35 Hillary Clinton admits CFR control over Government Policy

(1) ADL got donors to threaten to withdraw funds from UCSB over criticism of Israel
(2) Hillary Clinton admits CFR control over Government Policy
(3) Life under communism - East Germans prefer the GDR
(4) Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them
(5) British soldiers are too fat to fight in Afghanistan

(1) ADL got donors to threaten to withdraw funds from UCSB over criticism of Israel

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 31.07.2009 01:10 PM

The ADL thought police

17/07/2009 11:55:00 PM GMT

That same network has now mobilized to expand that war to Iran.

By Jeff Gates

http://middle-east-online.com/english/opinion/?id=33192

When sociology Professor Bill Robinson stared down the Anti-Defamation League, it looked like a victory for academic freedom. Yet was it? Robinson was portrayed as an anti-Semite because he sent an email to students featuring a photo essay critical of Israel that had circulated online for weeks. While University of California administrators dallied, the ADL and its international network turned up the heat - signaling academics worldwide they could be next.

It looked like progress when the faculty at UC Santa Barbara urged "changes in procedures to avoid improprieties and abuses in the future…." But was it? By then the ADL campaign had created the intended chilling effect. This silencing campaign was featured news for five time-critical months while a newly elected U.S. president was reassessing U.S.-Israeli relations. How can anyone calculate the full extent of the damage - not only to Robinson's reputation and to the stature of the University of California but also to national security?

So where's the victory? Clearly Robinson deserves acclaim for resisting pressure as the ADL deployed its most seasoned operatives, including Marvin Heir, a rabbi at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Only an investigation can identify who mobilized the donor community that threatened UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang with the withdrawal of funds.

What was the motivation for this high profile intimidation campaign? Was the ADL driven simply by the discomfort that two students voiced on their receipt of his email criticizing Israeli policy? Or did the ADL network have its sights on a broader strategic goal?

Facts have since proven it was largely pro-Israelis who fixed the intelligence that manipulated the U.S. to invade Iraq. That same network has now mobilized to expand that war to Iran. A key barrier: the global condemnation of Israel's brutal assault on Gaza. How does Tel Aviv limit the public relations fallout? On what leverage points should Israel focus to contain the censure while continuing to obscure Israel and pro-Israelis as the common source of this manipulation?

 * Aiding an enemy within?

The Founders faced a similar challenge during the Revolutionary War. How could they distinguish patriots from those loyal to a foreign nation? Knowing the vast risks that accompany betrayal, they lowered the evidentiary standard for treason. Guilt still required proof beyond a reasonable doubt but a conviction only required evidence of "adhering" to an enemy or giving them "aid and comfort." To remove all doubt about the gravity of this capital offense, they even included those relaxed standards in Article III of the U.S. Constitution.

Fast-forward two centuries to the Information Age and consider the challenge of distinguishing friend from foe. With a new president sworn into office on a platform promising change, how should Tel Aviv continue to conceal the fact that it was pro-Israelis who deceived the U.S. to wage war in Iraq for the expansionist goals of Greater Israel?

During the Democratic presidential primaries, Senator Barack Obama promised no change in U.S.-Israeli relations. But that pledge was made while he and Hillary Clinton were vying for the pro-Israeli vote. What about now - particularly now that he knows Israel scheduled its assault on Gaza between Christmas and the Obama inaugural - knowing that interval would ensure Tel Aviv could operate largely free of official criticism?

Campaigning for president is one thing. Serving as commander in chief is another. What became of the prospects for change after this professor of constitutional law took a constitutional oath that obliged him to defend the U.S. from all enemies - both foreign and domestic?

Based on the success of pro-Israelis in inducing the U.S. to invade Iraq, how does this international network best expand this war to Iran? To succeed again, how can Tel Aviv best control the risk that facts unhelpful to its agenda find their way into the marketplace of ideas?

How about this for a psyops strategy: launch an intimidation campaign on a high-profile campus and portray a critic as an anti-Semite for sharing photos that had been circulating for weeks on the Internet. Then threaten his job, smear his reputation, put him in fear of his physical safety and threaten to withhold critical funding. Then see if on-campus critics still dare to speak out.

