Seymour Hersh has an 8 page article in the New Yorker which basically says that after nearly a decade of trying and despite any assurances from Washington, the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are far from secure. The wheedling, perpetually offended and self-righteous nature of America’s ally is evident on every page alongside with Washington’s self-deception to provide a Laurel and Hardy style tragi-comedy which would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. Here are some highlights from from the article:
In an actual crisis, would the Pakistanis give an American team direct access to their arsenal? An adviser to the Pentagon on counterinsurgency said that some analysts suspected that the Pakistani military had taken steps to move elements of the nuclear arsenal “out of the count”—to shift them to a storage facility known only to a very few—as a hedge against mutiny or an American or Indian effort to seize them. …
Zardari offered some advice to Barack Obama: instead of fretting about nuclear security in Pakistan … You should help us get conventional weapons,” he said. “It’s a balance-of-power issue.” …
Leslie H. Gelb, a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “I don’t think there’s any kind of an agreement we can count on. The Pakistanis have learned how to deal with us, and they understand that if they don’t tell us what we want to hear we’ll cut off their goodies.” Gelb added, “In all these years, the C.I.A. never built up assets, but it talks as if there were ‘access.’ I don’t know if Obama understands that the Agency doesn’t know what it’s talking about.”
The former high-level Bush Administration official was just as blunt. “If a Pakistani general is talking to you about nuclear issues, and his lips are moving, he’s lying,” he said. “The Pakistanis wouldn’t share their secrets with anybody, and certainly not with a country that, from their point of view, used them like a Dixie cup and then threw them away.”
Tarar, who retired in 1995 and has a son in the Army, believed—as did many Pakistani military men—that the American campaign to draw Pakistan deeper into the war against the Taliban would backfire. “ The Americans are trying to rent out their war to us,” he said. If the Obama Administration persists, “there will be an uprising here, and this corrupt government will collapse. Every Pakistani will then be his own nuclear bomb—a suicide bomber,” Tarar said….
I flew to New Delhi after my stay in Pakistan and met with two senior officials from the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s national intelligence agency. (Of course, as in Pakistan, no allegation about the other side should be taken at face value.)
“Our worries are about the nuclear weapons in Pakistan,” one of the officials said. “Not because we are worried about the mullahs taking over the country; we’re worried about those senior officers in the Pakistan Army who are Caliphates”—believers in a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state. “We know some of them and we have names,” he said. “We’ve been watching colonels who are now brigadiers. These are the guys who could blackmail the whole world”—that is, by seizing a nuclear weapon. …Others are less sure. “Nuclear weapons are only as safe as the people who handle them,” Pervez Hoodbhoy, an eminent nuclear physicist in Pakistan, said in a talk last summer at a Nation and Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy forum in New York. For more than two decades, Hoodbhoy said, “the Pakistan Army has been recruiting on the basis of faithfulness to Islam. As a consequence, there is now a different character present among Army officers and ordinary soldiers. There are half a dozen scenarios that one can imagine.” There was no proof either that the most dire scenarios would be realized or that the arsenal was safe, he said.
The long and short of Hersh’s article — sensational as always — is that nobody is quite sure how “safe” the Pakistani nukes are. “A senior Obama Administration official brought up Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni organization whose goal is to establish the Caliphate. ‘They’ve penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army,’ he said.” The fact that Hersh could repeat many assessments, some of them wildly conflicting with each other is an indication that a lot of variables are in play. This suggests there is some probability greater than zero a scenario could come in true in which weapons could be taken over by a Pakistani “Major Hasan” and that the contingencies planned for the event would be just as effective as the recent response to the disturbance at Fort Hood.
The first decade of the 21st century is ending on a scene of uncertainty. The old comforting verities can no longer be taken for granted. The confident dreams which characterized the turn of the millenium are tempered by the idea that it may all vanish in an atomic cloud unleashed in the desire to return to the eighth century. America, which was once the sole superpower in the world, has unaccountably taken a vacation from the world. Perhaps not so unaccountably, but even Europeans, having long expressed their desire for a diminished America, are beginning to worry about the “missing President” — nowhere to be found in the 20th anniversary commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, nowhere to be found in Afghan policy, apparently indifferent to a resurgent Russia, impotent in the Middle East and on passively good terms with every dictator and authoritarian in the world.
Joe Loudon who was in Berlin on the day the Wall describes what has changed. History ended in 1989, but not quite in the way people thought. Fundamentally this generation of Americans and Europeans lost the will to pay for anything while its appetite for everything remained unabated. The eventual result was Barack Obama. In the next few years the heirs of the victory of the Cold War will get to live out the adage that one ought to be careful what one wants in case those wishes come true.
Now we have a new face of America. We elected Barak Obama, and he does not feel that moral duty to you as Reagan did, at least not enough to stand up to the shrill American voices that hate the American military. So he will not be there on November 9th to Celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I do not think he sees it the way you do. He will also not participate in the festivities on the campus of my College. Westminster College, in my State of Missouri, is where the great Allied leader Winston Churchill gave the Iron Curtain Speech. He told the World how millions of our fellow human beings were being stuffed into the cage, the very cage I was privileged to help dismantle. He had a way with words. On the campus of another American College he gave his shortest speech “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give in.” But I digress.
Our new President believes that you are on your own. As the KGB agent-turned-billionaire, puppet master of the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin conducts war games of an assault on Poland, Obama has decided to tear down the American missiles from Poland. We knew that he cared less as he promised to remove our protection from the Iraqi people. 150 of them were slaughtered just this week. He really wants to find a way out of Afghanistan and pull our soldiers out just as you are pulling your U.N. workers out right now.
So my new President will not be there with you, like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were there for you. He has other priorities. I really wish I could be there to celebrate with you. Unfortunately, with the passing of time, I have five children, our economy is bad, and I too, have other priorities. So I am sorry that my President, the American face to the World will not be there for you. I feel just a little better knowing that you asked America to give him to you. I hope you like him.
Could it be that Fukuyama was simply wrong? Daniel Hannan has this retrospective on the collapse of the Berlin Wall:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100016114/reflections-on-the-revolutions-in-europe/
Because as long as people conclude that they can profit from inflicting man’s inhumanity to man, barbaric acts, like those of the hammer & sickle crowd, or those who surpass them in man’s inhumanity to man (the Sons of Allah), then history will not have ended.
Sources matter. In politics as in police work you often have to deal with unsavory characters and sift their words. Granted that broken watches will be correct twice a day. Still it is important not to seek out the bank robber for advice when considering one’s options on crafting an interest rate policy or the pederast when evaluating your options for a Summer camp for children. Seymour Hersh is no damn good. Everything that he says me be correct but I decline to allow him to bull his way into my intellectual life. Richard Perle was right, the man is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist. Wretchard is their a bell I can ring so that a servant will come and haul him out of The Club?
LoTM.
You’re right. “Seymour Hersh is no damn good”
But when ol’ Seymour is worried about what Obama is doing is Pakistan,
you should be too. It’s a point of reference. Some hard core lefties are starting to get frightened about the road we’re on. Both with foreign policy and the economy. That should tell us something.
Fukuyama has become schizophrenic as of 2002. I have serious doubts about his ability to bring a coherent thought to the table.
“An unequal distribution of wealth, he stated, leads to social upheaval which in turn results in stunted growth.”
He stated this was his understanding of why the Latin American countries lagged so far behind the U.S. in development and the overall wealth of the population.
As you can see he has it wrong. It isn’t the unequal distribution that causes the social upheaval. It is the lack of any way for those not already wealthy to gain any appreciable wealth. But in the U.S. we have always had a largely merit based economy and this has allowed us to thrive.
As we sink into the morass of Socialism where those that vote can out vote those that produce. We will see our once great country and it’s melting pot of humanity become socially solid. Without the means to gain wealth the poor classes will resort to using govt to obtain what it can from those that produce.
It will eventually end with a war. Possibly a very large war. Population pressure assures us of that. Pinning down the timetable is the difficult part. But I would surmise that sometime within the next year we will see the fires start to glow.
what’s to happen to the free world? for 2 centuries the US has been the intellectual leader of democracy.everywhere on the planet,our ideas of freedom and human rights have been influenced by the US.Suddenly now that appears to be over.who’s going to carry the ball and where will their influence lead?
time will tell.
The best opportunity to deprive Pakistan of its nuclear arsenal was on the day after 9-11. After the white-hot anger of the Americans had passed, the Pakistanis knew that they could trash the Americans like a fiddle, playing according the needs of the hour discordant chords, on Kashmir, the Taliban, moderate as opposed to immoderate Islam and all the rest. In return the Americans had to let in more Pakistanis, line the generals’ pockets, allow dawa and turn a blind eye to the slow Jihad. The Indians had already figured out that much in 2001.
My first reaction at seeing Hersh all hot and bothered was to say, “hey the sky is falling even when Democrats are in office”. The significance of that is that Obama has been unable to work his miracles. To me that is the real news. Sy Hersh is now saying “it ain’t gonna happen”. The good news is that Hersh is now record as saying that a “world without nuclear weapons” isn’t just going to come from a stroke a pen. The bad news is that he might be right about Pakistan.
