27 missile test with multiple warhead separation has even been recorded by space based sensors.

What is also little known is that President Clinton already offered Russia the 3-warhead option as part of his deal to gain Russia’s permission to build an ABM system--as if we needed Russia’s permission to defend ourselves. What was particularly egregious was Clinton’s reasoning. He said his offer was to assure Russia that they would have sufficient nuclear power to overwhelm the puny 100 missile interceptor system being planned at the time. Here is an American president supposedly building an Anti-Ballistic Missile system to protect the American people and then offering to make an agreement with our largest potential nuclear enemy to render the system ineffective! Thus, it was entirely predictable that Putin’s defense minister would openly deride the US ABM system by saying exactly that--that by mounting 3 warheads on Russia’s planned 500 SS-27s, Russia could overwhelm the US defense system. As if that weren’t enough, Russian defense ministry spokesmen announced, after a test launch of an SS-19 ICBM this week, that Russia may not dismantle the SS-19s after all, in spite of prior promises to do so. This is not surprising since Russia is and has been in violation of virtually every single disarmament agreement signed. Strangely, the US not only never protests these violations, but insists on abiding by the agreements itself unilaterally.

As I have said before in prior Briefs, our leaders aren’t simply stupid, naive, or even suicidal. These tactics of covering for Russian violations and war preparations indicate that US globalist leaders have some sort of ulterior motives not in accord with US sovereign interests. These motives are instead tied to global intentions of undermining US sovereignty and military might. What better way to do that than create the conditions of US vulnerability whereby Russia is induced to finally destroy the one obstacle in Communism’s long dream of world hegemony--the US military?

Ironically, as Russia and China build for a two-ocean war of supremacy against the US, Sec. of Defense Rumsfield recently announced to Congress that as a matter of US military policy and strategy, the US will no longer prepare to wage two major wars simultaneously. This is a tacit admission that the Bush campaign pledge to rebuild the American military does not involve a strategy for preparing against the greatest real threats--Russia and China. Rumsfield’s stated intention of allocating almost the entire $8 billion in defense budget increases towards pay and amenities for service men is indicative that the Bush administration’s spending will not be sufficient or timely enough to protect us during this hastening window of vulnerability. All ammunition and strategic missile stocks have yet to be replenished from the Serbia campaign. Worse, none of the major US defense systems nor advanced weapon systems are expected to reach deployment till the 2006-2010 time frame. Therefore, the US will be open for maximum exposure to attack from 2002 to 2006. I’m issuing a major warning to my subscribers to not delay any preparations for implementing a high security shelter within your home or retreat. If the Bush administration implements Rumsfield’s drastic proposal for the early elimination of the MX, our nation’s window of vulnerability will move forward two years and you must not delay making substantive preparations for future war. [See my website listed above for details on how to proceed.]

In a move that set off anti-American demonstrations throughout western Macedonia, the US pressured Macedonia to call off its attack of NLA Albanian rebels holed up in the Macedonian town of Aracinovo. Worse, the US sent in a column of US armored troop carriers to evacuate the guerrillas, with their weapons, to a nearby town. The US said this was necessary because no private bus company would take on the task. Why should any Macedonian bus company want to help extract an enemy of its own country? This whole excuse is simply disinformation on the part of the US meant to cover up its real intentions. It’s a phony cover on its face. There is no way the NLA guerrillas would have accepted a ride in civilian buses out of a town surrounded by Macedonian soldiers without an armed escort.

There is also evidence from a German news report that among the retreating rebels were 17 former American military "instructors" working for one of the many "private" corporations that the US hires to do military consulting the US doesn’t want to take responsibility for. According to the article, Macedonian security people claim that most of the weapons the NLA fields are provided by the US, including night vision goggles. While I cannot independently confirm this damaging report, I feel it is predictable that the US would get involved since we already know that the CIA trained and armed the KLA rebels in Kosovo--so why not the NLA? The NLA regularly penetrates Macedonia from the US-KFOR sector in Kosovo, giving further suspicion to US complicity in this whole affair.

These facts are well known among the local non-Albanians in Macedonia. Hostility against the recent American intervention was so intense that the American military convoy, attempting to return to base in Kosovo, was confronted by angry and armed demonstrators at various border check points. Rather than confront the armed crowds, the US headquarters launched an unmanned "hunter" reckon aircraft to find a safe route home for the convoy through the back roads. All told, this little "rescue" mission on behalf of the enemy cost the US taxpayer a few hundred thousand dollars.

The town of Aracinovo was a key town that the Macedonian army could not simply cede to guerrilla control. This town is not only within 4 miles of Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, but it is also within striking distance of Macedonia’s sole oil refinery. The Macedonian military had the NLA surrounded and under artillery bombardment when US and NATO negotiators intervened to force Macedonia to honor a "cease fire." NATO claims they had to intervene because Macedonia could not have defeated the guerrillas--a charge hotly disputed by Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski. Macedonians have come to see this latest move by US troops as a NATO attempt to keep the Albanian militant wing alive so as to eventually justify a Kosovo style intervention in Macedonia.

Obviously, the intervention has already begun. Macedonian President Trajkovsky gave in (unwisely) to Javier Solana’s demands that Trajkovsky form a coalition government with the Albanian minority parties. Solana is the Spanish Marxist who was former head of the Atlantic Alliance, NATO, and is now NATO’s high representative for foreign and security policy. Pushing governments into hostile coalitions with enemies has been a standard tactic used by the US to covertly assist in communist takeovers of friendly governments for years. It happened in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and is ongoing in Korea and Ireland. For Macedonia, as for these other countries, a coalition government with the enemy is a no-win proposition. Just as Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland is a political shill for the militant IRA, so the Albanian political parties are fronting for the NLA who will settle for nothing less than a partition of Macedonia, splitting off the western section of the country so it can join with Kosovo and Albania proper to form a pan-Albanian Muslim state. There is no intent on the part of the radical Albanian parties to have a peaceful negotiated settlement of the issues.

