PRESS RELEASE
Obama, NATO Are Threatening General War Based on an Admitted Lie
June 21, 2016 (EIRNS)—The entire array of four—now five — simultaneous NATO maneuvers involving 50-60,000 troops, and forward basing of four battalions, on Russia’s borders, is based on what was today admitted by a senior NATO official to be a lie. That admission became the lead story on Russia’s Sputnik news service today, and confirms the warnings from German leaders like Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that NATO is escalating dangerously against Russia without reason.
Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Petr Pavel admitted in a June 21 news conference that the entire Baltics/Poland forward build-up and maneuvers are not based on any threat of "Russian agression." Said Pavel,
"Deployment of more substantial military force [than the four battalions—ed.] is not being considered. It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing."
Yet NATO Commanders Gen. Craig Breedlove and Gen. Curtis Scaparroti, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, and President Obama have claimed that threatened "Russian aggression against the Baltic States and Poland" justified escalating with massive exercises to the borders of Russia and otherwise generating a situation which could break into war between nuclear superpowers. Stoltenberg today inaugurated yet a fifth simultaneous exercise, "Dynamic Mongoose," a Norwegian Sea/North Sea exercise against Russian submarines based near there.
Since June 15 Der Spiegel in Germany and then Foreign Minister Steinmeier have warned the exercises were going too far, risking a rapid mutual escalation to war for an "aggression" threat which did not exist.
Pavel admits this—even as attacks on Steinmeier’s statements are multiplied from NATO and U.S. military officials!
Also today, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, outrageously complained that Russian military units inside Russia had full freedom of movement! The speed of Russia’s snap exercises "scare him," General Hodges said in an interview with BBC; thus he called—and not for the first time — for a "military Shengen" in Europe. The Shengen Agreement meant the free movement of travelers and migrants across borders within the European Union; it has effectively been scrapped when large numbers of refugees entered Europe from the Mideast and North Africa. Lt. General Hodges demands a new Shengen agreement — but for tanks.
