Matt Kennard writes: My journey into the dark underworld of the US military begins on a rainy Tuesday morning in March 2008, with a visit to Tampa, Florida. I am here to meet Forrest Fogarty, an American patriot who served in the US army for two years in Iraq. Fogarty is also a white supremacist of the serious Hitler-worshipping type.

We meet in his favourite hangout, the Winghouse Bar & Grill. In our brief phone call, I’d asked how I would recognise him. “Just look for the skinhead with the tattoos,” he said. And sure enough, sitting straight to my right as I walk in is a youngish-looking man, plastered in tattoos, with cropped hair and bulging biceps. “You’re British, right,” he says, as we order. “I remember seeing black guys with British accents in Iraq, shit was so crazy.”

Fogarty tells me he was bullied at his LA high school by Mexican and African-American children, and was just 14 when he decided he wanted to be a Nazi. He has no qualms about flaunting his prejudice. When black people come into the bar, he emits a hiss of disapproval. “I just don’t want to be around them,” he tells me. “I don’t want to look at them, I don’t want them near me.”

As a young man, Fogarty was obsessed with Ian Stuart Donaldson, the legendary singer in the British band Skrewdriver, who is hero-worshipped in the neo-Nazi music scene. At 16, he had an image from one of Skrewdriver’s album covers – a Viking carrying an axe, an icon among white nationalists – tattooed on his left forearm. Soon after, he had a Celtic cross, an Irish symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, emblazoned on his stomach. A few years later, he started his own band, Attack, now one of the biggest Nazi bands in the US. But it was never his day job. “I was a landscaper when I left school,” he says. “I kind of fell into it. I didn’t give a shit what I was doing, I was just drinking and fighting.”

For the next eight years he drifted through jobs in construction and landscaping, and began hanging out with the National Alliance, at the time one of the biggest neo-Nazi organisations in the US. He soon became a member. He had always seen himself as a fighter and warrior, so he resolved to do what two generations of Fogartys had done before him: join the military.

Fogarty was not the first extremist to enter the armed forces. The neo-Nazi movement has had a long and tense relationship with the US military. Since its inception, the leaders of the white supremacist movement have encouraged their members to enlist. They see it as a way for their followers to receive combat and weapons training, courtesy of the US government, and then to bring what they learn home to undertake a domestic race war. Not all far-right groups subscribe to this vision – some, such as the Ku Klux Klan, claim to prefer a democratic approach – but a large portion see themselves as insurrectionary forces. To that end, professional training in warfare is a must. [Continue reading…]

The Atlantic: New details are emerging about the four U.S. soldiers accused of plotting to assassinate President Obama and overthrow the U.S. government.

The bizarre story began unfurling on Monday after Pfc. Michael Burnett, dressed in his Army uniform, testified in a southeast Georgia court against his fellow militia members. Prosecutors accused the group F.E.A.R. (Forever Enduring Always Ready) of buying $87,000 worth of assault rifles, bomb materials, and semiautomatic weapons in a plot to bomb a park in nearby Savannah, poison apple orchards in Washington state and blow up a dam with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the government and killing Barack Obama. The group also stands accused of murdering former U.S. soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend Tiffany York after they learned of the group’s plans. In a plea bargain, Burnett plead guilty to manslaughter and illegal gang activity on Monday in connection with Roark and York’s murder. Here’s what we’ve learned about the group so far.

The four U.S. soldiers implicated in the crimes, Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, Sgt. Anthony Peden, Pvt. Christopher Salmon and Burnett, are all active members of the U.S. Army. According to Burnett, the group’s rationale behind killing the president was “to give the government back to the people,” according to CNN. “The government needed a change, Burnett told the court. ‘I thought we were the people who would be able to change it.'” According to Long County Prosecutor Isabel Pauley, “This domestic terrorist organization did not simply plan and talk. Prior to the murders in this case, the group took action” and had the “knowledge, means and motive to carry out their plans.” The Associated Press reports that the group courted current and former soldiers “who were in trouble or disillusioned.” Prosecutors said they had no idea of the size of F.E.A.R.’s membership.

The Washington Post reports: Osama bin Laden hid in his bedroom for at least 15 minutes as Navy SEALs battled their way through his Pakistani compound, making no attempt to arm himself before a U.S. commando shot him as he peeked from his doorway, according to the first published account by a participant in the now-famous raid on May 2, 2011.

The account, in a book by one of the SEAL team leaders, sheds new light on the al-Qaeda chief’s final moments. In the account, bin Laden appears neither to surrender nor to directly challenge the Special Forces troops who killed his son and two associates while working their way to his third-floor apartment. A White House narrative of the raid had acknowledged that bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed but suggested that he posed a threat to the U.S. commandos.