The US secret agenda in the Balkans deserves Congressional scrutiny. But it doesn’t look like the presumed conservative administration of George W. Bush is going to cooperate. Representative Benjamin Gilman, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, made a request last year of the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to secure for the subcommittee heretofore secret documents surrounding our government’s involvement in UN peacekeeping operations around the world. It is the GAO’s legal responsibility to respond to Congressional investigative instructions. The Clinton administration continuously ignored Congressional oversight of the "War Powers Act" by refusing all requests as detailed below, and the Bush administration is continuing the cover-up. Here’s a summary of the Comptroller General’s letter to Rep. Gilman detailing his futile efforts to get the cooperation of the Clinton and Bush administrations. My emphasis has been added and comments included in [brackets].

"SUMMARY AND OBSERVATIONS by David Walker, Comptroller General:

Since the Departments of State and Defense and the National Security Council had failed to provide us access to all the records we requested and needed, the Comptroller General issued demand letters to the head of each agency on November 9, 2000, under our enforcement authority in 31 U.S.C. § 716. On December 13, 2000-- after almost 9 months of sustained effort on the part of both agencies and the efforts of the Committee-- we obtained from State reasonable access to records documenting State's role in the Directive 25 decision-making process [top secret PDD-25 on US policy for UN operational assistance] for the operations in our study. On November 28, the Department of Defense responded to our demand letter by stating that it was committed to cooperating fully with us (see enc. III). However, as of February 27, 2001, [Bush administration] we had obtained access to only about one quarter of the Defense records we had requested, and many of these were heavily redacted.

"Despite two calls to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and a meeting with Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense De Leon on February 28 and March 1, respectively, the access issue remains unresolved. Specifically, on March 1, the Comptroller General met with the acting Deputy Secretary of Defense to discuss ways to provide us satisfactory access to the Defense records. At the conclusion of this meeting, it appeared to us that an accommodation was forthcoming that would have provided us the access we needed. However, on March 2, Defense informed us that the National Security Council, coordinating with the White House Counsel's office, directed Defense not to provide us access to the records until the National Security Council had completed its review. [Typical stonewalling tactic.] Since these records are necessary for preparing a report that is responsive to the Committee's request, we advised the Defense Department officials that we would proceed with enforcement action under section 716(b) to obtain these records, unless we have reasonable and responsive access to the records by March 9, 2001.

"...the National Security Council responded to our demand letter by formally denying us full and complete access to the records we had requested. Consequently, the Comptroller General took the next step under our enforcement authority in section 716(b) by issuing a report to the President, the Congress, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and other specified officials. (See enc. IV, V, and VI, respectively, for our demand letter, the National Security Council's response, and our report.) After filing this report GAO can bring an action in court to require an agency to produce a record. However, section 716(d) indicates that we can not bring such an action if the President or the Director of OMB certifies that the requested records contain certain privileged material whose disclosure to GAO ‘reasonably could be expected to impair substantially the operations of the Government.’ The Director of OMB [Jacob Lew--one of the many Clinton holdovers retained by Bush] certified that these conditions had been met and that the records could be withheld from GAO . At the same time, the Director of OMB did not provide adequate substantive support that the statutory standard for his certification had been met. (See enc. VII.) However, the language of section 716 and its legislative history suggest that GAO can not judicially challenge the certification. [That’s because the courts are in collusion with this hidden agenda.]

"Denying us access to records has impaired our ability to conduct a complete and accurate assessment. Specifically, the National Security Council has denied us full and complete access to 26 documents related to the decision-making process on UN peacekeeping. These documents cover discussions about Presidential Decision Directive 25 factors relevant to peacekeeping decisions. As of March 5, 2001 Defense has not provided us full and complete access to 111 specific documents."

It should be obvious after reading this detailed report that the Bush administration is controlled by the same globalists operators that ran the Clinton administration. The figureheads change but not the trend to use US power to implement a New World Order agenda.

On Fox News Sunday morning, June 17, Tony Snow was interviewing US Secretary of State Colin Powell on the State Department’s agenda for President Bush’s upcoming meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Powell said that the US was requesting Russian help in tracking down lost nuclear materials in Russia, as well in locating certain Russian scientists who had gone underground. How would the US know nuclear material in Russia was "lost" unless the Russians told them? What motive would Russia have to inform the US and why should we believe them when the Russians are uncooperative in pursuing the investigation? Powell intimated that this missing nuclear material could now be in the hands of these rogue scientists, who may be working for adversaries of the US. In reality, there is no such loss of control over nuclear material in Russia. This is Russia’s way of violating the Nonproliferation Agreement and blaming it on rogue scientists. This is why the Russians have never been forthcoming with any help in tracking down these "rumored losses."

But the most dramatic faux pas (false step) in this interview came next. Powell commented that, "Finding the Russian scientists may be a problem being that Russia does not have a Social Security System--as here in America--that allows us to monitor, track down and capture an American citizen." Powell immediately recognized that he made a huge mistake in this admission of the government’s misuse of Social Security numbers. He abruptly stopped speaking and look very embarrassed before continuing. Tony Snow failed to pick up on the dramatic admission, but it was all too predictable for those who understand the government’s hidden agendas.

WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF (excerpt) June 29, 2001 Copyright Joel Skousen. Quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief. Website: http://www.joelskousen.com

(Ed. Note: We thank Joel Skousen for allowing his insights to be reprinted in part at Web Today. For access to his complete weekly columns, available by subscription, we refer you to his homepage http://www.joelskousen.com)

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