.
Apologies in advance for not checking before posting,
but I was under the impression that US military drones launched in Afghanistan are directed against targets in Afghanistan,
and
CIA drones launched in Afghanistan are directed against targets across the "border" with Pakistan.
If correct, that goes a long way toward explaining the disparities between the 2 programs in civilian casualty rates.
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Kilkullen styles hisself as a "synergizer," bringing together ideas from all over and making new ideas out of them.
To the people he has plagiarized from, they frame it differently.
Either way, I'm glad to hear he said that.
2 bad his former mentor doesn't take a stand on something important like this. P4, or any of the retired among Bush's Generals who are now cashing in.
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Nick, I think you raise the question of whether the Pakistanni government controls the Pakistani military.
Because I think I could shoot down 50% of American drones over FATA, if I wanted to, for about $ 5 million.
I wouldn't even need military aircraft to do it.
Guessing, 50% of drones might amount to 30 - 50 UAV's.
And I assume they mostly commute from Jalalabad AF to Miran Shah, then loiter there.
I assume they're so thick over that town that the USAF has an ATC system in place.
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Nick,
translate "shock and awe" into common terminology.
It means "terrorize the population."
The US government has been the largest state sponsor of shock and awe for decades.
Truman's justification for the second nuke strike, the one on Nagasaki, was that it would terrorize the Japanese civilian population into withdrawing support for defending their own homeland against ground invasion by untermenschen.
He rationalized that such terrorism means were justified by the end of the war ends.
In the halls of the USAF war college (Air University, Maxwell AFB,) doctrine calls for shocking and aweing the civilian population of the adversary.
Much easier than having to find and destroy enemy military capability.
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Bill,
when you say "traditional governance system,"
R U referring to the indigenous (Pakhtun) shura system of local elders,
or the Agency system of outside officials (from Islamabad)(mostly Punjabi) who officially represent the region in the national government ?
- - - - --
also,
the linked article said the locals would rather be threatened by occasional drones overhead, than by the artillery of the Pakistani Army, if given that choice.
I see that as different than "locals want to be threatened by drones."
In other contexts,
the US military figures out who the "terrorists" are by paying locals to finger the bad guys.
I think its the same with drone strikes in FATA.
So,
I would expect thaat the tribes being paid to finger the "terrorists" in FATA would like to see that system continue.
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I hope yer right and I'm wrong,
because to me she comes across as vindictive,
and would clean house.
That's the only real protection you and I have from Big Brother -
frequent turnover so that nobody gets too entrenched.
Don't look to the likes of the Senator to do her oversight job properly. Not when there's so much money to be made.
I'm thinkin of that scene in Will Smith's movie "Enemy of the State," where the Admiral in Charge at NSA throws the tracking device from the Congressman's shoe on the table and tells all the Agency's principals that he wants to know every stinkin' detail of who ordered the device, who made the device, who authorized using it to track the Congressman.
Of course, in the current situation, it's the NSA Director himself who has gone rogue.
As well as the Director, ONI.
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John H,
I think you give Diane too much credit for innocence.
There are 8 members of Congress, 4 in the House and 4 in the Senate, who actually get briefed on the extent of NSA spying.
They are the House Speaker and Minority Leader, and Chair and Ranking Member of the House Intel Committee, and their Senate counterparts.
She has been briefed on the spying on Merkel since it started in 2002, as well as the monitoring of Supreme Court Justices, WH officials and fellow legislators.
Either she has been concealing her anger and frustration over these excesses for 11 years, or she was OK with it.
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There are two persons, selected or approved personally by BHO, who work on the staff of the NSC and who are deeply involved in monitoring the Intel Community.
It is unthinkable for me that these 2 didn't know about spying on Merkel, and much, much more.
Of course BHO has to deny knowledge.
But to accept that denial at face value reeks of religious belief, faith in things unseen, for which evidence would have been offered, if there was any.
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Counter-Terror, counter-insurgency.
Don't choke on all that Kool-Aid.
The McChrystal counter-terror approach was to get intel from one tribe, who would then finger a rival tribe as "terrorists,"
and then go kill or capture the folks that "our" Afghans didn't like.
The Kiernan conter-insurgency approach was based on the fantasy-based Petraeus "rewrite" of the Army Manual on the subject.
Dale Carnegie with guns.
The job of an Army is to kill people and break things. That includes assorted rapes and thievery.
If you don't want the US Army destroying a society, don't send them in.
If you want to rebuild a society, send in college professors instead.
Here's the key fact that has been kept secret for 4,000 years:
folks don't like foreigners coming in and taking over.
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And just so's you know,
we never attempted any "nation building" in Afghanistan.
Everything we did that we called "nation building" was strictly to strengthen the Karzai appointees who filled every post in every Province.
There were never any provincial elections for those positions, and Karzai insisted on getting some display of loyalty,
often expressed in likenesses of Benjamin Franklin,
before giving someone a position in a Provincial or District government.
If they had dog catchers in Afghanistan, the PM would appoint them.
We were trying to ensure that "our guy" had the cooperation of every podunk local official.
Things would have looked very different if we had honestly intended to build roads, or provide electricity.
Anyone in a position of GS-14 or above in USAID in A'stan ought to be required to account for what she or he did with all the resources they had at their disposal.
As a religious nut, I expect that to happen, but not very soon.
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Professor Rudolph,
I find it revealing that you think
"... the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.”
Rarely did resistance fighters kick any US Army ass in Afghanistan.
To clarify, an IED can be a powerful means to destroy individual soldiers and their equipment, but I doubt an IED has ever produced a tactical victory on the ground.
On those rare occasions when the resistance fighters DID kick US Army ass, it was only after the combat efficiency of the units involved was sorely compromised by one of Bush's Generals.
The biggest danger to an American soldier in A'stan is not the Taleban, or some other indigenous resistance force -
it's having strategic and especially tactical decisions made by Generals who haven't a clue how to win a war, or even how to fight a war.
I've looked at the terrain of the scenes of the major defeats the US has suffered in that war.
In EVERY SINGLE CASE I looked at, the US forces were deployed in a manner that should have been expected to result in catastrophic losses. That's not just 20-20 hindsight; it was obvious going in, and the small unit leaders who were ordered to put their men at risk unnecessarily should have refused.
Even if the Lieutenant on the ground only had Infantry Officer Basic Course under his belt, he never should have followed such stupid orders.
But nowadays, even selection to Brigade Command is ALL political, and technical competence is not a factor.
Did the Colonel whose bad judgement was responsible for Restrepo get his gonads sliced off ?
Did he at least get branded ?
Heck, no.
He got promoted, lest anyone ask if maybe incompetence at the Brigade TOC was the reason men died needlessly.
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If correct,
that fewer than 15,000 Afghan civilians have been killed from 2006 to 2012 in what the US military has treated as a free-fire zone,
that's surprisingly low.
Consider that, in about the same amount of time, 2003 to 2011, the US military caused (directly or not) about 1.5 million Iraqi deaths.
From the Lancet 2006 study,
"We estimate that between March 18, 2003, and June, 2006, an additional 654,965 (392,979–942,636) Iraqis have died above what would have been expected on the basis of the pre-invasion crude mortality rate as a consequence of the coalition invasion. Of these deaths, we estimate that 601,027 (426,369–793,663) were due to violence."
If accurate, these figures would imply the death of an average 500 people per day, or 2.5% of Iraq's population during the period.
Extrapolating 5 more years to 2011, when the US retreated from Iraq, I estimate 1.5 million dead Iraqis over what would have happened without the 2003 invasion, ballpark.
15,000 dead is a horrific tragedy, but considering who was in charge, it coulda been a LOT WORSE.
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Did anyone else react the way I did when I saw the full title of Andy's new book ?
"BREACH OF TRUST:
How Americans failed Their Soldiers and Their Country."
My first thought was of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.
Taleban offered 4 years ago to trade him for a dozen Gitmo prisoners, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and $ 1 Million.
2 years ago, Gilad Shalit's government made a deal for his release. Reportedly 1,027 prisoners were swapped for him.
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I want to blame President Obama alone for this,
because he could recover Bowe with the flick of his pampered wrist. Probably within a coupla days.
Easier than killing Osama.
But where is ANYONE in Congress standing up for the dog-faced American doughboy ? I'm talkin' to you, Maverick McCain.
And the Pentagon is completely AWOL on this case.
I had high hopes when Chuck was made SecDef.
He was the first actual warfighter in a position of responsibility and trust in Obama's inner circle.
"Hagel." ... "Hagel." ... "Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Yer missing roll call."
__________________________
Once again, the question comes up, who do you think of when I say, "the Military ?"
To Congress, "the Military" = Lockheed Martin and CACI.
To Obama, "the Military" = a bunch of politicians in uniform, the Generals.
To me, "the Military" = a bunch of economic refugees forced into military service, who then surrender their human worth, or have it taken from them, to become cannon fodder.
In this formulation,
the President takes care of the Military,
and the Congress takes care of the Military,
while the Military is hung out to dry.
It's not just an outrage,
it's a source of national shame - to those who can feel shame.
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Please buy my new book, "The New Isolationism: NeoCons from American Interests and Values," once I get around to writing it.
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Bill,
let me put my naivete and ignorance on full display:
projecting US military power abroad, without a strong international mandate, will never again advance American interests or values.
