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It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)
"I know you have no earthly clue just how god-awful complicated it is to actually perform a raid and scarf up a bad guy, let's just say it rates up there with trying to conduct a Beethoven Symphony with your orchestra in free fall, screaming towards Earth like a phalanx of freaking lawn darts." (Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive)
"Incidentally, one of the things that apparently made Hasan angry was that another soldier ripped an “Allah is love” bumper sticker off of his car. Well, he sure showed him when he shot a pregnant woman in the back." (Frank J. at IMAO)
President Obama’s recent decision to “overhaul” the Bush-era missile-defense shield for Europe was the most significant, but hardly the only, indication that the Obama national-security vision is skeptical of, and very likely actually hostile to, missile defense altogether. The president’s missile-defense request for the 2010 fiscal year is an outright cut of 16 percent — down from $9.3 billion to $7.8 billion. What’s more, the 2010 budget underfunds, delays, or outright kills core programs designed to protect our homeland.
It scales back the Airborne Laser program, which could provide an airborne capability and serve as the nation’s first line of defense (because it destroys an incoming missile in boost phase). The budget terminates the Kinetic Energy Interceptor program, which can be rapidly deployed by air to land bases abroad to counter unexpected threats. It kills the Multiple Kill Vehicle program, which is intended to attack incoming missiles in midcourse. It also defers funding for design and risk reduction for the space-based sensor constellation, an important part of the warning and detection systems.
Why, at a time of growing threats from unstable regimes that are testing long-range missiles and at or near nuclear status, would we spend less money on missile defense? To answer this question, we recall the early years of the Cold War. Our nation’s response to the strategic nuclear confrontation with the former USSR was deterrence, not defense. Indeed, U.S. policy rejected anti-ballistic-missile defense systems on the theory that the USSR could add enough missiles or warheads to overwhelm and negate any such system. Instead, we relied on the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD), according to which neither side would ever launch a nuclear strike because both the U.S. and the USSR knew they would not survive the result.
There is good reason to believe America is actually more at risk today than at any time during the Cold War. In 1972 only nine countries possessed ballistic missiles; today that number is more than two dozen. New nuclear actors, such as North Korea and possibly Iran and Syria, may not be deterrable in the classic sense. Mutually assured destruction is useless against an enemy that does not value life.
To deal with these emerging threats, we need a layered missile-defense system of a global, rapidly deployable sea-, land-, air-, and space-based capability to defend against ballistic missiles. This system must be capable of defending through the ascent/boost, midcourse, and terminal phases of flight. It requires robust command-and-control systems and state-of-the-art network and sensor technologies.
Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to a weapons inspection program that would allow Russians to visit nuclear sites in America to count missiles and warheads.
The plan, which Fox News has learned was agreed to in principle during negotiations, would constitute the most intrusive weapons inspection program the U.S. has ever accepted.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said publicly Tuesday that the two nations have made "considerable" progress toward reaching agreement on a new strategic arms treaty.
The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires in December and negotiators have been racing to reach agreement on a successor.
Clinton said the U.S. would be as transparent as possible.
"We want to ensure that every question that the Russian military or Russian government asks is answered," she said, calling missile defense "another area for deep cooperation between our countries."
On another critical issue, Lavrov declared that it would be counterproductive to threaten Iran with more sanctions over its nuclear program -- as he resisted efforts by Clinton to win agreement for tougher measures should Iran fail to prove its program is peaceful.
Clinton visited Moscow on her first trip since becoming America's top diplomat, in an effort to gauge Moscow's willingness to join the U.S. in imposing sanctions.
While he looks the other way on Iran and leaves Eastern Europe defenseless, Obama hands America's national security over to the likes of Vladimir Putin.
When I and others predicted that Obama would endanger America's national security, our warnings were dismissed as overstatement. If anything, I underestimated the extent to which Obama would endanger me, my family, and my fellow Americans. The speed with which he and his administration are destroying our national security is shocking.
And when one considers the recent embarrassment of a 40-something pal of Obama videotaping hmself skateboarding down the halls of the White House, the term "adolescent" seems particularly fitting.
When it comes to Iran, Obama is still determined to try hot dog diplomacy. Inviting Iranian diplomats to share in U.S. 4th of July celebrations was bizarre when first announced, but in light of the recent regime brutality against protestors in Iran, it is downright ghoulish.
