Unha-3

Juche!

The ruling regime in slave trading North Korea (more like a giant underground rocket factory) has sump sump on the pad...

Concerns over North Korea's nuclear ambitions are mounting on two fronts thanks to a planned rocket launch and signs of preparations for an underground nuclear arms test. 

Timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of the nation's late founder Kim Il-Sung on 15 April, the Pyongyang regime says its Unha-3 rocket will merely place a small weather satellite into orbit. But the rocket is capable of launching much bigger payloads, prompting fears that this is really a ballistic missile test.

US analysts say the 30-metre-high rocket on the launch pad at Sohae near the Chinese border could pack the power to send a warhead to Hawaii or Alaska.

Unha-3's true purpose could be revealed at the launch, planned for between 12 and 16 April. David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes on the organisation's website that it should be clear from the trajectory Unha-3 takes whether it is a genuine attempt to launch a satellite or a missile experiment.

A successful launch would contrast with Unha-2, a slightly smaller rocket, launched in 2009, that failed to reach orbit when its third stage did not separate.

Meanwhile, South Korean spy satellites show earth and sand are being piled up in another area of North Korea, Punggye-ri, where previous underground nuclear tests took place in 2006 and 2009. Then, similar telltale dirt piles appeared before the tests.

44"s Faux Pas

Aside from bellowing belches or igniting gastric accidents - girl repellant is also readily available in way more diff varieties. Appearing shy, timid, unsure, overtly arrogant or unaware of funintended consequences is totally jank too.

Especially in l'diplopolitary realm. 

See, Great Satan"s Premier Great Satan fan lays it out to play it out in a language that ebberdobby here can easily understand: 

 44"s driving ideology, whether he wins or loses on November 6, has already had enormous implications for Great Satan"s role in the world and the very structure of the international order. By reducing not only the visibility of America's global presence, but also her military capabilities, and by shifting the federal budget even further from national security to social welfare programmes, 44 has also sought to transform Great Satan into Europa. 

Of course, the obvious question is what happens once Washington's protective shield is diminished to the point of feebleness. It was one thing for European and other industrial democracies to be free riders under the sheltering  nuclear umbrella, her strong naval forces, and her essentially global force projection capabilities. 

 Yet if Great Satan retires from Globe Stomping and becomes just another ho among hoochies - what kinda chiz does this mean for the Internat"l Order and the world she herself hath created? 

44 sees American strength as provocative. He believes her nuclear arsenal is excessive, and hence worthy of reduction, without fearing in any way that shredding the nuclear deterrent might actually have profoundly deleterious consequences not only on national security, but on security and stability in the world as a whole. 

44"s policies and debilitating budget cuts reflect the views of former DefSec Gates on the nature of the threats that America and its allies will face in the near future. Proving yet again that generals tend to fight the last war, Gates and his aides concluded from Afghanistan and Iraq that future wars would most likely be counter-insurgency or counter-terrorist scenarios. 

No more Cold War-era spectres of Soviet-panzered thrusts through the Fulda Gap and over the northern European plains, or World War II-style armadas clashing at sea.   

That future means de-emphasising "heavy" fighting requirements like armour, artillery and large infantry formations, as well as high-firepower air and naval platforms. Instead, stand-off weapons and assets like cruise missiles and drones, and light, quick special operations forces will be the new norm. Of course, this restructuring of the force also conveniently conforms to the smaller, less visible, less "aggressive" Great Satanesque military posture that suits 44"s Weltanschauung, so Gates was seamlessly kept on to serve in his Admin

And virtually all of this, from the broad vision to the tactical details, is like totally retarded. 

Like the erroneous idea that the Cold War's end would bring a "peace dividend" that could be "spent" on domestic programmes without adverse security consequences, the idea that a second radical downsizing Great Satan"s capabilities will avoid political and military effects is pernicious.