While the Faculty Senate should be commended for its stance, one must ask: what took so long? And what will be done to ensure that never again is a professor on any University of California campus subjected to such abuse with the complicity of university administrators? What steps will be taken to ensure this conduct does not recur on campuses nationwide?

Where was UC President Mark Yudof as this intimidation campaign progressed with such well-timed success? What role was played by the pro-Israeli bias of his wife, Judith, the immediate past president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism representing 760 synagogues?

Where was the Board of Regents while this silencing campaign advanced between the invasion of Gaza and President Obama's White House meeting with Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Did Board of Regents chairman Richard Blum harbor an undisclosed bias that precluded him shutting down this ADL operation? How about his wife, pro-Israeli U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee? What role did bias play in a community-wide smear campaign led by Arthur Gross-Schaefer, a Santa Barbara rabbi?

Was this only an offense against a courageous professor who fought on while university administrators retreated? Or was this assault more strategic? The Faculty Senate cannot on its own correct these wrongs because key offenders remain beyond their reach. What they can - and must - do is dismiss any faculty member complicit in this operation, condemn any university administrator who failed to act promptly and rebuke complicit operatives in the community.

The reputation of Prof. Robinson was only grist for the same mill that churned out the phony intelligence required to induce the U.S. to war in Iraq. That same network of deceit now seeks to catalyze war with Iran. Robinson was not the target. His reputation was collateral damage. The target was the mindset of academics that - because of this assault - hesitated to criticize Israel.

Until steps are taken to deter future offenses, these psychological operations (psyops) will continue and the reputation of the U.S. will continue to be collateral damage. Most ominous of all, those who wage war "by way of deception" (the motto of the Israeli Mossad) will continue to displace the facts on which self-governance depends. Progress must be measured by how many educators grasp that what was done to one could be done to all.

 * Education – The ultimate battlefield

In unconventional warfare, the battlefield is the shared field of consciousness. Where does a "consensus" reside? That's where battles are now waged for public opinion. Those who targeted University of California, Santa Barbara Professor Bill Robinson know that victory flows to those most adept at influencing the consensus mindset. Few know that better than the Anti-Defamation League.

For seasoned combatants, the psyops challenge lies in how best to displace facts with beliefs. The only modern component of this ancient craft is the means for taking such manipulation to global scale. The duplicity is the same regardless whether the operation creates a shared belief in Iraqi WMD, a shared consensus in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets or a shared opinion that Israel is a democracy and an ally. All false yet all widely believed to be true.

Robinson was smeared as an anti-Semite for sharing a photo essay with his students that was critical of Israeli policy. That essay first appeared in Adbusters, a magazine subtitled The Journal of the Mental Environment. That essay has since been posted on a website maintained by UCSB students in defense of academic freedom: http://sb4af.wordpress.com/robinson-case/

Kalle Lasn, founding editor of Adbusters, is a graphic artist who eventually awoke to the harm he was doing as an advertising executive. An Estonian, he saw firsthand how the Soviets exerted virtual control by manipulating the mental environment. In March 2004, Lasn published an article in Adbusters pointing out that, whereas less than two percent of Americans are Jewish, 26 of the top 50 neoconservatives advocating war in Iraq are Jewish (52%).

He titled the article: "Why Won't Anyone Say They're Jewish?" By ADL standards, that meant he was an "anti-Semite" - just for asking the question. What's since been confirmed is that the bulk of those who fixed the intelligence around that predetermined goal were either Jewish or assets developed by operatives who were Jewish.

Displacement is how warfare is waged in the Information Age: displacing facts with beliefs. Why would anyone expect otherwise? Jewish critics of Israeli policy are "self-hating." Non-Jewish critics are anti-Semites, Jew haters and/or Holocaust deniers. Although those charges are fast losing their potency from overuse, their toxicity still retains enough force to silence critics - as shown by the global traction gained by this thought control operation on a University of California campus.

Sir Gerald Kaufman, British founder of Independent Jewish Voices, uses his position as a Member of Parliament to criticize Israeli policy. Members of his family perished at the hands of the Nazis and in the Holocaust. As one of the U.K.'s harshest critics of Israeli policies, he routinely compares the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews - the same analogy for which Robinson (also Jewish) was smeared as an anti-Semite.

