Gay Day plus 2, The Predicted Purge of US Military Begins

White Anglo Saxon Protestants

President George W. Bush (right), Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Michael W. Hagee (2nd from right), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace (3rd from right), and Lt. Gen. James Amos, deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integrations, attend the official opening of the National Museum of the Marine Corps during the birthday celebration of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va., on Nov. 10, 2006. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen, U.S. Air Force.

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That didn't take long, did it? It is barely Tuesday morning after the weekend repeal of DADT and the the gay blades are drawn looking for blood. Take down a marine commandant and that should get their attention rather promptly should it not?

We read the first paragraph of this editorial and we learn who is the face of the new enemy, "an officer who was good-looking and clearly a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant". Some with a brain and any powers of observation would also just happen to notice that officers clearly white and Anglo-Saxon Protestants make up the backbone of the US military.

Oh, that's right, this is a civil rights issue isn't it? How foolish of me not to have noticed.

No this is politics and an agenda that will never be satisfied. It has just begun.


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Marine Corps commandant has to go
By Richard Cohen Washington Post
Monday, December 20, 2010; 8:00 PM

I am a fan of the old World War II movies, the ones where the platoon was composed of typical Americans, Hollywood-style. There was a guy named Farmer and one called Preacher and another called Brooklyn (who was killed shortly after receiving a salami from home), no blacks and, of course, an officer who was good-looking and clearly a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant of the John Wayne variety. Now, of course, we would have to add a gay soldier. I fear for him. He'll need someone to watch his back.

The repeal of the odious "don't ask, don't tell" law has been 17 years in the making. It could have been done much sooner had it not been for the political cowardice and/or ignorance of much of Congress and some of the military. The nation as a whole was way out in front of these institutions, having learned from their own kids and society in general that gays and lesbians were not drooling perverts but human beings with a different - not better and not worse - sexuality. Most of us know this now.

There's good reason to believe, however, that this lesson has not been universally learned. In the run-up to the vote in the Senate, Gen. James Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, showed how he felt about the prospect of open homosexuals serving in the Marines. He was particularly concerned about combat situations where, he thought, gays might be "a distraction." "Mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines' lives," Amos said. This was not the first time the general had expressed his doubts. Earlier, he had talked about what might happen when his Marines were "laying out, sleeping alongside of one another and sharing death, fear and loss of brothers. I don't know what the effect of that will be on cohesion. I mean, that's what we're looking at. It's unit cohesion. It's combat effectiveness."

It's easy to dismiss Amos, but his concerns fall within the realm of possibility. After all, being gay is a sexual matter and young people are nothing if not sexual. This is the way it is supposed to be. This is also the problem with having women in the armed services or, if you are a radical feminist, having men. Sooner or later, a certain amount of unacceptable harassment will occur, abuses will be committed and, more innocently, plain hooking up is going to happen. We know this.

But we know also that this can be managed - contained, limited. It takes education. It takes training. It takes leadership. This is what concerns me about Amos. His views are on the record. He sees gays as somewhat out of control, possibly holding hands in combat, sneaking into one another's bunks at night, being distracted just as the enemy is coming over the hill. Not only is this silly and based on an ignorant misconception of who most gays are, but it can be dealt with.

Amos, though, is the wrong man to deal with it. His subordinates know what he thinks of gays. They know he has not an iota of sympathy for what might be their difficulties or any tolerance for their lifestyle. If I were gay, I would not want to work for the man - or serve under him. He is one step short of being a bigot.

The racial desegregation of the military in 1948 also produced much blather about unit cohesion. It is true, of course, that race is not about behavior, but it is also true that race is obvious, spotted clear across a room - or a dance hall or a noncommissioned officers club - and can produce a violent reaction. (Remember, the South was still an apartheid nation back then.) The military managed because it was commanded to comply. The leadership came from President Truman. He liked to have his orders followed.