The depiction of an apparently passive bin Laden is among dozens of revelations in the book, “No Easy Day,” which chronicles the raid in minute and often harrowing detail, from the nearly disastrous helicopter crash in the opening seconds to the shots fired into bin Laden’s twitching body as he lay apparently dead from a gunshot wound to the temple.

The book also has provided fresh fodder for partisans in the long-simmering controversy over the Obama administration’s handling of the raid’s aftermath. Author Matt Bissonnette’s account, written without Pentagon or White House approval, is being published at a time when the administration is cracking down on unauthorized leaks while also fending off accusations that it sought to exploit the success of the raid by offering unusual access to filmmakers.

Republicans have sought to diminish President Obama’s most significant counterterrorism achievement by accusing the White House of selectively leaking details about the raid to ensure a favorable portrayal of the president. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has decried such leaks as “contemptible” and called for an independent investigation. The White House has denied authorizing the release of classified information for political gain.

Bissonnette, who retired last year, writes that the commandos knew that their successful mission would be exploited for political purposes. “We just got this guy re-elected,” Bissonnette quotes one of his SEAL comrades as saying of Obama in the hours after the team returned to its base in Afghanistan.

At the same time, Bissonnette credits Obama for having the courage to order the raid, and he describes being impressed by the president’s understated speech announcing the al-Qaeda leader’s death to the world. “None of us were huge fans of Obama,” Bissonnette writes in the book. “We respected him as the commander-in-chief of the military and for giving us the green light on the mission.”

Al Monitor reports: When the drums of war reach a fever pitch throughout the Middle East, cooperation with Israel’s most important ally assumes even more urgency than ever. The IDF is, of course, a powerful and independent army but in the event of an extensive confrontation, even Israel — a regional power — may run out of ammo. Meanwhile, six secret American bases are spread out throughout the country. According to foreign reports, these depots are chock-full of ammunition, smart bombs, missiles, an assortment of military vehicles and a military hospital with 500 beds. If Israel will be forced to take action against Iran, whether alone or together with the US, there is high probability that it will need a strategic home front — in the guise of those bases full of goodies.

According to the reports, the bases are situated in Herzliya Pituah (in the vicinity of Tel Aviv, on the coastline), Ben Gurion Airport, and air-force bases Ovda and Nevatim (Israeli Air Force bases in Southern Israel). These bases are crammed full of expensive equipment worth more than $1 billion. “These [supply] depots do not constitute the central consideration in deciding when to go to war, but they definitely figure in the overall calculations,” says David Ivri, former Israeli Air Force (IAF) Commander at the beginning of the negotiations with the Americans regarding establishing the depots. Later on, Ivri served as Director-General of the Defense Ministry and as Israel’s Ambassador to the US from 2000 to 2002.

Negotiations between Israel and the US over the emergency reserve depots in Israel extended over a 10-year period. The Israelis asked for huge depots filled with heavy equipment and tanks, while the Americans agreed at first only to store medical equipment. Finally, the US began to build the depots in the early 1990s; according to foreign reports, some were built as underground bunkers. High-echelon Israeli (and American) sources are very familiar with the emergency installations and their great importance to Israel’s warfare deployment. Three weeks ago, the White House issued a special announcement mentioning the existence of these storage sites: “The Israeli forces have access to the American emergency depots.” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, in internal discussions in the Defense Ministry, that the United States will allow Israel to use equipment from these depots during an emergency.

“The fact that we have these depots definitely improves the way we feel,” says Dani Yatom, former Knesset Member and former head of the Mossad, who served as the Head of the IDF’s Planning Directorate of the General Staff in the period when the US began to transfer emergency reserves to Israel. “I was in favor of the depots. My instincts told me it was a good idea. These depots give us the feeling that we have more equipment than we actually possess. Our military inventory is never sufficient, a prolonged war can lead to a shortage of shells, bombs and other [military] equipment but inventory is always slashed in the defense budget. When we have to decide between stocking up on inventory or transferring funds to [military] training or acquisition of MRPVs [Mini Remote-Piloted Vehicle] or tanks, inventory is usually the lowest priority. The American storage depots alleviate our planning of military operations because we can take into account the American equipment as well. Officially we are not allowed to use anything without American authorization, but there definitely might be someone out there who thinks that if we really will need this equipment, and the Americans won’t allow our access to the emergency depots, we’ll take it anyway.” [Continue reading…]

Nick Turse writes: “In operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a failure to recognise, acknowledge and accurately define the operational environment led to a mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions and goals,” reads a new draft report by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

In Decade of War: Enduring Lessons from the Past Decade of Operations, the authors admit to failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and lay out a series of lessons for the future, including more effective efforts aimed at winning hearts and minds, integrating regular troops and special operations forces, coordination with other government agencies, coalition operations, partnering with the forces of host-nations and paying greater attention to the use of proxy forces.