Today's massacre may finally be awakening someone in the Obama administration to the absurity and moral depravity of partying with Iranian leaders while people are being axed and shot in the streets. The latest updates are truly heart-wrenching. Here are the lastest Twitter updates at Persiankiwi (see preceding "massacre" link") in reverse chronological order:
thank you ppls 4 supporting Sea of Green - pls remember always our martyrs - Allah Akbar - Allah Akbar -
we must go - dont know when we can get internet - they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names - now we must move fast - #Iranelection
Everybody is under arrest & cant move - Mousavi - Karroubi even rumour Khatami is in house guard - #Iranelection
they pull away the dead into trucks - like factory - no human can do this - we beg Allah for save us - #Iranelectionabout 2 hours agofrom web
Lalezar Sq is same as Baharestan - unbelevable - ppls murdered everywhere - #Iranelectionabout 2 hours agofrom web
they catch ppl with mobile - so many killed today - so many injured - Allah Akbar - they take one of us - #Iranelectionabout 2 hours agofrom web
in Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher - Allah Akbar - #Iranelection RT RT RTabout 3 hours agofrom web
reports of street fighting in Vanak Sq, Tajrish sq, Azadi Sq - now - #Iranelection - Sea of Green - Allah Akbarabout 3 hours agofrom web
rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users - must move from here now - #Iranelection
Reportedly, the Obama administration is "seriously considering" not inviting those Iranian officials to the 4th of July celebrations after all. Ya think?Just on aesthetic grounds alone, it's hard to picture enjoying a hot dog while considering how the Iranians are currently butchering their own people. That sort of thing will put a damper on the whole party.
Update: The hot dog party is off. The blood of protestors flowing freely in the streets of Iran apparently got to someone.
Obama's adolescent angst on missile defense is even more dangerous. His desire not to "weaponize" space has the potential to get a lot of innocent people killed. Thankfully, as one commentator has put it, Obama is under at least some "grown up supervision" and the Defense Secretary is moving missile defense assets (developed by Reagan and continued by the Bush administration) into place to attempt to protect Hawaii, a reported target for -- what else? -- 4th of July weekend.
But these sorts of last-minute, minimalist changes of position in response to clear outrages and mortal threats are not enough. In this age of growing nuclear proliferation involving several rogue and tyrannical regimes, there is no such thing as mutually assured destruction. Thugs can and will launch attacks without warning and will not be deterred by the possibility of retaliation. Nuclear missile defense is critical to America's survival. Funding for the program should be increased substantially, not slashed by billions as Obama has done.
For the sake of the U.S. and the world, Obama and his advisors need to grow up in a hurry.
It has dawned on Obama's defense secretary, Robert Gates, that this is exactly the wrong time to slash $1.4 billion from U.S. missile defense. He's begun making noises about the possibility of expanding missile defense funding again "if North Korea or other nations increase threats against the United States."
While is commendable that Gates is at least suggesting the possibility of reversing Obama's dangerous policy of leaving the U.S. wide open to nuclear attack, it is ludicrous for Gates to condition the restoration of funding on "increased threats" from North Korea or others.
Nations planning truly devastating attacks rarely announce their intentions in advance, other than by the type of generalized sabre-rattling that is coming almost daily from Iran and North Korea already.
Before 9/11, would it have been sensible to condition improvements to U.S. airline security on whether al Qaeda increased its "threats" against the U.S.? Of course not. Al Qaeda was already making generalized threats before 9/11, and by the time the 9/11 attacks happened, it was already too late.
The Obama administration is flirting with disaster in standing by its $1.4 billion in missile defense agency cuts. This is no time for political games nor for dithering. The U.S. needs to be working all-out on missile defense. Instead of pouring billiions into ACORN, we should be fully funding missile defense. The stakes could not be higher.
According to this report, Obama reversed his decision to release the detainee abuse photos only after Iraq's prime minister -- and others --went ballistic.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and that Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official have told McClatchy.
In the days leading up to a May 28 deadline to release the photos in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, U.S. officials, led by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Maliki that the administration was preparing to release photos of suspected detainee abuse taken from 2003 to 2006.
When U.S. officials told Maliki, "he went pale in the face," said a U.S. military official, who along with others requested anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.
The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn't make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011.
Maliki said, "Baghdad will burn" if the photos are released, said a second U.S. military official.
. . . .
The administration, which as late as April had agreed to release as many as 2,100 photos, said in the two weeks before the deadline approached that the release could trigger a backlash against American troops.
After U.S. officials notified Maliki, the prime minister put "heavy pressure" on Hill and Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, to stop the release, the senior U.S. defense official said.
In early May, Odierno and Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said they objected to the release of the photos. Both Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said they changed their minds largely because of objections from U.S. commanders in the field, but they never mentioned Maliki's reaction. Col. James Hutton, Odierno's spokesman, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
The senior U.S. defense official said that Hill and Odierno were the "primary voices" urging Obama to reverse his decision. They were joined by U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command; and McKiernan, who also were concerned that the photos, while not comparable to the pictures of U.S. guards abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, could ignite anti-U.S. violence. . . . .