The Marines of today know that virtually the entire Republican Party stood up for bigotry. The Corps knows that some important senators - John McCain and Jon Kyl, to name two - furiously fought to retain the status quo, always in the sainted cause of unit cohesion. (Kyl said repeal could "cost lives.") Marines know, too, that in surveys, those on the front lines are least supportive of having gays among them and they are also aware that their brass fought to keep "don't ask, don't tell." The issue for me, as for Gen. Amos, is unit cohesion. That's why he has to go.

cohenr@washpost.com

North Korea Goes to the Dead US Soldiers' Remains Strategy

Richardson: North Korea offers to return remains of U.S. troops

By the CNN Wire Staff

December 19, 2010 --

Pyongyang, North Korea (CNN) -- A top North Korean general offered Sunday to help return the remains of several hundred U.S. troops killed during the Korean War, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said.

Maj. Gen. Pak Rim Su told Richardson that the bodies were discovered recently in North Korea.

Richardson, who is meeting with officials in North Korea to help ease tensions in the region, described the offer as a "very positive gesture."

Any returned remains are "better than nothing," Korean War Veterans Association President Bill Mac Swain said. But he noted that there were possible pitfalls.

"I'm worried that what we'll get is a bunch of stuff that we'll never be able to figure out," he said.

Investigators are still trying to identify many of the bodies from more than 200 boxes stuffed with remains and personal items that North Korea sent back to the United States between 1990 and 1994, he said.

"The problem is the bones were scattered in boxes. There were all kinds of different things that made it very difficult for them to even determine how many people were in the boxes," Mac Swain said.

The Korean War ended at midnight on July 27, 1953, after three years of fighting that left millions dead -- including just more than 54,000 U.S. troops, according to the Department of Defense.

More than 8,000 U.S. service members remain missing from the Korean War, according to the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

For more than four decades, U.S. attempts to persuade North Korea to return additional U.S. remains were unsuccessful.

But between 1990 and 1994, North Korea exhumed and returned what it claimed were 208 sets of remains in 208 boxes.

In 2007, on the eve of preliminary peace talks, North Korea handed over four sets of remains believed to be those of American soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War.

The remains, in aluminum coffins, were delivered by North Korean soldiers to United Nations honor guards during a brief rain-drenched ceremony in Panmunjom on the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas. They were recovered in the North's Unsan County, where about 350 Americans are thought to have been killed in fighting between U.S. and Chinese troops shortly after China entered the war on the side of North Korea.

At that time, 209 sets of remains had been returned to the United States; only seven had been identified.

Before 1996, most of the remains excavated and returned by North Korea were in too poor condition to identify. The United States asked North Korea to stop further exhumation until an agreement was made for joint recovery. That agreement gave the United States access to the reclusive communist country to look for evidence of U.S. soldiers killed during the war.

But the U.S. government temporarily suspended such trips into North Korea in 2005, according to the Defense Prison of War/Missing Personnel Office.

Mac Swain, 80, said that finding remains isn't just an issue of statistics and science.

"From my company there's two people that are missing in action. We don't really know anything about them, and this is 60 years later. ... I would like for them to be able to find these two guys," he said.

But North Korea's motives may not be altruistic, Mac Swain said.

"I'm afraid it's more political than it is humanitarian. ... They use our dead to further their gains. That's another way to look at it. ... But we need to find (the missing). We need to bring them home," he said.

It's Gay Day for the USA - Go Army, Go Go Navy, and Whoooo Air Force

December 19, 2010

End of DADT: The Final Blow Against Cultural Conservatism

Michael Filozof American Thinker

The military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gays in the military is over. The lame-duck Senate passed legislation ending the policy today by the overwhelming margin of 65-31; all that awaits is President Obama's signature, which is a certainty. The legislation couldn't have passed without Republicans, including the Tea Party insurgent Scott Brown and Mark Kirk, who won Obama's old Illinois seat in November. It fell to the doddering old war hero and loser of 2008, John McCain, to argue against the policy (and McCain's position was undermined by his wife's and his daughter's public opposition to DADT).

The end of DADT will be hailed as a groundbreaking achievement, like the racial desegregation of the military in 1948. But race is an involuntary characteristic that becomes irrelevant so long as the minority service member conforms to the military's behavioral and performance norms. Proclaiming one's sexual orientation and acting upon it is voluntary, not involuntary. Thus, homosexuals will be given not equality, but preferential treatment, based on chosen behavior. Why, then, draw the line at homosexuality? Why should the military discriminate against service members who announce proclivities for transsexuality, polygamy, bestiality or pedophilia?

