GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD

New Moon

2009-11-25T00:00:00.001-05:00

Hanging out within 8 inch SP Howitzer range of any of Great Satan's mega plex cinemas - the buzz about New Moon is nigh undeniable. Hottie nosferatu (cut like an M1 panzer) are on fire!

"New Moon and Twilight is the ultimate female teen romantic fantasy, about the awkward female outsider who finds a complex, deep, dark male outsider, the one all the other girls wish they had. In this case, standard teen romance becomes a kind of teen gnosticism, since here the brooding James Dean happens to have preternatural powers and is clued in to the secrets of the universe."

As best understood, traditional Victorian Era vampire gossip evolved into something known as sexyful suppression. Faint notions of egalitarianism began to reward the ancient pre positioned Greek concept of individualism and busted out of her cocoon as Free Choice.

In the new millenium, modern tall tail tales of vampires and choice undead could be interpreted as resisting the vampire's sexyfulness - remaining chaste in the face of hot, wet, sticky breaths of illicit allures, eternal youth and life.

Zooming out of such stunning social commentary and righteous realism re:Team Edward or Team Jacob, the temptation to compare Great Satan's diplomilitary bona fides with vampires is - huh - biting.

Consider - Capitalism manifests herself as a bloodsucker to some: draining all the phat booty resources - working an indigenous working class to death, sucking up tons of bling, power and prestige that maintain the parasitical parasite healthy, wealthy and wise.

Team Great Satan?

Like any hot! vampiress worth a lick, she teases the entire world with the forever tingling tingles of desire of free choice.

And like Jonathan Harker who tripped head first into Count Dracula's bed chamber, wall to wall and with super hot sexy succubi and realised too late that doom came with crimson lipstick and sharp sharp pointy teeth, today's despots face the same dilemma as the last millennium's despots.

America - Great Satan - embodies all their captives peoples hold dear - freedom, choice, fun and living life to the nth. Thus they are driven to try and control media, cut off the outside world as much as they can and try to hang on with computerized police states and true believers.

It is Great Satan's natural function, for she is the one truly revolutionary country in the world for more than 2 centuries. She does it automatically, and that is precisely why the tyrants hate her guts, and are driven to attack her. An enormous advantage, tyrants fear her, and their oppressed peoples want what she offers: freedom.

New Moon indeed.

Pic "Twighlight/New Moon"

COIN Collection

2009-11-24T08:28:00.000-05:00

Interest in counterinsurgency comes and goes. During the 1950s and 1960s, soldiers, politicians, and scholars wrote voluminously on what was sometimes called “revolutionary war,” a supposedly new mode of conflict that enabled nationalist and communist movements (and some combinations of the two) to thwart or even defeat seemingly stronger European colonial powers.

The Vietnam War generated a rich literature on the topic, but attention waned with the U.S. withdrawal from Indochina and the American desire to avoid irregular warfare in the future. In recent years, however, hard experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have rekindled interest in the subject and caused even some experts to reconsider old ways of waging “the war of the flea.”

1st off - a book on how not to do COIN - Max Hasting's horrific account of Waffen SS Panzer division 'Das Reich' and atrocities committed on rowdy poorly armed maquis - the French Reistence - and reprisals against unarmed women and children.

Now - the good stuff:

Guerrilla Strategies: An Historical Anthology From the Long March to Afghanistan. Edited by Gérard Chaliand. University of California Press, 1982.

Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare. Edited by Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian. Osprey Publishing, 2008.

These two anthologies present a broad range of texts on the subject, from canonical treatments to less well-known offerings that are useful and relevant. Those who can read French would do well to consult the massively updated edition of Gérard Chaliand’s collection (Èditions Gallimard, 2008 -- somebody please translate it!), but even the 1982 English version is a superb assemblage of first-hand descriptions of guerrilla war by insurgent and counterinsurgent groups alike.

Chaliand is a wise old war hound who began studying these matters in the field during the early 1960s, and he continues to do so today. Daniel Marston and Carter Makasian present what is essentially a companion volume, covering roughly the same period (the twentieth century) but relying on scholars more than participants or theoreticians.

The editors contribute sober and thoughtful analyses of the Afghan and Iraq conflicts, but the strength of this volume is its summary of important insurgencies, including such classic cases as Northern Ireland and the Palestinian intifadas.

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. By David Galula. Praeger Security International Academic Cloth, 2006.

This is a short, powerful monograph written by a French officer with long experience in China, Greece, and Algeria, among other places. Even though it has been reprinted, it is remarkably hard to find, in part because it is one of the first books soldiers look to buy -- for good reason -- when they go off to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. The basics are all here, including a shrewdly balanced handling of the issue of hearts and minds: David Galula does not display the ruthlessness of other French counterinsurgents, but he is under no illusions about the ways in which all belligerents try to force the population at large to choose sides.

War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province. By Jeffrey Race. University of California Press, 1972.

This is a careful, well-written book that bears out most of Galula’s conclusions. Jeffrey Race’s close study of insurgency in a single province of Vietnam has many virtues, but perhaps the most important is the in-depth treatment of why populations choose sides. It is a cliché, though true nevertheless, that in most revolutions only small minorities oppose or support a government, while the majority simply hopes to get by in chaotic and dangerous times. Race is particularly insightful on how conventional forces, seized with the desire to close with the enemy and destroy it, can fundamentally misunderstand the wars in which they are engaged and undermine the causes for which they are fighting.

Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq. By Peter R. Mansoor.
This is the best memoir by a tactical commander who has served in Iraq. A trained military historian who later served as executive officer to General David Petraeus, Peter Mansoor commanded the First Brigade of the First Armored Division in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. He witnessed the transition from conventional to irregular warfare and conducted a brilliant expulsion of Muqtada al-Sadr’s extremists from one of the holiest cities in the Shia world, Karbala.

The Bear Trap: Afghanistan’s Untold Story. By Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin. L. Cooper, 1992.

Mohammed Yousaf is a former senior officer in the Pakistani intelligence services, and his book, written with Mark Adkin, gives an account of Pakistan’s support for -- and, in some ways, manipulation of -- the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It will set on edge the teeth of some of those in the CIA and elsewhere with whom Yousaf worked, but no matter: this valuable, if not always reliable, portrayal of how a less developed country can help run a lethal insurgency against a great power should occasion sober reflection.

The Battle of Algiers. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. 1967.
and Bloody Sunday, Directed by Paul Greengrass. 2002.

These two movies get to the heart of the counterinsurgency dilemma. Gillo Pontecorvo’s cinematic treatment of the 1957 contest between the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and the French military for control of the capitol of Algeria is remarkable in many ways. Pontecorvo sides with the FLN, but the fictional French commanding officer, Colonel Mathieu, also receives sympathetic treatment.

Although the film was entirely staged, it has a newsreel quality to it, reinforced by the fact that many of the actors had in fact taken part in the events described, and it is chillingly realistic in its depiction of the use of terror by both sides.

Paul Greengrass’ account of the 1972 shooting of Catholic protestors by the British army in Derry uses similar techniques (and casting) to portray the dynamics of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

It, too, has a point of view, but somehow manages to depict all the players empathetically. If The Battle of Algiers makes too strong a claim that violence on both sides can be controlled, purposive, and effective, Bloody Sunday is more convincing in suggesting that in such settings violence can escalate for all kinds of reasons, with devastating and unforeseen consequences.

Small Wars Journal.

This Web site has become an extraordinary gathering place for today’s self-described “COIN community” -- a tight-knit group of military, think-tank, and academic types who study counterinsurgency issues with what might be considered obsessive interest. The articles are of uneven quality, but the resources here, including references and research links, are terrific.

If any worthy goodies were omitted - please add them in your commentary.

Pic - "Eating Soup with a knife"

French Foreign Legion

2009-11-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

As soon as the French Foreign Legion moved in this summer, some of the men climbed on the roof of the base headquarters and painted the force’s Latin motto in big white letters.

“Legio Patria Nostra.” The legion is our homeland.

Home has been in many far-flung places for legionnaires during their storied 178-year history — North Africa, the Far East, Mexico, and now the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan as part of NATO’s U.S.-led International Security Force.

The legion’s Afghan contingent consists of 750 men of more than 80 nationalities. Some have joined up for high-adrenaline life, some are dodging the law, some have come from poor countries simply to earn a decent wage.

If anything bothers them about the Afghan mission, it’s NATO’s rules of engagement, which stress the need not just to fight the Taliban but to befriend the local population.

“We’re meant for fighting. There’s too much chatting around here,” said Chief Sgt. Alex, downing beers in the legionnaires’ clubhouse at Tora base, an open-air shed whose large flat-screen TV was showing hard-core porn videos to the music of “Viagra,” a Ukrainian techno band.

A 23-year veteran of 17 legion missions, mostly in the Balkans and in former French colonies in Africa, Alex said he was expecting his fifth citation for valor, for a nighttime combat mission with U.S. Special Forces.

