Military Might Matters

A Shooting War With Pakistan? Posted 11/28/2011 06:52 PM ET War On Terror: The latest deadly Afghan border skirmish between U.S.-led troops and Pak

2011-12-16T02:09:00.000-08:00

Islamabad is not our friend. Never was and never will be. Military might matters and once again we are fighting with one hand tied behind our back and over our mouth. Thank you politicians. mc

Posted 11/28/2011 06:52 PM ET

War On Terror: The latest deadly Afghan border skirmish between U.S.-led troops and Pakistani troops indicates that the war may be expanding to include our putative ally. But are we prepared?

In what's become a common occurrence, the Pakistani military — in an unprovoked attack — fired on coalition troops based across the border in Afghanistan. We responded by hitting two Pakistani border posts. The airstrikes killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers, sparking anti-American riots and threats of reprisal by Islamabad.

It's hardly the first direct attack on our forces by Pakistan, and the attackers aren't merely a few rogue elements of its military who are sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaida. But attacks have become so frequent that our troops can no longer just duck and cover while pretending Pakistan has our back in this war. We have to return fire to protect the lives of U.S. and NATO soldiers.

So why still coddle Pakistan, diplomatically? Several reasons, not the least of which is Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear weapons and cold war with India. But it's mainly because we need its permission to transport military supplies across its border into landlocked Afghanistan, the terror swamp believed most worthy of draining.

More than 40% of the fuel, food, ammunition,>>>

Suit: Saudi Gov't Sponsored 9/11

2011-10-15T04:12:00.000-07:00

This is a 'must read' article from IBD. And yet the Saudi government is our friend and we pay billions of dollars a year for Saudi oil when we have all the oil we need here at home. This Obama Administration is preventing us from drilling and is preventing us from becoming energy independent.

Posted 09/21/2011 06:32 PM ET

Justice: A new 9/11 lawsuit portrays the Saudi government as having more control over al-Qaida charities before the attacks than it (or the U.S.) has admitted. Let's hear the truth.

Lloyds of London seeks $215 million in damages from the kingdom to recover claims it paid 9/11 victims and their families. The suit charges that the Saudi government funded al-Qaida through its banks and charities.

The complaint, filed in U.S. court, states that without official Saudi sponsorship, "al-Qaida would not have possessed the capacity to conceive, plan and execute the Sept. 11 attacks." In other words, absent Saudi support, the Twin Towers would still be standing — along with nearly 3,000 Americans.

We're impressed by the documentation cited in the 156-page complaint by Cozen O'Conner, a major Washington law firm. It's much more detailed than the lawsuit brought on behalf of 9/11 families, which a federal judge dismissed for lack of evidence. This one might have a shot. It points to new intelligence, including recently leaked diplomatic cables.

Among the findings:

• Senior Saudi officials and Saudi royal family members — including Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif — either served as executives of suspect charities or sat on their boards while the charities were used to launder money to al-Qaida; and they knew of the activities.

• The Saudi charities themselves often provided not only money but employment cover, ID badges and logistical support to al-Qaida operatives.

• For example, the Saudi Joint Relief Committee>>>

With Drones, President Leads War From Behind

2011-10-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

What is not to like. At least the Obama Administration has this right. I wonder what memos he is reading to beget this war on terror?

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON Posted 10/13/2011 06:35 PM ET

We are in a long war against radical Islamic terrorism. The struggle seems almost similar to the on-again/off-again ordeals of the past — like the French-English Hundred Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries, or the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants in the 17th century.

In these kinds of drawn-out conflicts, victory finally goes to the side that responds best to constant new challenges. And we've seen a lot of those since 9/11, when the United States was caught unaware and apparently ill-equipped to face the threat of radical Islamic terrorists hijacking our passenger jets.

But even when we adjusted well to the 9/11 tactics, there were new threats like suicide bombers and roadside improvised explosive devices that seemed to nullify American technology and material advantages.