People in other countries are too well-informed to ever again believe that American shock and awe (terrorist) attacks are for their benefit.
US foreign aid, on the scale we've seen historically, is too feeble to win friends and influence people. Look at what we've done in A'stan, for example, in aiding their electrical power systems. Maybe $ 8 Billion spent, and the appearance is that it was intended to benefit American Expats, International manufacturers, and a dozen Afghan politicians with palms greased.
That wasn't an aid program at all; it was a wealth-transfer program.
If there was even one person involved at USAID with any authority who had the improvement of Afghan lives at heart, that money would have bought 100,000 small renewable (solar / wind) energy electrical power producing machines, maybe 5 - 10 kW each, rather than investing in 100 MW hydro plants and coal-fired generators.
Our best shot at molding societies and economies in foreign lands to the benefit of orinary Americans lies in helping people in those foreign lands build their own local businesses. Help them to live better lives. If we have to structure such programs so that the same USAID "non-profit" Contractors continue to reap huge "fees, so be it. If the only way to get there requires US and multi-national / trans-national business conglomerates to extract natural resources in a way that does NOT benefit locals, maybe don't implement those programs.
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if the Saud family (al-Saud) defines their identity in terms of maintaining custody of the land of the two holy mosques, and if the country and all its inhabitants as the personal property of the monarch, and
if all power is in the hands of one clan that is less than 2% of the total population,
why do we have any diplomatic relations with them at all ?
I undersand buying oil from them;
I don't understand treasting them like the legit rulers of a country.
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If you refer to the idea that it was some party other than the Syrian military that launched the 21 Aug attacks,
that hasn't actually been refuted.
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or, the T-Party types were trying to stave off even greater pain when the reckoning finally comes.
Today, the US Treasury exercises a sort of hegemony over the economies of other nations. That won't last.
Then we will have to pay our bills, for real.
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a ship sinking near the Italian island of Lampedusa
could possibly be considered to be
"opposite the shores of Libya,”
or even
"off Malta,"
but those are both stretches.
But the allegation that the boat carrying Palestinians and Syrians was fired on,
that seems to show therse are different incidents.
This is just a guess,
but if there are 1,000 refugees a year dying while trying to sail from Tunisia to Lampedusa,
there might be many more who don't drown.
I'd guess that there are always a handful of boats on the sea attempting the crossing, and one or two more launched every day, on average.
That's just the traffic in the stretch between Lampedusa and Tunisia.
If folks are embarking in Latakia for Europe, I would expect them to head for a destination closer than Lampedusa, around 1,200 miles away. Crete is only 500 miles; Rhodes only 400 miles; and the coast of Hatay only 50 miles. Cyprus is barely 100 miles.
......
Now, if the implication is that Syrians are traveling by land to Tunisia, and then embarking there, that's not clear.
the island is Lampedusa.
Both boats were headed there, and foundered near there.
That's been the primary target of boats overfilled with African immigrants for decades.
It's Italian territory, but only 80 miles from Tunisian beaches.
I got no facks, but Syrians taking that route sounds dubitable to me.
In terms of warfighting, my expertise is limited to ground combat at the tactical level.
So I'm just guessign here.
But it seems to me that the Pakistani Air Force has all they need to shoot down every single drone the US flies into Pakistani airspace from Afghanistan.
The PAF knows where the drones launch from (Jalalabad.)
They know how high and how fast they fly.
They have radar capable of tracking them.
They have F-16's and air-to-air missiles that can knock them down.
What's more, the Pakistani people know all this.
Clearly, if PM Sharif wanted the drone strikes to stop, he could make that happen. If not through negotiations and diplomacy, then through kinetic action.
Heck, based on the Abbotabad precedent, he could even justify a strike on the US base at Jalalabad - Fenty, I think it's called - where the drones live and play, when not in the air.
more to this than just what the press releases say.
What is this "elected president" you have mentioned multiple times ?
The "parliament" was technically selected from nominees from tribal elders, but effectively appointed mostly by the US CIA. They were almost all expats from the diaspora.
This is the body that elected the guy you are calling the elected President.
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On another note,
the grievance against foreigners that I think was most resonant among Somali artisanal fishermen was that allegedly the Italian Mafia was dumping barrels of toxic waste in Somali coastal waters. IIRC, I think I saw video or stills of hundreds of barrels washed up on the shore of Raas Xaafuun, with labels in Italian.
Who was doing the poaching in Somali waters ?
I ask to be corrected.
My impression, the #1 offender was Taiwan, followed closely by Spain.
Because I don't think you necessarily get the best understanding of the hinterlands from a city (Mogadisco) that is occupied by thousands of foreign military forces.
yeah, in December 2008, the Chief of Naval Operations was presented with a $ 200 M plan to fix rule of law in Puntland, and thereby end piracy.
no,
he had those magnificent supercarriers,
and no enemy to send them up against, save the Iranians,
so he NEEDED those barefoot, high-on-Qat, armed mostly with machetes teenagers as a justification to spend $ 5 Billion per year per carrier at sea.
If al-Qaeda cannot be invoked as a threat to maritime security, well,
there's gotta be SOMEBODY who threatens commercial or naval or recreational navigation to send those Naval aviators out to defend against.
I can personally vouch for the Somalis who were proposing that undertaking.
I cannot vouch for a CNO who wastes $ Billions just to avoid any honest cost-benefit analysis.
Today's China is about as closely related to what was called "China" 2,500 years ago
as
the current secular-ish state of Israel is to the Israelites of the Bible.
I talk to Chinese expats in Asia. They have no ambitions of conquest or domination, unlike the Vulcans of neoconservatism. They see trade as a way for everyone to benefit. That's all.
Malala is being cunningly exploited to undermine support for the local Taliban. The campaign is rooted in Western values, which seem to be projected onto Pakistanis out in the FATAs.
You and I know who is engineering this, and why, but to say who marks me as a conspiracy nut.
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I hope that one part of this report is in error -- the part that says that US Special Opns Forces tracked the kidnapee al-Libi down.
It may be accurate.
Last year, or two years ago, US SOCOM asked for money to stand up its own private DIA/CIA, internal to the command.
That way, they wouldn't get bogged down by having to coordinate or collaborate with the real DIA or real CIA, which they seemed to imply was hoding them back.
I think it was under Stan the Man McChrystal that SOCOM wanted to add their own Intel capability, and even - IIRC - wanted to report directly to the National Security Advisor, bypassing the SecDef.
I just assumed that would be quashed. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe US SOCOM is now an independent agency, on par with the CIA. If so, I say that's not an improvement.
...........
Of course it was SOF who snatched the guy. I realize that.
I'm asking if it's good for SOCOM to be able to operate so independently, a law unto themselves.
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not so much off the streets, Chris. They don't often venture into town, let alone travel to countries that signed the Treaty of Rome.
Daddy Warbucks Chaney lives in a gated community. Same with Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Barack Obama and many if not most of the reputed "terrorists" we harbor.
After a reporter recently walked up and knocked on Don Rumsfeld's door, I suspect he might invest some of his ill-gotten gains in more "local security."
well, if Dr. K approves, then it must be good for business -- transnational, loyal-to-none very big business.
Perhaps he will get his slice of baksheesh.
a couple of Senators (e.g., Pete Domenici) steered a lot of federal dollars to the area. The locals didn't bother with economic development or balance.
Now, somehow, their benefitting from outsized, disproportionate largesse has become an entitlement ?
What did Bruce Hornsby have to say about this kind of situation ? And, no, suckling on the government teat isn't exactly the same thing as getting a job.
I have only had dealings with a small number of folks who were collecting federal salaries for whatever they did at LANL, and all of them were making more off their connections outside the government than from eagle squats.
The volume of oil recovered / produced is about 6% of the volume of the tar-sand-clay mix used to produce it.
My impression is that the proportion of tar/ bitumen is much higher than 6%, over 10%, so a lot of it is not captured and made into oil in the process.
To help readers visualize the quantities cited,
a ton of tar sands is about the size of a cube 36 inches in each direction.
And a barrel of oil has 42 gallons, not 55.
Isn't having Wendy Sherman acting as the point person in US negotiations with Iran a bit like having Martin Indyk as the point person in US negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians ?
The USA leads the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commisssion seemingly to exclude Chinese and Southeast Asian fishermen from that fishery. http://www.npafc.org/
As long as we reamin a law unto ourselves, nothing can rein in American excesses, nor can we garner international support for our initiatives.
I personally am a LOT safer after Snowden alerted the masses to some of what the government does to us.
In fact, you are, too.
But if I have to explain, you wouldn't prob'ly understand anyway.
Seems to me that elements of TF Kingston entered Chinese territory, crossing the Yalu. I think that's why the PLA got involved.
So, Joe, if we were just wanting to maintain status quo, how did American troops end up on Chinese soil ?
There are stated war aims, and there are actual war aims.
Sometimes they don't match exactly.
Since when,
Charley,
is being detached from reality a reason for Congress to stop listening to anyone ?
Congressional deliberations would grind (poof) to a halt.
Strictly my perception,
but I think it was T-Party types in Congress who refused to get rolled on the imminent Syria invasion.
I've visited Yad Vashem.
It's beautiful, moving.
The slaughter was horrific.