Like his comrades, the British-born former pub manager went only by his first name, an alias. The legion gives all recruits a new name and strictly guards their anonymity.

“Legionnaires begin a new life when they join,” explained Capt. Michel. “Each and every one of them is allowed to keep his past a secret.”

It’s part of the legion’s mystique, along with a reputation for ferocity, in battle as well as in the training needed to mold men of many countries and languages into a single force.

Since settling into their base at Tora, in the Surobi district east of Kabul, the legionnaires, who make up almost a third of French troops in the NATO force, have not had many opportunities to fight.

They have pushed two-thirds of the way up the Uzbeen valley nearby, a former Taliban stronghold where their outposts still come under sporadic attack. But most of their mission has been to patrol relatively calm villages, meeting with the “Maleks,” or community leaders, while U.S. and British forces bear the brunt of the fighting in the more volatile Afghan south.

Historically, the legionnaires have viewed themselves as one big family of 7,500 men. Even the officers spend Christmas not at home but on base with their men, and retirees and invalids can live on the legion’s farm in southern France, where they grow and bottle rose wine.

At dinner recently, officers were served Cote du Rhone red wine, while alcohol had been banned at U.S. and British bases in the country.

To enlist in the all-male legion, a man simply has to sign up at a recruiting station on French soil. Officers say police often let illegal migrants go through if they are heading for the legion. One recruit recently bicycled from Mongolia to France, they said.

It’s a tradition that dates to the founding of the legion in 1831, after France was bled by the Napoleonic wars and needed foreign men to help conquer and colonize Algeria.

Five years’ service entitles a recruit to French citizenship. A handful are Afghans, but none are here. The rules bar legionnaires from fighting their native countrymen.

Murderers, rapists and child molesters are banned.

Officers say background checks are done when needed, and legionnaires who lie about their records may be kicked out. Their files are kept secret and they have the right not to talk to or be photographed by the media. One man in Tora is a Harvard and Princeton graduate. He declined to be interviewed, his officers said.

Another American, Private 1st Class Raoul, would not discuss why he spent three months in prison for a felony when he was 18. “I didn’t kill anyone, but I didn’t make anybody proud either,” he said.

A plumber from Virginia Beach, Va., he wanted to join the U.S. military but was turned down because of his record. “I grew tired of being told I was a criminal, so I flew to France,” Raoul said. “I had absolutely nothing keeping me back home.”

Another man, Cpl. Marcus, said he was 7 when he saw legionnaires in action in his home country, the Central African Republic, in the 1980s, and was so impressed “I promised myself I’d join them one day.” After both his parents were killed during the next wave of violence in 1990, Marcus fled and ended up in the legion’s 2nd infantry regiment, now stationed in Tora.

Most legionnaires don’t have a criminal record, officers say. Some joined because of the aura of adventure and romance cultivated over the decades by novels and movies such as Hollywood’s 1936 classic “Morocco,” in which Marlene Dietrich follows her legionnaire lover, played by Gary Cooper, in the North African desert.

Discipline is harsh, and a spell in a legion prison is something of a rite of passage.

Raoul said his hardest challenge was learning French. A corporal teaching him to count to 10 thumped him on the chest each time he flunked a number. Eighteen months later, his French is fluent.

The third of the force whose mother tongue is French are nicknamed Gauls, after the ancient tribe. A lot of Slavic language is also heard, because another third of the men are from Eastern Europe and Russia.

One of the legionnaires is Rushan, a former lieutenant in the Russian army. Now he’s a corporal, but says he earns 1,200 euros a month ($1,780) — as much as a senior Russian commander.

Rushan was born in Kabul, where his father was a colonel in the Soviet army which occupied the country throughout the 1980s.

“Being in Afghanistan again is a bit strange,” he said. He speaks Dari, an Afghan language, and says he landed at an airport his father built.

Raoul, the legionnaire from Virginia, says he didn’t expect to end up in Afghanistan, and his family worries about him. “But my mom is proud of me now.”

Submitted by Alfred de Montesquiou

Pic - FFL 3rd Regiment

AFPAK Facts Jack

2009-11-22T00:00:00.003-05:00

"We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense...

"In our own native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed til the late violation of it: for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms.

"We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed and not before

Thomas Jefferson 1775

Charge: The illegitimate election of Hamid Karzai means failure for any stepped up effort in Afghanistan.

Response: “Consider the analogous case of Iraq over the last three years,” write Richard Fontaine and John Nagl in the Los Angeles Times. “At the time [of the surge of forces to Iraq], Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Shiite-led government was widely viewed as weak and sectarian. An overwhelming number of Sunni Arabs -- who formed the center of gravity of the insurgency -- rejected its legitimacy and had boycotted the December 2005 elections that brought it to power.

The Maliki government had done little to allay these feelings; on the contrary, elements of its security forces participated in sectarian violence against Sunnis through 2006.” Yet Gen. David H. Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy was able to protect populations, restore order, and make room for the political reconciliation that would not have otherwise been possible.

“Prospects for such an outcome in Afghanistan actually look better now than they did in Iraq in early 2007,” write Fontaine and Nagl, “unlike Iraq -- where success hinged on persuading a critical mass of the Sunni Arab community to accept the bitter reality of a Shiite-led government -- no deep existential issue drives Afghans (primarily Pashtuns) into the arms of the insurgents.”

In fact, all polls and other data indicate that “the national government in Afghanistan almost certainly retains greater legitimacy among the people than did the Iraqi government before things began to turn for the better there.” -- Los Angeles Times

Charge: Afghanistan is too “naturally” tribal and backward for a COIN strategy to work.

Response: In reality, Afghanistan “has been a state since the 18th century (longer than Germany and Italy) and has been governed by strong rulers such as Dost Mohammad, who ruled from 1826 to 1863,” writes Max Boot, in Commentary. “Afghanistan made considerable social, political, and economic progress during the equally long reign of Mohammad Zahir Shah from 1933 to 1973.

The country was actually relatively peaceful and prosperous before a Marxist coup in 1978, followed by a Soviet invasion the next year, triggered turmoil that still has not subsided. . . . Afghanistan has not always been as unstable and violent as it is today. . . it is hard to know why Afghanistan would be uniquely resistant to methods and tactics that have worked in countries as disparate as Malaya, El Salvador, and Iraq.” -- Commentary

Charge: Al Qaeda is our real enemy. COIN focuses unnecessarily on defeating the Taliban and other related groups.

Response: “Al Qaeda does not exist in a vacuum like the -SPECTRE of James Bond movies. It has always operated in close coordination with allies,” write Frederick and Kimberly Kagan in The Weekly Standard. “The anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s was the crucible in which al Qaeda leaders first bonded with the partners who would shelter them in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden met Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose network is now fighting U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, as both were raising support in Saudi Arabia for the mujahedeen in the 1980s.

They then fought the Soviets together. . . Bin Laden and al Qaeda could not have functioned as they did in the 1990s without the active support of Mullah Omar and Haqqani. The Taliban and Haqqani fighters protected bin Laden, fed him and his troops, facilitated the movement of al Qaeda leaders and fighters, and generated recruits.

They also provided a socio-religious human network that strengthened the personal resilience and organizational reach of bin Laden and his team. Islamist revolution has always been an activity of groups nested within communities, not an undertaking of isolated individuals. . . There is no reason whatever to believe that Mullah Omar or the Haqqanis--whose religious and political views remain closely aligned with al Qaeda's--would fail to offer renewed hospitality to their friend and ally of 20 years, bin Laden.

Al Qaeda’s allies “provide them with shelter and food, with warning of impending attacks, with the means to move rapidly. Their allies provide communications services--runners and the use of their own more modern systems to help al Qaeda's senior leaders avoid creating electronic footprints that our forces could use to track and target them.

Their allies provide means of moving money and other strategic resources around, as well as the means of imparting critical knowledge (like expertise in explosives) to cadres. Their allies provide media support, helping to get the al Qaeda message out and then serving as an echo chamber to magnify it via their own media resources.” -- Weekly Standard

Charge: We can defeat our enemy in Afghanistan with a more limited counterterrorism strategy, using drones and increased intelligence gathering.

Response: “If the United States should adopt a small-footprint counterterrorism strategy, Afghanistan would descend again into civil war,” Frederick Kagan testified before the House Armed Services Committee. “The Taliban group headed by Mullah Omar and operating in southern Afghanistan (including especially Helmand, Kandahar, and Oruzgan Provinces) is well positioned to take control of that area upon the withdrawal of American and allied combat forces. The remaining Afghan security forces would be unable to resist a Taliban offensive.

They would be defeated and would disintegrate. The fear of renewed Taliban assaults would mobilize the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras in northern and central Afghanistan. The Taliban itself would certainly drive on Herat and Kabul, leading to war with northern militias.