This is almost funny. I would laugh hysterically if I didn’t know how awful it is going to turn out.
The Bush years were a desperate attempt to keep the corks in quite a few bottles. Bottles ready to blow. He and his group can be criticized for ineptitude. But I think they recognized the reality.
His opposition, now in power, vigorously argued that there wasn’t any bottle, and none of them if they existed at all were ready to blow. Attitude amply illustrated by the hilarious reaction to Fort Hood. I’m surprised no tv news had dragged a psychiatrist onto the program and hammered them with all the psychiatrists gone bad and murderous in the past, and asked for an explanation. Not really surprised, because that would take some thought.
It is all going to blow up.
One of Taleb’s ideas is that theories are dangerous. Empirical evidence, and responding to that evidence works. Theories hide the facts from us. Bush was called an ideologue, the neocons were painted as single minded dangerous fools.
Now we see what ideologues look like. Nothing, absolutely nothing including the its ands and ifs have any basis in any reality.
I predicted that Obama would nuke someone. I still think he will. For the very reason that he will let things get so out of control that he has no choice.
He will leave office a failed, hated and broken man.
Derek
Reg 5, all I can is that I would not support any of our troops coming to Europe’s aid to help save you guys this time. You all have disresepected the 400,000 who died 60 years ago so that you could trash us for the past 25 years. You all are on your own, so you might want to start figuring out how you are going to defend yourselves.
It is inevitable that a Major Hassan will gain access to not one, but several nukes, and several US cities will die.
We know, this is simply inevitable.
What will matter, then, after millions of Americans dead, is not mourning, “healing” and the rest of the female-therapeutic junk. But rather survival, so that Dallas or Atlanta or St. Louis may live even after NYC dies.
That means, for sheer survival:
1. Immediate and total internment of all Muslims. Since the cost of not doing that is St Louis or some other city dying.
2. A short-term cutoff of all trade, immigration, visitors, and the like.
3. Immediate deportation of all foreign nationals or suspected foreign nationals.
4. Nuking all nations that could have produced the nuke (Iran and Pakistan) into a shadow of their former populations — which means killing about 116 million people (2/3rds of Pakistan’s 176 million) and about the same proportion of Iran’s 73 million. Since failure to respond “horrifically” will simply ensure follow on strikes from any comer: Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, and other opportunistic threats.
I fully expect the government such as will survive to dither and careen about in a display of PC/Diversity/Multiculturalism. But survival instincts after “another” city dies after the first one, and the residual powers in the States and dispersed US Military will respond to supplant vigilante action which would be a threat of alternative power.
It was always going to come to this. The nation simply cannot handle (or rather, its elites and feminized/feminine cultural/political power structure finds it too threatening) the changes needed to deter these threats.
Simply nuking Iran’s major nuclear points, and making sure ALL tribal/sectarian leaders understand the US will do so upon any attack on it, would do two things: first lamentably kill millions of innocent Iranians, but two show danger and power by the US to decision makers who matter: tribal/sect leaders in Pakistan (while removing Iran’s nukes).
Doing so however would irrevocably sway power to engineers, scientists, military men, and so on away from Shaman Presidents and the “View.” So we won’t do it, and be damned.
The “good news” of course is that a shattering attack on the US will result in the US being a permanent Armed Camp with nearly everyone in the Military, and non-Majority people being made second class citizens, while non-natives are simply summarily deported after internment.
It is clearer than ever that the US cannot dynamically change, absent shattering deaths in the millions. Then the change will be so complete that even Hersh can see where he will end up (likely in prison or deported, at best without any means to earn a living).
Pakistan’s nukes were a problem twenty years or more in the making. Presidents since Reagan kicked the can down the road. The result will be millions of US dead and the end of the old system of life and prosperity. A mean, impoverished, vengeful and always fearing society, with no place for those not making or wielding weapons will take hold. God help us all.
Wretchard wins “Best Lines” prize again.
“Fundamentally this generation of Americans and Europeans lost the will to pay for anything while its appetite for everything remained unabated. The eventual result was Barack Obama. In the next few years the heirs of the victory of the Cold War will get to live out the adage that one ought to be careful what one wants in case those wishes come true.”
Absolutely stone cold true.
#9 steeple
cool your jets i’m canadian, we’ve bailed them out twice like you ,just earlier.
#10 whiskey
i sure hope the US eastern cities don’t get nuked-being in eastern Canada i’m downwind.
That’s one of 2 big reasons I’ve never understood why people have wanted to be president-there’s a damned good chance you might have to kill several million people to make a point(and there’s no way around it,you are representing 300,000,000 people’s interests not your own).the other is the total loss of privacy,the secret service is in the washroom with you, and outside your bedroom door.
#11, just what I was going to say!
Fundamentally this generation of Americans and Europeans lost the will to pay for anything while its appetite for everything remained unabated. The eventual result was Barack Obama.
Says it all.
The word “earn” has lost its meaning for the consensus, urban, state of the art culture. Happily, large parts of America are still more traditional. Is that a stable configuration? Doubt it.
OTOH, Hersh is just speculating wildly, he seems to have no actual facts in hand. He’s probably right, but maybe it doesn’t matter, or at least by his own account it isn’t really news. The Pak bombs are (at last count) very primitive, who knows if they are even functional, and would have to be delivered by commercial shipping to get outside the borders of their country … or mebbe into Afghanistan? Harumph. We never did nuke Afghanistan as bin Laden thought we might, but maybe the Taliban, will, courtesy of the nation whose capital is Islamabad.
“… [Hersh] might be right about Pakistan”?
I place the likelihood of Islamic Nuclear Terror (INT) somewhere between 100% gonna happen and inevitable. So much so that I’m selling my house in LA and moving to undisclosed locationville. How do I know it’s inevitable?
Rather than showing any sign of pushback against so-called “radical” Islamic trends, after 9/11 and the WOT the global Ummah is embracing Islam more fervently than ever. There is no stopping the Mullahs’ madness now, whether in Falls Church, Riyad, or Tehran. Someplace somewhere in the not-too-distant future a Muslim group or individual will gain access to the bombs, at which point they will be used.
There is no “if”.
There is no “might”.
It is going to happen.
I’ve come to view Hersh as a tool and for every report he comes out with I wonder who is pulling his strings.
In this case there is nothing too earth shattering in the report except possibly the Obama glitter powder is finally starting to loses its magical ability to bedazzle the left and reporters.
This notion that we don’t have to worry about the mullahs but the power hungry generals who may have their own private nuke stash embezzled from the Pakistani government is a distinction w/o difference. The Taliban (i.e. the mullahs) are creatures of the Pakistan military & intelligence service. No wonder why it seems Pakistan’s heart is not in the fight.
I have no doubt it all a tangled and pretty close if not already intractable knot and maybe smooth words will serve as oil to lubricate the unraveling the knot but will do nothing to unravel it. Let us hope we don’t need a sword to deal with that knot.
Y’all please pardon the OT comment, but Kelly’s Heroes is on AMC this Wednesday and Thursday.
And Europe, maybe that is the new model. We may still be coming to save you, but we want the gold.
If a real disaster impends, one can hope there are enough clear-headed people on every side to bring the crazies under control. Humanity can often act very differently in the face of an existential crisis. If things aren’t too bad, then people can be indecisive. But if things are bad yet not too bad they can act decisively and humanely. The worst situation is when things are so bad that all the bets are off. This is a mental place few people have been. This is where real desperation as only those can be desperate, comes into play. Imagine yourself drowning, then nothing matters. Not your clothes, money, or anybody else. That’s desperation and under the spell of that crisis people will pull their mothers under.
We are leaving the “aren’t too bad stage” where BS can still exist. For so long as we don’t go all the way over to the land of despair there may be stability left in the system to settle stuff humanely, justly and decisively. Maybe the nations will build a new international system based on sanity.
What statesmen ought to aim for is to manage things so the world never completely goes over the edge. I think even liberals are beginning to wonder what will go on in the White House if the 3 am phone call ever happens.
#17 wretchard
elections have consequences. just because we have survived by the skin of our teeth before doesn’t mean that we will again.
Wretchard, Depends who that call is from, don’t it? If it’s from Poland, no one is going to answer. If it’s from Japan, no one is going to answer. But maybe if it’s from Venezuela or Russia, the President will be quite willing to have a chat.
The problem is that despair empowers evil. The real issue is how to keep ourselves from despair. Empirical evidence isn’t helping at this point. Planning for an all out crisis is a bit of a contradiction in terms. Sure, we can be prepared, but we know not what our countrymen will do, which cities will survive, etc. Luck will surely play a role in what happens after.
I’m down to prayer. At least I know my redeemer lives.
Our only natural allies are free market democracies. Ergo, our single most important ally is India, the world’s most populous free market democracy, which, not coincidentally, borders the world’s most populous, Islamist, nuclear-armed state.