"We historians estimate that some 6 million were gassed or killed by other means."
At one particular display in the memorial, it suggests that 6 million is no more than an educated guess. The number is for people who need such specifics to put some kind of comprehensible limit on the devastation.
The actual number might be as small as 2 million and as high as 12 million. The lack of specificity is due to the dearth of census data on the thousands of small communities, Jewish and otherwise, that dotted Prussia-Russia-Poland-Byelorus- and that region more generally, where IIRC most of the victims came from.
6 million is not, as some presume, an upper limit.
So,
does President Rousseff want the CIA to cut off payments to Brazilian government officials, as they also infringe sovereignty ?
ALL such officials ?
Garoweonline dot com looks like a Somali language website, but if you click on the links, it has most of its content in English.
My only expertise re: Somalia was a couple years back, working on a proposal to USAID for development funds for Puntland as a way to stop the piracy that originates from within Puntland. Get the locals to stamp it out.
A former Puntland Minister and I put together a sweet proposal, but it went nowhere.
I had forecast that the piracy problem could not be eliminated through military force. Apparently I was wrong.
Hargeisa is ruled by a tribe.
Garowe is ruled by another tribe.
Mogadisco used to be ruled by another tribe.
I'm not sure anyone is "in control" in Bosasso.
The only way to get stability in that area is to let the indigenous folks work it out - prob'ly along tribal lines.
Farole was the best thing to happen to Somalia in the last decade.
How much does the CIA support him ?
Not at all, because he stands for Somali control over Somali affairs.
I would say that the "regime chamge" of 1993 produced the ICU,
and that continuing Western meddling in the ICU produced the Islamic Youth Movement.
For folks who can't afford to follow this story closely,
a port like Kismayu is not all that strategic when you don't have trading partners overseas.
Food Aid brought to that port used to be surreptitiously turned over to the al Shabaab AT THE PORT for onward transport and distribution.
Now it looks like al Shabaab simply commandeers the delivery trucks on the outskirts of town.
They rule the Shabelle.
As a phony Christian hypocrite, while I don't like supporting an Islamist Jighadist organization like the Islamic Youth Movement,
they are the only game in town
when it comes to getting food aid to the hinterlands.
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There IS a functioning government in Somalia.
Unfortunately, it is the government of the Puntland Autonomous Region.
The "Federal Government of Somalia" has all the legitimacy and popular support of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, or Karzai in Afghanistan.
Current Somali President Xasan Sheikh MoXamuud was elected in August 2012 by the legislature selected and installed by the USA. He has ties to the MB.
Saying the "Islamic Youth Movement" is an offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union is technically correct, but entirely misleading. The previous President, Sheikh Sharif Shaikh Axmed, was the leader of the ICU and the USA asked him to join the "transitional government."
I think it is likewise misleading to speak of "Somali federal government forces." They are less effective than the pretend "Afghan National Army."
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I'm not sure why you think that, since the Affordable Health Care Act is the law of the land, that it cannot be defunded.
I believe that the Executive Branch doesn't support a lot of things that are the law of the land, so they just don't execute what the Congress has authorized.
For example, demilitarizing chemical weapons by the 2007 deadline was never a priority for Clinton, Bush or Obama, so even though it was an obligation under an international treaty, and thus the law of the land, they failed to even request funding, let alone exedute.
Another example is funding VA care. Lots of vets don't get served timely, and individual Representatives and Senators claim to be upset by that, but it doesn't get fixed.
You may ercall the position of Attorney General Holder on enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act.
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I admit to being wrong.
I have repeatedly posted that one or another group of rebels was (or may have been) involved.
I believed that mostly because the US govt declined to share their "evidence" with the public.
They apparently shared it with the UN intel folks, who were convinced.
That's a lot better than Kerry's "trust me."
Parts of Boulder County got over 7 inches of rain in 24 hours. Even without a drought or fires, the flooding would have been great.
In Colorado Springs, I live in the "rain shadow" of Pikes Peak. I normally see 12 inches of rain in a year. We've had over 17 inches so far this year, officially, 7 in just the normally dry month of September. I think the actual total is a bit more than 17.
Unirrigated fields are usually brown by late May.
This year, everything looks like Missouri - vibrant green - into mid-September.
If you believe in statistics, this is a huge outlier. If next year is similar, the local weather patterns have changed.
NOTE: I love the rain and fog and mist, because it is so unusual. The bugs will undoubtedly follow.
I meant to say that the American public doesn't want the US military employed on losing causes,
and they don't want their tax dollars spent giving foreigners stuff that makes their lives better over the long term.
Short-term Disaster assistance is OK, but actual development that might lead to sustained growth and improvement is off-limits.
Of course the obsolete CVN weapons platform can be used for humanitarian good.
We conduct a wide range of "window dressing" disaster assistance efforts to convince the American public that we are the world's saviors, so we can pat ourselves on the back.
It's like WAL-MART 10 years ago, spending $50 Million on a PR campaign to brag about a $50,000 charitable contribution.
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I was part of mostly Afghan team that offered to implement a USAID development program in Herat Province 2 years ago, "Stability in Key Areas." We would have employed 2,200 Afghans and 6 Americans.
The award went to one of the ten contractors that get 90% of all USAID dollars, and they employed 45+ US Expats and 7 Afghans.
USAID finally pulled the plug when local Afghans demanded the charade end.
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USAID spent $5 Billion on developing electrical power in A'stan, almost all of it on humongous projects that had no chance of ever actally working. These turned out to be driven by what the multinationals like GE and Siemens wanted to do, not based on what Afghans needed.
USAID could have ended the conflict with the Taliban -
USAID could have won the Afghan war by themselves, without any help from the military -
- if they would have just spent a fraction of that money on local energy development projects.
2,000 small renewable energy stations (about $100 K each) sprinkled along the trails connecting Pakistan to A'stan, through Paktika and the border provinces, and in Waziristan and border FATA's, would have kept the young men doing the fighting home.
Our government bureaucrats don't understand the problems they are trying to solve. Nor do they understand human nature. Dr. Shah, USAID Administrator, promised to shake up the Agency. I can't see one thing he's changed.
USAID would be the most powerful tool that the USA had to change the world, if it had better leadership.
But right now, all we can do to help foreign peoples improve their prospects is to employ our magnificent military to kill them.
USAID remains mired in the mode of a wealth transfer mechanism intended to benefit only those 10 USAID contractors, and the $250,000 per year expats working for them. If a local in the foreign country where USAID operates actually benefits, then it is probably an accident, or through accepting bribes or such.
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I was responding to John Ballard's statement that we are helpless to do anything to improve the lives of people stuck in messes like the proxy war in Syria.
The way things are right now, he is right.
But if we had more competent folks running our federal agencies, and more competent folks staffing those agencies, we could do a great deal to help them.
It's an option.
CLARIFICATION:
USAID seems to do pretty good work when not in a conflict environment.
But EVERYTHING they've done in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade has failed.
If they went into Syria, with the same leaders at the top and the same bureaucrats who were in charge in A'stan, they would screw that up, too.
This is not a problem with the folks implementing in the field, just like the Army's problem isn't the front line soldier.
The culture in the Ronald Reagan Building is sick.
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Perhaps, A Meshiea,
you do not believe that the various "rebel" factions are committing atrocities against civilians ?
If the point is to protect Syrian civilians, its not clear that just striking against the al-Assad forces will do the trick.
To me,
it appears that we would also have to do something to get many "rebel" groups to cut back on atrocities.
And how do we get Israel to stop interfering and killing Syrians ?
Actually, there is a great deal we could do that would advance our interests.
But since it would be impossible to present this sort of aid to the American Public as some sort of military victory, it would be political suicide.
As a former US Army Infantryman, I lack objectivity. Stipulated.
INCOMPETENT SOLDIERS
I think our soldiers in combat units have, for the most part, acquitted themselves well. The failures in Iraq and A'stan to my view are ALL attributable to Colonels and above.
The first responsibility of a Colonel is NOT to say, "Yes, sir, yes, sir, 3 bags full." That's the job of a Lieutenant.
The first responsibility of a Colonel is to know his unit, his soldiers, their capabilities; and his second responsibility is to push back when asked or ordered to do something beyond their capabilities.
Infantrymen are trained to kill people and break things.
Infantrymen are not capable of "nationbuilding."
We lost the war in Iraq because Colonels and Generals didn't do their jobs.
Our Army is broken at the top levels, and it was broken by fascists in the WH and Pentagon.
Golly, Colonels and Generals don't even know what their jobs are anymore. They all think that serving in the combat arms is preparation for a career in the war contractor industry, or in politics.
In fact, leading troops in combat is the only important thing they will ever do, and they give that duty short shrift while their gaze is fixed on future aggrandizement and riches.
Did I mention that our Army is broken ? Eric Shinseki or John Singlaub may have been our last competent General.
OVER EQUIPPED
30 years ago, I had to conceal my knee pads and elbow pads under my fatigues, because wearing them on the outside was prohibited. Squad radios 30 years ago rarely worked. I would navigate combat patrols in the Korean DMZ with a lensatic compass and 1:25,000 DMA map.
3 months before I took over command of Guard Post Collier, the preceding Commander lost 11 soldiers to a DPRK minefield and defensive fire, because a US patrol wandered across the MDL in the fog.