This conflict would collapse the Afghan state, mobilize the Afghan population, and cause many Afghans to flee into Pakistan and Iran. Within Pakistan, the U.S. reversion to a counterterrorism strategy (from the counterinsurgency strategy for which Obama reaffirmed his support as recently as August) would disrupt the delicate balance that has made possible recent Pakistani progress against internal foes and al Qaeda.” -- House Armed Services Committee

In Commentary, Max Boot notes, “it is hard to point to any place where pure [counterterrorism] has defeated a determined terrorist or guerrilla group. This is the strategy that Israel has used against Hamas and Hezbollah. The result is that Hamas controls Gaza, and Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon.

It is the strategy that the U.S. has employed in Somalia since our forces pulled out in 1994. The result is that the country is utterly chaotic and lawless, and an Islamic fundamentalist group called the Shabab, which has close links to al-Qaeda, is gaining strength.

Most pertinently, it is also the strategy the U.S. has used for years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The result is that the Taliban control the tribal areas of Pakistan and are extending their influence across large swathes of Afghanistan.” -- Commentary

Charge: Our army is already stretched too thin. A troops surge in Afghanistan is unsustainable.

Response: “This fear, heard often about Iraq in 2004-06, is no truer now than it was then,” writes Tom Cotton in the Weekly Standard. “At the 2007 peak, the United States had 200,000 troops deployed to Iraq (170,000) and Afghanistan (30,000). Currently, there are 110,000 troops in Iraq and 68,000 in Afghanistan, well below that peak. And 60,000 troops are expected to leave Iraq by next August as more troops flow into Afghanistan.

Thus, overall deployed troop levels in 2010 will remain the same or fall. The Army has also grown to accommodate repeated deployments. It expanded over the last two years from 512,000 to 547,000 soldiers and now plans to add another 22,000 troops by 2012. Further, it just exceeded its annual recruitment and retention goals, hardly the stuff of a broken Army.”

Charge: The American public believes we have no need to stay in Afghanistan after eight years of fighting.

Response: “Barack Obama has yet to talk about America or its ideals as being worth the fight. It's no wonder public support for our commitment in Afghanistan is lower today than at any point during the Bush administration,” writes Foreign Policy Initiative Policy Advisor Abe Greenwald at the American Spectator. “The disconnect between rhetoric and mission is stark.

Since taking office, President Obama has continuously spoken of the United States as a country that ‘all too often…starts by dictating,’ a place that ‘has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive’ toward allies, where ‘our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, [and] all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.’

America, in Mr. Obama's words, ‘is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history.’ What kind of dupe would rally behind that place? To make matters worse, while the situation deteriorated in Afghanistan and loose speculation abounded the president went silent on matters of war. . . If the president wants to boost morale on Afghanistan, he is going to have to drink from the well of American exceptionalism.” -- American Spectator

Charge: Dealing with the problems in Pakistan is more important than finishing the fight in Afghanistan.

Response: “The debate over whether to commit the resources necessary to succeed in Afghanistan must recognize the extreme danger that a withdrawal or failure in Afghanistan would pose to the stability of Pakistan,” writes Frederick Kagan in the Wall Street Journal. the fight against the Taliban must be pursued on both sides of the border.

Pakistan's successes have been assisted by the deployment of American conventional forces along the Afghanistan border opposite the areas in which Pakistani forces were operating, particularly in Konar and Khowst Provinces. Those forces have not so much interdicted the border crossings (almost impossible in such terrain) as they have created conditions unfavorable to the free movement of insurgents.

They have conducted effective counterinsurgency operations in areas that might otherwise provide sanctuary to insurgents fleeing Pakistani operations (Nangarhar and Paktia provinces especially, in addition to Konar and Khowst). Without those operations, Pakistan's insurgents would likely have found new safe havens in those provinces, rendering the painful progress made by Pakistan's military irrelevant.

Pakistan's stability cannot be secured solely within its borders any more than can Afghanistan's.” -- Wall Street Journal

Charge: Afghans view coalition forces as “occupiers” and want us to leave.

Response: “In fact repeated polls have shown that majority of Afghans want the U.S. and NATO there,” writes Brian Glyn Williams in Foreign Policy. “As they watch Indian soap operas on televisions the Taliban once smashed, send their girls to school, and drive on newly paved roads, millions of Afghans are experiencing the direct benefits of the U.S. presence in their country. This is the work we could have been doing in 1991 and, for all its obvious flaws, it is a tentative sign of progress in the long journey to rebuild civil society in this long suffering land.

In other words, compassionate, global-minded Democrats who supported President Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia owe it to the Afghan people to be patient and do the same for Afghanistan.” -- Foreign Policy

Charge: Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires.”

Response: “This refrain belongs, as they say now in the military, in the graveyard of analogies,” writes Tom Cotton in the Weekly Standard. “The Soviets, in particular, teach us how not to win in Afghanistan. A heavily mechanized force, the Red Army was ill-suited for Afghanistan's treacherous terrain, and it was dependent on long, vulnerable supply lines.

It also discouraged innovative junior leadership, which is critical against an insurgency. To compensate, the Soviets employed vicious, massively destructive tactics that inflamed the Afghan people and still scar the country with depopulated valleys and adult amputees maimed as children by toy-shaped mines.

Our present way of war couldn't be more different. We deploy light and wheeled infantry to Afghanistan, making our tactics more flexible, our supply lines shorter, and our soldiers more engaged with the locals. We also radically decentralize decision-making authority to our junior soldiers and leaders, who increasingly can draw on years of combat experience.

In short, America has a counter-insurgency strategy, whereas the Soviet Union had a genocide strategy. Afghans I spoke with always recognized the difference, reviled the Russians, and respected our troops.” -- Weekly Standard

Max Boot makes a similar point in Commentary, “The two most commonly cited examples in support of this proposition are the British in the 19th century and the Russians in the 1980s. This selective history conveniently omits the military success enjoyed by earlier conquerors, from Alexander the Great in the 4th century b.c.e. to Babur (founder of the Mughal Empire) in the 16th century. In any case, neither the British nor the Russians ever employed proper counterinsurgency tactics.

The British briefly occupied Kabul on two occasions (1839 and 1879) and then pulled out, turning Afghanistan into a buffer zone between the Russian Empire and their own. In the 1980s, the Russians employed scorched-earth tactics, killing large numbers of civilians and turning much of the country against them. Neither empire had popular support on its side, as foreign forces do today.”

Charge: We can manage Afghanistan by focusing on the training of Afghans.

Response: “The Afghan Army is reasonably effective. It is too small, with roughly 90,000 total soldiers,” writes Michael O’Hanlon in the Wall Street Journal. “But by most accounts, the Afghan Army is fighting well, and cooperating well with NATO forces. Gen. McChrystal's new approach to training Afghan troops will greatly strengthen and deepen this cooperation.”

Here is the key point as it relates to a troop build-up. “Not only will NATO finally field enough personnel to embed with each Afghan unit in mentoring teams, but its combat units will partner with Afghans at every level on every major operation – living, planning, operating, and fighting with each other in one-to-one formal partnerships.” In order for that partnering to be fully implemented, a large troop surge is required. -- Wall Street Journal

Charge: There is no rush to get all of the requested resources to Afghanistan.

Response: “We face both a short and long-term fight,” wrote Gen. Stanley McChrystal in his comprehensive assessment of the war. The long-term fight will require patience and commitment, but I believe the short-term fight will be decisive. Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures –risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

Many Americans are understandably resistant to the amplification of war after eight years of combat in Afghanistan and other taxing military deployments. But distaste for combat cannot supersede obligations of national security. Those who seek to sidestep those obligations must be challenged head-on, so that the illogical bases for their claims can be exposed and America can get about the business of winning a war and bringing our soldiers home in victory.

Foreign Policy Initiatives

Journey From The Land Of No

2009-11-21T00:00:00.001-05:00

Journalist Roya Hakakian's beautifully written memoir of growing up in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran.

"Journey from the land of No" makes a striking contrast to another journalist's Iranian memoir, Azadeh Moaveni's "Lipstick Jihad," a contemporary portrait of Tehran from the viewpoint of a Californian-Iranian, looking for identity. While Moaveni battled her mother over Madonna's music, Hakakian rioted against a fanatical headmistress who found sin in a strand of female hair.

Hakakian describes a rather idyllic childhood in a quiet house in Tehran's "Alley of the Distinguished." She is the only daughter of a Jewish schoolmaster and scholar, beloved baby sister to three brothers. Her closest friend, Z, is a Muslim neighbor girl and her first inkling of the stirrings abroad were the political speeches Z's older sister and her devout Great-Uncle listened to in secret.

Though one by one her three older brothers are sent out of the country, Hakakian finds herself caught up in the heady togetherness of revolution. "Within weeks, Tehran seemed to have matured by years. Even drunkards stopped ranting about their personal misery. Neighbors did not fight. Cars honked constantly, but not in gridlock, only to announce the advance of the uprising, or the fall of another barracks."