Relative to Whiskey’s “Jericho” scenario, the question is: “What if we don’t go all the way?”
Not even 9/11/01 turned out quite right for the attacking side. Not even 7 Dec 1941 turned out quite right for the attacking side. Not even 6 Jun 1944 turned out quite right for the attacking side.
What if we intercept an inbound nuke, whether via ship or missile? What then?
Very few Presidents would respond by turning the attacking side into a large scale simulation of the Moon. Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan come to mind and that is about it. No way is President Nobel Peace Prize going to explain to the Pakis or Iranians or the Norks the new American definition of Air Rage. And this assumes we can even figure out who is attacking.
Best response in the case of an intercept or even a misfire is to tell all of the possible attackers – even the ones we do not think did it – that they have 24 hours to meet some very specific demands or else they get vaporized.
But what will we really do? Not that, for sure. And that is one case in which you wish you had a few less clear headed people around.
Reg, I apologize for the erroneous assumption.
Sounds like you could help spread the word with your countrymen:
“Canadians have a crush on Barack Obama leading up his inauguration Tuesday as the 44th president of the United States, but that sense of approval doesn’t extend to policies that could affect their lives, according to a poll done for CBC News.
The EKOS poll found only 3.8 per cent of respondents have a negative view of the Democratic president-elect, compared to 81 per cent who approve of his performance as he prepares to take over the Oval Office. (Another 15 per cent said they didn’t know or had no opinion on the matter.)
EKOS president Frank Graves said the approval-rating numbers for Obama among the 1,000 Canadians surveyed from Jan. 15 to 17 are outstandingly high, especially compared to the opinions people in this country have held of departing Republican President George W. Bush.
In past polls, Canadian disapproval ratings for the man who led his country into war in Iraq in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 have registered in the 70s and 80s, “and sometimes higher,” Graves told CBC News.”
What will it take to make a Harper/Obama trade happen?
Whiskey @ 10 stated: [Nuking Iran] … would irrevocably sway power to engineers, scientists, military men, and so on away from Shaman Presidents and the ‘View.’”
My initial (smart-@ssed) response was, only if it works; by which I mean, no additional attacks on American soil follow. My more serious response is, why do you think the change would be irrevocable? Why would nuking Iran be different from, say, nuking two Japanese cities. We nuked two Japanese cities and yet, the Shaman President and ‘The View’ are in control.
#16 RWE
I don’t think they have that much gold [or other things of value], and gold does not create the means in a timely manner when they do not exist. And we have no means to help in Europe, lacking uncommitted forces and being bankrupt. Europe is going to be in a 3 way fight over who gets to rule the debris. The EU is a reincarnation of the First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire [which was none of those things, but a merged proto-France and proto-Germany ran things]. They have finally created its dreamed of dictatorship with the facade of democracy. The Russians are not done with Europe, and neither the US nor the EU has the means or will to stand up to them. Then there is the matter of demographic collapse and their replacement by a growing, radicalized Muslim population.
We are not going to step in to defend the people of Europe from the EU. The Administration may consider trying to help suppress the European people if they revolt, in hope of similar aid here if needed. There is no way in any of the circles of Dante’s Inferno that we will be sending troops to Europe to fight Muslims. And we have already backed down to the Russians.
Europe is scrod. We will watch from the sidelines. And wait our turn, for we will be next.
Subotai Bahadur
Understanding international “political order” is always a very chancy thing, I think. For years, during the so-called “Cold War”, many thought we understood the order of things: two factions, both armed with total weapons, fighting various proxy wars around the globe for an edge, with many non-aligned, poorer nations sometimes involved.
Probably not, even as a simple synopsis.
Today, there is an underlying order of money that is moving around the world that is “ordering” things. I am not being a conspiracy theorist, but frankly alarmed that even sovereign governments may not be able to control what is happening. I don’t think there is a plan or set of plans, just capital flowing in strange ways and much of it in currency hedges and such. It is leading to unpredictable strange things happening in reaction. There is a great deal of financial “insecurity” right now, as nobody is quite sure just what certain currencies are worth, or where to put your money. And then add the uncertainty of the Obama Administrations programatic changes to government and the economy, and uncertainty is increased.
Today in the US, the DJ Average went up, but the value of the dollar dropped. What is happening?
Are foreign bank exchanges parking their dollars in the blue chips and such, waiting for a better day to convert them back to Euros or Reminbis or Yen, or is something else happening?
Will somebody pull the plug (cash out stocks) at a key moment in the near future? Who can afford to play this game?
There is an underlying order to this (perhaps extremely unpleasant), but we poor kulaks don’t have the faintest clue.
Derek @8: You may be more prescient than you know. With all that is swirling about, Obama may be seen as a tragic figure in 50 years.
30 years after makes Jimmy Carter out to be a bitter old man.
I have the feeling the world is like a railroad freightyard, and we a runaway boxcar, careening down the tracks, switching madly from track to track, but always moving remorselessly towards the high iron and the deep, black river, unheeding of the warning signs BRIDGE OUT!
I see the world around me flashing
Careening past and faster than before
I see the smiling faces
Not knowing they’ll soon hear the missiles roar
I see the children playing
Not knowing if they’re rich or if they’re poor
I see it all
I see the fall
From a boxcar door
I see Obama sleeping
A’dreaming of a world that he would cure
I see the man’s advisors
Not knowing anything but still damn sure
I see the nukes a’moving
I see what Islam crazies have in store
I see it all
I see the fall
From a boxcar door
I see the rails a’burning
I see the switches in a light so pure
I see the high iron coming
I see the river and the distant shore
I see the world around me glowing
I see the silver missiles start to soar
I see it all
I see the fall
From a boxcar door
My 26
I tried a Youtube link to Boxcar Willie’s From A Boxcar Door, and when that failed tried to edit 26 to give Wille credit, but the edit would not hold still to allow me to do that. I would not have anyone think I use stuff without attribution.
Walt Erickson
I agree with Lifeofthemind that Seymour Hersh is no damn good. I really have no interest in what Seymour Hersh has to say (he’s in that gray area between moonbat and traitor). However Wretchard was correct to point out that Obama has been unable to work his miracles for people like Hersh. Obama is slowly losing his moonbat base.
In the end the only strategic advantage the US has is dispersion, but it’s an immense advantage. You can take out US cities with a handful of delivered (somehow) nuclear weapons, but you can’t defeat us with that many. European states are far more vulnerable, often to even a single device.
We are headed towards a short nuclear war, after which we will implement the global control regime, backed up by threats, that we could have had at this stage for nothing, if we had the resolve.
Likely cost of the path we are on: 50 million unnecessary deaths, up to half of them Americans.
Sey Hersh is a tool. I remember a year or two ago he passed on some info he learned that the CIA had teams in Iran.
A lot of people hyperventilated about Hersh’s perfidy on that one. One thing is for sure, that story probably set the Mullah’s on edge and my guess is every now and then the CIA plants a story and Hersh they know on which cell phones Hersh’s number is on. Not saying Hersh is cooperating but even if you know how to deal with someone you can get the uncooperative to cooperate.
Speaking of great moments in journalism, or thread hijacking I suppose, have people followed Mudville Gazette’s coverage of CNN deliberately mangling a survivor’s quote to discredit the evidence that Hasan yelled “Allah Akbar?”
Civil Defense – were is it?
If a nuclear explosion went off in a US city, tens to hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved by an effective civil defense program.
For a ground burst, the easiest for a terrorist to accomplish, the fallout would be heavy and could kill as many or more than the direct blast effects. Yet, a knowledgeable population could respond in ways to minimize both panic and overdose.
Yes, that means “duck and cover” lessons for our kids but it means more too. We need a broader understanding of what to do following a blast and how to respond – and NOT respond. Our correct reactions could save our lives.
For our government to NOT be increasing public awareness and knowledge is irresponsible.
Seymour Hersh and his colleagues sold obama to the world. They worked pretty hard at it, and they didn’t rest. This country, its institutions, its heritage, its people were rotten and needed to be replaced. They did it, but it was too easy. There was no real struggle, as if no one really believed that a fake president could really be foisted on the American people without somebody putting the kibosh on such a project at just the right time. Now he’s worried?
Nuclear bombs have a definite shelf life; best if used before a certain date. I’m hoping that they’re too busy moving them around, hiding and re-hiding them to remember their maintainence.
dkite @ #8 said:
“The Bush years were a desperate attempt to keep the corks in quite a few bottles. Bottles ready to blow. He and his group can be criticized for ineptitude. But I think they recognized the reality.”
I think Bush’s efforts, particularly in Iraq, were all about taking OFF the corks in an extremely overheated region of the world in order to let off some proverbial steam. Steven den Beste wrote an excellent piece in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion describing the strategic overview of what is ultimately a war for Islamic reformation and a fundamental global power realignment.
http://tinyurl.com/l6we27
It is Obama and those like him on the left, with their centralist, Kantian impulses and near complete lack of knowledge concerning all things military, who are attempting to replace the corks and enforce the old Westphalian system. The failure to successfully nation build in Afghanistan (A fool’s errand in my opinion) or a single WMD attack on American soil though will bring their fantasies crashing to the ground. No amount of political maneuvering or social engineering is going to send the Islamic expansionist genie back.