I don't see much use for the networked vision that Boeing has for letting the battalion commander see where each individual solidier is on a display in the TOC, because pretty soon we'll have a re-run of LBJ choosing targets in Hue from the WH situation room.
But I'm all for giving that grunt on point as much ballistic protection, firepower and situational awareness as he can handle.
I think the focus on al-Assad as the focus of evil misses some important nuance.
To my understanding, there are still 7 "governments" of "nations" that still consider some human beings as chattel property. Six are in the GCC. Brunei is #7.
All 7 are solid US allies.
What do we have in common with a Saudi tyrant that still upholds slavery ?
In 1997, when the USA ratified the CWC, we promised to demilitarize all of our chem wepons within 10 years.
Ten years later, in 2007, we promised to destroy them all by 2012.
In 2013, the "working" target date is 2022.
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Under Nunn-Lugar, we paid for the destruction of Soviet chem weapons at Shchuch'ye in the early 2000's.
It might be a show of good faith to get on with destroying our own chem weapons.
I suspect Obama is only too happy to cut off all US aid to the non-Syrian, al Qaeda Mercenary forces of al-Nusra Front, the Frankenstein monster he created less than 3 years ago,
as he pivots to support the replacement proxy force, the purportedly "moderate" "Sons of Syria."
Perhaps, if we ever pin down ALL parties who actually have been using chem weapons in Syria, this deal will be expanded to include Israeli chem weapons stocks, production facilities and research labs ?
Why is it that some of these analyses leave out the US role in instigating this phony "civil war" / actual proxy war almost 3 years ago ?
The CIA, under the US Neocon president in late 2010, are the ones who provoked Assad's security forces to fire on unarmed demonstrators.
The CIA, through Blackwater, armed and trained what we now call the "Al Nusra Front" Mercenary army.
A pretty good case has already been made that the US' closest ally in the region was behind most of the chemical attacks in Syria. Recall that their Intel service reported many of the attacks within mere minutes of when they occurrd. Coincidence ?
Of course the American public is played for chumps. But this audience ?
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Although the term "WMD" applies to all 3, Nuke, Bio and Chem, the destruction of a nuke is many orders of magnitude greater than the other two - so far.
My impression, chem weapons require a lot of things to go right for them to be effective, including weather, vegetation and landforms. Ditto for bio weapons.
On an individual level, chem and bio weapons can be just as terrifying. On a tactical level, not so much, unless attacking unprepared civilians.
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So,
the first link defines a "Toxic chemical" as:
"Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals."
I think that includes Willie Pete.
And
the second link states clearly at the top:
"... these Schedules do not constitute a definition of chemical weapons."
From these 2 linx, I can't see how you conclude that:
"... white phosphorus is not a chemical weapon under the CWC."
Not readily apparent.
Did you think folks wouldn't check the linx ?
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Willie Pete is often not considered a chem weapon.
It acts by spreading small chunks of material, about half the size of a pea, that burn on contact with the air.
Either raining down from an air burst, or shooting out from a ground burst, these particles ignite anything flammable that they come into contact with.
If one of these pellets grazes unclothed human skin, it causes a surface burn.
If forced into the flesh by the force of a blast, it burns until extinguished, such as if the flesh closes back over it, cutting off the oxygen supply. But it remains pretty hot, even if not burning, so folks tend to try to dig it out, reigniting it.
If that sounds awful, the reality is much, much worse.
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Never fact-checked this,
but when I went through Army Basic Combat Training back during the Viet Nam war, our instructors told us that it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions to call in WP artillery rounds on people, so if we wanted the Field Artillery unit providing our direct or general support to use WP, we would have to identify the target as bgeing some materiel that could be destroyed by an incendiary.
With a nod and a wink, they said to call WP in on the uniforms and LBE that the targeted individuals were wearing, rather than the human beings wearing the clothing.
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In one sense, all weapons are chemicals, eh ?
The propellant, the explosives, even the steel that fragments into projectiles.
But in the current discussions, it appears to me that folks think chem weapons are limited to toxic gases.
In that framework, no, WP is not a gas that is inhaled (though tiny particles do get inhaled, with predictable results - lungs are full of air.)
So I understand the argument that WP is not a chem weapon, though I disagree.
I don't abbreviate "chemical weapons" as CW, because I seem to recall that acronym having another meaning. Can't quite put my finger on it. But riot control agennt (purportedly non-lethal toxic gases) go by names like CN, CS, CR and CA.
Under the CWC, the USA promised to destroy / demilitarize all our chem weapons by 2007. The absolute last time allowed under the treaty, with an extension, was 2012.
Our target date for compliance is not 2022 or so.
Wouldn't it be great if, as we demand Syria comply with the CWC, we made a parrallel effort at compliance our own darn selves ?
Today, the CIA is no longer arming tha al-Nusra and FSA, the Mercenaries they stood up into an army almost 3 years ago.
The CIA's new darlings are the "Sons of Syria," whatever that means.
I wonder if it includes any actual Syrians, or is it entirely made up of foreigners, like the "rebel" force that turned rogue that they are replacing.
Of course it is the THREAT of the use of force that affected events; the actual use of force signals a failure of leadership and diplomacy.
The US has been using force against the Syrian government for 3 years now, through a proxy Mercenary army. That hasn't been very effective.
=
I expect the Tuesday night address to the nation will be postponed, pending actual diplomacy by parties looking for a non-kinetic solution. That doesn't appear to include the Obama Administration.
I don't expect the Congress to vote on this, after all.
if supporting and defending the Constitution,
and the values in the Declaration of Independence,
make me a neo-isolationist,
then I wear your smear proudly.
Thousands of US chem weapon artillery rounds, missiles and aerial bombs have been destroyed. Millions remain. Most are unusable.
The good people of Pueblo, Colorado, objected to demilitarization by incineration, so Bechtel is testing a demil technology based on dilution with water.
800,000 rounds sit in igloos 40 miles from my home.
Every now and then they detect a leaker. I worry about the smell of freshly mown hay (that's how mustard gas smells in low concentrations.)
Don't think I'll visit the farms downstream of the Pueblo Depot to pick chili peppers anymore.
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Speaking of US chem warfare,
notwithstanding the photo above,
I think the last acknowledged use was in 2007,when we administered superdoses of the Malaria medicine Lariam to the last men transferred to Gitmo. As an added benefit to the known psychoactive effects, including suicide ideation, Lariam supposedly loosens tongues in interrogations.
You are overlooking
-- the Battle of the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964,
in which the US Navy prevailed; and
Operation Earnest Will, 1987-88, in which not a single capital ship was lost.
Maybe I should throw in Operation Ocean Shield, 2008 - present. We have not yet lost a single capital ship to barefoot Somali teenagers armed with machetes.
This illustrates why we need 13 active aircraft carriers and their supporting task forces: to prevail over enemies in rowboats.
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Apologies in advance for not checking before posting,
but I was under the impression that US military drones launched in Afghanistan are directed against targets in Afghanistan,
and
CIA drones launched in Afghanistan are directed against targets across the "border" with Pakistan.
If correct, that goes a long way toward explaining the disparities between the 2 programs in civilian casualty rates.
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Kilkullen styles hisself as a "synergizer," bringing together ideas from all over and making new ideas out of them.
To the people he has plagiarized from, they frame it differently.
Either way, I'm glad to hear he said that.
2 bad his former mentor doesn't take a stand on something important like this. P4, or any of the retired among Bush's Generals who are now cashing in.
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Nick, I think you raise the question of whether the Pakistanni government controls the Pakistani military.
Because I think I could shoot down 50% of American drones over FATA, if I wanted to, for about $ 5 million.
I wouldn't even need military aircraft to do it.
Guessing, 50% of drones might amount to 30 - 50 UAV's.
And I assume they mostly commute from Jalalabad AF to Miran Shah, then loiter there.
I assume they're so thick over that town that the USAF has an ATC system in place.
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Nick,
translate "shock and awe" into common terminology.
It means "terrorize the population."
The US government has been the largest state sponsor of shock and awe for decades.
Truman's justification for the second nuke strike, the one on Nagasaki, was that it would terrorize the Japanese civilian population into withdrawing support for defending their own homeland against ground invasion by untermenschen.
He rationalized that such terrorism means were justified by the end of the war ends.
In the halls of the USAF war college (Air University, Maxwell AFB,) doctrine calls for shocking and aweing the civilian population of the adversary.
Much easier than having to find and destroy enemy military capability.
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Bill,
when you say "traditional governance system,"
R U referring to the indigenous (Pakhtun) shura system of local elders,
or the Agency system of outside officials (from Islamabad)(mostly Punjabi) who officially represent the region in the national government ?
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also,
the linked article said the locals would rather be threatened by occasional drones overhead, than by the artillery of the Pakistani Army, if given that choice.
I see that as different than "locals want to be threatened by drones."
In other contexts,
the US military figures out who the "terrorists" are by paying locals to finger the bad guys.
I think its the same with drone strikes in FATA.
So,
I would expect thaat the tribes being paid to finger the "terrorists" in FATA would like to see that system continue.
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or maybe Ahmed Chalabi, another CIA tool.
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I hope yer right and I'm wrong,
because to me she comes across as vindictive,
and would clean house.