Several days after the meeting, Odierno returned to Washington, and he and Gates took their concerns to Obama. It took "considerable lobbying" before the president changed his mind, the senior defense official said.
Based on this report, it took heavy and concerted pressure to get Obama to do the right thing in this case.
Will Obama stand by his dangerous plan to slash the budget for the U.S. military and specifically his $1.4 billion cut to missile defense, leaving U.S. cities defenseless against nuclear missile attack?
It's nice that Time is finally waking up to the futility of endless negotiations with North Korea -- now that its preferred president, Barack Obama, is in office. However, the response to North Korea can't end with a realization that diplomacy has proven useless. Pointing to "global criticism" and trying to downplay the threat is useless too, because global criticism has no effect whatsoever and the problem is growing by the day.
A shoulder shrug is not a foreign policy and it certainly will not keep any nation safe. The U.S., for one, should be doubling down on its investment in nuclear missile defense now that a nuclear North Korea is an established fact. Sadly, Obama is headed in the exact opposite direction. His approach is to disarm and hope that nobody ever launches a nuclear attack. How realistic is that?
Obama has lots of pretty flowers and a teleprompter, but does he have the backbone to defend America against nuclear attack? Obama in Prague in April, responding to North Korea's defiant missile test with a call for . . . global nuclear disarmament!
PRAGUE — Hours after North Korea’s missile test, President Obama on Sunday called for new United Nations sanctions and laid out a new approach to American nuclear disarmament policy — one intended to strengthen the United States and its allies in halting proliferation.
“In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up,” Mr. Obama told a huge crowd in the square outside of Prague Castle. “Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread.”
And yet, he said, too few resources have been committed to developing a strategy to stop terrorist groups like Al Qaeda that are “determined to buy, build or steal” a bomb.
Mr. Obama said that his administration would “reduce the role of nuclear weapons” in its national security strategy, and would urge other countries to do the same. He pointed to the agreement he reached last week with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia to begin negotiations on reducing warheads and stockpiles, and said the two countries would try to reach an agreement by the end of the year. He also promised to aggressively pursue American ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which in the past has faced strong opposition in Congress.
It is a strategy based on the idea that if the United States shows it is willing to greatly shrink the size of its atomic arsenal, ban nuclear testing and cut off the worldwide production of bomb material, reluctant allies and partners around the world will be more likely to rewrite nuclear treaties and enforce sanctions against North Korea and Iran.
In his speech, he said North Korea’s missile test illustrated “the need for action, not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.”
“Rules must be binding,” he said. “Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.” Those words were added to the end of a long-planned arms control speech hours before, after the president was awakened at 4:30 a.m. by his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, with news of North Korea’s defiance.
Instead of responding to the rapidly growing nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran with increased effort to keeping America safe, Obama has cut $1.4 billion from the U.S. missile defense agency. This is unconscionable. As dangers grow, Obama has no viable plan. All he knows is that peace is good, flowers are pretty, and if we lay down our arms, nobody will try to kill us. Here is what he said as a candidate:
The text from the video:
...I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning. And as president I will end it.
Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending.
I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.
I will not weaponize space.
I will slow our development of future combat systems.
And I will institute an independent "Defense Priorities Board" to ensure that the Quadrennial Defense Review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.
Third, I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.
He said it then, and by golly he's sticking by it now -- even as dangers mount.
Am I implying that Obama might get lots of people killed if he continues down this path?
I'm not implying it -- I'm saying it. This is no time for flowers and teleprompters.
North Korea's nuclear test caught the U.S. completely by surprise. North Korea gave the U.S. one hour's notice, presumably so the U.S. could see for itself that the detonation was not a random earthquake.
North Korea is deadly serious. The fact that smaller nations have not previously been able to unleash lethal force against nations like the U.S. means nothing in the nuclear age.
We need a president and a Congress who are clear-eyed enough to fund missile defense aggressively now thatit'sthe only defense we have.
We are at a cross-roads. Iran is deadly serious. The path of diplomacy sounds high-minded but has achieved nothing year after year, while Iran enriches uranium, tests missiles, and perfects its nuclear weapons capability. More diplomacy means dithering, delay, destruction and death.
Do you remember the surprise attacks of September 11, 2001? Do you want to relive it -- only in a far, far worse way?
"Americans have known surprise attacks, but never before on thousands of civilians."
"All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack."
We don't have to relive it, if we act in time.
"As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror. This will be an age of liberty here and across the world." (George W. Bush, Speech to Congress, September 20, 2001)
Hiding Evidence of Global Cooling The content of these e-mails raises extremely serious questions that could end the academic careers of many prominent professors
Obama’s Trumped-Up Job Count Flunks Science Test The incentives are all wrong. They encourage districts to take the money and report healthy job creation in the hope of qualifying for more funds. Why didn’t anyone think of this in advance?
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