On Dec. 6, President Joe Biden’s White House issued its last semiannual report to Congress under the War Powers Act, the supposed notification of U.S. military activities around the globe. In [an article]([https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/biden-ends-term-with-parade-of-lies?r=5ca8t) posted yesterday, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein tore it apart as a tissue of lies.
“The Biden administration has submitted its final War Powers Report to Congress, and it is filled with lies. The twice annual report, required under the law, is supposed to disclose to the American people the ‘deployments of United States Armed Forces equipped for combat.’ But by playing with the definitions of the words ‘armed forces,’ ‘deployments,’ ‘equipped’ and ‘combat,’ the report conceals more than it reveals,” Klippenstein writes at the outset. “This includes ignoring air forces, obscuring naval activities, undercounting U.S. personnel in various countries, brushing off combat that doesn’t involve ground troops, and most importantly, glossing over special operations and other clandestine activities, by the Pentagon, the CIA, and other agencies.”
As one example, Klippenstein notes that the report admits that the U.S. military struck Iranian forces in Syria on Nov. 11 and again on Nov. 26. U.S. Central Command press releases issued on those occasions “glossed over” that the U.S. attacked Iranian forces by characterizing the targets as “Iran-backed.” Is Biden’s report, Klippenstein asks, “stating that Iranian forces (IRGC) directly attacked U.S. forces? Is it saying that Iran is directly the belligerent and not just Iranian-backed or Iranian-aligned? The answer isn’t clear, which certainly makes no sense in a report to Congress.”
Similarly, the near daily engagements of the U.S. Navy against the Houthis—which some officials have described as the most intense combat actions the Navy has been involved in since World War II—are passed off as “discrete strikes ... conducted in a manner designed to limit the risk of escalation and avoid civilian casualties.” Klippenstein says of this: “Near daily attacks during the month of September hardly could be described as ‘discrete,’ nor would constant engagements by Navy ships to ward off Houthi missiles, drones, and unmanned explosive ships.”