That's the only real protection you and I have from Big Brother -
frequent turnover so that nobody gets too entrenched.
Don't look to the likes of the Senator to do her oversight job properly. Not when there's so much money to be made.
I'm thinkin of that scene in Will Smith's movie "Enemy of the State," where the Admiral in Charge at NSA throws the tracking device from the Congressman's shoe on the table and tells all the Agency's principals that he wants to know every stinkin' detail of who ordered the device, who made the device, who authorized using it to track the Congressman.
Of course, in the current situation, it's the NSA Director himself who has gone rogue.
As well as the Director, ONI.
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John H,
I think you give Diane too much credit for innocence.
There are 8 members of Congress, 4 in the House and 4 in the Senate, who actually get briefed on the extent of NSA spying.
They are the House Speaker and Minority Leader, and Chair and Ranking Member of the House Intel Committee, and their Senate counterparts.
She has been briefed on the spying on Merkel since it started in 2002, as well as the monitoring of Supreme Court Justices, WH officials and fellow legislators.
Either she has been concealing her anger and frustration over these excesses for 11 years, or she was OK with it.
But she definitely didn't just find out.
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Reggae out the Hashemite keffiyeh!
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were those Greek women locked in their husbands' houses ?
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There are two persons, selected or approved personally by BHO, who work on the staff of the NSC and who are deeply involved in monitoring the Intel Community.
It is unthinkable for me that these 2 didn't know about spying on Merkel, and much, much more.
Of course BHO has to deny knowledge.
But to accept that denial at face value reeks of religious belief, faith in things unseen, for which evidence would have been offered, if there was any.
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I don't think "tar sands" can be transported by pipeline.
I think they are processed somehow before being pumped through a pipe.
Most of the pollution will happen in the far North.
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Counter-Terror, counter-insurgency.
Don't choke on all that Kool-Aid.
The McChrystal counter-terror approach was to get intel from one tribe, who would then finger a rival tribe as "terrorists,"
and then go kill or capture the folks that "our" Afghans didn't like.
The Kiernan conter-insurgency approach was based on the fantasy-based Petraeus "rewrite" of the Army Manual on the subject.
Dale Carnegie with guns.
The job of an Army is to kill people and break things. That includes assorted rapes and thievery.
If you don't want the US Army destroying a society, don't send them in.
If you want to rebuild a society, send in college professors instead.
Here's the key fact that has been kept secret for 4,000 years:
folks don't like foreigners coming in and taking over.
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And just so's you know,
we never attempted any "nation building" in Afghanistan.
Everything we did that we called "nation building" was strictly to strengthen the Karzai appointees who filled every post in every Province.
There were never any provincial elections for those positions, and Karzai insisted on getting some display of loyalty,
often expressed in likenesses of Benjamin Franklin,
before giving someone a position in a Provincial or District government.
If they had dog catchers in Afghanistan, the PM would appoint them.
We were trying to ensure that "our guy" had the cooperation of every podunk local official.
Things would have looked very different if we had honestly intended to build roads, or provide electricity.
Anyone in a position of GS-14 or above in USAID in A'stan ought to be required to account for what she or he did with all the resources they had at their disposal.
As a religious nut, I expect that to happen, but not very soon.
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Professor Rudolph,
I find it revealing that you think
"... the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.”
Rarely did resistance fighters kick any US Army ass in Afghanistan.
To clarify, an IED can be a powerful means to destroy individual soldiers and their equipment, but I doubt an IED has ever produced a tactical victory on the ground.
On those rare occasions when the resistance fighters DID kick US Army ass, it was only after the combat efficiency of the units involved was sorely compromised by one of Bush's Generals.
The biggest danger to an American soldier in A'stan is not the Taleban, or some other indigenous resistance force -
it's having strategic and especially tactical decisions made by Generals who haven't a clue how to win a war, or even how to fight a war.
I've looked at the terrain of the scenes of the major defeats the US has suffered in that war.
In EVERY SINGLE CASE I looked at, the US forces were deployed in a manner that should have been expected to result in catastrophic losses. That's not just 20-20 hindsight; it was obvious going in, and the small unit leaders who were ordered to put their men at risk unnecessarily should have refused.
Even if the Lieutenant on the ground only had Infantry Officer Basic Course under his belt, he never should have followed such stupid orders.
But nowadays, even selection to Brigade Command is ALL political, and technical competence is not a factor.
Did the Colonel whose bad judgement was responsible for Restrepo get his gonads sliced off ?
Did he at least get branded ?
Heck, no.
He got promoted, lest anyone ask if maybe incompetence at the Brigade TOC was the reason men died needlessly.
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If correct,
that fewer than 15,000 Afghan civilians have been killed from 2006 to 2012 in what the US military has treated as a free-fire zone,
that's surprisingly low.
Consider that, in about the same amount of time, 2003 to 2011, the US military caused (directly or not) about 1.5 million Iraqi deaths.
From the Lancet 2006 study,
"We estimate that between March 18, 2003, and June, 2006, an additional 654,965 (392,979–942,636) Iraqis have died above what would have been expected on the basis of the pre-invasion crude mortality rate as a consequence of the coalition invasion. Of these deaths, we estimate that 601,027 (426,369–793,663) were due to violence."
If accurate, these figures would imply the death of an average 500 people per day, or 2.5% of Iraq's population during the period.
Extrapolating 5 more years to 2011, when the US retreated from Iraq, I estimate 1.5 million dead Iraqis over what would have happened without the 2003 invasion, ballpark.
15,000 dead is a horrific tragedy, but considering who was in charge, it coulda been a LOT WORSE.
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my impression,
the 10,000 or so men of the al-Saud have functional de facto "citizenship," through the tribal consultative process.
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Did anyone else react the way I did when I saw the full title of Andy's new book ?
"BREACH OF TRUST:
How Americans failed Their Soldiers and Their Country."
My first thought was of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.
Taleban offered 4 years ago to trade him for a dozen Gitmo prisoners, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and $ 1 Million.
2 years ago, Gilad Shalit's government made a deal for his release. Reportedly 1,027 prisoners were swapped for him.
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I want to blame President Obama alone for this,
because he could recover Bowe with the flick of his pampered wrist. Probably within a coupla days.
Easier than killing Osama.
But where is ANYONE in Congress standing up for the dog-faced American doughboy ? I'm talkin' to you, Maverick McCain.
And the Pentagon is completely AWOL on this case.
I had high hopes when Chuck was made SecDef.
He was the first actual warfighter in a position of responsibility and trust in Obama's inner circle.
"Hagel." ... "Hagel." ... "Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Yer missing roll call."
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Once again, the question comes up, who do you think of when I say, "the Military ?"
To Congress, "the Military" = Lockheed Martin and CACI.
To Obama, "the Military" = a bunch of politicians in uniform, the Generals.
To me, "the Military" = a bunch of economic refugees forced into military service, who then surrender their human worth, or have it taken from them, to become cannon fodder.
In this formulation,
the President takes care of the Military,
and the Congress takes care of the Military,
while the Military is hung out to dry.
It's not just an outrage,
it's a source of national shame - to those who can feel shame.
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Please buy my new book, "The New Isolationism: NeoCons from American Interests and Values," once I get around to writing it.
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Bill,
let me put my naivete and ignorance on full display:
projecting US military power abroad, without a strong international mandate, will never again advance American interests or values.
People in other countries are too well-informed to ever again believe that American shock and awe (terrorist) attacks are for their benefit.
US foreign aid, on the scale we've seen historically, is too feeble to win friends and influence people. Look at what we've done in A'stan, for example, in aiding their electrical power systems. Maybe $ 8 Billion spent, and the appearance is that it was intended to benefit American Expats, International manufacturers, and a dozen Afghan politicians with palms greased.
That wasn't an aid program at all; it was a wealth-transfer program.
If there was even one person involved at USAID with any authority who had the improvement of Afghan lives at heart, that money would have bought 100,000 small renewable (solar / wind) energy electrical power producing machines, maybe 5 - 10 kW each, rather than investing in 100 MW hydro plants and coal-fired generators.
Our best shot at molding societies and economies in foreign lands to the benefit of orinary Americans lies in helping people in those foreign lands build their own local businesses. Help them to live better lives. If we have to structure such programs so that the same USAID "non-profit" Contractors continue to reap huge "fees, so be it. If the only way to get there requires US and multi-national / trans-national business conglomerates to extract natural resources in a way that does NOT benefit locals, maybe don't implement those programs.
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ow.
Looks like Obama is going to have to close Gitmo.
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seriously ?
our government is so lacking in credible spokesmen that we send out Jim Clapper to deny France's charges of illegal phone taps ?
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"... the largest State sponsored terrorist regime on the planet" could be taken a couple of different ways.
When was the last time the Saudi military invaded a country, declaring that their aim was to terrorize the invaded population ?
To clarify, "shock and awe" means "terror."
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well, it's kinda in the interests of the million or more Bengalis serving there as de facto slaves, isn't it ?
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if the Saud family (al-Saud) defines their identity in terms of maintaining custody of the land of the two holy mosques, and if the country and all its inhabitants as the personal property of the monarch, and
if all power is in the hands of one clan that is less than 2% of the total population,
why do we have any diplomatic relations with them at all ?
I undersand buying oil from them;
I don't understand treasting them like the legit rulers of a country.