Kaufman's heartfelt speech on Israel's incursion into Gaza, given on the floor of the House of Commons, is a must-see for those concerned that criticism of Israeli policy remains absent on the floor of the U.S. Congress. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8 [Readers can draw their own conclusions as to who would be motivated to corrupt this YouTube version of his remarks.]

The psyops specialists who coordinated this on-campus silencing campaign know where modern wars are waged: in the shared mindset. The war fought to invade Iraq was waged in the mental environment long before U.S. troops invaded Iraq. Now the U.S. appears guilty by its association with an extremist enclave infamous worldwide for its prowess at waging war by way of deception - and for its aptitude at deceiving the U.S. to fight those wars.

The U.S. invaded Iraq only after facts were displaced by manipulated beliefs. The litany of manufactured beliefs is long and varied: Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi meetings with Al Qaeda in Prague, Iraqi acquisition of yellowcake uranium from Niger and the list goes on. None were factual; all were deployed to deceive. And to advance an Israeli agenda.

Remember the campaign to discredit Joe Wilson overseen by (Jewish) White House operative Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff? A former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Wilson was targeted by Libby for exposing the phony intelligence on uranium from Niger. Campaigns to deceive and discredit have long been key weapons in the Israeli arsenal of deceit.

Remember how Colin Powell was dispatched by pro-Israeli war-planners to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the March 2003 invasion? Why Powell? To associate his hard-earned credibility with what we now know was false intelligence about Iraq's mobile biological weapons laboratories. At every turn we find the displacement of facts with beliefs to manipulate decision-makers. That operation successfully discredited not only Powell and the U.S. but also the U.N., an organization that Tel Aviv fears may yet hold Israel accountable for its conduct under international law.

Intelligence on which the U.S. relied was fixed by pro-Israelis in pursuit of a predetermined agenda: the expansionist goals for Greater Israel. Phony intelligence persuaded Washington decision-makers to dispatch the U.S. military to wage a preemptive war not for American interests but for Tel Aviv. When waging unconventional warfare, by the time you see troops on the ground, those complicit are often pre-staging the next venue - as now with the Israeli push to attack Iran.

The ADL-coordinated intimidation campaign launched on the UCSB campus reflects the face of fascism in the Information Age. To respond effectively, the Senate Faculty must provide the tools that enable those targeted to grasp how facts are displaced with induced beliefs - in plain sight and, to date, with legal impunity. No one likes to be deceived. Once "the mark" grasps how they were manipulated, they will see for themselves who is complicit and why. That's when long overdue accountability can begin.

To focus only on the means (such as the attack on Robinson) leaves the end obscure. And leaves the mark - including UC students - without the tools required to defend against such duplicity. For educators, that shortcoming would transform this potential triumph into an academic tragedy.

-- Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide. Gates' latest book is Guilt By Association - How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008). His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. For two decades, he was an adviser to policy-makers worldwide and Counsel to the US Senate Finance Committee (1980-87) - working with Senator Russell Long of Louisiana.

Source: Middle East Online

(2) Hillary Clinton admits CFR control over Government Policy

From: norman clemo <normanclemo@telkomsa.net> Date: 03.08.2009 02:40 PM

http://www.examiner.com/x-9462-LA-Ron-Paul-Examiner~y2009m7d21-Hillary-Clinton-admits-CFR-Control-over-Government-Policy

Hillary Clinton admits CFR control over Government Policy

July 21, 7:02 PM

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put at least one foot in her mouth in stating a major geopolitical truth, inadvertently or otherwise, about the secretive, elitist, globalist organization, The Council On Foreign Relations, and the tremendous influence and power it wields over the US Government.  Her remarks came during a major speech she was invited to give at the new at the new CFR Washington DC branch.

Speaking to CFR President Richard Haas from the podium, Clinton - not an official CFR member - said, "Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters.  I have been often to, I guess, the 'mother ship' in New York City, but it's good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department." Mrs. Clinton then turned to the audience and continued, "We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won't have as far to go to be told what we should be doing.