But now America is once again getting the upper hand in this long war against Middle Eastern terrorists with the use of Predator drone targeted assassinations that the terrorists have not yet an answer to. In systematically deadly fashion, Predators are picking off the top echelon of al-Qaida and its affiliates from the Hindu Kush to Yemen to the Horn of Africa.

Death Without Warning>>>

Launching the Missile That Made History

2011-10-02T04:22:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER 1, 2011

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS

Outside Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 25 years ago this week, an angry young man named Abdul Wahab Quanat recited his prayers, walked onto a farm field near a Soviet airfield, raised a Stinger missile launcher to his shoulder and shot his way into history.

It was the first time since the Soviet invasion seven years earlier that a mujahedeen fighter had destroyed the most feared weapon in the Soviet arsenal, a Hind attack helicopter. The event panicked the Soviet ranks, changed the course of the war and helped to break up the USSR itself.

Today, Mr. Wahab is general manager of the Afghan central-bank branch near the Khyber Pass, a middle-age man who carries tinted bifocals in his vest pocket and chooses Diet Pepsi over regular. Mr. Wahab and the two other Stinger gunners at the airfield that day—Zalmai and Abdul Ghaffar—have now joined the post-jihad establishment. Mr. Zalmai is sub-governor of Shinwar District, and Mr. Ghaffar is a member of parliament.

They nurse a gauzy nostalgia for the joys of being young jihadists. "Those were good, exciting times," Mr. Wahab says. "Now I'm a banker. It's boring."

The Soviet invasion touched off three decades of violent>>>

The Next 9/11 — A Nuclear One?

2011-09-30T04:51:00.000-07:00

Remember--it is not a question of if but when. Be Prepared. Always.

osted 09/09/2011 06:43 PM ET

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National Security: The Sept. 11 commission stated that our biggest failure was one of imagination. Imagine an Iranian nuclear device detonating high over the American heartland. They're working on it.

On the same day the 9/11 Commission issued its report, another commission issued a report on a threat that could change our world and way of life in ways we can scarcely imagine. It is a real and credible threat, and it is largely being ignored.

The threat is a phenomenon known as electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, and demonstrates why the issue of homeland security extends beyond the need for body scanners or taking our shoes off at the airport. It's why ignoring Iran is dangerous and why a robust national missile defense should be of the highest priority.

This threat to our national security was the subject of study by the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, established by unanimous consent of the House and Senate. Released on the same day as the 9/11 Commission report, few paid attention.

It is a scenario worthy of Hollywood, but it is a frighteningly real possibility. A solitary ballistic missile, perhaps an ICBM launched by a decaying North Korean regime or an Iranian mullah, or a terrorist Scud launched from a ship off the Atlantic Coast carrying the first Islamic nuke, detonates its warhead 25 to 300 miles above the U.S. mainland.

Nobody is harmed or killed immediately by the blast. But life in America, the world's only superpower and largest economy, comes to a screeching halt as a country dependent on 21st-century technology regresses almost a century instantaneously.

The radiation from such a high-altitude nuclear blast>>>

Unanswered: What Was Saudis' Role?

2011-09-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

Why do we continue to treat the Saudis' as our friends? Oh, I know--they have the oil! And we are blocked from drilling for our own oil by the Obama administration's failed energy policies. The Obama administration would rather 'go green' than save our country. When is enough enough?

Posted 09/09/2011 06:43 PM ET

9/11: A new report revealing the hijackers met in Florida with a well-connected Saudi family who fled to Riyadh just days before the attacks raises fresh concerns about the Saudis' role in the plot.

The Saudi hijackers who entered the country from San Diego also met with Saudi handlers. So now we know al-Qaida had Saudi help from coast to coast. According to the Miami Herald, investigators believe the wealthy family at a minimum knew of their guests' evil plans, and possibly aided them.

Just two weeks before 9/11, and after meetings and calls with ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers, the Saudi nationals abandoned three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway of their Sarasota home. In their haste to leave the country, they also left behind opulent furniture. A safe, however, was cleaned out. They also took a computer.