10. Whiskey
Your scenario is plausible but perhaps your targets are not the best.
The source of this pestilence is Islam, not the machinations of particular states under its influence.
If we lose a city or a couple of cities, doing a tit for tat doesn’t solve the ultimate problem.
Certain so-called holy places have to be at the top of the hit list and that black rock thingie comes to mind as a start.
Oh Bother — The reason it would be different is that the US would not be in August, 1945. Rather, say September, 2010. Or what have you.
FUNDAMENTALLY, Technology has CHANGED the playing field. A Hassan type might have the power to eradicate whole cities, something unimaginable for the US of 1945. And Pakistan manufactures nukes and Hassan types both in great quantities.
Which means, the real issue is not what happens after the first US city dies but what happens after the SECOND dies. With millions of dead Americans.
The US fought in Europe not to eradicate and kill Germans, but the Nazi regime. Even in the Pacific, where the fighting was brutal, America’s official policy was not eradication of the Japanese people (a goal well in the grasp of Curtis Le May without nukes and with area bombing).
But if the formula nukes + hostile people = dead American cities, the only way to stop the endpoint of the equation is remove the hostile people. By killing them all (or mostly). Since the knowledge of nukes is a genie out of the bottle. Hell North KOREA can make them.
And since the amount of hostile people to America, simply by our relative wealth, is limitless, this means turning America into a permanent armed camp. Which is a very unhappy thing. For example, this would entail strict rationing according to military need. Including food, clothing, metal consumption, and the like for a “war effort” that never ends, to crash-produce airplanes, ships, nukes, missiles, and satellites, not to mention UAVs, and what not. There would be no place for private motorcycles, firearms, camping, hiking, fishing, boating, pleasure drives, dogs, cats, horses, other pets, hunting, and nearly other private, pleasure inducing activities that are not military related. Almost every man would be under military supervision, in the reserves or active duty, if nothing else to soak up unemployment as the global economies suffer massive shocks of rapid end of oceanic trade.
This is not “Jericho,” rather it is a sort of WWI and WWII that just never ends, ever, and drags on and on and on. With massive casualties by the West first, and then massive ones by the Muslim east on and on and on, with more menaces discovered and dealt with. Resources seized and bled dry (oil, gas, timber, etc.) from Arabia to Indonesia.
The people that die won’t be mostly soldiers responding to a Whistle “Once more over the top boys!” into machine gun fire, or facing battles of annihilation in the Pacific or Omaha Beach. It will be the ordinary guy in the office tower, seeing the flash of the blast, or those going early to pray at the mosque, feeling the first microseconds of the pressure wave.
To quote Wretchard’s drowning metaphor, the threat of drowning again will cause the US to become a permanent “core of engineers” draining lakes. The lakes being the World’s 1 plus billion Muslims.
Need I mention that the “solution” to US cities being nuked is a classic “Big Goverment plus” growth? If you like Big Goverment now, imagine how it will grow (even if or especially if Washington is gone) in response to a real threat that killed millions of Americans in an instant? EVERY aspect of life would be under permanent military control, and while I respect and am grateful to vets and active duty military, the force they serve under is still a bureaucracy and an often stupid one. I have no desire to be part of it, forever, in every aspect of my life. Where I might live, what I might do, how I will do it, and what I will do in my spare time. Which is exactly the survivors fate. Not “scrappy rebuilding of America.” America can survive the loss of major cities.
But it will not be the same. It will be all military, all the time, as the only institution big enough, functional enough, and competent enough to respond to the crisis. The way the Church supplanted the Emperors after the Empire fell in the West, only in a space of weeks not centuries.
wretchard wrote:
Are you quite sure this is just not the personal flavor of Hersh being projected into the article? Just sayin’, ya know?
A friend from Madras maintains that the issues in that part of the world are Pakistani in origin. I think that he is right and now the American Western world is finding out what a feckless dangerous bunch they are. Since their founding (Pakistan) was done in such an underhanded manner, essentially the dictates of Islam say that the country should become part of the ummah (Dar al Islam) as opposed to Dar al Harb, what can we really expect? That the Paks should suddenly change their stripes?
oMan @ 11: You are so right. wretchard can be SO clear and succinct.
We’ve got a president who has no sense of the appropriate, who basically wipes his feet with the English language whose basic sense of common decency is beginning to seem suspect to Americans, a head of the army who says that mass murders are preferable to lack of diversity, a head of homeland security who offers cooing words of solace to Dubai Muslims while the dead victims of Islamic violence lay yet warm on the floor.
I didn’t think the rot was this deep.
For the first time I’m thinking, “We’re on our own people.”
Life of the Mind:
What should one do if one discovers that one or two of the heroes of early American history who are written of in worshipful tones in history texts just happen to have been cruel, unsavory, and bloodthirsty monsters?
I regard the question of whether history is revisionist as irrelevant. What is relevant is whether one’s conclusions are grounded in historical evidence. Either a book or article is well researched or it isn’t. As an historian, I think it is important to tell the truth and let the chips come down as they may. Damn the politics, full speed ahead.
36. whiskey:
I don’t agree that an all out retaliation against the sources terrorism would even make us break out in a sweat, Whiskey.
If we are nuked and reply in kind, we cut loose one barrage of Trident missiles from a submarine that is already on patrol and every identified major trouble spot or holy place in the world vaporizes.
Then the sub comes home and we give them all medals and start rebuilding.
No explanations, no nation building, no occupation, and the barbarians no longer matter.
Big deal.
39. Alexis:
Life of the Mind:
“What should one do if one discovers that one or two of the heroes of early American history who are written of in worshipful tones in history texts just happen to have been cruel, unsavory, and bloodthirsty monsters?”
At this remove how much does that matter if they helped found one of the greatest experiments in human history, the US?
I totally agree with you about the importance of telling the truth and let the chips come down as they may but I have seen too many people pushing their own agendas and ideology, ones often inimical to this republic and much of what they say has been revisionist.
Revisonism matters, especially when academics are so lock step left that the revisionism is unchallenged and its claims undebated and then it becomes the basis for brainwashing a generation of students.
Sy Hersh is a tool, agreed, but a tool useful to someone.
I am glad BCers acknowledge that Russia is resurgent rather than engaging in the “Russia is finished” wishful thinking of the 90s early 2000s. But why do so many BCers assume if the Crimea wants to rejoin the Motherland (which it was detached from by none other than Nikita Kruschev in the 1950s) that means Russian tanks will be in Talinn or Warsaw the following year?
I know it isn’t popular to ask why America should fight to the death to defend borders drawn by Josef Stalin (North/South Ossetia split and throwing the latter into his native Georgia) but I’m asking. Don’t we have enough enemies already?
Don’t you think that lending Georgians money they don’t have to buy Patriot missiles is going to lead to similarly generous arms deals for Hugo Chavez? Do we need that pointless tit for tat? Can we even afford it? Or are some folks here going to start paying heed to the Asia Times Spengler, who understands the futility and folly of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian/Georgian (both countries which have worse demographics than Russia).
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK03Df02.html
Here’s the quote:
“I think even liberals are beginning to wonder what will go on in the White House if the 3 am phone call ever happens.”
Hopefully not the same thing as happened in the school where Bush was told about 9/11; President looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights, followed by several hours flying around in random directions while people who were actually competent got things done – and many of them died in the doing, most of them ordinary firemen and cops.
American Presidents, for a very long time (arguably since Eisenhower), been exactly what you might expect from a political system in which you can essentially buy votes, and the President has to have had either millions of dollars or access to same to get into office in the first place, and the electioneering starts on Inauguration Day.
The only exception to this since maybe 1960 was Reagan, and even he had the greatest statesman since Churchill to prop him up. I am quite convinced that if Margaret Thatcher had not got into office, there would still be an Iron Curtain across Europe, and we would still all have had the spectre of global thermonuclear annihilation at the backs of our minds, awake and asleep.
The current situation is not like that. One, or possibly two, nudets in the West – and the current enemy gets smashed utterly, instantly and forever. “World War II once a second” – for about twenty minutes. And if the President of the time won’t do it – well, then he won’t be President very long.
Pardon the ot, but this is one of the funniest things I’ve heard, and goodness knows we could use a laugh these days.
oops:
Mother Goose Goes Nuclear
The Russian strategic rocket forces (as they style them) have to be the sum of all our fears –’fears’ in the sense not that we tremble in our boots but that we include among the topics we raise with our our (*cough*) office of the CiC is just that particular item –Putin’s spending on massive civil defense, his new generations of rockets and warheads, his crash (or nearly so) modernization of the entire military, his new doctrines of winning a nuclear war, all while we do nothing but watch president Buster Keaton fret about how best to throw away our (deteriorating) deterrent without our (wee the people) much noticing. SecDef Gates, for example, has over the last year or two made some rather stunning remarks about the shifting-against-us balance of strategic weapons power –and the reports get buried on page 31 and have a hour’s legs if any legs at all. Urge selecting the Russian nuke titles in JR Nyquist’s archive and scanning a few of ‘em. Mavbe emailing one or two to Aunt Sally and Uncle Jim.