She explores the child's perceptions: the jangly scariness of her parents' tense arguments and distressed uncertainty contrast unfavorably with the liberation let loose in the streets. But almost immediately anti-Semitic slogans appear on walls. The Hakakians sell their home and move into an apartment. Islamic dress is imposed and then the Jewish headmistress vanishes one day, and her Muslim replacement asks Hakakian why Jewish men customarily deflower their daughters.

Still, politics remains a youthful focal point and the young intellectuals exercise their idealism in dissent. Another moment of startling clarity comes when the group is caught with incriminating papers, and dismissed as irrelevant as soon as they are discovered to be Jewish.

As idealism fades and repression casts a dark gloom over daily life, Hakakian discovers that her old friend Z has grown grave and distant, Z's older sister, the fervent revolutionary, jailed and tortured, her mother's spirit broken.

Hakakian's story is a layered, nuanced remembrance of one girl's awakening to adulthood, a Jewish view of Iran's upheaval, and a chronicle of a country's nightmarish descent from liberation into a maelstrom of repression and fear.

submitted by Samantha

Pic "Living in the Land of No"

Chiorny Oriol

2009-11-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

Does Commonwealth have a new panzer in the super secret panzer R&D shops?

"According to the Russian media, an early prototype of the Black Eagle was shown at an arms exposition in Siberia, in June 1999. It appeared to be based on a lengthened T-80U hull, and to have very thick front armor and new-generation Kaktus explosive reactive armor.

"However, recent reports in open sources suggest that the Black Eagle program has been halted due to the acceptance of the T-90, built by the Uralvagonzavod plant, into the Russian military in the mid-1990s.

Nyet so fast Tovarisch!

Russia has reportedly opted for Uralvagonzavod as the developer and manufacturer of a new-generation MBT, which will most likely have a designation as T-95.

Sergei Mayev, head of the Federal Service for Defense Contracts (Rosoboronzakaz) told a news conference in July 2008 that the Russian Armed Forces would start receiving new-generation panzers superior to the T-90 main battle tank after 2010.

The new tank will feature better firepower, maneuverability, electronics and armor protection than the T-90 MBT.

Its speed will increase from 30-50 kph to 50-65 kph (19-31 mph to 31-40 mph).

According to some sources, the new tank may be equipped with a 152-mm smoothbore gun capable of firing guided missiles with a range of 6,000-7,000 meters.

In comparison, the T-90 MBT has a 125-mm 2A46M smoothbore gun, which can fire AT-11 Sniper anti-tank guided missiles with a range of 4,000 meters.

pic "Black Eagle"

Palestinian Dependence Day!

2009-11-19T00:00:00.002-05:00

Here's a quiz - ever heard of a cat named Saleem Fayad? No? It's cool - you will! As Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Fayad recently coughed up the idea of declaring Palestinian statehood.

1st glance - it seems cool. At long last rowdy Strip Palestinians can take a break from building home grown rocket artillery, cranking out tunnels like doughnuts, and maybe even enjoying the 'new reality' that President Mazen/Abbas mentioned like West Bank has.

Dissolving UNRWA alone would awesome - all that wasted time, effort and money could be put to work elsewhere -- like the op to shed ancient, non productive (unless considering the death industry) endeavors, antique gripes about turf and beat their K'Ssams into laptops.

With the highest literacy rate in the entire Middle East (sans Little Satan!), Strip Palestinians could actually construct a Vegas style Riviera on the Med and West Bank could xform into a happy place - chock full of cutting edge industrial zones and colleges.

Hold up though - the flaw in the ointment is such a manuever would render all previous Oslos, Helsinkis, Sharm al Sheiks, Annapolis' Roadmaps and Quartets null and void.

Oathbreaking they calls it!

Great Satan and Europa both dissed the idea -- as Little Satan's BiBi mentioned ”there is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel’s side.”

The bit about waiting for a negotiated settlement sounds fake believe. In fact - two of the planets most successful nation states sweetly achieved internat'lly recognized independence without the benefit of a negotiated agreement between conflicted parties, like Great and Little Satan - prob the most obvious - obviously.

If Palestinian nat'l aspirations were so magically legit and a 2 state solution the only answer, why wouldn’t the all the cats involved in the long years of on again off again 'peace process' proponents recognize the fact?

And in such a scenario, what unilateral retaliation could Little Satan reasonably get away with?

Rather, the real mix queering with Palestinian independence — — is that there is no viable Palestinian regime that can claim to run a sovereign country. Right now, the Palestinian territories are divy'd up, seperate fiefdoms ruled by 2 different Palestinian regimes.

And both may be illegit anyway - HAMAS won't hold elections in January - lucky for them! And Pres Abbas has stayed on way past his time without being re elected.

Stripstine is led by a death cult worshipping internat'lly recoged terror organization supported by Iran and Syria -- dedicated to war against Little Satan.

West Bank, is led by a revolutionary-style regime that is deeply corrupt and still sucks up to intolerant, murderous fan boys terrorist groups like the Fatah-Tanzim, HAMAS, and Islamic Jihad.

Efforts to negotiate a unification between the two sides have consistently sucked, maybe the only thing stopping Palestine from erupting into all out civil war betwixt HAMAS and Fatah is the tiny tiny taint of turf that divides them -- Little Satan herself.

The real issue is not so much Little Satan building apartments, roads, schools, shopping malls and karoke bars in disputed, occupied or illegal turf as it is with 2 diametrically opposed factions in Palestine.

That this is the real trouble seems to be hinted at by none other than the Palestinian prime minister, Saleem Fayad. According to Fayad, a declaration of independence is really just a “formality” — or at least, it will be, once the institutions of statehood are established.

It is not too hard to glean from Fayad’s statement, however, the hidden assumption that such institutions are not yet in place and may not be for the foreseeable future.

So it may be cool to consider if the Palestinians really were to hook up with a means of establishing a homeland: to build systems of government aimed at improving the Palestinians’ lives rather than tossing them away like grenades in an endless conflict; to build an economy that emphasizes good business rather than corruption; to craft an educational system and public culture that fosters a positive, life-affirming vision of Palestinian identity and coexistence with Little Satan rather than one created about “resistance” to “occupation.”

If that were to happen, wouldn’t Little Satan and world leaders have a really tough time denying Palestinian statehood? OTOH, would they even want to? Should they?

As it stands today - granting Palestine statehood could very well result in "3rd Infitadah" - another war. Consider - Palestinians and their rowdy rejectionist foreign enablers may indeed estab alliances, bases and military aid with a sovereign Palestine that starts another crises that could end up with Little Satan's Merkava panzers parked amidst smoking craters, a wrecked landscape as barren and desolate as the surface of the moon, in downtown Ramallah, Gaza City and Khan Younis.

And Little Satan may not be too interested in handing it off to anyone, as a new word debuts in the peace process.

Annexation.

Art - "Palestine will still be tiny and weak and Little Satan will still be tiny and mighty"

Land Of Pure Nightmare?

2009-11-18T00:00:00.001-05:00

A government unable to control large parts of its territory, a military in disarray, loss of control over nuclear assets, radical Islamists intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction — that's the stuff nightmares are made of, at least for the West. Pakistan's current turmoil is causing jitters around the world precisely because this scenario might just come to pass as the Talibanization of the country drags it to the brink of collapse.

Pakistan has been reeling under a relentless wave of terror strikes, targeted primarily against security forces, police and government officials. But what is causing consternation in the global corridors of power are recent attempts by the extremists to target Pakistan's nuclear installations.

Recently a suicide bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint outside the maximum security Pakistan Aeronautical Complex reportedly linked to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program at Kamra near Islamabad, renewing concerns about the safety and security of its nuclear arsenal. This was the second attack on the base since 2007 when a similar attempt was made.

Other attacks on Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility in Sargodha in November 2007 and an attack in August 2008 on the armament complex at the Wah cantonment, one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly sites.

U.S. President Barack Obama has made it clear that he remains gravely concerned about Pakistan, though he continues to project confidence that Pakistan's nuclear weapons will not fall to the militants. Even Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari sometime back raised the specter of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban, albeit adding the caveat that nukes are safe as of now.

Though Pakistan's government is always quick to dismiss media reports that its nuclear weapons are in danger of falling into the wrong hands and stresses that Pakistan provides the highest level of institutionalized protection for its strategic assets, the credibility of such claims remains open to question.

Instituted in 2000, Pakistan's nuclear command and control arrangements are centered on the National Command Authority, which comprises the Employment Control Committee, the Development Control Committee and the Strategic Plans Division.

In addition, a small group of military officials apparently have access to the country's nuclear assets. These command and control arrangements continue to be beset with some fundamental vulnerabilities that underline the reluctance of the Pakistani military to cede control over the nation's nuclear assets to civilian leaders.

It is instructive to note that of all the major nuclear states in world, Pakistan is the only country where the nuclear button is in the hands of the military. That's not at all comforting when former civilian leaders, including the late Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, made clear at the height of various crises that the Pakistani military keeps civilian authorities out of the decision-making loop on the crucial issue of nuclear weapons.