What will be the effect of the end of DADT? The short-term effects will probably be minimal. The military won't be overrun by homosexuals anytime soon. It's unlikely that very many gays, who constitute a tiny fraction of the population, want to serve in the military anyway. But the cultural shift in the military will be dramatic. The military will be forced to deal with issues like anti-gay discrimination (real or imagined), how to deal with transsexuals, gay marriage, and benefits for gay partners. There will be gay affirmative-action quotas, gay cliques and subcultures, and you can be sure that in the future, there'll be some gay equivalent of the "Tailhook" scandal. A military that is in the process of losing it's second decade-long war in Asia to ragtag insurgents needs none of this. But the military, with its "can-do" ethos, will deal with it.

The consequences for cultural conservatism are much more acute, though. Repeal of DADT means that homosexuality will officially no longer constitute "conduct unbecoming" of a professional soldier. This amounts to a de facto sanction of homosexuality as normal and acceptable.

With the repeal of DADT, cultural conservatives will no longer control any institutions in American society. The military, the last bastion of cultural conservatism to which Americans rallied en masse after 9/11, has now been conscripted by the Left. The military is the final institution to fall in what Roger Kimball described as the "Long March" of cultural Leftism through America's institutions that began in the Sixties. The academy, the churches, the courts and the government have long since fallen.

In the 30 years since the election of Reagan, cultural conservatives have failed to overturn Roe v. Wade, suppress pornography, stop gay marriage, or make a serious dent in the use of illegal drugs. Conservative activist Paul Weyrich noted that Clinton's high public approval rating in the wake of the Lewinsky sex scandal meant that a "Moral Majority" no longer existed in the U.S.

Polls indicating overwhelming public support for ending DADT reaffirm that Weyrich's observation was surely correct.

Out of One, Many. Obama Opens the Door to Reparations

Don't make any mistakes about where this is going. It opens the door to reparations. It will force conflict over generational old land disputes.

It has implications for tribal claims that cross international borders. Obama knows that. He also knows that it will open conflict over reparations for slavery.

Regardless of the merits of the emotional claims of land by the descendants of Indian tribes and racial groups, current law and land guarantees the rights of present owners. It is a system created by people long since dead, but the system is alive and it is the system which governs current commerce and wealth, property rights, and the border rights of states and national US borders.

Obama knows that Republicans and right thinking Democrats have to oppose this change in law. Obama believes that his political agenda will be advanced by the expected opposition. For Obama to quote "E Pluribus Unum", shows what a fraud and cynic he really is. His real agenda is out of one, many.
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From The Wasington Times:

President Obama announced Thursday that the U.S. would reverse the position of the Bush administration and become the last nation to drop its opposition to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Mr. Obama made the announcement to enthusiastic applause at the second White House Tribal Nations Conference, a gathering attended by representatives of the nation's 565 recognized American Indian tribes.

"The aspirations it affirms - including respect for the institutions and rich cultures of native peoples - are ones we must always seek to fulfill," Mr. Obama said at the conference, held at the Interior Department. "But I want to be clear: What matters far more than words - what matters far more than any resolution or declaration - are actions to match those words. And that's what this conference is about."

Continue

Can we find a hole and crawl into it?

Pakistani spy agency denies it unmasked CIA chief

By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press

1 hr 28 mins ago

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's top spy agency denied speculation Saturday that it helped unmask the CIA's station chief in Islamabad in retaliation for a New York City lawsuit linking Pakistan's intelligence chief to the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India.

The CIA ordered its station chief out of Pakistan because his life was threatened after a Pakistani lawsuit revealed his name. His recall comes at a delicate time, as the White House presses Islamabad to rid its lawless tribal regions of safe havens for militants fighting in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is grappling with an exit strategy.

The station chief's name was revealed by a Pakistani man threatening to sue the CIA over the deaths of his son and brother in a 2009 U.S. missile strike. The attorney involved with the legal complaint said he learned the name from Pakistani journalists. Pakistan's spy agencies have kept ties to a number of Pakistani journalists as a way to influence coverage.