After all, dropping the ball in this area would be uniquely bad –remember what you heard about your folks and theirs, how they felt on Dec 06, 1941? Or our own attitude as of 9/10/01? –that it was American complacency that encouraged the bad entity to try the attacks. And those attacks were nothing compared to what could happen if we don’t wake up.
“”As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” – General George Casey,US Army chief of staff”
Buddy Larsen or Luddy Barsen whoever, your claims are a joke. The sea based Bulava missile has failed in the last ten tests and the land based Topol ICBM is just slightly more reliable.
But I know, you think it’s all an elaborate ruse, like in that Simpsons episode “Homer Tide” where the Russian ambassador pushes a button at the UN, switching his title to “Soviet Union” and says “Nyet, vats vat ve vanted you to think! Bwahahahahahaa!” and the Berlin Wall comes back up, Lenin crawls out of his tomb going “grrrerrrrerrr”.
Doug,
Thank you for the voicemail link. It gives me hope.
There is a spirit in America. Don’t mess with the US. Don’t mess with us.
The arrogant, self indulgent and destructive will be taken down. Those that live by the Audacity of Hope to street hustle themselves past any consequences for their conduct and to justify taking what others have earned through honest labor will be humbled.
Alexis,
You work very hard to be very credible and earn respect so that your work can be fairly received and the flaws of the messengers of the past are not conflated with the worth of the messages that are relied upon to build a society with more wealth, creativity, liberty, safety and justice than have ever existed for so many in all of human history.
Mr. X,
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Your Masters may have over reached and “woken up a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve.”
a single attack is too easy to carry out. Put the device in a shielded storage container in the hold of an old cargo ship, sail it into any port (west coast just as vulnerable, if not more so because of the heavy cargo traffic) and detonate just as the ship is docking, or at first boarding.
Impossible to detect, impossible to stop.
There are approximately 1,454,515 servicemen and women.
About 9,000 professed Muslims.
By my shakey math, if our guys commited fratricide in the name of religion at the same rate as Muslims over the past 7 years, (this, plus the 101st Airborne Grenade Guy) we would have suffered about 3,000 on base murders.
Happy Birthday Marines
Semper Fidelis
at ten shun!
http://tinyurl.com/cava46
Better to say,”If an islam is moving his lips he’s lying” It is known as takfir methodology. Lying to obtain by guile and deceit your goals is honored.
It has been common for many in the west to assume that what Al Qaeda wants for us is something like the ‘Islamic’ governed society we see in Saudi Arabia, and that country’s sharia based laws, strict religious prohibitions, banned Bibles, restrictions on women and even robed sword-wielding executioners. However, for Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia is a state of impure Islam and one grossly corrupted by western ideas, influence and contacts! The Al Qaeda takfirist war against us is an extension of their desire for purification of the Ummah, and as such, we are will remain a target until and unless takfirist ideology loses its ability to attract and motivate significant numbers of adherents in the Muslim world.
This isn’t the grreatest article explaining it but I wasn’t going to research camp to find “the best” BC’ers are smart enough to pursue the methodology if they choose.
http://tinyurl.com/yzuygg2
LOTM #2
The truth you write is crystal clear and totally correct.
“Seymour Hersh is no damn good. Everything that he says me be correct but I decline to allow him to bull his way into my intellectual life. Richard Perle was right, the man is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.”
“Better to say,
”If an islam is moving his lips he’s lying”
It is known as takfir methodology.
Lying to obtain by guile and deceit your goals is honored.”
—
Works wonders on PC addled, white guilt ridden Americans,
regardless of the faith of the practicioners.
Often practiced by “our representatives” in Congress.
Adding an endorsement to Whiskey #10
The ability by our enemies to make atomic weapons is rolling at a rate much faster than any of our intelligence agencies initially predicted.
Whiskey #10 points out a number of important truths, the bottom line I read is that a nuclear war will happen sooner rather than later. What shall be done?
I have advocated preemptive strikes on islam given it’s aggressive anti-everyone else philosophy and it’s desire to spread to enemies of the USA nuclear technology as well as completed nuclear systems.
It is the only rational course in the face of 16th century cultures armed with nukes.
But stand by because CONUS will be eating a few nukes in the easily foreseeable future. Preemption can slow this progress.
Next to that you’d better learn to be a survivalist and begin anew the shelters, now overgrown or filled in, we built in our backyards in the 1950’s.
To those who doubt all this I say wonderful for you will be one less person to care for who was ill prepared and totally naive.
Im struck by how in the past Buraq is. Economically he is hung on Keynes and the monetarist ideas that completely ignore human behavior. Politically he is stuck on the failed ideas of a governmental solution to any and all our ills, despite the failure of more governmental programs than one man can name. He is hung on the Wesphalian state and diplomacy as the path to peace in our time, despite the trouble caused and threats offered by non-state actors. He is hung on the idea that we’re no better than anybody else in our acts around the world. As the American patriot Russell Honore said “He’s stuck on stupid.”
wws,
While the threat of a rogue nuke is real there are efforts to counter that, including the use of dosimeters by cargo inspectors both at the border and increasingly at the overseas point of embarkation. As this document indicates all CBP officers are walking alarms insofar as they wear dosimeters. http://tinyurl.com/y9t2fxs In addition a search on cbp.gov for “radiation” will give more information on efforts to counter a known threat.
Do not neglect the very real threat that would be caused by less dramatic but still extremely disruptive attacks using simpler technology. The purpose of a terror attack is to induce terror and only secondarily to achieve the widespread physical damage caused by a nuclear blast.
A Dirty Bomb radiological device that is constructed from medical waste and ANFO (like the Oklahoma City bomb) could contaminate and more importantly shut down all economic activity in an effected area for weeks. Postal workers refused to work in a building that had handled the anthrax letters. The implications that targeting critical nodes could have on the economy are serious.
Some decades ago I believe that ABC TV had a special on a hypothetical terror attack using a refined petroleum (gasoline) tanker that entered NY harbor and emptied its cargo into the East River just below the Brooklyn Bridge. The result was a combustible slick in a confined space between a major population center and the financial district, then less populated than it is now. The ship itself would have been converted in the process of emptying its cargo into a more lethal trigger filled with a highly volatile gas vapor. In effect it would become a poor man’s nuclear bomb.
For more on the concern that people had with the threat before 9-11 my advice is to read this, http://tinyurl.com/yfl9h9c. The 376 pages are worth your time and it is still useful. We knew the issues and were working the problem. The media and the Democrats working together to lull America back to sleep and give us to Obama is all the more inexcusable.
The choice of sheltering in place (fallout shelters) vs evacuation is a bit different now than in the Cold War.
General Thermonuclear War would mean that there was nowhere to run to within your dose limits. You’d get your 500+ REM before you escaped. A single nuclear terrorist attack would have a much smaller fallout profile. Hence, prompt evacuation would usually be the preferred option.
But that is only if the government can make prompt fallout predictions (they can) and you know to listen to them and respond appropriately.
The latter is my concern – the government hasn’t explained this to the general public. To do so would be the height of political incorrectness of course, which is why it isn’t done. Too “provocative.”
They’ve penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army,
Hmmm . . . . might we not be said to have the same here in the U.S. Army, I mean, for all practical purposes, thanks to multiculti head-up-our-assness? Doesn’t the British military establishment have this happening as well?
Subotai @#24
“Europe is scrod. We will watch from the sidelines. And wait our turn, for we will be next.”
Good word. We have to keep the pressure up on Europe’s leaders right now. They’re like slugs when it comes to national defense, their haughty pacifistic pretenses render them flaccid in the hand, and, because their economic model – a pastiche of government sponsored, global corporatism – relies on government-brokered sales with NPT violators, they actively ooze slime.
The best way to handle a slug is with a pair of tongs. “Europe is scrod!” Your comment picks a pressure-point and applies it squarely.
LoTM @#2,
“Granted that broken watches will be correct twice a day. Still it is important not to seek out the bank robber for advice when considering one’s options on crafting an interest rate policy or the pederast when evaluating your options for a Summer camp for children. Seymour Hersh is no damn good.”
Clever (…I used to feel the same way about Dick Morris during Clinton’s second term.).
As Wretchard noted, Hersh is signaling something. Of course, divining his signal will be like translating ancient pictographs – which is what bothers you and me about him, I think. If you take the bulk of Hersh’s work o’er the past ten-to-twelve years, its meandering messaging, hyper-ventilating tone and overt politicization have reduced his trade to cryptic, evangelistic and opportunistic, in that order. The “broken clock,” a cracked mirror, a scratched record, a crazy uncle…he’s all these things.