The State Department even published her amazing admissions on its web site <http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/126071.htm>. Clinton might just as well have described herself as a CFR puppet.  Whether her remarks were intended to be 'humorous' isn't known.  Important truths often slip out under many guises and this 'confirmation' by Clinton is one of the more obvious unspoken truths in how major American Foreign policy is shaped and controlled by the CFR. 

See Video of entire speech: http://www.infowars.com/hillary-clinton-admits-that-the-cfr-runs-the-government/

The CFR is made up the elite in politics, business, media, and finance. They are committed to an authoritarian globalist agenda, which seeks to dissolve American Sovereignty and Freedom. They have ardently promoted the North American Union modeled after the EU. The Council on Foreign Relations has outlined their agenda in a document called Building a North American Community . Director of International Economics for the Council Ben Steil stated that the world must "abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn."

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner stated that he is open to the idea of a global currency to replace the dollar. Unlike Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations is more open to the press. However they have ardently pushed a globalist agenda to weaken American sovereignty including the North American Union modeled after the EU.

Former Congressman John R. Rarick warned us about their agenda:

"The CFR, dedicated to one-world government, financed by a number of the largest tax-exempt foundations, and wielding such power and influence over our lives in the areas of finance, business, labor, military, education and mass communication media, should be familiar to every American concerned with good government and with preserving and defending the U.S. Constitution and our free-enterprise system. Yet, the nation's right to know machinery – the news media – usually so aggressive in exposures to inform our people, remain conspicuously silent when it comes to the CFR, its members and their activities."

Much like Hillary's honest statement the elites have spoken openly about their agenda and contemp for our nation and its citizens. Committed Globalist and long time director of the CFR, David Rockefeller in a speech at the 1991 Bilderberg Convention stated "We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." <http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/globalism/rockefeller.htm>

(3) Life under communism - East Germans prefer the GDR

From: Eric Walberg <efgh1951@yahoo.com> Date: 03.08.2009 11:51 AM

Saturday, August 1, 2009 http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

A Remembrance of Things Past: The GDR

http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2009/08/remembrance-of-things-past-gdr.html

For an old Cold-Warrior like Der Spiegel – the influential German newsweekly, recent opinion polls in Germany brought considerable alarm. After nearly two decades of German re-unification, pollsters found that a majority of citizens living in the former German Democratic Republic – what Westerners call “East Germany” – defend the former socialist state.

In the face of a continuous onslaught of triumphal propaganda demonizing the GDR, eastern Germans still hold a positive view of that country. In Germany – as in the US – every aspect of life in the GDR is painted as evil: GDR border guards killed border-crossers, as though US border guards never killed border-crossing Mexicans (the crucial difference, I guess, is which direction they are going!). The Stasi spied on GDR citizens, as though the odious berufsverbot and political snitching never occurred in The Federal Republic (not to mention the many domestic surveillance and blacklistings that have befallen US citizens). It was not enough that the achievements of German socialism were never acknowledged in the West, the end of the Cold War brought a savage assault on every feature of life under the “dictatorship”. Even The GDR’s most celebrated cultural gems – like Bertolt Brecht – were transformed into unhappy captives of Communism (in spite of the consistent content of his works).

But the people of the Ost, after a constant bombardment of thought control and twenty years of capitalism, think differently. According to Der Spiegel:

…57 percent, or an absolute majority, of Eastern Germans defend the former East Germany. “The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there,” say 49 percent of those polled…

Instead of taking these results as a serious reflection of popular sentiment – perhaps re-examining some of the Cold War assumptions – author, Julia Bonstein, embarked on a mission to diminish the poll results. She found a ready ally in Klaus Shroeder, director of an academic institute that studies the GDR. He, too, is alarmed that “Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service” – a finding he relays from his 2008 study of school children. He faults them for defending the GDR based upon family conversations rather than the official textbooks. Imagine challenging textbooks! “These young people cannot, and in fact have no desire to, recognize the dark side of the GDR,” he remarks.

