Category: Military

Bush Gets Missiles at NATO Conference

No Comments

Well, it appears that Bush has managed to browbeat the Europeans into accepting an ABM installation spread across Poland and the Czech Republic, despite the fact that he pissed them off of by publicly lobbying for the admission of Georgia and the Ukraine to NATO, despite the fact that there had been a previous agreement not to do so.

The marvelously named Duck of Minerva makes the point that Bush was talking out of both sides of his mouth, on the one hand claiming that the missile shield is not intended to be used against Russia, and on the other claiming that the membership of Georgia and the Ukraine, “would send a signal throughout the region that these two nations are, and will remain, sovereign and independent states.”

If they need membership to be protected against Russia, then who do they need protection against?

The answer is that this is a deliberate attempt to antagonize Russia, because it is believed to play well for Republicans. Lynne Cheney has been lobbying for recreating what was the Soviet threat for political advantage since the early 1990s.

It’s all the fault of those damn Eskimos!!!

Of course, once again, the Greeks appear to be compensating for what must be the smallest penises in Europe, vetoing Macedonia’s entry into NATO.

Let’s get this clear:

  • Macedonia was never a part of Greece.
  • Alexander the Great was not a Greek.
  • The people of what was then Macedonia did not speak Greek, except for the aristocracy, who were educated in Greek, and might have spoken Greek with more facility than Macedonian.
  • Greece was conquered by Macedonia, by Phillip of Macedon, and then Alexander took over the known world.

Any questions?

Croatia Looking at Gripen

No Comments

They are considering buying 12 aircraft.

This is not surprising. The Gripen is about half the weight of its next smaller competitor among the 4th gen fighters, and you pretty much pay for planes by the pound (or by the kilo for you metric folks).

I think that the Gripen may very well be the Mirage III of the 4th generation fighters.

It’s small, it’s cheap, it’s designed for austere basing, and by all reports, its avionics are superb.

The Unsinkable BUFF

No Comments

It appears that the USAF is looking to change its draw down on B-52s, with 76, as opposed to 56.

Their justification is that they want some of the B-52s dedicated to nuclear strike, as opposed to swapping squadrons in and out of the service, on the theory that they won’t do stupid stuff like sending detonators to Taiwan, or flying live missiles by mistake.

Once again, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat F&^%er) is being tasked to pull the Air Force brass’s ass out of a fire.

Incompetents Abroad

No Comments

Pakistan’s new coalition government is saying that it objects to what it considers the reckless and excessive air strikes of the US in Pakistan.

It’s clear that Musharraf is on the way out, and that this is the policy of the government, so what is the response of the US Military? They accelerate their bombing, because we need to get those last few licks in before the end of Musharraf actually become official.

Does anyone in the White House or Pentagon have a clue as to how damaging this behavior is?

More importantly, does anyone in the White House or Pentagon have any clue about anything period.

The Stupid, Mindless Security State

No Comments

In this case, it’s USAF Gen. Michael Hamel, who feels the need to warn us about the extential threat that Google Earth poses to the United States.

“It could be as simple as how is it that an adversary gets an image off of Google Earth that could somehow threaten American lives or interests ….. “That is an example of a space threat that we may face in the future.”

And as a commenter said, “Right… and pigs can fly. Or rather, the good General may wish a Pig Ban because if pigs could fly they might somehow hurt US interests.”

I’m beginning to wonder why a disproportionate number of these mind-boggling stupid statements coming from generals seem to come from USAF generals.

Must be something in the water at Colorado Springs…Come to think of it, that is where dog and child beater James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is located.

Climb Down on Latin American Tensions

No Comments

Venezuela has reopened its embassy in Columbia

This is another example how Bush and His Evil Minions™ have poisoned counterterrorism operations. Before Bush and his attempts to overthrow and murder Chavez and his invasion of Iraq, this would have been a major diplomatic incident, bit you would not have seen a mobilization on the borders.