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if wishes were horses,
I'd be driving a Tesla.
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if only.
If only the perpetrators were capable of shame.
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If you refer to the idea that it was some party other than the Syrian military that launched the 21 Aug attacks,
that hasn't actually been refuted.
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or, the T-Party types were trying to stave off even greater pain when the reckoning finally comes.
Today, the US Treasury exercises a sort of hegemony over the economies of other nations. That won't last.
Then we will have to pay our bills, for real.
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The USA is not a party to the Rome Statute.
ergo, by definition, Americans cannot commit Crimes Against Humanity.
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I don't agree that:
"The relocation of American bases out of Saudi Arabia [had] nothing to do with Israel."
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Isn't that why we have grand juries ?
to choose the proper charge ?
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I'd like to hear the opinion of an epidemiological statistician before I reject the Lancet study.
I think the US government's sense of the importance of Iraqi suffering was summed up brilliantly by Tommy Franks:
"We don't do body counts."
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Did I somehow miss the companion piece in which Leon Panetta said that Prez. Obama was also being obsructionist,
that it wasn't just the GOP ?
maybe those are 2 different ships that sunk ?
a ship sinking near the Italian island of Lampedusa
could possibly be considered to be
"opposite the shores of Libya,”
or even
"off Malta,"
but those are both stretches.
But the allegation that the boat carrying Palestinians and Syrians was fired on,
that seems to show therse are different incidents.
This is just a guess,
but if there are 1,000 refugees a year dying while trying to sail from Tunisia to Lampedusa,
there might be many more who don't drown.
I'd guess that there are always a handful of boats on the sea attempting the crossing, and one or two more launched every day, on average.
That's just the traffic in the stretch between Lampedusa and Tunisia.
If folks are embarking in Latakia for Europe, I would expect them to head for a destination closer than Lampedusa, around 1,200 miles away. Crete is only 500 miles; Rhodes only 400 miles; and the coast of Hatay only 50 miles. Cyprus is barely 100 miles.
......
Now, if the implication is that Syrians are traveling by land to Tunisia, and then embarking there, that's not clear.
of note,
more Eritreans, Ethiopeans and Somalis die trying to cross the Baab to Yemen than trying to cross the Med to Italy.
the island is Lampedusa.
Both boats were headed there, and foundered near there.
That's been the primary target of boats overfilled with African immigrants for decades.
It's Italian territory, but only 80 miles from Tunisian beaches.
I got no facks, but Syrians taking that route sounds dubitable to me.
In terms of warfighting, my expertise is limited to ground combat at the tactical level.
So I'm just guessign here.
But it seems to me that the Pakistani Air Force has all they need to shoot down every single drone the US flies into Pakistani airspace from Afghanistan.
The PAF knows where the drones launch from (Jalalabad.)
They know how high and how fast they fly.
They have radar capable of tracking them.
They have F-16's and air-to-air missiles that can knock them down.
What's more, the Pakistani people know all this.
Clearly, if PM Sharif wanted the drone strikes to stop, he could make that happen. If not through negotiations and diplomacy, then through kinetic action.
Heck, based on the Abbotabad precedent, he could even justify a strike on the US base at Jalalabad - Fenty, I think it's called - where the drones live and play, when not in the air.
more to this than just what the press releases say.
What is this "elected president" you have mentioned multiple times ?
The "parliament" was technically selected from nominees from tribal elders, but effectively appointed mostly by the US CIA. They were almost all expats from the diaspora.
This is the body that elected the guy you are calling the elected President.
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On another note,
the grievance against foreigners that I think was most resonant among Somali artisanal fishermen was that allegedly the Italian Mafia was dumping barrels of toxic waste in Somali coastal waters. IIRC, I think I saw video or stills of hundreds of barrels washed up on the shore of Raas Xaafuun, with labels in Italian.
Who was doing the poaching in Somali waters ?
I ask to be corrected.
My impression, the #1 offender was Taiwan, followed closely by Spain.
Where were you in Somalia ?
Hobyo ? Eyl ?
Because I don't think you necessarily get the best understanding of the hinterlands from a city (Mogadisco) that is occupied by thousands of foreign military forces.
yeah, in December 2008, the Chief of Naval Operations was presented with a $ 200 M plan to fix rule of law in Puntland, and thereby end piracy.
no,
he had those magnificent supercarriers,
and no enemy to send them up against, save the Iranians,
so he NEEDED those barefoot, high-on-Qat, armed mostly with machetes teenagers as a justification to spend $ 5 Billion per year per carrier at sea.
If al-Qaeda cannot be invoked as a threat to maritime security, well,
there's gotta be SOMEBODY who threatens commercial or naval or recreational navigation to send those Naval aviators out to defend against.
I can personally vouch for the Somalis who were proposing that undertaking.
I cannot vouch for a CNO who wastes $ Billions just to avoid any honest cost-benefit analysis.
Lesus Christ!
Today's China is about as closely related to what was called "China" 2,500 years ago
as
the current secular-ish state of Israel is to the Israelites of the Bible.
I talk to Chinese expats in Asia. They have no ambitions of conquest or domination, unlike the Vulcans of neoconservatism. They see trade as a way for everyone to benefit. That's all.
Malala is being cunningly exploited to undermine support for the local Taliban. The campaign is rooted in Western values, which seem to be projected onto Pakistanis out in the FATAs.
You and I know who is engineering this, and why, but to say who marks me as a conspiracy nut.
as a conspiracy theorist, I ask myself who is paying for the PR campaign surrounding this girl ?
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I hope that one part of this report is in error -- the part that says that US Special Opns Forces tracked the kidnapee al-Libi down.
It may be accurate.
Last year, or two years ago, US SOCOM asked for money to stand up its own private DIA/CIA, internal to the command.
That way, they wouldn't get bogged down by having to coordinate or collaborate with the real DIA or real CIA, which they seemed to imply was hoding them back.
I think it was under Stan the Man McChrystal that SOCOM wanted to add their own Intel capability, and even - IIRC - wanted to report directly to the National Security Advisor, bypassing the SecDef.
I just assumed that would be quashed. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe US SOCOM is now an independent agency, on par with the CIA. If so, I say that's not an improvement.
...........
Of course it was SOF who snatched the guy. I realize that.
I'm asking if it's good for SOCOM to be able to operate so independently, a law unto themselves.
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the video opens with a fella being bundled off of a Ro-Pax ferry into a police car. That was NOT the USS San Antonio.
What's that got to do with this sotry ?
Neither al-Libi nor Zeidan was captured on a ferry, were they ?
not so much off the streets, Chris. They don't often venture into town, let alone travel to countries that signed the Treaty of Rome.
Daddy Warbucks Chaney lives in a gated community. Same with Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Barack Obama and many if not most of the reputed "terrorists" we harbor.
After a reporter recently walked up and knocked on Don Rumsfeld's door, I suspect he might invest some of his ill-gotten gains in more "local security."
well, if Dr. K approves, then it must be good for business -- transnational, loyal-to-none very big business.
Perhaps he will get his slice of baksheesh.
a couple of Senators (e.g., Pete Domenici) steered a lot of federal dollars to the area. The locals didn't bother with economic development or balance.
Now, somehow, their benefitting from outsized, disproportionate largesse has become an entitlement ?
What did Bruce Hornsby have to say about this kind of situation ? And, no, suckling on the government teat isn't exactly the same thing as getting a job.
I have only had dealings with a small number of folks who were collecting federal salaries for whatever they did at LANL, and all of them were making more off their connections outside the government than from eagle squats.
$ 7 Million ?
really ?
Fedspending.org shows Harris, the 31st largest govt ktr, raking in $ 2,183 Million last year for various communications-related work.
http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/fpds.php?database=fpds&reptype=r&detail=-1&sortby=a&datype=T&combDuns=004203337&fiscal_year=2011
The volume of oil recovered / produced is about 6% of the volume of the tar-sand-clay mix used to produce it.
My impression is that the proportion of tar/ bitumen is much higher than 6%, over 10%, so a lot of it is not captured and made into oil in the process.
To help readers visualize the quantities cited,
a ton of tar sands is about the size of a cube 36 inches in each direction.
And a barrel of oil has 42 gallons, not 55.
According to Articles 1 & 2, yer blamin' the wrong partee/ partay. But it sure looks fun.
Isn't having Wendy Sherman acting as the point person in US negotiations with Iran a bit like having Martin Indyk as the point person in US negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians ?
For UNCLOS to have teeth,
wouldn't the USA have to subscribe ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-ratification_of_the_UNCLOS
The USA leads the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commisssion seemingly to exclude Chinese and Southeast Asian fishermen from that fishery.
http://www.npafc.org/
As long as we reamin a law unto ourselves, nothing can rein in American excesses, nor can we garner international support for our initiatives.
I doubt your analysis.
Fat, dumb and self-medicated Americans rising up in revolt ?
On TV, maybe.
Bill:
I personally am a LOT safer after Snowden alerted the masses to some of what the government does to us.
In fact, you are, too.
But if I have to explain, you wouldn't prob'ly understand anyway.
Bill,
to folks who believe that the authority of a government flows from the consent of the governed,
US support of any of the GCC nations is odious.
You mean the foreign jihadist forces that we were funding up until 2 months ago ?