Their Sarasota home was owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi financier. He'd been on an FBI watch list for terror-fundraising. The FBI, however, never briefed the 9/11 Commission about his and the other Saudi occupants' connections to the hijackers. Congress also was left in the dark about the house search.

It's one of many mysteries surrounding the Saudis and 9/11. Other questions still unanswered after 10 years:

• Why was the section of Congress' >>>

Can Israel Survive Next War?

2011-09-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

Peace through strength is the only way to go!

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON Posted 09/22/2011 05:53 PM ET

Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now things are far worse for the Jewish state.

Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on. Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before — and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.

One thing unites Syrian and Libyan dissidents: They seem to hate Israel as much as the murderous dictators whom they have been trying to throw out.

The so-called "Arab Spring" was supposed to usher in Arab self-introspection about why intolerant strongmen keep sprouting up in the Middle East. Post-revolutionary critics could freely examine self-inflicted Arab wounds, such as tribalism, religious intolerance, authoritarianism, endemic corruption, closed economies and gender apartheid.

But so far, "revolutionaries" sound a lot more like reactionaries. They are more often retreating to the tired conspiracies that the Israelis and Americans pushed onto innocent Arab publics homegrown corrupt madmen such as Bashar Assad, Muammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak.

In 1967, the more powerful periphery of the Middle East — the Shah's Iran, Kemalist Turkey, a military-run Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies — was mostly uninvolved in the Israel-Arab frontline fighting. Not now:

A soon-to-be-nuclear Iran serially promises to destroy Israel.

The Erdogan government in Turkey brags about its Ottoman Islamist past — and wants to provoke Israel into an eastern Mediterranean shooting war.

Pakistan is the world's leading host>>>

Editorial: Gutting Defense Won't Solve Debt Cris

2011-09-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Obama administration equates weakness with strength or is it strength with weakness.

Posted 09/12/2011 06:40 PM ET

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Spending: One lone senator stands up against the budget "supercommittee" doing what no enemy has ever accomplished — rendering the arsenal of democracy impotent and defenseless. Why is defense being singled out?

On the Thursday before the nation mourned its dead from the largest terrorist attack on the United States, the specially selected "supercommittee" of six senators and six congressmen met for the first time to do the job for which 535 of them had been elected but had failed to do — make the budget cuts that were part of the debt ceiling deal.

Failure by this 12-member Joint Committee of Congress to come up with $1.5 trillion in cuts would trigger an automatic across-the-board sequestration process that would make half the cuts at the expense of the defense of this nation. Either way, defense gets hit hard, since these cuts come on top of $350 billion in defense cuts already announced.

Firing a shot across the committee's bow was Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who announced to a conservative group Thursday, "I'm off the committee if we're going to talk about further defense cuts."

Whether agreed on by the committee or triggered by a failure to reach a deal, further cuts coming at a time of increasing threats from rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, the rearming of traditional foes like Russia and an increasingly belligerent China make no sense. Throw in Afghanistan and the war on terror, and they get outright dangerous.

Kyl knows the Democrats will not agree to cut the obscene growth rate of entitlement programs such as Medicare or Social Security, an area where the real problem resides. They will not agree to a GOP proposal to return across-the-board nonsecurity spending to 2008 levels, but are quite willing to gut defense by returning spending there to 2007 levels.

This nonsense is opposed by defense secretaries past and present.>>>

Israel: 360-Degree Hostility

2011-09-23T04:47:00.000-07:00

We must stand firm and offer Israel our unequivocal support in all ways always.

Posted 09/12/2011 06:40 PM ET

Foreign Policy: With Israel's two most important allies in the Muslim world now conspiring against her, we must act to help our strategic friend and avert a costly Mideast war.

The White House has to do more than just make phone calls and statements of concern. Yet that's all it did when Egypt's police and army last week let a mob sack Israel's embassy in Cairo following a flare-up on the Egyptian border.

Terrorists trekked across Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and sneaked into Israel, killing eight Israelis. In response to the attack, Israel killed five Egyptian police and soldiers along with the insurgents.