Moreover, senior civilian and military officials responsible for these weapons have a problematic track record in maintaining close control over them.

A.Q. Khan was head of the Pakistani nuclear program (and a veritable national hero), yet was instrumental in making Pakistan the center of the biggest nuclear proliferation network by leaking technology to states far and wide including Iran, North Korea and Libya. Pakistani nuclear scientists have even traveled to Afghanistan at the behest of Osama bin Laden.

While it is true that Pakistani military has been a very professional and perhaps is the only the cohesive force in the country today, it is not clear if it would be able to continue to exert its control over the nation's nuclear assets if the militants continue to gain ground in the absence of institutionalized safeguards.

It is believed that Pakistan relies on separating the fissile core from the weapon to ensure that a usable weapon doesn't fall easily into wrong hands. But it would take little time for the command and control network to collapse if Pakistan slid toward greater anarchy. Sympathizers of radical Islamists within Pakistani military and intelligence agencies could then help terrorist groups acquire the wherewithal of a nuclear weapon.

Throughout the Cold War years, it was viewed as politically prudent in the West and especially in the United States to ignore Pakistan's drive toward nuclear acquisition as Pakistan was seen as an important ally of the West in countering the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Nuclear proliferation has never been a first-order priority for the U.S. when it comes to Pakistan.

Various U.S. governments have continued to go easy on the Pakistani military even while it claimed that it had no knowledge of the A.Q. Khan network. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the Pakistani military seems unable and unwilling to take on the Islamist forces gathering momentum within the Pakistani territory on the one hand while, on the other, the nation's nuclear weapons seem within reach of extremist forces.

The international community needs to be aware of the potentially catastrophic implications of the collapse of governing authority in Pakistan. Irrespective of India's other problems with Pakistan, Indian decision-makers have had little doubt so far in trusting that their Pakistani counterparts would make rational decisions insofar as the use of nuclear weapons was concerned. That assumption might soon need to be revisited if current trends in Pakistan continue.

Art - "Nuclear Goddess"

submitted by Dr Harsh V. Pant

When Attorneys Ruled The World

2009-11-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

Can't help but notice - attorneys have taken over the world!

Well, maybe on the League of Hot! Democrazies - seems the unfree world is attorney free.

Consider recent events:

Ft Hood massacre. Essentially the raison d'etre that Major Disaster never got booted out of the service on his booty, is that any mention of his violent, head chopping mohammedistic prejudices would unleash an airborne attorney brigade on hapless evil doer pointer outers.

Anyone pointing out how uncool the guy was would just be asking to be sued into bankruptcy for the rest of their days. They would have been ruined in any endeavor.

KSM's trial in NYC is another.

The 'mess' that 44 'inherited' about Gitmo, renditions, foreign torment experts, enhanced interrogation tech and casus belli was actually created by a lawyer liebstandarte - often queering the mix for years on Military Tribunals during 43's trip - now they are at Justice Dept - really pushing the envelope that foreign cats caught on foreign battlefields or rousted out of hidden lairs in the dead of night should be given the same rights as American citizens.

Drones Gone wild! A foreign aid program that skips arrest, indictments and a chance for bail or attorney client privileges is fixing to get scrutinized - by attorneys.

The domestic front is yet another example. Some kinda legalistic treat called 'tort' that perhaps could be reformed would solve tons of stuff about Nat'l Health Care. Yet no attorney will tolerate such legal unbinding of their livelihoods.

Attorney's are like Frat boys - always looking to protect and perpetuate the species.

Maybe Dick The Butcher's dangerous ditty from from King Henry VI, Part II, (Act IV), Scene 2 bears some scrutiny?

"1st thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

Pic - "Dick the Butcher's Vision"

2nd Hand Buzz

2009-11-16T10:21:00.003-05:00

Not off topic - there is a magical event perhaps best known as a 2nd hand buzz. Essentially, if certain elements in an AO ignite a blunt device (often aromatically blueberry'd) the pungent pungency can spread in enclosed places and annihilate or afflict everyone in the impact area.

Not unlike 44's Shang Hai Surprize. Hitting up a Student 'town hall', 44 fielded some quizes by China's future - her co eds.

And at moments - it was like enjoyable suffering of the afore mentioned 2nd Hand Buzz.

Aside from sincere blocks of sincere insincerity - like dodging the Taiwan quiz - to be fair -- it was a set up - 44 amazingly channeled some awesome avatars of the new millennium.

"That is why America will always speak out for these core principles around the world. We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation, but we also don't believe that the principles that we stand for are unique to our nation.

"These freedoms of expression and worship -- of access to information and political participation -- we believe are universal rights. They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities -- whether they are in the United States, China, or any nation. "

"Indeed, it is that respect for universal rights that guides America's openness to other countries; our respect for different cultures; our commitment to international law; and our faith in the future.

Whoa!

Sound familiar? It dang well should - this a cliff note from Uncle Tony's open sexyful proclamation nom d'guerr'd "Universal Values of the Human Spirit"

"We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind--black or white; Christian or not; left, right or merely indifferent--to be free--free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts, free not to bend your knee to any man in fear, free to be you, so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others."

"There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values;

"Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit, and anywhere--anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police."

Perhaps 44's 2nd hand buzz (from a wicked Anglodaemoneoconic herald - no less!) will shape and impact Red China's next generation.

Art "2nd Hand Buzz"

"What If We Win?"

2009-11-16T00:06:00.000-05:00

There is a amusing story about a state that failed to achieve its development plans. This state was unable to fulfill its promises to the people, in terms of offering them prosperity, unique education, fascinating cities, and other shiny slogans. As a result, the leadership of this state held an extremely urgent meeting to discuss the repercussions of the situation.

The president asked for his ministers' opinion and advice in addressing this crisis. The defense minister responded by saying: "Let us declare war against the West and attack them. The West will retaliate, and, of course, destroy us. Accordingly, they will feel very guilty and announce a reform plan to fix the situation."

"This plan will be similar to the Marshall Plan implemented in Germany after its defeat in World War II. As a result, giant projects will be launched and major banks will set up operations. The country will prosper and the people will feel satisfied and happy, thus making us heroes and saviors in the people's eyes."

After a few moments of silence, the minister of agriculture gave a deep sigh and said: "But what if we win the war and defeat the West?"

Submitted by Hussein Shobokshi

Pic - "Future Palestine?"

Drones Gone Wild! III

2009-11-15T09:43:00.002-05:00

Three weeks ago today, Taliban leaders were meeting in a safe house in the Pakistani village of Chohetra, close to the Afghan border.

The village is the home of Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, alias Commander Faqir, the deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

They should have been fairly safe from attack. But Great Satan had another of those drones gone wild! sweetly loitering about the AO, circling the village, a tiny, tiny dot in the sky.

Halfway through the meeting, two Hellfire missiles destroyed the Taliban hideout, killing 24 people and wounding 12 more. Faqir was said to have left the house a few minutes earlier. But there was little doubt that a number of Taliban leaders were killed, some from Afghanistan.

The Predator attacks are controversial, but they are getting increasingly close to the senior leadership of both the Taliban and al Qa’eda. Commander Faqir can have no doubt by now that he is in the sights of the US drones.

The Predator MQ9, with its deadly armoury of two Hellfire anti-tank missiles, is known as the Reaper, for good reason. The use of the Reaper is an extension of a well-tried US special operations technique known to its proponents as “taking down the mountain”, used to hunt such figures as Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drugs baron, and the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

It combines the collection of extensive intelligence with an operation to hunt the target’s associates, removing them one by one, forcing the main target on the run and out into the open, where he can be targeted. It has already been used against one senior al Qa’eda leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al Qa’eda in Iraq, killed by the US in June 2006.

The process is designed to “decapitate” al Qa’eda and its allies. It is known that it is having a devastating effect on the insurgents from the testimony of David Rohde, a New York Times journalist who was taken prisoner by the Taliban, and was with them during an attack.

Rohde escaped in June and, last month, described how the Predator strikes “created a paranoia among the Taliban. They believed that local informants guided the missiles. Innocent civilians were rounded up, accused of working as American spies and then executed”.

There are problems with these attacks. The first concerns the number of civilian deaths. The most authoritative assessment of the attacks, by the New America Foundation, estimates that about one third of more than 1,000 people killed were civilians, fuelling anti-western feeling inside Pakistan.

The second is the dubious legality of the attacks under international law. To justify killing an enemy in a military operation, it is necessary to be under threat from that enemy. Critics say the US airman operating the Predator remotely from an operations room in the Nevada desert is scarcely under threat from the Taliban or al Qa’eda.

What cannot be disputed is that the attacks have been effective. If a third of those killed are civilians then around 700 were militants. But it is not the deaths of the ordinary militants that are important. Even before the most recent attacks, the past few months had seen Hellfire missiles fired from the Predators kill a number of figures close to al Qa’eda leader, Osama bin Laden. They included the leaders of the two Uzbek groups allied to al Qa’eda.