There are legitimate “hot pursuit” situations, though this increasingly appears not to have been one, and I’m expecting a Sy Hersh article in the next week or so casting doubt on the provenance of the laptops “captured” in the operation.

Some facts are clear though.

  • The FARC is a terrorist organization that is not much more than organized crime with a veneer of politics.
  • Chavez is a pompous jerk and a lousy leader.
  • As bad as Chavez is, the political classes of Venezuela are all considerably worse.
  • Mending the relationship with Chavez may be one of the bigger challenges facing Bush’s successor, unless it’s McCain, in which case, he’ll invade.

Chinese Nuclear Arsenal Increased by a Third Since 2006, Pentagon Report Indicates » FAS Strategic Security Blog

No Comments

Since 2006, the Chinese nuclear arsenal has increased by 1/3.

When one considers the strategic needs of China, they would generally be geared towards protecting supply lanes for oil and other strategic materials, but we see a buildup here that is largely ICBMs and nuclear cruise missiles, which are useless in this scenario:

In fact, the only realistic use for these weapons is to deter the US from using their weapons as a threat to forestall specific Chinese actions **cough** Taiwan **cough**.

Were this simply a modernization, I don’t think that you would see an increase in warheads, because the older liquid fueled missiles would be decommissioned, and they have not been.

France On Diplomatic Offensive in Africa

No Comments

Nicolai Sarkosy is intends to renegotiate its military relationships in Africa, along with changes in economic policies to better involve African nations in world economic negotiations.

This is an artifact of the collapse of US Diplomacy brought about by Bush unilateralism. It has created a diplomatic vacuum that France intends to fill, and is just one area, beyond Roberts and Alito, where the damage done by Bush and His Evil Minions™ will last for years.

There May Be Tapes of Gitmo Torture

No Comments

This is very interesting:

Last week, a team of faculty and students from Seton Hall Law School—the folks who’ve worked tirelessly for years to document the government’s best evidence (PDF) against the Guantanamo prisoners—released a new report suggesting that the government has recorded all of the interrogations at Guantanamo. Using documents prepared by the government and obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the team established that all of the 24,000 interrogations conducted at the camp since 2002 were taped. This jibes with reports from the detainees themselves, who came forward to dispute CIA Director Michael Hayden’s claim last winter that the videotaping had been halted in 2002.

Torture Comes Home

No Comments

There is a very good that Darius Rejali, Author of ‘Torture and Democracy’ makes in this interview:

Yes, torture does migrate, and there are some good examples of it both in American and French history. The basic idea here is that soldiers who get ahead torturing come back and take jobs as policemen, and private security, and they get ahead doing the same things they did in the army. And so torture comes home. Everyone knows waterboarding, but no one remembers that it was American soldiers coming back from the Philippines that introduced it to police in the early twentieth century. During the Philippine Insurgency in 1902, soldiers learned the old Spanish technique of using water tortures, and soon these same techniques appeared in police stations, especially throughout the South, as well as in military lockups during World War I. Likewise, the electrical techniques used in Vietnam appeared in the 1960s appeared in torturing African Americans on the south side of Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, and, as I argue in the book, that wasn’t just an accident.

So torture always comes home. And the techniques of this war are likely to show up in a neighborhood near you. Likewise, the techniques that appeared in the War on Terror were already documented in INS lockups in Miami in the 1990s. There is no bright line between domestic and foreign torture; the stuff circulates.

Next time you talk with a wingnut, mention that.

And go read the full interview.

Africom Move to Africa Abandoned

No Comments

The US Military’s new Africa Command (Africom) was to have been relocated from Germany to an African nation, but only Liberia was willing to be a host, I guess that that whole illegal war of aggression in Iraq probably put other host nations off.

They don’t want to be a part of future colonialist military actions.

The US government is claiming that Africom is, “not about militarisation but consolidating existing operations under one single command, while helping Africans with military training and supporting peacekeeping and aid operations”.

And no one believed this, largely because of recent behavior.