(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 2 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)
The War Powers Resolution requires the President to report twice a year to Congress on U.S. military operations being conducted overseas without a congressional declaration of war.
President Obama filed his latest such report on December 11.
The report went virtually unmentioned in the mainstream press. Yet in it, Obama reports the startling, little-known fact that "the United States has deployed U.S. combat-equipped forces" in no less than... 14 countries.
As Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity summarizes: "In other words, the U.S. government is at war in 14 countries!"
Here's the list:
- Afghanistan
Iraq- Syria
- Somalia
- Yemen
- Cuba
- Niger
- Chad
- Uganda
- Egypt
- Jordan
- Kosovo
- Central African Republic
- Tunisia
The list does not include countries in which the U.S. is engaged in covert activities, or where U.S. troops are stationed in non-combat positions, or where the U.S. has participated in joint exercises with military allies, which, together, would probably include most countries in the world. Asks the Ron Paul Institute's McAdams:
"Where else would the neocons have the U.S. military deployed for the next half-year report? Iran? Ukraine? Russia? North Korea? We can only imagine their wish list. Meanwhile, the $1 trillion spent annually on the military is quickly bankrupting the country, making us new enemies every day, and as a result making us less, not more, safe."