The ones we paid Eric Prince to recruit and train ?
get a grip, man.
Seems to me that elements of TF Kingston entered Chinese territory, crossing the Yalu. I think that's why the PLA got involved.
So, Joe, if we were just wanting to maintain status quo, how did American troops end up on Chinese soil ?
There are stated war aims, and there are actual war aims.
Sometimes they don't match exactly.
Since when,
Charley,
is being detached from reality a reason for Congress to stop listening to anyone ?
Congressional deliberations would grind (poof) to a halt.
Strictly my perception,
but I think it was T-Party types in Congress who refused to get rolled on the imminent Syria invasion.
I suppose that makes me an anti-semite ?
Of course, I didn't say what you attribute to me, but so what ?
I suggest you visit the new part of the city of Jerusalaam, swing by the Memorial, and stroll through.
If the folks who curate the displays are willing to say that they really don't know how may perished, why aren't you ?
I've visited Yad Vashem.
It's beautiful, moving.
The slaughter was horrific.
"We historians estimate that some 6 million were gassed or killed by other means."
At one particular display in the memorial, it suggests that 6 million is no more than an educated guess. The number is for people who need such specifics to put some kind of comprehensible limit on the devastation.
The actual number might be as small as 2 million and as high as 12 million. The lack of specificity is due to the dearth of census data on the thousands of small communities, Jewish and otherwise, that dotted Prussia-Russia-Poland-Byelorus- and that region more generally, where IIRC most of the victims came from.
6 million is not, as some presume, an upper limit.
So,
does President Rousseff want the CIA to cut off payments to Brazilian government officials, as they also infringe sovereignty ?
ALL such officials ?
Castellio,
Garoweonline dot com looks like a Somali language website, but if you click on the links, it has most of its content in English.
My only expertise re: Somalia was a couple years back, working on a proposal to USAID for development funds for Puntland as a way to stop the piracy that originates from within Puntland. Get the locals to stamp it out.
A former Puntland Minister and I put together a sweet proposal, but it went nowhere.
I had forecast that the piracy problem could not be eliminated through military force. Apparently I was wrong.
Hargeisa is ruled by a tribe.
Garowe is ruled by another tribe.
Mogadisco used to be ruled by another tribe.
I'm not sure anyone is "in control" in Bosasso.
The only way to get stability in that area is to let the indigenous folks work it out - prob'ly along tribal lines.
Farole was the best thing to happen to Somalia in the last decade.
How much does the CIA support him ?
Not at all, because he stands for Somali control over Somali affairs.
I would say that the "regime chamge" of 1993 produced the ICU,
and that continuing Western meddling in the ICU produced the Islamic Youth Movement.
For folks who can't afford to follow this story closely,
a port like Kismayu is not all that strategic when you don't have trading partners overseas.
Food Aid brought to that port used to be surreptitiously turned over to the al Shabaab AT THE PORT for onward transport and distribution.
Now it looks like al Shabaab simply commandeers the delivery trucks on the outskirts of town.
They rule the Shabelle.
As a phony Christian hypocrite, while I don't like supporting an Islamist Jighadist organization like the Islamic Youth Movement,
they are the only game in town
when it comes to getting food aid to the hinterlands.
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An associate of mine in Garowe translates it as "Islamic Youth Movement."
There IS a functioning government in Somalia.
Unfortunately, it is the government of the Puntland Autonomous Region.
The "Federal Government of Somalia" has all the legitimacy and popular support of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, or Karzai in Afghanistan.
Current Somali President Xasan Sheikh MoXamuud was elected in August 2012 by the legislature selected and installed by the USA. He has ties to the MB.
Saying the "Islamic Youth Movement" is an offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union is technically correct, but entirely misleading. The previous President, Sheikh Sharif Shaikh Axmed, was the leader of the ICU and the USA asked him to join the "transitional government."
I think it is likewise misleading to speak of "Somali federal government forces." They are less effective than the pretend "Afghan National Army."
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I'm not sure why you think that, since the Affordable Health Care Act is the law of the land, that it cannot be defunded.
I believe that the Executive Branch doesn't support a lot of things that are the law of the land, so they just don't execute what the Congress has authorized.
For example, demilitarizing chemical weapons by the 2007 deadline was never a priority for Clinton, Bush or Obama, so even though it was an obligation under an international treaty, and thus the law of the land, they failed to even request funding, let alone exedute.
Another example is funding VA care. Lots of vets don't get served timely, and individual Representatives and Senators claim to be upset by that, but it doesn't get fixed.
You may ercall the position of Attorney General Holder on enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act.
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I admit to being wrong.
I have repeatedly posted that one or another group of rebels was (or may have been) involved.
I believed that mostly because the US govt declined to share their "evidence" with the public.
They apparently shared it with the UN intel folks, who were convinced.
That's a lot better than Kerry's "trust me."
Parts of Boulder County got over 7 inches of rain in 24 hours. Even without a drought or fires, the flooding would have been great.
In Colorado Springs, I live in the "rain shadow" of Pikes Peak. I normally see 12 inches of rain in a year. We've had over 17 inches so far this year, officially, 7 in just the normally dry month of September. I think the actual total is a bit more than 17.
Unirrigated fields are usually brown by late May.
This year, everything looks like Missouri - vibrant green - into mid-September.
If you believe in statistics, this is a huge outlier. If next year is similar, the local weather patterns have changed.
NOTE: I love the rain and fog and mist, because it is so unusual. The bugs will undoubtedly follow.
Bill, I chose my words poorly.
I meant to say that the American public doesn't want the US military employed on losing causes,
and they don't want their tax dollars spent giving foreigners stuff that makes their lives better over the long term.
Short-term Disaster assistance is OK, but actual development that might lead to sustained growth and improvement is off-limits.
Of course the obsolete CVN weapons platform can be used for humanitarian good.
We conduct a wide range of "window dressing" disaster assistance efforts to convince the American public that we are the world's saviors, so we can pat ourselves on the back.
It's like WAL-MART 10 years ago, spending $50 Million on a PR campaign to brag about a $50,000 charitable contribution.
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I was part of mostly Afghan team that offered to implement a USAID development program in Herat Province 2 years ago, "Stability in Key Areas." We would have employed 2,200 Afghans and 6 Americans.
The award went to one of the ten contractors that get 90% of all USAID dollars, and they employed 45+ US Expats and 7 Afghans.
USAID finally pulled the plug when local Afghans demanded the charade end.
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USAID spent $5 Billion on developing electrical power in A'stan, almost all of it on humongous projects that had no chance of ever actally working. These turned out to be driven by what the multinationals like GE and Siemens wanted to do, not based on what Afghans needed.
USAID could have ended the conflict with the Taliban -
USAID could have won the Afghan war by themselves, without any help from the military -
- if they would have just spent a fraction of that money on local energy development projects.
2,000 small renewable energy stations (about $100 K each) sprinkled along the trails connecting Pakistan to A'stan, through Paktika and the border provinces, and in Waziristan and border FATA's, would have kept the young men doing the fighting home.
Our government bureaucrats don't understand the problems they are trying to solve. Nor do they understand human nature. Dr. Shah, USAID Administrator, promised to shake up the Agency. I can't see one thing he's changed.
USAID would be the most powerful tool that the USA had to change the world, if it had better leadership.
But right now, all we can do to help foreign peoples improve their prospects is to employ our magnificent military to kill them.
USAID remains mired in the mode of a wealth transfer mechanism intended to benefit only those 10 USAID contractors, and the $250,000 per year expats working for them. If a local in the foreign country where USAID operates actually benefits, then it is probably an accident, or through accepting bribes or such.
------------
I was responding to John Ballard's statement that we are helpless to do anything to improve the lives of people stuck in messes like the proxy war in Syria.
The way things are right now, he is right.
But if we had more competent folks running our federal agencies, and more competent folks staffing those agencies, we could do a great deal to help them.
It's an option.
CLARIFICATION:
USAID seems to do pretty good work when not in a conflict environment.
But EVERYTHING they've done in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade has failed.
If they went into Syria, with the same leaders at the top and the same bureaucrats who were in charge in A'stan, they would screw that up, too.
This is not a problem with the folks implementing in the field, just like the Army's problem isn't the front line soldier.
The culture in the Ronald Reagan Building is sick.
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Perhaps, A Meshiea,
you do not believe that the various "rebel" factions are committing atrocities against civilians ?
If the point is to protect Syrian civilians, its not clear that just striking against the al-Assad forces will do the trick.
To me,
it appears that we would also have to do something to get many "rebel" groups to cut back on atrocities.
And how do we get Israel to stop interfering and killing Syrians ?
Actually, there is a great deal we could do that would advance our interests.
But since it would be impossible to present this sort of aid to the American Public as some sort of military victory, it would be political suicide.
thnx for injecting some historical perspective.
As a former US Army Infantryman, I lack objectivity. Stipulated.
INCOMPETENT SOLDIERS
I think our soldiers in combat units have, for the most part, acquitted themselves well. The failures in Iraq and A'stan to my view are ALL attributable to Colonels and above.
The first responsibility of a Colonel is NOT to say, "Yes, sir, yes, sir, 3 bags full." That's the job of a Lieutenant.