The report has created a buzz in military circles and has been hailed as offering new insights, but the move away from ruinous large-scale land wars to a new hybrid method of war-fighting, call it “the Obama formula”, has been evident for some time. For the past several years, the US has increasingly turned to special operations forces working not only on their own but also training or fighting beside allied militaries (if not outright proxy armies) in hot spots around the world.

And along with those special ops advisers, trainers and commandos, ever more resources are flowing into the militarisation of spying and intelligence, the use of drone aircraft is proliferating, cyber-warfare is on the rise, as are joint operations between the military and increasingly militarised “civilian” government agencies.

The Obama administration has, in fact, doubled down again and again on this new way of war – from Africa to the Greater Middle East to South America – but what looks today like a recipe for easy power projection that will further US interests on the cheap could soon prove to be an unmitigated disaster – one that likely won’t be apparent until it’s too late. [Continue reading…]

Where chaos looms, the Few emerge. Marines move toward the sounds of tyranny, injustice and despair — with the courage and resolve to silence them. Marines face down the threats of our time.

Has the Pentagon learned anything over the past decade? The promise of American boots on the ground to challenge tyranny is not what the world wants to hear. The rest of the world does not want or need to be saved by the U.S. Marines.

Likewise, American kids being recruited for military service should not be told they will be trained to protect humanity. They will be trained to kill people in accordance with the dictates of the U.S. government and the entities whose interests the U.S. government serves.

Salon: Kirby Dick’s “The Invisible War” is already the darling of the festival circuit, a documentary that won the audience award at Sundance and critical praise for its sharp, skillful storytelling. But as compelling as his film is, the director of “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” and the Catholic Church sex abuse documentary “Twist of Faith” doesn’t merely want to impress you. This is a movie that intends to reform the entire United States military. And it stands a very good chance of succeeding.

Inspired by Helen Benedict’s 2007 Salon story “The Private War of Women Soldiers,” “The Invisible War” is a gut-wrenching condemnation of the way the military has, across the board and in every branch, failed to protect its members from sexual assault – and then failed them again and again afterward. In a series of harrowing personal accounts, victims – mostly women but a sampling of men as well – recount the trauma of their rapes while in uniform and the sickening personal consequences they experienced for reporting them. It’s estimated that over 20 percent of female veterans have been sexually assaulted during their service – and some believe the real figure is even higher. It’s an epidemic.

As the film demonstrates, because the military handles sexual assault internally, a stunning number of victims are simply brushed off by their superiors. But even more outrageously, many of them have faced retribution. The subjects speak of having their careers ruined, of being punished for committing “adultery” with their married rapists, or being denied veterans’ benefits for the long-term consequences of the emotional and physical batterings they received.

The Christian Science Monitor reports: Even as the Pentagon draws down US troops in Afghanistan, it plans to base a sizable contingent of forces in nearby Kuwait – with the clear purpose of sending a signal to Iran.

The signal – that the United States plan to maintain a credible force in the region – comes at a vital time for the US military, says Michael Singh, a former senior adviser for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council.

“The Middle East is very turbulent right now – it’s hard to even imagine all of the different types of conflicts that will challenge our interests,” adds Mr. Singh.

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released Tuesday stresses the “myriad” political and security challenges in the region, “from the Iranian nuclear program to the threat of terrorism.”

But at the top of the list is the ongoing friction with Iran, analysts tend to agree.

“Clearly the day where we had massive US troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming to a close,” Singh says. When coupled with what Singh describes as a US response to the Arab Spring that “has in many ways been aloof,” he adds, “I think there’s a perception in the region that the US is pulling back.”

Singh says it’s a perception that Iran is seeking to disseminate for its own purposes – “that America is leaving the region because they have driven US forces out.” And, he adds, it’s in the Pentagon’s best interests “to show this narrative is false.”

At the same time, “there are still lingering questions over our military posture in the region” in the wake of looming defense budget cuts and the Pentagon’s strategic pivot toward Asia and the Pacific, notes Singh, now managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report estimated that the number of US forces in Kuwait is likely to be some 13,500 following the US drawdown in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said that he ultimately envisions some 40,000 US troops stationed in the Middle East region.