The drone attacks in Saudi Arabia have changed the nature of global warfare
On the morning of 14 September, 18 drones and seven cruise missiles – all cheap and unsophisticated compared to modern military aircraft – disabled half of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production and raised the world price of oil by 20 per cent.
This happened despite the Saudis spending $67.6bn (£54bn) on their defence budget last year, much of it on vastly expensive aircraft and air defence systems, which notably failed to stop the attack. The US defence budget stands at $750bn (£600.2bn), and its intelligence budget at $85bn (£68bn), but the US forces in the Gulf did not know what was happening until it was all over.
Tip of the Hat to Berto Jongman for pointing out this article.
ROBERT STEELE: For over 30 years I have been writing and speaking to the desperate need to reform our secret intelligence community that provides “at best” 4% of what the President and major commanders need (to which I would add and nothing for everyone else). The IC spends too much money doing evil and virtually no money at all creating decision-support. This pathology needs to be ended.
EITHER our $75 billion a year secret IC is worthless against IRAN — we have no HUMINT, no IMINT, no SIGINT capable of achieving Early Warning on this attack, which if done by Iran and the Yemenis is utterly brilliant and as Patrick Cockburn suggests, a global game changer
OR this was an Israel – Saudi Arabia – Cabal false flag operation, and the US IC is complicit in covering that fact up.
Or BOTH.
The President cannot trust Israel and he cannot trust Saudi Arabia and he cannot trust the Federal Reserve and the private banks behind the Federal Reserve most particularly including Goldman Sachs which bet very wrong on the future of oil (toward $200 a barrel) and he cannot trust the US IC.
In my view who did it does not matter. What matters is that
a) the US IC was once against worthless to the President and
b) as with 9/11 which was an insider enabled act of war against America by Israel, asymmetric warfare now rules and the military-industrial complex is largely worthless — even a danger to the USA as Chuck Spinney, Wheeler, Jeff St. Claire and I and many others have been saying for decades.
The President needs and does not have a grand strategy for global engagement (one that integrates diplomacy, development, defense, and commerce (D3C) and the President needs and does not have a grand strategy for domestic peace and prosperity. He has many genius elements that he is juggling all by himself but he does not have a loyal disciplined government nor does he have a national outreach program able to communicate with and educate every citizen on every topic toward a national censunsus that restores democracy and an economy that is of, by, and for the 99% instead of the 1%.
My personal support for the President is absolute, but I feel compelled to continue to point out that he is not addressing most of his promises and most of our needs. Vastly more needs to be done. I can only pray that between now and Election Day he will be able to radically reduce our overseas presence as he promises, and radically increase prosperity and comity at home.
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