WTF??? Pentagon: Who We're At War With Is Classified

[unhappycamper]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/pentagon-war-classified_n_3659353.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Pentagon: Who We're At War With Is Classified
ProPublica | By Cora Currier Posted: 07/26/2013 12:35 pm EDT | Updated: 07/26/2013 10:09 pm EDT

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”

~snip~

At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.

The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin, would say only that the department’s “answer included the information requested.”

A Pentagon spokesman told ProPublica that revealing such a list could cause “serious damage to national security.”




unhappycamper comment: So we are in (another) secret war. Oh, goody.

[tularetom]

1. we have always been at war with eastasia

Doncha know?

[Mnemosyne]

2. +1000

[grilled onions]

3. No It's Anywhere "Over There"

Where that is, is a matter of opinion, at the moment, among the war mongers. At times it appears to have similarity to a Chinese menu. One from country A but also a side war with B,C, and or D. They want to cover as much ground as possible to those troublesome peace people back home, to try and convince them that war is needed,wanted, a good deal.
Scan the news any given week and you will see them dropping names off their forked tongues about which country is next or should be included.
The only things they don't talk about is who is going to finance the next rodeo and they can't explain why there isn't any money to fix that crumbling bridge, allow seniors to eat AND pay their bills or allow everyone who gets sick to be able to see a doctor, but they can always cough up the bucks for war.

[obxhead]

4. You know a secret war is always better than a official war.

With a secret war all the money is secret as well.

You also have none of that pesky oversight throughout the process.

[truebluegreen]

11. Of course the secret war is only a secret to us...

like Cambodia.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. Oh, no, no. Not so.

We didn't want the Cambodians to find out that we were bombing them.

[truebluegreen]

14. Yep. Dog Forbid somebody prints it and they find out.

[Solly Mack]

5. We're at war with them, those, not us, over there, somewhere, everywhere...

Just shut up and wave the flag!

[Orrex]

6. Makes it easy to charge people with aiding the enemy

Heck, you might be aiding them right now. How would you know?

[blackspade]

7. And releasing the list of the folks we are at war with.....

could cause “serious damage to national security” ? How?

That makes no sense at all.

[NorthCarolina]

8. I suspect because disclosure would cause public outrage. nt

[RC]

15. Because the Citizen of the United States of America are near the top of that secret list.

We are not to know that our own government is at war with us. And if we suspect and object, that is proof that we are the enemy.
National security is at stake here.

It makes perfect sense if one is a paranoid power monger whose pay check depends on anyone "not us" automatically being the enemy. "Not us", being anyone not rich enough to profit from their wars.

[blackspade]

20. Your probably right.

[pasto76]

9. how has this changed in the past 12 years

those 'affiliates' have always been classified.

this is a real reach, and the attempt at the hyped up drama is unbecoming.

[blackspade]

21. That same worn out memo.....

and the reasons for that classification are still unrevealed.

[westerebus]

10. I 'm thinking...

ACLU
OWS
SLPC
Doctors w/o Borders
Earth First


You can add as many as you think.
Unless thinking has become a crime.
But, we wouldn't know that as that too is classified.
At least I think so..

Cuba
Syria
World Wild Life Fund
Union of Concerned Scientists

[Civilization2]

12. For our security! lolz What a sickening degeneration into corporate-militarism for profits.,.

Rather sadly, there are some on this very site that STILL believe the hype!

[Downwinder]

16. Pogo said it best.

[Ford_Prefect]

18. Not to mention all the behind the scenes situations in central and southern Africa...

[ctsnowman]

19. Why

do you hate the troops?

[valerief]

22. When was war declared? I didn't think they did that anymore, not since the Vietnam "conflict". nt

[Lugal Zaggesi]

23. Vietnam was never a declared "War"

The Constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war. Congress has declared war on 11 occasions, including its first declaration of war with Great Britain in 1812. Congress approved its last formal declaration of war during World War II:

http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_and_teasers/WarDeclarationsbyCongress.htm

There are few things more dangerous in a democracy than allowing a President to wage secret wars without the knowledge of the country. I’ll permit Abraham Lincoln — not exactly a pacifistic worshipper of legalisms and restraints on Executive power — to explain why this is so, in an 1848 letter to a proponent of unrestrained presidential warmaking powers:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose.

If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, I see no probability of the British invading us but he will say to you be silent; I see it, if you dont.

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

http://dangerousintersection.org/2012/07/13/abe-lincolns-warning-about-allowing-a-president-alone-to-declare-war/

[Major Hogwash]

24. ProPublica is not a real journalistic entity, so they didn't have the right to that information.

Besides that bit of information, ProPublica has published information that was given to them before that was not supposed to be made public.

In December 2012 and January 2013, ProPublica published and reported on confidential pending applications for groups requesting tax-exempt status. After it became known that the Cincinnati office of the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, in May 2013 ProPublica clarified that it obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, writing, "In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public." ProPublica reported on six of them, after deeming information within those applications to be newsworthy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProPublica#Notable_reporting