Still, I’m bothered by the feeling that Hersh is correct this time in his evaluation of Pakistan’s civic deficiencies, and in his observation that these weaknesses undermine both the “Republic’s” control over its nukes and its military’s fealty to constitutional republics in general.
Could it be, a lot of the journo’s who got proliferation so wrong *on purpose* during the Bush years now find it equally expedient to get the hard facts so coldly correct during the Obama years? With Hersh, I’m thinking it’s something about raw opportunism and needing to refill depleted stores of journalistic credibility.
Bein’ right for a spell will cure most cases of lick-spittling: it’s like mother’s spit on warts.
Whiskey @#10,
“[...]several US cities will die.”
You and I only disagree here: I think the most active front is Continental and South-Asian, and you believe that the front is in the Americas.
Do you think Europe (ie. it’s EU-nocrats, not its individual European nations) have negotiated an “Attack America First, Not Us” agreement with the ascendant nuclear Ummah? I ask because it is more likely, imo, that a Central or Mediterranean European city with will be nuked (or that, barring an actual detonation, a city in the region will suffer an overt blackmail threat) first, not an American one.
Notice that one view shifts the heat from Europe’s military and civilian leadership onto ours, and the other puts it decisively on Europe’s. Why do you think America will be hit first?
So he will not be there on November 9th to Celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
It was astounding, depressing, to see Merkel thanking Gorbachev, surrounded only by Europeans and the new Russian leadership (with their neo-Soviet designs on that part of the world), for the end of the Cold War, with nary a major American diginitary in sight. On this 20th anniversary of freedom’s last great victory, we have become a “non-person,” edited out of the photograph that is modern history.
By the way, folks…
They took down all the Fallout Shelter signs in the mid-90′s. The commander at my last assignment directed that be done at our base – and his previous job had been as a B-1 wing commander.
And they sold all the old CD Radiation Survey meters and dosimeters they had stockpiled as surplus. I bought some on ebay.
Ain’t gonna study war no more… now if we can just figure out how to get everyone else to take that approach…..
Mr X in comment #42: Russia is resurgent! We should acknowledge that instead of engaging in “Russia is finished” wishful thinking. We shouldn’t interfere in its expansion of borders and bullying of neighbors, or it’ll make big trouble for us!
Buddy then comments (#47) that Russia is indeed engaging in a military buildup which we should be concerned by, and match.
Mr X then immediately responds (#49) that No no no, not at all, Russia’s military is incompetent, there’s no need for us to worry about them, the very idea is a joke!
Which leads me to wonder just how many Mr X there are.
MX/49; The sea based Bulava missile has failed in the last ten tests and the land based Topol ICBM is just slightly more reliable …thanks Mr. X, that was my point precisely. Lots of testing –TEN tests of the new generation sea based ICBM.
You would have us believe that ten failed tests prove that NO major state effort is well underway and that NO powerful new capability is being developed?
Why –exactly –would you have us believe such nonsense?
And another laugher, arguably of somewhat less import, when your handle is “Mr X” your position, in ridiculing mine with that “or whatever”, is really weak.
***
( edited after reading bob/65; bob, good point. here is a possible explanation –Mr X are twins! )
Buddy, RE “Mr. X are twins!”:
Does that make him a “Dos-Equis!?”
Gentlemen, gentlemen. And ladies. We are not facing the Imperial Japanese or the German Nazis, both of whom had First World economies and were capable nations militarily and scientifically. We are dealing with Islamic “parasites”. They are not capable of anything other than destruction, and generally only against unprepared and defenseless civilians. They don’t develop, build or create anything original. Everything they have is because of the West. Yes, they might be able to destroy a city or two. We can EXTERMINATE them. And not even break a sweat. Do the math. Let’s take just one part of the US’s nuclear triad, the Trident submarines. We have 14 of these bad boys. Against which they have zero, I repeat zero, defense. A single Trident submarine carries 24 Trident II SLBMs, each of which carries eight W88 warheads (475 kt) or eight W76 warheads (100 kt). A single Trident submarine is able to hit and destroy 192 individual targets (cities, towns, villages, hamlets, huts or just to bounce the rubble for good measure).
For reference the Hiroshima bomb was 18kt and the Nagasaki one was 21kt. The W76 warhead has a blast radius (1 psi) of about 3.5 miles (38.5 square miles of destruction). The blast radius of W88 warhead is over 5.5 miles, or 100 plus square miles of flaming ruins. A single Trident SLBM has the capacity to turn between 300 and 800 square miles into glow-in-the-dark rubble. For reference the area of Greater Tehran is 301 square miles, Islamabad is 350 square miles, Damascus 220 square miles, Cairo 83 square miles, Riyadh 193 miles.
We fret about the Hassans of the world armed with a pair of handguns. They have to worry about a Curtis LeMay in command of a Trident submarine with a crew willing and eager to follow him (and after the vaporization of an American city it wouldn’t be stretch to say that American submarine crews just might go ‘postal’, especially if they think going ‘postal’ will save loved ones back home). A single Trident missile is the complete and utter destruction of any of their cities. A single rogue Trident submarine means the annihilation of one of any of their nations. The Trident fleet unleashed against the Islamic world means the destruction of their civilization. Period. It is they, not we, that are the ones playing with fire.
Tarnsman,
Give BHO 30 more months and he will mothball two thirds of our strategic forces and stuff the remainder with zampolits.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch …
Obama just managed to wiggle through the moment.
He sounded like a more eloquent Dubya, with that cute little Mussoliniesque lift of the chin. He spoke of a nation at war, praised this generation’s soldiers as the equal of any previous generation. He did slip in the “incomprehensible” word and spoke of a military of “all faiths,” but did a good job of soft pedaling the PC.
This first, most obvious threat to Barack Hussein Obama’s political career by the actions of Major Nidal Malik Hasan was successfully sidestepped. (He avoided any “shout out” moments.)
Of course, the fallout from the continuing disclosures of Major Hasan’s treason can still be a big problem for B. Hussein. The trial will be very interesting.
I’m too wrapped up in my own reactions to this atrocity to accurately gauge public sentiment, but I suspect that the Ft. Hood terrorist attack and the Obama administration’s inability to prevent may just prove to cause a greater tidal wave of disapproval than the Tea Party movement.
WOT takes center stage again.
LOTM… that’s a lot of zampolit shuffling. Bubble-heads smell funny and are weird, but they are an elite and dedicated group. I have to agree with Tarnsman… and I’ve mentioned this before (shameless plug), we only need one skipper with spine to re-task some targets. I admit as a former surflant MM2 I don’t know much about how The Big Candles get lit, but I have first hand experience on the craftiness of sailors and the innate ability to make it work.
You’ve (or perhaps another commenter) mentioned in the past about how dangerous the lower ranks were when coupled with ideas and only the chiefs knew the ropes? In my time if you wanted chocolate ice cream then you stole it from the chiefs mess under the guise of “AC&R maintenance”, for the most part they were overweight skaters who had mastered bucking the system. Not all mind you, but most. If you wanted results you spoke to a 1st or 2nd class, things got handled quietly and correctly, without a bother to anyone. Thank WJ Clinton for that mess… hopefully it hasn’t eroded beyond that since I passed the watch on.
“You would have us believe that ten failed tests prove that NO major state effort is well underway and that NO powerful new capability is being developed?”
How many ICBM tests does OUR country conduct every year? Care to enlighten us? Quit being a John Bircher.
The Mr. X handle is a tribute to George Kennan, but not in the way that you think. Kennan spent a great deal of the latter part of his life trying to keep people from turning his thesis into a rationalization for Russophobia – i.e. some version of the Russians are either at your feet or at your throat. Since the Russians aren’t in the former state as in the Nineties, ergo they must be in the latter.
I try to prevent those who falsely claim Ronald Reagan’s mantle to exploit his legacy to justify endless Cold War and shoving NATO expansion down the throats of a country (Ukraine) that doesn’t want it or making it happen by hook or crook to a country that doesn’t deserve it (Georgia). For God’s sakes people, by the end of the Eighties Reagan was probably whispered to be called senile behind his back by the Frank Gaffneys and Richard Perles for saying we should consider sharing SDI with what was then STILL the Soviet Union. Twenty years later these people are still pushing perpetual World War III AND World War IV…
Mr. Saakashvili’s George Soros patronage (boy if that isn’t the biggest conservative hypocrisy when it comes to Russia, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain of the Colored Revolutions! and stay utterly SILENT about it across the Right) his smooth talking Columbia U English, and blatant lies about who started the fracas last August just don’t matter. Don’t confuse you people with the facts. The Eurocrats say Saako started it? Anti-Americanism from Franco-German appeasers, of course. Just like that Magna deal Government Motors killed in a decision that I’m sure has nothing to do with anti-Russian politics. But I forgot, free markets don’t apply to freedom loving Ukrainians, they’re entitled to cheap subsidized Russian energy forever. “Unbreakable union of the peoples…” I think most Ukrainians are normal but their elites are Russia’s Mexico…let me in let me in gringo and subsidized my country while I spit in your face.