Schroeder received over 4000 responses to his study, many outraged at his outrage. A sampling provided by the Der Spiegel article:

"From today's perspective, I believe that we were driven out of paradise when the Wall came down," one person writes, and a 38-year-old man "thanks God" that he was able to experience living in the GDR, noting that it wasn't until after German reunification that he witnessed people who feared for their existence, beggars and homeless people.

Today's Germany is described as a "slave state" and a "dictatorship of capital," and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic.

The audacity of these former citizens of the GDR! Undeterred by these rebuffs to the official media line, author Bonstein sought some personal responses to the unpalatable poll results. In the cock-eyed contemporary media version of “balance and fairness” she located some prosperous former GDR citizens who would surely share her shock at the attitudes of the misguided multitudes. Surely Germans who were successful after the Wall came down would see the vast superiority of capitalism over the “drabness” of socialism.

Not so.

Thorsten Shoen, a 51 year old with creature comforts sufficient to impress Bonstein, vigorously defends the GDR:

"In the past, a campground was a place where people enjoyed their freedom together," he says. What he misses most today is "that feeling of companionship and solidarity." The economy of scarcity, complete with barter transactions, was "more like a hobby." Does he have a Stasi file? "I'm not interested in that," says Schön. "Besides, it would be too disappointing."

His verdict on the GDR is clear: "As far as I'm concerned, what we had in those days was less of a dictatorship than what we have today." He wants to see equal wages and equal pensions for residents of the former East Germany. And when Schön starts to complain about unified Germany, his voice contains an element of self-satisfaction. People lie and cheat everywhere today, he says, and today's injustices are simply perpetrated in a more cunning way than in the GDR, where starvation wages and slashed car tires were unheard of. Schön cannot offer any accounts of his own bad experiences in present-day Germany. "I'm better off today than I was before," he says, "but I am not more satisfied."

Schön's reasoning is less about cool logic than it is about settling scores. What makes him particularly dissatisfied is "the false picture of the East that the West is painting today." The GDR, he says, was "not an unjust state," but "my home, where my achievements were recognized." Schön doggedly repeats the story of how it took him years of hard work before starting his own business in 1989 -- before reunification, he is quick to add. "Those who worked hard were also able to do well for themselves in the GDR." This, he says, is one of the truths that are persistently denied on talk shows, when western Germans act "as if eastern Germans were all a little stupid and should still be falling to their knees today in gratitude for reunification." What exactly is there to celebrate, Schön asks himself?

Hmmm… This is not the picture paraded in the media. But, of course, who knows more about life in the GDR, Cold-warriors or the citizens of the former socialist country?

Another younger man, Birger, interviewed in a café, also defends the GDR: "Most East German citizens had a nice life… I certainly don't think that it's better here." He goes on to subtly prick the smugness of the Der Spiegel writer: "I know, what I'm telling you isn't all that interesting. The stories of victims are easier to tell… In the public's perception, there are only victims and perpetrators. But the masses fall by the wayside." Indeed, they do, especially when viewed through the eyes of privileged capitalist commentators who find a cause in every dissident, every unpublished poet, or every café intellectual crowing about the lack of freedom. But dry figures of income distribution, employment, social security, education and cultural participation make for boring copy… except to the masses.

The Cold Warriors at Der Spiegel will never grasp the meaning of the poll results, but hopefully their message will not be lost on those who seek a better life for working people in the US.

(The full Der Spiegel article is available on-line at the MLToday website: http://mltoday.com/en/majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-642-2.html)

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

(4) Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 31.07.2009 01:38 PM

Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them

By Amiram Barkat

Haaretz July 13, 2009

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=487412

A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

The clergyman prefered not to lodge a complaint with the police and told an acquaintance that he was used to being spat at by Jews. Many Jerusalem clergy have been subjected to abuse of this kind. For the most part, they ignore it but sometimes they cannot.

On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.

Both were questioned by police and the yeshiva student will be brought to trial. The Jerusalem District Court has meanwhile banned the student from approaching the Old City for 75 days.

But the Armenians are far from satisfied by the police action and say this sort of thing has been going on for years. Archbishop Nourhan Manougian says he expects the education minister to say something.

"When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don't they take harsher measures?" he asks.