 Although 44 and his acolytes may want to escape unpleasant reality, force remains critical to national security. Using it, threatening to use it, being prepared to use it, or simply having it remain the sine qua non for a superpower with global interests, friends and allies. 44 might have been excused in his days in faculty lounges and the Land of Lincoln legislature for not grasping this correlation, but it is truly remarkable he has spent nearly three and a half years as President and still doesn't understand it.

It's force baybee! - The hyperpuissant ability to have your way with whatever the heart desires 

 And the purposes of force? The first and most important is "dissuasion," often confused with its cousin, deterrence. Dissuasion implies convincing other states (or non-state actors) not even to think about challenging the US by developing new weapons capabilities, force levels or strategies. We often hear blithe comments that America's defence budget exceeds all other defence budgets in the world combined, implying ours is far too large. 

Leaving aside the honesty and transparency of other countries' budget presentations, the currency exchange rates/purchasing-power-parity issue, military salaries and other factors that tend to "overstate" Great Satan"s expenditures, why shouldn't the world's arsenal of democracy possess capabilities that shape others' thinking politically as well as militarily? That is clearly the best way to avoid war.

The next purpose is deterrence, which involves convincing those states or coalitions with significant capabilities that actually attempting to employ these assets will result in their destruction and defeat. Unfortunately, Western deterrence concepts are not meaningful or even rational to terrorists and regimes like Iran. 

Religious extremists who value life in the hereafter more than life on earth are unlikely to be deterred as Moscow's Cold War atheists were, reluctant to toss away their one turn at life. This gaping hole in the deterrence concept requires different strategies against adversaries that are not "rational actors" as we have heretofore understood that term, especially those new threats relying on asymmetric capabilities like terrorism with weapons of mass destruction.

 Thus we arrive inevitably at  the issue of pre-emptive or preventative military strikes in self-defence, concepts that are also cousins, not synonyms. In both, however, a nation considering using force before actual military hostilities have commenced against it must be able to justify so doing, morally and politically. 

Here is the most important conclusion: America should never again be in a fair fight. The best wars, of course, are those that are never fought. That objective itself argues for an overwhelming preponderance of Great Satan and allied forces in the world. 

And when war is fought, Clausewitz never deviated from the imperative of decisively defeating the enemy's military capability. Nor should we. Finding the Schwerpunkt and determining the "culminating point of victory" are,  not entirely scientific.

 Yet they are readily understandable.  

Pic -  "It is no act of war on our part when we decide to protect stuff vital to American defence. The aggression is not ours. Ours is solely defence."  

Little Satan"s Strike Package

"She's a fine tuned supersonic sting machine - wears a low slung top with a killer's lean"

Or sump like that - in a Hegelian Age of Something Something - who shall truly say? 

An Little Satan pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program will probably begin with a rain of Jericho missiles obliterating the heavy water plant in Arak and destroying four small nuclear research reactors at the Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan.

Simultaneously, 100 IAF F-16I and F-15I fighter jets will drop huge bunker-busting bombs on attack-hardened nuclear fuel enrichment plants buried in the mountain sides of Natanz and Fordow.

Submarine-launched cruise missiles will seek out targets at a variety of research facilities across Iran.

Some Little Satan combat aircraft will attack Iran’s power lines with special-purpose munitions that use chemically treated carbon fibres to short-circuit transformers and switching stations to knock out Iran’s power grid.

Black Hawk helicopters (possibly taking off from disused Soviet air bases in Azerbaijan) will deposit Little Satan"s  commandos, disguised as members of the Iranian military, outside the Parchin military complex near Tehran, and bomb-equipped dogs will penetrate deep into fortified tunnels at other sites.

A wave of cyber attacks will disrupt Iranian computer and anti-aircraft targeting systems.

  Nonprofit jawflapping betwixt Preacher Command and 6 world powers — Great Satan, Great Britain, France, China, Russia and Deutschland — scheduled to begin in Constantinople next Friday could be like the very last chance to avoid a full-fledged fracas.