Given the Pakistani army’s current operations against the Taliban in north-western Pakistan, the last few months have also seen successful attacks on Ilyas Kashmiri, al Qa’eda’s chief of paramilitary operations in the region, and Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

Baitullah’s death, in August, may have been a turning point in the way in which the Predator campaign is perceived in Pakistan. It was greeted ecstatically by the Pakistani press, in stark contrast to the reaction to previous attacks in which civilians died.

Combined with the Pakistani offensive, the attacks have led some al Qa’eda followers to desert the Pakistani-based leadership, dispersing to Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

“There are indications that some al Qa’eda terrorists are starting to see the tribal areas of Pakistan as a tough place to be in,” one US counter-terrorism official said recently. ”

Western intelligence agencies believe that the al Qa’eda leadership’s power is on the wane, with the exodus of members from Pakistan growing and only the most obvious sign of the problems it faces.

When al Qa’eda first came to prominence in September 2001, with its devastating attacks on the United States, it was seen as having a potency no other Islamist militant group had enjoyed.

Already allied to the Taliban and to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, through bin Laden’s closest ally, the group’s chief theorist, Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qa’eda found a queue of Islamist insurgency and militant groups wanting to declare themselves part of bin Laden’s organisation.

But being part of a franchise is only attractive if it is a successful operation, and while there were a series of successful attacks on the West in the five years following the September 11 attacks – most notably the Bali bombing in October 2002, the Madrid bombings in March 2004, and the London bombings in July 2005 – the successful attacks have begun to dry up.

While there is a very strong argument that the Iraq invasion let bin Laden off the hook, the fact that he has yet to be captured or killed, is of only symbolic importance. He appears increasingly impotent, even offering the US a “long-term truce” in January 2006.

The most recent attacks have been two bombings by al Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb, which killed 33 people in Algiers in April 2007 and a bomb attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad in June last year, which killed six Pakistanis.

The main feature of both attacks was that the only people killed were Muslims, raising serious questions about the capability of an organisation that claims to be fighting an “Islamic jihad”, a factor that has led former allies of bin Laden, not just to drop their affiliation with al Qa’eda, but to criticise.

In May 2007, Sayyid Imam al Sharif, better known as Dr Fadl, a former member of the al Qa’eda leadership, attacked its tactics of mass slaughter, arguing that this inevitably led to the deaths of innocents, and was therefore un-Islamic.

He was particularly critical of the way in which Muslims lived freely within western societies, then attacked the very people who had given them shelter. Fadl’s attack was dismissed by his fellow Egyptian, and former fellow student, al Zawahiri, as having been written while Fadl was in prison in Egypt.

But last week saw a fresh attack, this time not from just one man, but from a complete militant movement previously aligned to al Qa’eda. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), issued a new religious document denouncing the tactics used by al Qa’eda as illegal under Islamic law. The 417-page “Corrective Studies” was a result of more than two years of consultation with respected religious Muslim scholars and its conclusions are similar to those articulated by Fadl.

“Jihad has ethics and morals because it is for God,” the LIFG’s new code states. “That means it is forbidden to kill women, children, elderly people, priests, messengers, traders and the like. Betrayal is prohibited and it is vital to keep promises and treat prisoners of war in a good way. Standing by those ethics is what distinguishes Muslims’ jihad from the wars of other nations.”

Nomad Benotman, a former LIFG leader, told the television network CNN that, before the September 11 attacks, he had tried to persuade bin Laden not to attack the US because any gains would be outweighed by the inevitable retribution. He said he told al Zawahiri that al Qa’eda’s tactics were “crazy”.

What effect Benotman or Fadl and their arguments will have is unclear, but they seem bound to eat into the number of recruits al Qa’eda can call upon.

With his lieutenants being systematically removed by the Predator attacks, the Pakistani army closing in around them, a growing exodus of his supporters from the tribal areas to east Africa or Yemen, and denunciation of his tactics by an increasing number of former allies, bin Laden and al Qa’eda are in trouble.

The movement is not dead yet. It may still lash out, like a wounded animal hemmed in by its pursuers, but it is almost certainly now in its dying throes.

Submitted by Michael Smith defence correspondent of the Sunday Times and author of Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team

Pic "Drones Gone Wild! III"

Outflanked

2009-11-14T10:49:00.002-05:00

As previously previewd by super savvy cats like Yosef Bodansky and Michael Baer, Persia's hot wicked desires to estab a kinda, sorta shia crescent from Iran to the Red and Med seas is tough to dispute, though a few still try.

While the northern horn of the crescent seems well known - Moktada al Sadr's mulitple attempts with Mahdi Army (or JAM, or 'Special Groups" ) in Iraq to Dr General President for Life Bashar al Assad's Allawite minority in Syria all the way to Hiz'b'Allah in Lebanon. A seperate rocket rich contingent sprouted up within HAMAS via Little Satan's client Strippers

So what about those sexyful, slick, oiled up little pies to the south? While the mullahs have long sought to encourage the Gulf States to lie back and enjoy it, Saudiland remains somewhat of an obstacle - natch - who would enjoy being outflanked? The ancient wicked old original he man women hating kingdom is well aware of the fact that most of her oil bearing regions are located in traditionally shia tribal turf.

The long small war going on in Yemen right now features al Qaeda, Huthi militants and Saudiland flexing military muscles - utilizing air force assets to contain Yemen's Huthi movement. GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnd Hijaz military sources confide some hot gossip

"The Royal Saudi Air Force bombed Huthi targets after the Royal Saudi airborn detachment dialed up air support in response to a Huthi attack to sieze and hold a border village.

The paras are adding substantial military muscles to Ministry of Interior police forces in the J'bal D'khan and J'bal R'meh regions and along most of the border. This source really, really stressed that Saudiland is enforcing Writ of state and maintaining complete control of the borders - even setting up a 'no go' killzone inside of Yemen.

Enter Iran

Yemen's Zaidi Shiite minority would be a worthy prize for Iran to exploit.
Consider - in the mohammedist world there is only one sect that has repeatedly stymied (often portrayed as decisively defeating) Little Satan. And it ain't the sunni sect.

The shia influ is spreading throughout future turf that would complete the crescent. Gaza, Lebanon, and even Pyramidlanders are reeling from the feeling that only shiaism is able to grant change the ME can believe in.

Thus, Yemen would be a great place to develop and spread into Saudiland's neglected shia population by sexploiting a strategic minority.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, the always funny Hossein Shobokshi, a columnist @ Asharq Alawsat , was critical of Iran's offer to intervene.

"It is a very odd situation that Iran threatens anybody that interferes in Yemeni affairs. This is an internal issue between the Yemenis. Saudi Arabia is protecting its borders," he said.

"What business does Iran have stating what it has stated?

"But it also falls in sync with what Iran has been doing. Interfering in other countries' affairs - we have seen it in Jordan, Sudan, Palestine, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq - creating pockets of influence and trying to control its puppets in every part of the Arab world."

Pic - "Outflanked!"

Co-Ven

2009-11-14T00:28:00.003-05:00

Journalists, playwrights and even clerics have boldly condemned the Taliban, yet Land of the Pure - Pakistan's rock scene have yet to sing out against their especial designer mix of Taliban, which continues to claim responsibility for daily bombings.

This is Co-Ven, a third tier alternative group with their latest title track "Ready to die". Interesting lyrics - almost manic or paranoid... and a kinda retro Britishy tone.

Friends And Future Fights

2009-11-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

As "C.O.D. Modern Warfare 2" blows the top off of the video game charts this week, Rasmussen released a poll that shows what Great Satan thinks about future Call Of Duty - like honoring alliances and actually putting troops in harm's way for Allies and friends in a war.

78% of Americans favor rushing to Canada’s defense and only 16% disagree.
The mommie country is in second place; 73% think Great Satan should defend Great Britain.

Tied for 3rd place (59% each) each are Mexico and Little Satan.

A diff Rasmussen thingy says 70% of Americans consider Little Satan an ally; only Canada and Britain at 86% and 85% respectively scored higher.

Rounding out the rest were Deutschland @ 53%, Nippon @ 46% and France (!!) @ 45%

And adversaries?

NoKo and Iran topped off the enemies list In a separate Pew poll taken last month, 61% of Americans (including 66% of independent voters) said they favored military action if necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Pic "Call of Booty 2: Battle of the Bulge"

Fragile!

2009-11-12T00:00:00.001-05:00

On or about 13:33 hours Feb 13th 2010, a Chinese SU-27 fighter and a Taiwanese F-16 collide over the Taiwan Strait.

The incident spirals out of control when the Chinese do what they always do in a crisis: blame the other guy. Demonstrations erupt in Beijing. Protesters demand that the Communist Party confront Taiwan and Great Satan. "When will China finally stand up?" read the signs.

Washington scrambles as Beijing readies for war.