The first responsibility of a Colonel is to know his unit, his soldiers, their capabilities; and his second responsibility is to push back when asked or ordered to do something beyond their capabilities.
Infantrymen are trained to kill people and break things.
Infantrymen are not capable of "nationbuilding."
We lost the war in Iraq because Colonels and Generals didn't do their jobs.
Our Army is broken at the top levels, and it was broken by fascists in the WH and Pentagon.
Golly, Colonels and Generals don't even know what their jobs are anymore. They all think that serving in the combat arms is preparation for a career in the war contractor industry, or in politics.
In fact, leading troops in combat is the only important thing they will ever do, and they give that duty short shrift while their gaze is fixed on future aggrandizement and riches.
Did I mention that our Army is broken ? Eric Shinseki or John Singlaub may have been our last competent General.
OVER EQUIPPED
30 years ago, I had to conceal my knee pads and elbow pads under my fatigues, because wearing them on the outside was prohibited. Squad radios 30 years ago rarely worked. I would navigate combat patrols in the Korean DMZ with a lensatic compass and 1:25,000 DMA map.
3 months before I took over command of Guard Post Collier, the preceding Commander lost 11 soldiers to a DPRK minefield and defensive fire, because a US patrol wandered across the MDL in the fog.
I don't see much use for the networked vision that Boeing has for letting the battalion commander see where each individual solidier is on a display in the TOC, because pretty soon we'll have a re-run of LBJ choosing targets in Hue from the WH situation room.
But I'm all for giving that grunt on point as much ballistic protection, firepower and situational awareness as he can handle.
I think the focus on al-Assad as the focus of evil misses some important nuance.
To my understanding, there are still 7 "governments" of "nations" that still consider some human beings as chattel property. Six are in the GCC. Brunei is #7.
All 7 are solid US allies.
What do we have in common with a Saudi tyrant that still upholds slavery ?
In 1997, when the USA ratified the CWC, we promised to demilitarize all of our chem wepons within 10 years.
Ten years later, in 2007, we promised to destroy them all by 2012.
In 2013, the "working" target date is 2022.
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Under Nunn-Lugar, we paid for the destruction of Soviet chem weapons at Shchuch'ye in the early 2000's.
It might be a show of good faith to get on with destroying our own chem weapons.
What "secular" FSA you talkin' about ?
I suspect Obama is only too happy to cut off all US aid to the non-Syrian, al Qaeda Mercenary forces of al-Nusra Front, the Frankenstein monster he created less than 3 years ago,
as he pivots to support the replacement proxy force, the purportedly "moderate" "Sons of Syria."
Perhaps, if we ever pin down ALL parties who actually have been using chem weapons in Syria, this deal will be expanded to include Israeli chem weapons stocks, production facilities and research labs ?
Why is it that some of these analyses leave out the US role in instigating this phony "civil war" / actual proxy war almost 3 years ago ?
The CIA, under the US Neocon president in late 2010, are the ones who provoked Assad's security forces to fire on unarmed demonstrators.
The CIA, through Blackwater, armed and trained what we now call the "Al Nusra Front" Mercenary army.
A pretty good case has already been made that the US' closest ally in the region was behind most of the chemical attacks in Syria. Recall that their Intel service reported many of the attacks within mere minutes of when they occurrd. Coincidence ?
Of course the American public is played for chumps. But this audience ?
Obama's primary foreign policy goal does not involve Syria.
RBTL,
I think you err when you say that Spiral comes across as an apologist for the Syrian government.
Perhaps you were taking some license ?
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Although the term "WMD" applies to all 3, Nuke, Bio and Chem, the destruction of a nuke is many orders of magnitude greater than the other two - so far.
My impression, chem weapons require a lot of things to go right for them to be effective, including weather, vegetation and landforms. Ditto for bio weapons.
On an individual level, chem and bio weapons can be just as terrifying. On a tactical level, not so much, unless attacking unprepared civilians.
-
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thnx 4 the linx, Jo from Lo.
So,
the first link defines a "Toxic chemical" as:
"Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals."
I think that includes Willie Pete.
And
the second link states clearly at the top:
"... these Schedules do not constitute a definition of chemical weapons."
From these 2 linx, I can't see how you conclude that:
"... white phosphorus is not a chemical weapon under the CWC."
Not readily apparent.
Did you think folks wouldn't check the linx ?
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I guess I'm not smart enough to follow that argument.
It doesn't make sense to me.
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Willie Pete is often not considered a chem weapon.
It acts by spreading small chunks of material, about half the size of a pea, that burn on contact with the air.
Either raining down from an air burst, or shooting out from a ground burst, these particles ignite anything flammable that they come into contact with.
If one of these pellets grazes unclothed human skin, it causes a surface burn.
If forced into the flesh by the force of a blast, it burns until extinguished, such as if the flesh closes back over it, cutting off the oxygen supply. But it remains pretty hot, even if not burning, so folks tend to try to dig it out, reigniting it.
If that sounds awful, the reality is much, much worse.
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Never fact-checked this,
but when I went through Army Basic Combat Training back during the Viet Nam war, our instructors told us that it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions to call in WP artillery rounds on people, so if we wanted the Field Artillery unit providing our direct or general support to use WP, we would have to identify the target as bgeing some materiel that could be destroyed by an incendiary.
With a nod and a wink, they said to call WP in on the uniforms and LBE that the targeted individuals were wearing, rather than the human beings wearing the clothing.
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In one sense, all weapons are chemicals, eh ?
The propellant, the explosives, even the steel that fragments into projectiles.
But in the current discussions, it appears to me that folks think chem weapons are limited to toxic gases.
In that framework, no, WP is not a gas that is inhaled (though tiny particles do get inhaled, with predictable results - lungs are full of air.)
So I understand the argument that WP is not a chem weapon, though I disagree.
I don't abbreviate "chemical weapons" as CW, because I seem to recall that acronym having another meaning. Can't quite put my finger on it. But riot control agennt (purportedly non-lethal toxic gases) go by names like CN, CS, CR and CA.
Under the CWC, the USA promised to destroy / demilitarize all our chem weapons by 2007. The absolute last time allowed under the treaty, with an extension, was 2012.
Our target date for compliance is not 2022 or so.
Wouldn't it be great if, as we demand Syria comply with the CWC, we made a parrallel effort at compliance our own darn selves ?
Today, the CIA is no longer arming tha al-Nusra and FSA, the Mercenaries they stood up into an army almost 3 years ago.
The CIA's new darlings are the "Sons of Syria," whatever that means.
I wonder if it includes any actual Syrians, or is it entirely made up of foreigners, like the "rebel" force that turned rogue that they are replacing.
Jordan ?
while my Arabic is terrible,
I question the accuracy of that translation.
I thought the article was implying that Mr. Moallem was eating too much.
Actually,
if the Congress wanted to be accountable,
or to be held accountable,
they could still have that debate and that vote.
Wherever did you get the notion that politicians solve problems ?
CORRECTION:
Mustard gas smells like garlic or mustard.
Phosgene smells like new mown hay.
Joe,
I think you lack imagination.
And a grasp of history regarding CIA disinformation.
But I admire your strong faith.
Faith is believing something for which there is no evidence.
I'm a lousy Catholic due to my weak faith. I envy you.
Jeanette,
if you have evidence, please share.
If all you have is certainty, but no evidence, then what you have is not enough to persuade me.
If all you really have is trust in certain politicians who have certainty and have promised you they are telling the truth, please reasess.
JM,
Of course it is the THREAT of the use of force that affected events; the actual use of force signals a failure of leadership and diplomacy.
The US has been using force against the Syrian government for 3 years now, through a proxy Mercenary army. That hasn't been very effective.
=
I expect the Tuesday night address to the nation will be postponed, pending actual diplomacy by parties looking for a non-kinetic solution. That doesn't appear to include the Obama Administration.
I don't expect the Congress to vote on this, after all.
John M,
if supporting and defending the Constitution,
and the values in the Declaration of Independence,
make me a neo-isolationist,
then I wear your smear proudly.
Thousands of US chem weapon artillery rounds, missiles and aerial bombs have been destroyed. Millions remain. Most are unusable.
The good people of Pueblo, Colorado, objected to demilitarization by incineration, so Bechtel is testing a demil technology based on dilution with water.
800,000 rounds sit in igloos 40 miles from my home.
Every now and then they detect a leaker. I worry about the smell of freshly mown hay (that's how mustard gas smells in low concentrations.)
Don't think I'll visit the farms downstream of the Pueblo Depot to pick chili peppers anymore.
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Speaking of US chem warfare,
notwithstanding the photo above,
I think the last acknowledged use was in 2007,when we administered superdoses of the Malaria medicine Lariam to the last men transferred to Gitmo. As an added benefit to the known psychoactive effects, including suicide ideation, Lariam supposedly loosens tongues in interrogations.
At least, if you can believe Jason Leopold. I do.
But when Syria uses chem weapons, its wrong.
You are overlooking
-- the Battle of the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964,
in which the US Navy prevailed; and
Operation Earnest Will, 1987-88, in which not a single capital ship was lost.
Maybe I should throw in Operation Ocean Shield, 2008 - present. We have not yet lost a single capital ship to barefoot Somali teenagers armed with machetes.
This illustrates why we need 13 active aircraft carriers and their supporting task forces: to prevail over enemies in rowboats.