Since 44 and the Highest Levels of Little Satan Command have LOL"d the sorry, inappropriate critical thinking free meme of 'Containment" 

 Academics, analysts, military strategists, diplomats and politicians are all reviewing recent reports that depict potential war scenarios and try to assess the implications of an Israeli or U.S. military option.

Like the Brookings Brothers say - 

 “Unless Iran pauses its uranium enrichment activities, an Israeli or U.S. strike against its nuclear facilities looks likely by next year.”

 And if Little Satan attacks Iran, even against the wishes of Great Satan, it could, ultimately, draw American troops into the ME to finish the gig.

Pic -  "Guns Of August II"

Green On Blue

Baba Tim is back @ Free Range Internat'l in the Stan outside the wire and gives up some interesting chiz.

Check it

Kabul is currently a tense place as it has been many times in the past (the 2006 riots that erupted after American soldiers caused a multi-fatality motor vehicle accident and then started shooting people who were coming to the rescue of the original victims springs instantly to mind) but this time things are different.  The endgame is near, internationals are no longer welcomed in most parts of the country and barely tolerated in the rest.  Armored SUV’s, still the only way most internationals will travel in Kabul, are routinely stopped and the legally licensed weapons of the international security consultants confiscated.  On a technical note every weapon owned and licensed to PSC firms are now illegal because the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF)  was supposed to take over the security duties from international PSC’s last month and that’s not remotely close to happening.

The local people here are terrified about what will happen when ISAF and the international community pull out while at the same time absolutely disgusted with ISAF, the UN, the big reconstruction firms and the Afghan politicians who are looting the country.  Who can blame them?  I’m disgusted with the American politicians who are looting my country too.  Over here the mob is enflamed by Koran burnings and rouge shootings.  In America the mob is inflamed by a media manufactured “racially motivated” shootings. 

 The New York Times prints articles about corrupt officials in Kabul and ponder aloud why they remain at liberty.  I’d like to know why Jon Corzine is still at liberty, he stole 1.6 billion dollars from his investors making the millions his Afghan counterparts are pocketing pale in comparison.  But we know why these men are free – politically powerful members of corrupt political machines never face the consequences of their actions.  

That seems to be a trend around the world these days, or so I thought until I read this piece of conventional brilliance from our Secretary of Defense informing me I don’t know Jack about trends.  The topic Mr. Panetta was addressing, while demonstrating his mastery at defining common english words, was the non-trend of Green on Blue fratricide.

The problem of Green on Blue fratricide is a big deal, has been going on a long time, and it’s not confined to Green on Blue as there have been reports of  Green on Green incidents over the years too.   We don’t know how big the trend  is because our military isn’t telling us how many Americans (another report on this un-trend can be fond here) have been gunned down by Afghan security forces.  Why is this happening?  I don’t know because I’ve got no perspective and very little inside information. 

 If you go back to this post and watch the 60 minute segment about Special Forces trainers or go back to this post and watch the you tube video of the mayhem caused by  Canadian soldiers as they spend an hour in the bazaar looking for a spark plug (I’m not kidding about that either) you’ll get an understanding on how we are viewed from the Afghan perspective.

Pic - "Last Offensive"

WoW!!

 WoW - the Watchers Council - it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - started online in 1912 by Sirs Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill themselves - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse. 

Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers.

Without further adieu - (or a don't) here are this weeks winners 

Council Winners

• *First place with 5 1/3 votes! Joshuapundit – Silent Scream;The Sudan Ethnically Cleanses Its Christians
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – The Right Planet Revenge of the ‘Birthers’
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Bookworm Room-Barack Obama to supporters: Give me the money, dammit!
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Razor-The Insidious Nature of Student Loan Debt
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Gay Patriot-Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, Jury Duty And The Press
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi-The Cunning Muslim Bro’s Candidate
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room-American Bolsheviks – The Second Act
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – The Epitome of the “Limousine Liberal”
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – VA Right! – Upholding Obamacare Would Be the Ultimate and Final Act of Judicial Activism and Render the Constitution Moot
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Rhymes With Right –Some Observations On Michael Kinsley’s Column On ObamaCare’s Constitutionality
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – How Did They Get It So Wrong?
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – “Anti-Zionism” and naivety