Sound scary? Hold up - as the daemoneoconically "America's Interests first and foremost" guy Ambassador Bolton reminds us - the last few years for China has been a wild trip!

"Look at China's previous century: the collapse of the last imperial dynasty, the rise and repeated fall of the Republic of China, internal chaos among belligerent warlords, invasion and subjugation by Japan, civil war between Communists and Nationalists, Mao's dictatorship – which brought two of world history's greatest tragedies, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution – and then the 1989 repression at Tiananmen Square, just for starters."

Essentially - China is really, really fragile: Carnegie's Dr Susan Shirk let's out all the hot! wicked gossip and juicy details:

"Party leadership is hemmed in by threats to its stability: a rapidly aging population, the rise of the Internet, privatization of the economy, a widening gap between urban rich and rural poor, a restive population fed up with corruption, pollution that not only sickens but kills, mounting unemployment in an economy that needs to grow 7 percent annually just to provide jobs for 25 million new people entering the workforce.

"All around them," Shirk contends, "the leaders see new social forces unleashed by economic reforms that could subvert the regime." Moreover, Shirk describes a regime -- half Mafia, half corporate board -- so obsessed with staying in power that it is ill-equipped to deal with these challenges.

In a country where communist ideology is dead and a dog-eat-dog form of capitalism is ascendant, you'd think economic interests would be supreme. That's not the case, Shirk argues.

After the crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the military and security services gained even more power than they already had in a society built on Chairman Mao's maxim that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

Force-fed to China's people through programs such as the "Patriotic Education Campaign" (for all college students), nationalism nurtures "popular resentments against Japan and America and an expectation that Taiwan would soon be reunified," Shirk writes.

Look at China's reaction to the food, toy and toothpaste scandals created by shoddy products: Instead of acknowledging the concerns of Western consumers, the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda organs have gone into attack mode, branding these worries as a campaign to isolate and weaken China.

The problem, Shirk says, is that this form of nationalism has "boxed the CCP and its leaders into a corner." With reactions like these, she asks, "how can they stabilize relations with these important countries on which China's economic growth, and its political stability, depend?"

Pic - "Peoples Liberation Air Force is ever vigilant against capitalistic, hegemonic designs and chicanery"

Veteran's Day!

2009-11-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

The 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Imperial Germany gave up the ghost. America's 1st regime change in the new century. Armistice Day for the War to End all Wars, entirely achieved by the addition of the Great Satan's spiritual fore fathers to an entente of desperate states.

Conscripting an army of free men, America deployed 2 million troops to save Europe from a Prussian military machine that was the world's best - until they hooked up with the Great Satan in combat. Places like Chateau-Thierry and Bellau Wood decisively crushed Teutonicism. Deutschland screamed "GOD! PLEASE! STOP!"

An extensive remixed v2.0 released 27 years later as Veteran's Day.

Americans should go down on their knees and thank God Almighty for raising up this laughing race of freemen.

Americans energetically pursue commerce, science, medicine, technology and the arts. When these designs are halted by conflict, they energetically pursue absolute, decisive, and ruthless destruction of their enemies. After visiting violence and securing victory they energetically return to the pursuit of commerce, science, medicine, technology and the arts.

An excellent example of the concept of service to something larger than self became a personal epiphany 2 years ago, at an especial place and a chance meeting with an ancient Iwo Jima survivor.

17 yo, still on the farm when the horrible news came that the neighbor boy had just been killed in Italy. Staring sacrifice in the face, this living embodiment of American Exceptionalism had to take his homie's "... place in the line..." Ma and Pa agreed and the preacher drove him to Nashville to enlist. Less than a year later, this Marine fought in place in the line at the hallowed bloodsoaked Iwo Jima.

His name is legion, for there are thousands like him. From Bunker Hill to Chickamauga, from Midway to Fallujah.

America's veterans put their lives on hold, deploy overseas, incinerate our enemies, return home and continue to build this awesome place.

America and the world can never thank ya'll enough.

Pic - "Thank You All" by ScOtT dUnGaN

Teuffel Hunden BDay!

2009-11-10T21:31:00.000-05:00

Celebrating a 234 year old birthday, the United States Marine Corps is an American treasure. "Semper Fidelis" (Always Faithful)) is especially sweet since her 1st foreign debut centuries ago. In a remakable twist of deja vu, a very young America was faced with a desperate choice - pay ransom cash to an 8th century caliphate or undertake to launch a war thousands of miles away on the shores of North Africa.

Diplomacy was the first choice and Great Satan's Thomas Jefferson himself met with a duly commissioned rep of the 'Barbary Coast'. His report to Congress is totally familiar to Americans in the New Millenium:

"The ambassador answered us that the right was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mohammedist who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise."

Jefferson used the Marine Corps to grant them their very wish. A task force led by the USS Enterprise stormed into the 8th century and defeated the Mohammedists in Great Satan's very first regime change.

Great Satan's enemies have learned the hard way that the Marine Corps is very often the piercing tip of the American spear. Like Kaiser Wilhelm's vaunted Prussian elites who admiringly christened the Americans at Bellau Wood - das Teuffel Hunden - 'Devil Dogs'.

"Retreat Hell - We just got here."

Sweet irony that Deutschland surrendered on the day after the Marines 143rd birthday

10 November 1775 to 10 November 2009. Always Faithful indeed. Happy Birthday USMC.

The Marine Anchor, Eagle and Globe is a wonderful reminder to America's friends and enemies that Great Satan built the modern world.

And she knows her way around.

Art "Teufel Hunden" by Dean Forward

Palestinian Sympathy Fatigue II

2009-11-10T00:00:00.002-05:00

Well, well -- wail! News that the so nice - he be nom d'guerr'd twice! Abu Mazen/M'Moud Abbas -- the President of the West Bank and the rocket rich Strip turf (collectively called Palestine) is ready to jettison the escape pod and high tail it for his super swanky beach front villa in Q'Tar.

Saw that one a mile away. Just like the happy happy fact that HAMAS couldn't get re elected as grave diggers in the Strip now.

What a dang shame.

Both Satans' seem to look at the fast creation of a magical Nakbah free nation state of Palestine regardless of the Palestinians’ unwillingness to accept Little Satan's right to exist as the primary aim of their Palestinian policies.

Hip and haunch with calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state seem to actually increase in direct proportion to the radicalization of Palestinian society:

The more radical Palestinian society becomes, the hotter the hot wicked desire to grant it sovereign statehood.

Sovereign statehood and Palestinians have never really seemed to hook up. Like their Arab brethern, Palestinians have consistently sour mouthed that Little Satan's property posse that 'occupied' precious Palestinian turf with an amazing immodestly, lack of restraint and blitzkrieg tactics is the main problem.

Yet - predictably enough -- Palestinian Sympathy Fatigue may be the new (same as the old) thang:

"There is no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency — not even a sense of importance anymore."

Essentially because -- there is precious little in it for Great Satan. Would creating the world's 58th and 59th mohammedist or Arab League's 23rd and 24th nation state sweetly usher in a new error free era of peace, tolerance and get with it ness?

Would Little Satan be able to host Great Satan's Air Force or Teufel Hunden at state of the art bases, kassernes or cantonments? Would Palestine? And what would a future Palestine look like anyway? Yet another tribalistic kleptocracy or a really cool version of an Arabic Little Satan - complete with real elections, free press, consenual gov, indy judiciaries and egalitarian concerns?

"The way for the Palestinians to get a state is to go ahead and build it. If and when the institutions are there and functioning, from police and courts to a parliament, negotiations will reflect that fact.

"The argument that settling the borders and removing Little Satan's troops must come first is a path to failure. For one thing, Little Satan will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Little Satan left there.

"No conference and no treaty can provide such a guarantee; only functioning Palestinian police forces that are already fighting and defeating terror can do so.

"It would press the Arab states to help real live Palestinians in the West Bank, rather than the imaginary Palestinians--all either bold jihadists or desperate widows and orphans--whom they see on Al Jazeera.

"In fact, except for occasional visits by Jordanians and Egyptians (who have peace treaties with Little Satan already), top Arab officials haven't a clue what's going on in the West Bank, for they've never been there. Not one head of state or government or foreign minister, not once.

"Organize a tour; take a few princes and foreign ministers to Ramallah, Jenin and Jericho where they would find that they are neither in Somalia nor some heroic battle scene against Zionist oppressors.

As Palestine's dual d'nom'd daddy says: "In West Bank we have a good reality… the people are living a normal life.”

Despite Goldstone Report, Willie P or rowdy rocketeers -- nearly everyone in free societies (except for maybe the MOST depraved Realist on the planet) is suffering from Palestinian Sympathy Fatigue.

Sweet!

Pic - "Don't wanna be accursed! Won't the last girl or the 1st to tell me i should go str8 2 Hale"

Relic

2009-11-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Measuring 1,300 meters on Mühlen street, between the Oberbaum bridge and the Ostbanhof station you'll find the longest section still standing of the Berlin Wall, also known as East Side Gallery in the Friedrichshain district.