Questions have arisen as to whether a civil lawsuit filed last month in Brooklyn in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks may have raised tensions with Pakistan and spurred it to retaliate. The lawsuit lists Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, as a defendant and accuses the ISI of nurturing terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead.

A Pakistani intelligence official dismissed any claims of ISI involvement in exposing the CIA official as "a slur." He declined to offer any comment on the Brooklyn lawsuit and said it was entirely possible Pakistani journalists simply figured out the station chief's identity on their own.

Such "unfounded stories can create differences between the two organizations," the Pakistani intelligence official warned.

He also said the CIA has not directly accused the ISI of any wrongdoing in the matter. Like other intelligence officials, he requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his work and because he is not authorized to speak to media on the record.

The Associated Press learned about the station chief's removal on Thursday but held the story until he was out of the region.

The CIA's work is unusually difficult in Pakistan, an important but at times capricious counterterrorism ally.

The station chief in Islamabad operates as a virtual military commander in the U.S. war against al-Qaida and other militant groups hidden along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The chief runs the Predator drone program targeting terrorists and handles some of the CIA's most urgent and sensitive tips.

The station chief also collaborates closely with Pakistani intelligence. The alliance has led to strikes on key militant leaders but has also been marred by spats between the two agencies. During the first term of President George W. Bush's administration, Pakistan almost expelled a previous CIA station chief in a dispute about intelligence sharing.

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It is so tempting to say let's just cut our ties with these losers but I suppose it's better to have some 'inside' connection to one of the major sources of the world's problems.  Pakistan has been identified as North Korea's nuclear partner.  In  exchange for Nodong rockets, Pakistan provides technical assistance on building nuclear facilities.

While the modern world sits and watches, the dysfunctional thugocracies and theocracies "arm up".  Can any good come of this?

Top US officer says Iran still driving for a bomb

By ANNE GEARAN, AP National Security Writer

45 mins ago 

MANAMA, Bahrain – Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb, posing a threat to its neighbors, and the United States is "very ready" to counter Iran should it make a move, the top U.S. military officer said Saturday.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reassured Persian Gulf nations nervous that an increasingly militarized government in Iran might try to start a war.

"The United States takes very seriously our security commitments in the Gulf region," Mullen said following a meeting with Bahrain's king. Bahrain, directly across the Gulf from Iran, is home to a large U.S.Navy base that would be on the front lines of any war with Iran.

"We're very ready," Mullen said, an unusually direct acknowledgment that the United States has contingency plans to counter Iran should it make a move. "There are real threats to peace and stability here, and we've made no secrets of our concerns about Iran."

We're on the highway to hell.

The Dream Act - You Pay - They Dream

Hat Tip: Hot Air

Last chance: DREAM Act vote coming tomorrow

POSTED AT 4:21 PM ON DECEMBER 17, 2010 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

The thinking all along has been that they’ll fall a few votes short, that squishy Republicans like Snowe and red-state Democrats like McCaskill and Tester won’t dare tempt fate by backing an amnesty when they’re up in 2012. Don’t take failure for granted, though: The House made the bill a bit more appealing by scaling back some of the crappier provisions, and the collapse of the pork-packed omnibus spending bill last night gives centrists some added cover to gamble on this. They’ll be in a “historic” mindset anyway tomorrow if, as expected, the DADT repeal finally goes through, and it is, after all, just a week before Christmas. Maybe they’ll walk into the chamber tomorrow thinking: This year,why not give the gift of amnesty?

Jeff Sessions is circulating a list of 10 problems with the bill, but all you really need is Kaus’s closing argument. Pure and simple: “DREAM is all amnesty, no prevention.” If it goes through, border enforcers have handed over a key bargaining chip in some later comprehensive reform deal in return for a little bit of jack and a whole lot of squat.

Many DREAM opponents also want take care of these “kids” (or former kids) by making them legal. Mark Krikorian, the anti-amnesty advocate whom I cite most, wants to take care of them. Even Roy Beck of Numbers USA seems to want to take care of them. But there is a way to do it that minimizes the unwanted long-term side effects of encouraging future illegal immigration from parents now living in other countries (who’d understandably like their kids to be made Americans, too), which would set the stage for another amnesty, which in turn would build up a constituency for the next amnesty in a cycle that doesn’t seem to have any end point.