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 4 votes! – Victor Davis Hanson- The New Anti-Semitism submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Mark Steyn – Just Reading ObamaCare Cruel And Unusual Punishment submitted by The Noisy Room
• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Argument@ Foreign Policy – Dear Ayatollah Khamenei: Go Ahead, Shut Down That Strait submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes -The Automatic Earth The Nature Of Tipping Points submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fourth place with 1 vote –Gatestone Institute Terrorism In France; Let’s Not Pretend Jews Aren’t The Targetsubmitted by The Political Commentator
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes - Investor’s business Daily –Poll Shows Even In Michigan Unions Are Despised submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Jewish Ideas Daily – Peter Beinart, I Quit. submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Powerline –Dubious Donations (2012 Edition) submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Natural Born Conservative –The Malaise of 2012 – Part IV submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Accuracy In Media – Beck to Publish Blockbuster on Obama’s Communist Mentor submitted by New Zeal
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Right Turn –When will the media get around to Obama? submitted by Gay Patriot
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Agitator –Liberals Lovin’ on Corporate Welfare submitted by The Razor
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Volokh Conspiracy –President Obama versus the Constitution submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Seraphic Secrets –Syrian Opposition Leader: Jews Helping To Keep Assad In Power, “Want Syrian Blood For Their Matzos.” submitted by The Watcher
  

See you next week! And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Only Way Out

Suriya al- Kubra! 

As Syria's Dr General President For Life promises the flogging will continue til morale improves - it's high time to cut straight to it shall we?

What a shock it must have been for Kofi Annan to realize that the Syrian regime and opposition agree over nothing except to largely ignore his splendid little plan for ending the conflict in Syria.

Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy, is no naïf. He did what all good diplomats do: He added a splash of reciprocity, a pinch of incentives, an aroma of consensus, and presto, he presented us with a more refined version of a failed Arab League plan crafted last November. The core of the Arab proposal was that the Syrian regime should withdraw its forces from cities, put an end to its violence against protesters, release prisoners, and begin a dialogue with the opposition. Yet President Bashar Assad could never implement such a plan, since it would encourage millions of Syrians to go out into the streets and call for his head, without fear of retribution.

 Once Assad starts loosening his military grip on society, he will be finished. He has promised to respect a cease-fire as of April 10, but still hopes to beat the Syrians senseless to earn himself a breather and transact from a position of strength, with an opposition he selects. But that ambition is going nowhere. It took a month for his army to crush Baba Amr, which involved deploying elite units. Yet Homs is far from pacified, let alone the provinces of Idlib, Damascus and Deraa.

Assad rule is crumbling. The regime is on a conveyor belt of repression, and will be overwhelmed if it stops. Annan sought, somehow, to do two things simultaneously: neutralize the fighting on the ground while creating an environment that would facilitate the removal of the Syrian president through peaceful means – a “soft landing” as some have described it. However, that did not make a good plan. In fact, it has made a plan so unrealistic that neither Assad nor the Syrian opposition has any intention of implementing it.

The most contentious facet of Annan’s plan was that he seriously expected the opposition, after the slaughter by the Syrian army and security forces of between 10,000 and 15,000 people, to sit at the same table with the individuals responsible. The opposition is divided, but groups willing to engage with Assad are well aware that they would be discredited if they actually did so. In other words, Annan’s call for an inclusive Syrian dialogue was unrealistic, and his goal of accelerating prisoner releases and widening the opposition’s margin to demonstrate against the regime was unworkable.

What is the way out? Already late last year, when the Arab and international diplomatic maneuvers over Syria began, it was plain that Assad was finished. The sole basis for a comprehensive solution is his departure into exile, with his family, followed by negotiations leading to a smooth transition of authority. Anything else is a waste of time, and Annan’s stumbling project has again shown us why.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned this week that the Syrian opposition would never defeat Assad’s army. It doesn’t need to. If it manages merely to impose a military status quo and hold territory, Assad’s options, and Moscow’s, will shrink. It’s hard not to believe that the Homs offensive received a Russian green light, explicitly or implicitly, along with a fresh supply of heavy weapons and ammunition. That is why Istanbul was a success in rejecting Moscow’s efforts to deactivate the Free Syrian Army.

