Hawks Still Positioning US as Globocop

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0616-02.htm

Inter Press Service

Stymied in Iraq, Hawks Still Positioning US as Globocop

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Although their hopes for transforming Iraq into a pro-U.S. base in the heart of the Arab world have been badly set back, neo-imperial hawks in the Bush administration are proceeding as fast as possible to reinvent U.S. forces worldwide as ''globocop'', capable of pre-empting any possible threat to its interests at a moment's notice.

In the last month, the Pentagon has confirmed plans to sharply cut forces stationed at giant U.S. bases in Germany, South Korea and Okinawa, Japan, and to redeploy them to smaller, more widely dispersed facilities -- sometimes called ''lily pads'' -- along an ''arc of crisis'' stretching along a wide band from Southeast Asia to West Africa, as well as to bases in Guam and back home.

The planned redeployments, the most sweeping since the onset of the Cold War more than 50 years ago, are all part of a global strategy to build, in Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's words, a ''capability to impose lethal power, where needed, when needed, with the greatest flexibility and with the greatest agility''.

As for where the ''need'' is, Pentagon officials state publicly that would be defined by threats to ''stability''. But a closer look at where Washington is most interested in acquiring access to military facilities suggests the determining factor may be proximity to oil and gas-producing areas, pipelines and shipping routes through which vital energy supplies pass.


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[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Rumsfeld is insane and a war criminal.

Wish we could put him on trial.