The next "serious incident," as Israel leader Benjamin Netanyahu described it, could be a flash point for war, spiking world oil prices.

For decades Israel could count on peace on its southern border, as former Egyptian premier Hosni Mubarak demilitarized the Sinai and held back the fanatics in the Muslim street. He also helped in the Israeli blockade of Iranian weapons shipped to the Gaza Strip.

Then President Obama threw Mubarak to the wolves. And now Israel must radically rethink its defense strategy. It faces growing hostility not just from Egypt, but even once-secular Turkey. Ankara has recalled its Israeli envoy to protest last year's raid on a Hamas-bound flotilla in which nine Turks were killed.

Turkey's belligerent Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, warned that his navy would in the future protect Gaza-bound ships, thus risking military conflict with Israel. Erdogan met Monday with Cairo's new regime and may pay a visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza — a move sure to infuriate Tel Aviv.

Mideast "peace is being challenged," Netanyahu warned.>>>

How Next War In Mideast Will Shape Up And When

2011-04-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

By CHUCK DEVORE Posted 04/06/2011 04:53 PM ET

Third in a series from a Middle East observer who just returned from the region and whose last report for IBD was "A Restive Egypt Faces Succession," nearly two weeks before the revolt began in that country that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

IBD Special Series: The Changing Face of the Middle East 1 2 3

The next Middle Eastern war may have already started.

Its first casualties may have been the five members of the Fogel family, Israelis slaughtered in their sleep by Palestinian terrorists in the town of Itamar on March 11 in the disputed territories of the West Bank.

Or the first shots of the war might have been heard on March 19 as the Hamas terror group significantly ramped up rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Or perhaps it was in Jerusalem on March 23, when a backpack bomb spiked with ball bearings detonated, killing a British woman and wounding at least 25 others, the first such attack in that city in seven years.

The Israeli response to this increase in terrorist violence directed at its civilians has been predictable: measured, targeted attacks and arrests aimed at those who struck Israel.

The world response is also predictable: condemnation of Israel for exercising its right of self-defense.

We've seen this cycle before.

What's different this time is that the shifting sands of the Middle East have raised the stakes in Israel's confrontation with Hamas in Gaza and its terror ally Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy in southern Lebanon.

Who are Hezbollah and Hamas and what might the next Middle East war look like?

Prior to the attacks of 9/11, the Islamic terror group that had killed the most U.S. citizens was Lebanon's Hezbollah (Party of God). Hezbollah carried out the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, killing 17 Americans and 46 others, and the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen.

Shooting Into Politics>>>

The Real Radiation Hazard: Iran

2011-04-03T04:06:00.000-07:00

Posted 04/01/2011 07:22 PM ET

Nuclear Terror: Japan's Fukushima plant remains lethally radiated, and elevated-but-unharmful radiation was found in milk in California and Washington state. But just wait until Tehran commits nuclear terrorism.

The hundreds of Japanese workers saving their countrymen and women from a full-blown nuclear meltdown have "committed themselves to die if necessary," according to the mother of one.

Few can read such reports of self-sacrifice in the wake of last month's massive Japanese earthquake and not be moved — and even frightened, as they hear of Japanese fallout affecting food thousands of miles from Japan on the U.S. West Coast (though posing no health dangers).

But the disastrous release of radiation in Japan should remind us, above all, that without aggressive vigilance and active engagement in the continuing global war on terror, we will inevitably see a nuclear terrorist attack that will instantly kill tens or hundreds of thousands — and expose blast survivors to lethal doses of radiation.

The radioactive iodine in the underground water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is now reportedly 10,000 times above safe levels.

Some of those hundreds of Japanese workers may die of radiation poisoning. Others will eventually contract leukemia or end up with cancerous tumors.

Compare that with the analysis undertaken by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after the 1993 World Trade Center attack involving a truck filled with fertilizer-based explosive.