The single workable strategy for Annan is to explicitly push for regime change in Syria, and to convince Russia that there is no substitute. The Russians must sense that it’s time for Plan B in Damascus.

Their guy is not gaining. 

Bashar Bay Bee has to keep killing just to avoid being killed.  

Pic - "Inheriting Syria"

Arrogance And Nat"l Interests

"Whale, see - since I dumped him - Imma gon get alla my friends to unfriend him..."

Talk about worrying about the wrong thing...

Not unlike this curiously boring assetted  inappropriate handwringing expose about Great Satan and her hot democrazy promoting meddling machinations: 

"...Perhaps there’s merit in stepping back just a bit and seeking to look at it from the perspective of the receiving country..."

Whoa! Stop right there mon frer. 

Simply put - there is simply no merit whatsoever in considering the tho"ts and feelings of faux democratic autocrazies, corrupt royalty in Ray Bans or girl hating military dictatorships (many of which would collapse over a long weekend sans foreign aid) to put it simply.

As previously previewed  

 Nothing less egalitarian, tolerant societies with an off the hook lit rate, a penchant for periodic xparent elections, a free, open press, a military under civie command, an independent judiciary under lected gov oversight and a nat"l treasury under public scrutiny will do

 Anything else is just asking for trouble.. 

And while democrazy promo may indeed be many things - arrogance ain"t on list ya"ll. 

Arrogance is insisting on a fakebelieve meme that unelected regimes as just as bona fide"d as elected govs!

As best understood doing democrazy on a global scale is Great Satan"s Nat"l (make that internat"l bay bee!!) Interests. And Great Satan shouldn"t be 'even handed in her dealings with the world either - au contraire -she should be radically tilted towards her hot delights, deigns and desiring interests.

Confusing unfun and unfree societies and their tender sensitive feelings is yet another sorry example of the sad, failed, played out realpolitik type thinking that everything in nation/stateland is equal. 

Actually, it would be way more helpful to consider 'Which one of these things is not like the other?' 

Relativism is a dangerously retarded "easy going belief that all points of view are equal (hence none really worth passionate argument, deep analysis or stalwart defense) and (which) then (xforms) into the strident belief that anyone who argues for the superiority of a distictive moral insight, way of life, or human type is somehow elitist or immoral." 

Consider:

Despotries killed more of their own citizens than foreigners. Despots caused the refugee flows; despots caused the poverty; despots caused all of the problems of the 20th century.

Look at the current crop of dictators running from North Korea through China in an unbroken arc through Central Asia, Pakistan, the Middle East, North Africa, and down to Angola, with three dictatorships: Belarus, Haiti, and Cuba; if you look at that those 43 men, no women (there are no lady grrl dictators happy to report); look at what they are doing today—once again they are the cause of refugee flows; they are the cause of terrorism, direct and indirect; they are the cause of wars; they are the cause of poverty, in Africa, particularly, but also in the Middle East, where the World Bank recently has shown that if you could have normal governance, democratic governance in the Middle East, that there would be a real spurt in economic growth as well. 

Despotries are the root of all of our problems. They are together and individually the major security threat to Great Satan, to their neighbors, and to the world.

Great Satan's driving desire should be to eliminate every last bloody one of them (only 43 of them!) by 2025

An also added benefit (which is also absolutely true) is the hap hap happy coincidental coincidence that a gig like democrazy promo is not American or even the wicked woman worshipping Western - it's Universal kids

"Our ultimate weapon is not our guns, but our beliefs. (Applause.)

"There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior."

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

Pic - "Exporting democrazy is like the most best basis for Great Satan"s FoPo. B!tches"