Most BCers are not old fart Cold Warriors still pining for Slim Pickens-style toe to toe nukyulur combat with the Russkies. The few here making their lame arguments give the rest a bad name.
It just reaches a point where you have to say that certain policies cease to be anti-Kremlin and become outright anti-Russian. God knows WE here would never stand for a Chinese alliance with Mexico or Russian ABM radars in Havana. At least the weapons sold to Venezuela are actually paid for by Venezuelan oil money as opposed to the American taxpayer endlessly subsidizing our client state in the Caucases. But you believe “we’re good, Russia is evil, so such lack of reciprocity is A OK”. Well, who do you think was the fourth largest holder of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paper? Russia. Who is among the U.S.A’s top ten creditors? Russia. Buying a lot of our debt must be some super secret novel way to bring us down, you have to admit. So if Russia is really evil and we’re squeaky clean, why are the “evil” forces subsidizing the “good”, at least until now?
Welcome back Cedarford…uh, I mean Mr. X
pretty good, Mr. X.
The more i hear those same half dozen points, tho, always with the same turns of phrase and squirts of gentle ridicule & trivialization, always couched within the same reasonable tone and and the same friendly ‘i’m just trying to be helpful here, so the local Bircher doesn’t stampede you’ (BTW Mr. X, you should tell your people that there’s only about ten people left in the USA who have ever heard of John Birch –your texts need an update), well, the more worried I get about what you somehow know for certain is nothing to be worried about.
The assertion of racism, tho, is something new. I suppose it wouldn’t be racism, tho, if one were just as you say and masking a hatred of the Russian people behind a desire to keep as close an eye as possible on the Kremlin.
Friend, my middle daughter majored in Russian language, visits there when she can. Her fiance is a ‘blue’ Ukrainian Jew who immigrated as a young child under Gorbachev’s torn-down wall. By baby sister’s sister-in-law has adopted two Russian children. myself, i’m a great admirer of Russian art and science, and the Slavic sensibility in general, with its wit, sense of humor, wry fatalism and willingness to accept life’s consequences as they come. Daughter’s university is but an hour away, so while she was a student in the Russian language Dept, home & hearth was generally crawling with Rooskies on weekends when the weather was good (and they never stole a single piece of the heirloom burgerkingware). So, if i worry about
1) Red Army massive civil-defense (what, $100 bbl worth of underground facilities for the command structure, since Putin came to power?),
2) strategic and tactical war-winning weapons modernization, the reorganization of the army beginning December 1st into a global mobile strike force that has published a new doctrine of using battlefield nukes in lieu of massed infantry formations, and
3) the thrust already underway as of August 2008, down through Transcaucasia toward the world jugular vein and femoral artery, already within range of Sukhoi and MiG, known as the pipelines, the Persian Gulf, and Saudi Arabia, and
4) the non-stop pro-Stalin, pro-communist, and stridently, hatefully, anti-American media campaign being led by national politicians and members of the Duma (and not talk-radio dj’s) who openly call for war to solve all of Russia’s ‘frozen conflicts’ and ‘legitimate security concerns of a great nation’ and who last August advocated for the Georgia invasion force to ”keep driving south until someone stops us”, it ain’t no redneck hatred of them Rooshins, it’s that 1917 bunch nested deep into the Kremlin, the guys that shot Nicholas and Alexandra and their five or six beautiful children to pieces in the cellar of their holding house, the Katyn Forest and Ukrainian Genocide guys, the guys who literally will not ever bury Lenin.
So, long/short, i have history books, i know the oil biz (the truth behind Shaakashvili’s ‘unacceptability’), i can read a map and spin a globe, and i see SO clearly how tantalizingly close Kremlin is to bloodlessly locking behind its rocket forces the full control of the planet’s oil –and therefore the planet’s politics & culture.
Yes yes, soon, that old FDR era shibboleth, Uncle Joe and that ‘Russian feeling of insecurity’ which so deftly and incuriously explained away not just a dozen or so ancient and proud eastern European nations reduced by six decades of USSR Tank Armies to a buffer zone populated by human shield slave people, citizens of no nation but Comrades of the World Red Revolution zone, soon with a little dash and a little courage and a little American president, maybe soon, depending on the breaks, maybe that Russian feeling of insecurity will need a new buffer zone –maybe a big blue round one called Earth.
Yup, if I’m one of the old comrades in the war room, oops i mean the ‘anti’ war room, i’d be drooling right now at (in Comrade Brezhnev’s term) the ”correlation of forces”.
60 Whitehall,
The problem with trying to run is that every fool will also be trying it. You won’t get very far. Anyone who tries will sit in their car, with no protection, absorbing the radiation that drops. You may be lucky the plume heads in a different direction, but if you are downwind, the dumbest thing you can do is head for your car.
We need to pressure local governments to identify and stock shelter locations. Look for places around where you live, and your family goes. Also, with only one bomb, the amount of fallout is less, so sheltering in place works better. Right now everyone is an Ostrich.
#10,
“It is inevitable that a Major Hassan (and/or foreign terrorists) will gain access to not one, but several nukes, and several US cities will die. We know, this is simply inevitable.”
Agreed.
“a shattering attack on the US will result in the US being a permanent Armed Camp”
Agreed, with the caveat that it must be a terrorist attack(s) to produce that result. Iran won’t directly attack us, an indirect nuclear terrorist attack has much less downside.
“It is clearer than ever that the US cannot dynamically change, absent shattering deaths in the millions.”
Sadly, this is self-evident as well.
“The result will be millions of US dead and the end of the old system of life and prosperity.
The social dynamics at play preclude any other outcome.
Russia and China are employing a long term geopolitical strategy of promoting Islamic terrorism against the US. It’s working and unlikely to either stop or be addressed by the US.
When nuclear terrorist attacks upon US cities happen, anyone care to wager on what the Russians, Chinese and Saudi’s will do with held US debt shortly after the attacks?
#74,
“i see SO clearly how tantalizingly close Kremlin is to bloodlessly locking behind its rocket forces the full control of the planet’s oil –and therefore the planet’s politics & culture. “
Could you elaborate upon this a bit more?
@44 Fletcher Christian
~ “Hopefully not the same thing as happened in the school where Bush was told about 9/11; President looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights, followed by several hours flying around in random directions while people who were actually competent got things done – and many of them died in the doing, most of them ordinary firemen and cops.” ~
I think it’s safe to say we all wish President Bush had simply ducked into a phone booth, donned his red white and blue Superhero outfit and held up the WTC towers with his X-ray vision. Yes indeed we do.
But never fear, Obama’s media profile is polished and secure – you may rest assured that whatever happens and wherever the chips may fall, he will look fabulous. I imagine his hoped-for visit to Hiroshima, if and when it occurs, will set a new standard for the Appearance of Presidential Something or Other.
http://tinyurl.com/yddhjd8
GB/76; yessir, and thank you for asking, but your request puts me in a familiar quandary –do the lite approach and that reflects poorly on the body of info; reflect on the body of info and be writing all night a post unreadable save for the rarity who happens to simultaneously feel interested, be motivated, and have the time. For that reason among others i’d like to direct you here, and ask you to look at the two simple bar charts in the 05/08/09 entry (provenance of charts seems impeccable, but you can take your own look, the link is nearby).
Another essay, one that brings to mind both KSA’s (KSA alone matches Russia’s oil production, and is the power and pricer in OPEC, and as such saved USA’s bacon from a nasty oil mkt freeze-up upon the Russian invasion of Georgia) recent big weapons purchase from Russia as well as Japan’s electing of the party that contains the increasingly influential ‘China-close America-distant’ movement, is at 07-06-09.
There’s others you should read –they’re 5 minute essays, painless timewise yet chockful of reports you won’t see elsewhere –messages from the netherworld, in denizen-tongue.
hey buddy – o/t but I didn’t get the chance on the other thread to thank you for the link to the pipers
Heyyoukids if you happen to be reading this – thanks to you too – beautiful stuff – when I was young I was a bit obsessed with all things Welsh – and I still think it’s the most beautiful language on earth
Mary, as a fellow fan i had to try to find you something good –surprisingly sparse on you tube –mostly a vidcam in a crowd as the band marches by on the street so you get a few bars –a fubars –or a wind-howled vidcam high in a stadium.
But this is great –the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, featuring –first time together in many decades –(“Don’t remind me!” –Napoleon) –Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, Royal Scots The Royal regiment, Royal Highland Fusiliers, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, Black Watch, Royal Highland Regiment, and Highlanders of Scott, Gordon, & Gammon.
Hearing this bunch come on across a rolling meadow in 18th century europe with the cannon booming and the smoke billowing must’ve been distinctly unnerving to the other side –and the march itself –the “state walk” –calculated to show unconcern for your feverish loading and firing your musket –well hell no wonder the redcoats ruled the world with such small armies. Quite a bunch you got there, Mr. Kipling, sir.