The Wall was erected in 1961 because more than 2.6 million Ost Deutschers escaped to West Berlin or West Germany from 1949 to 1961 (total population of East Germany was about 17 million!).

Great Satan's 41 was on hand to reassure allies ("I like Germany so much I think there should be two of them!" France's Mitterand) and stare down Soviets who really didn't have a choice in the matter - at least without igniting a Götterdämmerung that would leave Europa as barren and desolate as the surface of the moon.

41 reflects on Wall and the relics:

"The international scene has changed enormously in the last two decades, in large measure because there is no more superpower confrontation. That is the enduring historical legacy of the Fall of the Wall: it set in motion those events that would lead to the reunification of Germany less than one year later – a day that marks, in my mind, the day the Cold War ended.

"The events of 1989 began a new era in the history of Germany, Europe, the Atlantic Alliance, and indeed, the entire world. To be sure, new challenges and responsibilities have emerged.

"It is a world that is all the more hopeful because over the last two decades, a united Germany has taken its place as a force for peace and stability in world affairs, NATO has renewed its purpose, and the members of the Atlantic Alliance have become even more vital partners in leadership.

"As we celebrate this year’s historic anniversaries and look forward to a shared future of hope and promise, may God continue to bless the people of Germany and the entire Transatlantic Community.

“That stark and searing symbol of conflict and cold war was proof that no wall is ever strong enough to strangle the human spirit, that no wall can ever crush a nation's soul.”

Pic "Checkpoint Charlie"

Re Unification Day

2009-11-08T10:20:00.002-05:00

"The greatest credit for liberation of Eastern Europe lies with common people whose thirst for freedom survived decades of repression under Soviet rule – ordinary warriors like Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose Nobel Prize-winning writings documented the horrors of Soviet labor camps.

"They are the ones who led the mass exodus from East Germany to West, who tuned in to the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe against the objections of their government, who shed the shackles of oppression in pursuit of the ideals of liberty and prosperity offered by a free society.

"The brave actions of these impatient patriots – matched by the bold transformative visions of Western policymakers – ensured that freedom would triumph over tyranny.

"Today, a new kind of ideological struggle emerges, one that finds freedom’s enemies in the form of dictators who persecute religious and ethnic minorities, in the form of tyrants who cling to artificial symbols of legitimacy, in the form of terrorists who seek to slaughter innocent civilians and seek to destroy civilized ways of life.

"We must marshal the institutions of the Cold War era, like the NATO alliance, to help meet these 21st-century threats.

"And, perhaps most importantly, we must never surrender the bold vision that advances the goals of freedom and democracy around the world.

Dr Condoleezza Rice

Pic "Holidays In The Sun"

Coup d'état le Militare: How to Stage a Military Coup

2009-11-07T11:28:00.005-05:00

While there may not really be a Coup School (as far as we know! ) there is a how to book.

The coup remains the single most common form of regime change throughout the world. 14 alone attempted in 2004! The gov targeted by a coup attempt could be democratically elected, a long-standing dictatorship, or nothing more than a junta putsch put in place by the previous month's coup.

The motivation will always be lust for power, patriotism, greed or exploitation. It is usually a combination of power, greed, exploitation and patriotism.

"How To Stage A Military Coup: From Planning To Execution" by David Hebditch and Ken Connor is a sexyful interesting and thought-provoking exploration of the military empowerment of obtaining command and control through the exercise of military force or the threat of such force.

Intro'ing a detailed and in-depth understanding (which Connor has 1st hand experience) of the act known as a military coup or coup d'etat, this worldy tome is an outstanding and unique study of what may be frequently and sweetly used against various unstable regimes throughout the world.

Highly recommended to military cats, students of politics, internat'l studies, and the utilization of military power with a role in establishing and/or overthrowing regimes.

Ultimately the book is a work of military history and illuminates this rarely talked about unsavoury element of the military experience that is fortunately outside the modern history of Western democracies.

Vital, because it's referring to the human experience of these coups, not high-blown non profit academic brainiac jawflapping full of theories or wishful interpretation, and still retains a certain dark humor.

With tons of soldiers serving overseas from legit democratic govs, understanding military coups is vital not only to protect our own force but also to promote respect for legitimate gov in our allied forces.

This Coup How To should be read by military cats to prep for the challenges of operating overseas and for some good entertainment.

"Who knows, maybe knowing how to stage a coup will help a western soldier from stopping one in its tracks."

Pic - "Valkyrie"

Day Of Mourning

2009-11-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

"Never Forget"

2009-11-05T00:00:00.001-05:00

She is 600 and 84 feet long - longer than a WWII Battleship.

She weighs in at over 25 K tons. She bears the piercing tip of Great Satan's sharp, sharp, shiny sword. She carries our own dear children - the pride of our nation - to dark, scary parts of the world. She carries enough agony infliction to make any enemy on earth scream "GOD! PLEASE! STOP!"

She is a predator.

She is a killer.

She is USS NewYork

Seven rays of sunlight signify both the crown atop the Statue of Liberty and the seven seas

Central focus placed on the Twin Towers and the bow of the ship, forged from the towers' steel

Breastplate of the phoenix bears the colors of first responders from the New York Police Department, New York Fire Department, and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Blood drops represent the fallen

Three stars for those earned by the battleship USS NEW YORK (BB34) in World War II at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and North Africa.

Her war cry is "Never Forget."

It’s been years since the WTC and over 2K innocents were murdered on that horrible day in New York. And now, something precious returns to Great Satan, Her latest future Navy ship, created with 24 tons of steel from the ruins of the Twin Towers.

USS New York - She's the only cat in the hood to bear the name of a State that is not a submarine.

She is the 6th warship to bear the name.

Her nom de guerre in Navyspeak is Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD 21).

"USS New York will transport and land Marines, their equipment and supplies, by
embarked air cushion or conventional landing craft or Expeditionary Fighting
Vehicles, augmented by helicopters or vertical take off and landing aircraft.

"USS New York shall support amphibious, special operations, or expeditionary
warfare missions through the first half of the 21st Century.

She is a significant offshore threat to Great Satan's enemies.

USS New York will comfily tote 800 Marines into battle with all the goodies they desire and require to deliver a world of hurt.

Four CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters or two MV-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft may be launched or recovered at the same incredible instantly! The ship’s hangar can store 1-2 aircraft.

Two 30 mm Close-in-Guns AKA "Bushmasters," for surface threat defense; two Rolling Airframe Missile launchers for air defense

Amphib Landing and Assault Craft - 2 LCACs (air cushion) or 1 LCU (conventional)

14 Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles

2 of her future sisters will be named USS Arlington and USS Somerset in commemoration of the places for the other two planes used in the attack on 911 that shed American blood on American soil.

Her new Captain is Commander F. Curtis Jones, a native of New York City.

"This is sacred and it makes me very proud. Nobody passes by that bow section
without knocking on it. Everybody knows what it is made from and what it’s
about."

Never Forget

Spy Wars II

2009-11-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

In the ancient Crusader city of Tartous Syria, not long after Little Satan allegedly bushwhacked a super secret Syrian facility, where a mystery ship nom d'guerr'd Hamed ported of called and dropped off her fakebelieve load of cement from NoKo, Syria's chief spyguy General Suleiman had a really cool beach front love nest about 13 K north of the the medievel city walls.

Sulieman's summertime weekend gig usually included hanging out, swimming and catching up on super secret Syrian state security stuff.

On the first weekend of August last year, the General had a huge stash of stuff to review to prep for his chaperoning the Lion of Syria - Dr General President for Life Bashar - to Tehran for a magical meeting of kindred malevolent spirits.

The General's security posse never let the guy out of their sight - the original super villan - Imad Mughiyah had just been dispatched to the perfumed Gardens of Paradise on St Valentine's Day in downtown Damascus - and security was totally off the hook. As the regime's top cat to the global community on nuclear issues, nailing his hide to the wall would be a worthy trophy!

After an evening of work, a movie, rest and a quick bfast - General Suleiman - decided on doing a quick dip in the pretty, pretty pristine sparkly waters of the Med and to feel the glittery sand tingling and slightly burning his bare feet so the security detachment escorted him to his own private beach.

"The sea was calm that morning. Yachts were cruising off the coast, and there was nothing to raise suspicions in Tartous, a popular sailing destination for Syria's moneyed aristocracy where boats can be chartered for visits to nearby Arwad Island and its fish restaurants.

"An unusually sleek yacht came within 50 meters of the coast, but it was not close enough to raise any red flags with the bodyguards when their boss decided to jump into the sea.

"No one even heard the gunshots, which were probably fired from precision rifles equipped with silencers. But they clearly came from offshore, striking Suleiman in the head, chest and neck.

The sleek, slinky sexyful yacht sweetly slipped off at high speed and disappeared into Internat'l waters.

"The general died before his bodyguards could do anything for him.

Pic - "Little Satan Got Claws!"