According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, "as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country."

Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.

There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday."I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday," he says.

Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as "a huge disgrace." He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.

"I'm sure the phenomenon would end as soon as rabbis and well-known educators denounce it. In practice, rabbis of yeshivas ignore or even encourage it," he says.

Evyatar says he himself was spat at while walking with a Serbian bishop in the Jewish quarter, near his home. "A group of yeshiva students spat at us and their teacher just stood by and watched."

Jerusalem municipal officials said they are aware of the problem but it has to be dealt with by the police. Shmuel Ben-Ruby, the police spokesman, said they had only two complaints from Christians in the past two years. He said that, in both cases, the culprits were caught and punished.

He said the police deploy an inordinately high number of patrols and special technology in the Old City and its surroundings in an attempt to keep order.

(5) British soldiers are too fat to fight in Afghanistan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/02/british-army-obesity-fitness

War effort is being hampered by troops too unfit to deploy

Leaked army memo reveals many British soldiers are so obese they cannot be sent to Helmand

Mark Townsend

The Observer, Sunday 2 August 2009

Britain's war effort is being hampered by the number of front-line troops who are too fat or unfit to be deployed to southern Afghanistan.

A leaked memo sent to all army units and obtained by the Observer reveals that basic fitness policy "is not being carried out" and highlights concern among military commanders over a "worrying trend of obesity" that is limiting the number of soldiers fit enough to fight in Helmand. Units are routinely failing to fulfil the army's basic fitness regime of two hours of physical exercise a week, it adds, and the army must "reinvigorate a warrior ethos".

To counter the problem, the army will introduce a "body composition measurement" policy this October to weed out overweight troops as well as enforcing a bare minimum of three physical training sessions a week.

"The numbers of personnel unable to deploy and concerns about obesity throughout the army are clearly linked to current attitudes towards physical training," states the emergency memo from Major Brian Dupree of the army physical training corps in Wiltshire. He warns that Britain's "operational effectiveness" is being undermined and that soldiers' lives could be placed at risk because some are unable to cope with the brutal conditions of Helmand province and the stresses of combat.

Last night a leading Conservative MP and retired colonel described the revelations as "disgraceful" at a time when commanders are demanding more British troops be sent to Afghanistan to hold ground recently seized from the Taliban during Operation Panther's Claw. Commanders have already sent an extra 125 troops to Helmand to replace those injured or killed in the offensive that saw the highest number of British casualties in Afghanistan since the conflict began.

Currently there are 3,860 army personnel classified as PUD - personnel unable to deploy - with a further 8,190 regarded as being of "limited deployability" for medical reasons. The MoD cannot give a breakdown for how many of these are obese or simply unfit.

Dupree states in the memo dated 10 July: "The current army fitness policy states that to be fit to fight requires a minimum of two to three hours of physical activity per week. It is clear that even this most basic policy is not being implemented.

"To cope with the demands of hybrid operations in Afghanistan and future conflicts the army needs personnel with that battle-winning edge that sustains them through adversity. It is clear this message has been diluted recently and this attitude must change.

"The increasing PUD list and concerns over obesity in the services are clearly linked to this indifferent attitude." He concludes that the army has "not consistently maintained our standards of physical fitness" and needs to "reinvigorate a warrior ethos and a culture of being fit".

Patrick Mercer MP, head of strategy at the Army Training & Recruiting Agency, said: "This lack of personal fitness is a disgraceful state of affairs. The army is desperately undermanned anyway and for obesity to be a problem is extraordinary."

Dupree's report comes three years after the army relaxed its rules to allow recruits with a higher body mass index (BMI) to join after research found that two thirds of British teenagers were too fat to meet fitness requirements. Applicants with a BMI of 32 - two points above the World Health Organisation's definition of obesity - can now enlist.

An army board of inquiry in 2007 revealed how a soldier who died of heat stroke in Iraq was "at the higher level of obese". Investigators revealed that concerns were expressed about Private Jason Smith's BMI.

Dupree's report states: "The demands on time, which are acknowledged, are such that physical training has been regarded as something that can be cut from busy schedules. This approach cannot continue. Strong leadership is expected in this area."