And there is a way to do it that maximizes those long-term effects, by maximizing the number of immigrants who would be covered by DREAM, by offering no effective way to combat fraudulent applications, by creating rules so complex they’ll collapse of the own weight, by passing the bill in a wave of ethnic passion and recklessly including no additional enforcement measures. That’s the bill they’ll vote on Saturday.

You’ve heard of “comprehensive” reform? DREAM is non-comprehensive reform. It doesn’t even have the basic enforcement provisions—employer sanctions and fancy new ID cards—that were part of the earlier, failed “comprehensive” bargain, which wasn’t a very good bargain (in part because nobody was sure the enforcement schemes wouldn’t be immediately undermined by lawsuits from the same organizations who supported “comprehensive” reform). DREAM is all amnesty, no prevention. Maybe that’s because its backers care about amnesty but not prevention.

Indeed they do, and none so much as their new self-appointed Pope. If you’re looking for offices to call, see Numbers USA’s list; fencesitters are highlighted in red, although you’re probably better off targeting Democrats rather than Republicans. The Maine sisters and Dick Lugar already know the stakes in their upcoming primaries only too well, so reminding them won’t achieve much. Bob Bennett and Voinovich are retiring, so pressure on them won’t work. Better to focus on McCaskill, Tester, Baucus, Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, and Kay Hagan — and, I guess, George LeMieux too, since he’s thinking of running again in Florida in 2012 and might be tempted to pander to Latino voters by switching to yes. Get cracking!

Who Was Jesus?

JESUS' GREAT-GRANDMOTHER IDENTIFIED

Medieval legends suggest that Ismeria, a descendent of the tribe of King David, was the grandmother of the Virgin Mary Discovery News

The great-grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine medieval manuscripts analyzed by a historian.

The legend of St. Ismeria, presented in the current Journal of Medieval History, sheds light on both the Biblical Virgin Mary's family and also on religious and cultural values of 14th-century Florence.

"I don't think any other woman is mentioned" as Mary's grandmother in the Bible, Catherine Lawless, author of the paper, told Discovery News. "Mary's patrilineal lineage is the only one given."

"Mary herself is mentioned very little in the Bible," added Lawless, a lecturer in history at the University of Limerick. "The huge Marian cult that has evolved over centuries has very few scriptural sources."

Lawless studied the St. Ismeria story, which she said has been "ignored by scholars," in two manuscripts: the 14th century "MS Panciatichiano 40" of Florence's National Central Library and the 15th century "MS 1052" of the Riccardiana Library, also in Florence.

"According to the legend, Ismeria is the daughter of Nabon of the people of Judea, and of the tribe of King David," wrote Lawless. She married "Santo Liseo," who is described as "a patriarch of the people of God." The legend continues that the couple had a daughter named Anne who married Joachim. After 12 years, Liseo died. Relatives then left Ismeria penniless.

"I'm pretty sure one is supposed to believe that it was either her dead husband's relatives or, less likely, her natal family," Lawless said. "The family of the Virgin Mary would not have been cast in such a light."

Ismeria then goes to a hospital where she finds refuge. She is said to perform a miracle, filling a shell with fish to feed all of the hospital's patients. After this miracle she prays to be taken away from the "vainglory of this world."

After God called her to "Paradise," a rector at the hospital informed the Virgin Mary and Jesus of her passing. They departed for the hospital with the 12 Apostles, Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas. There they paid honor to St. Ismeria.

The legend marks a shift in belief, as sanctity was previously more often earned by blood martyrdom rather than piety. Lawless credits that, in part, to the rise in the belief of Purgatory, an interim space between heaven and hell where sins could be purged.

"The more sins purged in one's lifetime (through penitence, good works, etc.) the less time needed in purgatory -- for either oneself or one's family," she said.

She also pointed out that "the great bulk of Christian martyrs of the west died under the Roman persecutions, which ended in the fourth century."

While the author of the Ismeria legend remains unknown, Lawless thinks it could have been a layperson from Tuscany. During the medieval period, "the story may have been used as a model for continent wifehood and active, charitable widowhood in one of the many hospitals of medieval Florence."

