The military bases used to invade Afghanistan were also in place before 9-11
in Krygystan and Uzbekistan. We no longer have those bases because they kicked us out with Russian verbal support.
Georgia was the aggressor and loser in the war they initiated. There was USA and Israeli military equipment and advisors in Georgia, the neocons didn't plan for a Russian military response.
Post 9-11 the Taliban offered up OBL with Pakistan as an intermediatary.
We know Iraq was a fraud and many of us and most of the world knew at the time.
Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador (Rumsfeld's axis of evil of the western hemisphere) were surrounded by new USA DoD bases under the rubrique of the War on Drugs prior to 9-11. We lost the bases in Manta, Equator and Paraquay and supported failed coups in Venezuela and Bolivia under GWB. Plan Colombia began under Clinton.
Post Obama there were a successful coups in Honduras and Paraquay and an expansion of military presense in Colombia and Costa Rica. One of Zelaya's "sins" in Honduras is that he wanted to make the airbase a public airport, the USA's largest base in Latin America, main staging area for Iran-Conta, and refueling stop for the plane for the Zelaya coup.
The major military base in Djibouti was also in place at the pinch between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and AFRICOM was in the works. There has been a steady expansion of small DoD bases / footprint in Africa ever since, most that are hard to find any public information about.
All these initiatives flow out of the Project for a New American Century plans that were published under Clinton.
In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, the US Forest Service offered the heavy lift helicopters and airtankers (for fires) used in the western USA for wildfires and were refused.
The Gulf Horizon was permitted with a Categorical Exclusion under NEPA (National Environmental Planning Act, good Nixon era environmental legislation. There are three levels of review under NEPA: Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), Environmental Assessment (EA), and Categorical Exclusion (CE), in declining intensity and time of scientific planning and assessment ad public opportunies to review. The Gulf Horizon CE spill plan was boiler plate with wildlife and fisheries species protections from Alaska NEPA documents. A Fed employee signed that CE and presented the responsibilty of a chain of command through the federal bureaucracy to political appointees at the Secretary and Deputy Secretary level. Why weren't they prosecuted or at least fired like the token fines and criminal convictions of BP and associated employees and companies?