Well bloody every advocate of Russophobia I seem to run in to on the web has Russians as his best friends. I’m sure Pat Buchanan has plenty of Jewish friends too. I suppose it is possible to be anti-Israel without being prejudiced against individual Jews. So your stance would be similar.
And I remember John Birch because of the Bob Dylan song John Birch Society Blues, not because I’m old enough to have joined in its heyday.
“4) the non-stop pro-Stalin, pro-communist, and stridently, hatefully, anti-American media campaign being led by national politicians and members of the Duma ”
You don’t think the American media is manipulated when it comes to Russia, even after the blatant lies of last August? Shepherd Smith cutting off the little South Ossetian girl on Fox? CNN claiming Georgian bombing was Russian bombing with footage snatched from Russian TV? How naive are you? They did what they were told. And the WaPost writes what is told by the State Dept. And don’t even get me started on the Economist. I think Ed Lucas father in law must have been in the Estonian SS. And the WSJ completely bootlicks China’s heels but cannot stand Russia, probably because of the Murdoch ownership.
And I have no idea who Cedarford is. Not everyone who calls a spade a spade and says that a particular commenter has idiotic Cold War nostalgiac views out of touch with reality is a troll.
I am somewhat suspicious of timing of Seymour Hersh’s article. It could simply be a red herring or a diversion from the Fort Hood terror attack.
It’s full of interesting information to misdirect conservatives from Obama’s failings regarding the first major terror attack on US soil. If it had come out two or three weeks ago I would have found it more digestible. I mistrust Seymour Hersh and timing of his article – even if it proves correct.
MX/81; so, i’m lying about my personal connections, the USA gov’t is lying about everything, the USA media is lying whenever it critiques mother russia, and really, everybody is lying all the time and about everything in regards the invasion of Georgia –oops i mean the invasion of Russia, by that formidable platoon of Georgian tanks and their squadron of air cover, which, as soon as it had pushed out of the way and/or destroyed fifteen Russian armored divisions, five guards divisions, the Russian blue-water navy and fleet submarine attack and ICBM flotillas, the layered hundred regiments of rocket and arty, the twenty air wings of 4G fighters and fighter-bombers, the ten strategic bomber wings, the six thousand modern tanks and three thousand combat aircraft and one million soldiers & sailors, and lastly the 5000 nuclear weapons and the unofficial thousands of battlefield tacnukes that we dont know about, was planning to troop whatever was left of its 30 tanks, brigade of infantry, several Volga-closing inshore PT boats, and squadron of interceptors thru and over Red Square to the Kremlin, where it planned (and surely would have executed were it not for the Heroic Federation Armed Forces’ defense which by the skin of its teeth managed to stop the onrushing Georgian military nmachine’s juggernaut in its tracks inside –oops! –Georgia, mostly WAY inside Georgia –double oops!) where it planned to surround as much of the kremlin building, or at least the parking lot, as it could, and then pull out the Georgian Army’s bullhorn and demand a surrender.
But then Georgia has been at war with the Volga peoples for 800 years –about 750 of them before the USA began to get accused by the Kremlin of being ‘the problem with Georgia’.
Really, Mr X, really. Credibility is immportant, you know, in the hortatory didactic pedagogy biz.
#68 Tarnsman – Agreed in its entirety excpet for one thing. “The Trident fleet unleashed against the Islamic world means the destruction of their civilization.”
What civilisation?
Steeple: ‘You all have disresepected the 400,000 who died 60 years ago so that you could trash us for the past 25 years.’
Today, as I do every year, I have placed flowers on the memorial to the memory of the crew of B-24D Liberator No. 41-24282 BAR Y ‘Ruth Less’ of 506 Squadron 44th Bombardment Group 8th USAAF who died February 2nd 1944 returning from a raid over Germany in a badly damaged aircraft and in low cloud at that spot on the Downs above my house here in Eastbourne, England.
I am an ex-UK Serviceman – aircrew in the Royal Air Force. I have served in many parts of the world with servicemen from the United States. I have never heard one single one of them, ever, voice anything like your foul remark.
Today is 11th November, when we remember the Fallen.
I strongly suggest that you keep your ignorant remarks, and appalling English, to yourself.
5050noline,
Thank you brother.
Mr. Presbypoet – #75
For a brief discussion of fallout patterns, check this:
http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/12/gamma-radiation-from-surface-burst.html
Your post exactly illustrates my call for greater civil defense education and awareness. For most people in an urban target area, outside of the direct blast effects, sheltering in place is the correct move. For others, it is fatal without an adequate shielding – feet of dirt or concrete.
The risk, as you pointed out, is that people who should shelter get up and start running across the fallout patterns, thereby overexposing themselves to fatal radiation and people who should get up and move, shelter without adequate shielding.
In a panic mood, both groups get in each others’ way and everyone suffers.
The government will broadcast fallout predictions and recommendations within 15 minutes or so. People need to pay attention and follow directions!
At the start of “Their Finest Hour”, the second book in Churchill’s history of WWII, he states the following –
MORAL OF THE WORK ~
In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will
THEME OF THE VOLUME ~
How the British people held the fort ALONE till those who had been half blind were half ready ~
Something to remember on this day of remembrance
Mm/88; –one wonders what, without Churchill’s speeches, would have happened over that year between the Fall of France and the German invasion of USSR. USSR was a German ally, America’s entry was far in the future and by no means assured –or even likely, given Hitler’s support from influential luminaries from Joe Kennedy and Lucky Lindburgh on down. Japan held China’s coast and Mongolia, Hitler was headed east thru north Africa and Japan heading west thru the subcontinent, both Axis powers enroute to meet in a conquered India –to put the entire Eurasian ‘world island’ plus Africa in the Axis working-asset column. had Tradesport been around, you could’ve probably got 10 to 1 against England. But they had that old boy Churchill.
“fifteen Russian armored divisions, five guards divisions, the Russian blue-water navy and fleet submarine attack and ICBM flotillas, the layered hundred regiments of rocket and arty, the twenty air wings of 4G fighters and fighter-bombers, the ten strategic bomber wings, the six thousand modern tanks and three thousand combat aircraft and one million soldiers & sailors, and lastly the 5000 nuclear weapons and the unofficial thousands of battlefield tacnukes that we dont know about, was planning to troop whatever was left of its 30 tanks, brigade of infantry, several Volga-closing inshore PT boats” This is not a rational discussion, if you actually believe that Russia has this size force across eleven time zones, much less concentrated in the Caucases to crush little Georgia.
The truth – that the Russians only had about thirteen thousand men, and the Georgians roughly the same in their order of battle fighting on their home turf, AND THEY STILL BROKE AND RAN – is much harder for you to swallow.
In fact, the Georgians did have Israeli made UAVs, night vision goggles, U.S. supplied Marine BDUs (check the camoflage pattern from the Paliwood-type Georgian soldier who kept popping up dead or wounded in all the AP photos)…certainly some equipment the Russians didn’t have. And they still lost. Obviously they would have been overwhelmed eventually by superior numbers from Russia, no one disputes that. But this isn’t what happened at all. A force that marched confidently into South Ossetia believing that Russia would stand aside instead got shellacked in 72 hours. And the Russians lied to the media about going to Gori? So did Stormin’ Norman right before Desert Storm. Disinformation is a fact of war.
And spare me all the preparations for war stuff. Both sides prepared in advance, except the Russians had better SIGINT from Saako personally directing the battle from his cellphone like any arrogant Ivy Leaguer might try to do, plus probably some disaffected Georgians who reported his war plan in advance. So…does the fact that Russia is bigger and has more competent intelligence services prove that Georgia was an innocent victim? Hardly.
The fifteen ACTUAL Russian armored divisions you describe probably have not existed except on paper since 1993. There are probably only two or three ready to fight on ten weeks notice if that. Hell, the one and a half division that went in to S. Ossetia was the cream of the crop (mostly paid volunteers not conscripts) and they still had to be spun up with exercises and be right across the tunnel to perform well.
You are living in a fantasy world where somehow you can simultaneously believe that Russia is dying off demographically AND still can maintain a million strong force as opposed to 200,000-300,000 contract soldiers with a whole bunch of one year conscripts who may or may not actually be in a barracks somewhere between Vyborg and Vladivostok, or may only report on paper while developing a truly alarming number of respiratory illnesses. I daresay even some of the crazy disease statistics you hear about young Russian men might simply be a consequence of ducking the draft rather than reality.
That’s it, I’m done arguing with idiots.
Mx/91; but you haven’t been arguing at all –with or without idiots. you have a lot of ground to cover before your lists of hilariously dubious assertions, deft tho accidental illustrations of the oppo contending points (been meaning to thank you again), and wholesale manufacture of false-witness propaganda (find me anywhere anytime speaking of Russian health care, disease, demographics, draft-dodging respiratory whatnot, et cetera) even begin to resemble argumentation, even to we idoits.
that said, peace, bro