"The grandmother of the Virgin was no widow who threatened the patrimony of her children by demanding the return of her dowry, nor did she threaten the family unit by remarrying and starting another lineage," she added. "Instead, her life could be seen as an ideal model for Florentine penitential women."

George Ferzoco, a research fellow at the University of Bristol, commented that the new paper analyzing the legend is "brilliant" and "reveals an exciting trove of religious material from late medieval and renaissance Florence, where many manuscripts were written specifically for females."

"What is so striking about St. Ismeria," Carolyn Muessig of the University of Bristol's Department of Theology and Religious Studies told Discovery News, "is that she is a model for older matrons. Let's face it: Older female role models are hard to come by in any culture."

"But the fact that St. Ismeria came to the fore in late medieval Florence," Muessig concluded, "reveals some of the more positive attitudes that medieval culture had towards the place and the importance of women in society."

Japanese Defense Reviews on China

Background:

Japan defence review warns of China's military might

17 December 2010 BBC

The major strategic review will shape Japan's defence policy for the next 10 years

Japan has unveiled sweeping changes to its national defence polices, boosting its southern forces in response to neighbouring China's military rise.

It said Beijing's military build-up was of global concern. Japan shares a maritime border with China.

It will also strengthen its missile defences against the threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea.

China has responded saying it is a force for peace and development in Asia and threatens no-one.

China's Foreign Ministry said no country had the right to make irresponsible comments on China's development.

Flashpoints
The National Defence Programme Guideline has been approved by the cabinet and will shape Japan's defence policy for the next 10 years.

Japan is changing its defence policy in response to the shifting balance of power in Asia, analysts say.


Reorganised Defences

• Troops moved from north to south, near maritime border with China
• More Patriot missiles to counter possible North Korean attack
• Defence budget of 23.49tn yen (£180bn; $280bn) for next five years, down 3%
• More submarines (up from 16 to 22); fewer tanks (down from 600 to 400)
• Review labels China military build-up "matter of concern"; US-Japan alliance "indispensable"
• Defences will be scaled down in the north, where they have been deployed since the Cold War to counter potential threats from the former Soviet Union.

The military focus will now be in the south of Japan, closer to China and remote flashpoint islands near Taiwan.

The guidelines say Japan is concerned by China's growing military spending, modernisation of its armed forces, and increased naval assertiveness in the East China and South China seas.

"These movements, coupled with the lack of transparency on China's military and security issues, the trend is a concern for the region and the international community," the new guidelines say.

Relations between Japan and China deteriorated sharply in September, after collisions between a Chinese trawler and Japanese patrol boats near a chain of disputed islands in the East China Sea.

North Korea concerns

The review paper outlines a shift in resources from the army to the air force and navy.

Japan's submarine fleet will be expanded from 16 to 22 and fighter jets upgraded, while the number of tanks will be cut by a third to 400.

Japan's military is constitutionally banned from taking offensive action
North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes were also described as a "pressing and serious destabilising factor".

Pyongyang has fired missiles over Japan and staged nuclear tests in recent years.

Last month it unveiled a new uranium enrichment plant to US experts, and launched an artillery attack on a South Korean island, killing four people.

In response, Japan says more Patriot interceptor batteries will be deployed across the country, and the number of warships which can shoot down missiles will be increased from four to six.

It also plans to cut the number of soldiers by 1,000 to an official headcount of 154,000.

The US has an almost 50,000-strong troop presence in Japan. The paper called the Japan-US alliance "indispensable".

The review paper added that it was necessary to reduce the burden on communities hosting US bases, including Okinawa.

Japan said it would "promote confidence and co-operation with China and Russia" while also developing ties with the EU and Nato.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sparked a diplomatic row with Japan earlier this year by visiting the Southern Kurils, which Japan calls the Northern Territories.

The islands, off the north coast of Japan's Hokkaido island, were seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II, but Japan still regards them as part of its territory.

Japan has a pacifist constitution. Article Nine of the constitution, which was written under US post-war occupation in 1947, renounces the use of force by Japan in settling international disputes.

The BBC's Roland Buerk, in Tokyo, says the new strategic stance will be closely watched in Asia, where Japan's World War II aggression has been neither forgotten nor forgiven.