Rotten: “Infiltrated by up to a dozen CIA spies, Hezbollah, the official party of God, is taking hits to its prestige—and revealing its weakness… Hezbollah’s entire prestige is built on the idea that it is a highly disciplined organization that is nearly impossible to infiltrate.”
Now Might Not Be the Best Time to Hire Pakistani Mercs: Perhaps seeking to mollify ruffled Islamabad’s feelings, the State Deparment decides to hire Pakistani embassy guards. “The State Department recently announced it’s seeking local Pakistani guards to keep its diplomats safe at the embassy in Islamabad and consulates in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar. Those guards will need to ‘deter potential terrorist attacks,’ according to a contract pre-solicitation, by ‘restricting entry of unauthorized personnel, operation of walk-through metal detectors, and hand-held detectors.'”
Hope they pay them well. The Strategy Page says suicide bombering is a popular occupation in the Islamic world because work is degrading, money is scarce and martyrs are rewarded by Allah.
Resupply By Air in Afghanistan: “Today, we air-dropped a 16-foot platform carrying an all-terrain forklift. It is one of six platforms ever dropped in theater,” said 1st Lt. Chelsea Craig, the 11th Quartermaster Detachment commander. “It is the first forklift dropped in theater and weighing in excess of 15,000 pounds, it is the heaviest platform ever dropped.”
Pakistan releases first images of border posts attacked by NATO: Images show bent mortar tubes, smoldering trench lines, white flags and the general ruin of Pakistani positions. “Amid rising anger, Pakistan’s military has released a set of images which it says show the remote border posts attacked by NATO helicopters and fighter jets on Saturday in an incident that has soured relations between Pakistan and the United States. ”
Nato outpost attacked by insurgents from within Pakistan: “The incident has added to the tension between Nato and Pakistan following the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers last week in a Nato-led airstrike.”
Syrian forces ‘fight rebels in south’: “Electricity and telephone lines had been cut off in the area, said the statement which quoted a witness as saying the clashes were triggered by the arrival in the town by at least 30 armoured personnel carriers.” Meanwhile, Turkey says it will impose “step by step” sanctions on Syria, but is it serious?
Turkey has opted to impose step-by-step sanctions on Syria over its brutal crackdown on an eight-month uprising that claimed thousands of lives as the Arab League endorsed a set of sanctions on Sunday to push the Syrian regime to stop its bloody crackdown.
Turkey says it will follow the Arab League sanctions but it failed to deliver its own sanctions despite Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s promise in September that Turkey will press ahead with sanctions on the Syrian regime.
UK expels all Iranian embassy staff, withdraws officials from Tehran: As embassy burns. British columnist says, “Hague shakes his puny fist at Iran in the thirty years’ invisible war”.
Maybe they could send the Royal Navy. Oh wait. New carrier ‘not fully capable’ until 2030, and will then be able to launch more than dozen airplanes. The second carrier cannot be operated by the Royal Navy because it no longer has enough men.
If Britain does not have the power to do anything more than send a diplomatic protest to Iran, maybe it can rely on the US, led by a President whose ratings are now lower than Jimmy Carter‘s. Ya think? Maybe he can do better than Jimmy Carter on foreign policy. He is doing five times worse than Jimmy in a poll on economic policy.
Iran will come to you: Never mind, if the Royal Navy cannot come to Iran, Iran may come to it. “Iran is developing an advanced low-flying cruise missile that could potentially carry a non-conventional warhead, Arieh Herzog, director of the Defense Ministry’s Homa Missile Defense Agency, said on Wednesday. … Earlier this month, close to 20 Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officers, including the architect of Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program, were killed in a mysterious explosion at a missile base near the city of Bid Kaneh. The officers were reportedly working on the development of a new missile when the explosion took place.”
Iran may have had some help from North Korea: “German newspaper Die Welt reported that North Korea has supplied Syria and Iran with a special kind of steel used for making missiles and building centrifuges for uranium enrichment.”
Russia Activates Missile Warning System: The Russian President said:
“I expect that this step will be seen by our partners as the first signal of the readiness of our country to make an adequate response to the threats which the (Western) missile shield poses for our strategic nuclear forces,” Medvedev said.
Using rhetoric reminiscent of the Cold War, he added: “If this signal is not heard, we will deploy other methods of protection including the taking of tough countermeasures and the deployment of strike forces.”
That is nonsense. Russia should know that the United States is led by a man committed to abolishing missiles, American future combat systems and nuclear weapons and anything else that has held the line up until this time. In its place, he is looking forward to cooperation with Russia and defanging North Korea. All he needs is more “treaties and institutions” to hold rogue countries accountable. Just give him time, but time it seems, has other ideas.
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