Had what was in that truck been a primitive five-kiloton atomic device (with the Hiroshima bomb, by comparison, being between 13 and 18 kilotons), most buildings south of Central Park would have been destroyed, millions of New Yorkers south of Harlem would have died of radiation, and millions more in the metropolitan area would have gotten acute radiation sickness.

"The detonation of a terrorist nuclear device>>>

Our Libyan 'Pickup Game'

2011-04-03T04:05:00.000-07:00

Posted 04/01/2011 07:22 PM ET

Defense Secretary Robert Gates faced pointed questioning Thursday before the House Armed Services Committee on "Operation Odyssey Dawn" and U.S.... View Enlarged Image

Leadership: As we put CIA boots on the ground to find out who the rebels are and withdraw air support as they retreat, our defense secretary describes how we're making up our policy as we go along.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were on Capitol Hill Thursday in a marathon of congressional testimony trying to explain our ad hoc "kinetic" military actions in Libya and a policy that seems to change and get redefined minute by minute.

Among the issues discussed was the decision to remove American close air support just as the rebels were reeling from a government counteroffensive in the hope that NATO will pick up the slack.

"Your timing is exquisite," Republican Sen. John McCain said sarcastically, alluding to Gadhafi's military advances this past week.

Inexplicable would be a better word.>>>

A Fifth Star for David Petraeus

2011-01-14T02:54:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 13, 2011

By PETE HEGSETH
AND WADE ZIRKLE

On a cold December evening in 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his staff and resigned his command of the Continental Army. One hundred ninety three years later, on America's Bicentennial, Congress posthumously promoted Washington to five-star "General of the Armies of the United States."

Washington led the Continental Army against the British for eight years, the longest tenure for a combatant (wartime) commander in our history to be awarded a fifth star. But David Petraeus, who begins his eighth year as a combatant commander (currently as theater commander in Afghanistan), will soon eclipse Washington's tenure. In appropriate recognition of his long and extraordinary wartime service, the new Congress should authorize a fifth star for Gen. Petraeus, thereby promoting him to "General of the Army"—just below Washington's rank of "General of the Armies" (plural).

After George Washington, the only other five-star>>>

Test Flight Signals Jet Has Reached New Stage

2011-01-14T02:44:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 12, 2011

By JEREMY PAGE

BEIJING—Images of a Chinese stealth fighter prototype in flight suggest that China has moved to the next stage of testing an aircraft that appears designed to rival the American F-22 and challenge U.S. air superiority in the Asia-Pacific region, aviation experts say.

China's first test flight of its stealth fighter Tuesday could have implications for that country's relations with the U.S.. Adam Horvath discusses. Plus, the iPhone is coming to Verizon so how much will it really cost?

Tuesday's flight means China is likely now testing the J-20's flight software, engines and aerodynamics, following weeks of runway tests at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute. The aviation experts say there is a limit to what more they can tell about the J-20's capabilities—especially its radar-evading technology—from the low-resolution images, which mostly appear to have been shot from the edge of the institute's airfield. It wasn't clear how high the J-20 flew or how fast.

However, several leading experts have concluded from the plane's shape and relatively large size that it was designed eventually to fly fast and far enough, and carry enough fuel and weapons to challenge the F-22, currently the world's only fully operational stealth fighter.

They said China probably wouldn't be able to make the aircraft>>>

North Korea: Not the Time for Talks

2011-01-07T03:57:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 3, 2011

By JOHN BOLTON

President Obama's North Korea policy has come to an entirely predictable dead end. Having for two years correctly resisted resuming the six party talks on the North's nuclear-weapons program, Mr. Obama is now pressuring South Korea to do just that. This is a significant mistake. It would have been bad enough had Mr. Obama simply picked up where the Bush administration left off in January 2009, but restarting the talks now will signal weakness and indecisiveness.

Since Mr. Obama's inauguration, Pyongyang has detonated its second nuclear device and launched two unprovoked military attacks—torpedoing a South Korean naval vessel last March and shelling Yeonpyeong Island in November, killing several civilians. Even more significant was the revelation of large, sophisticated uranium-enrichment facilities at Yongbyon, and construction there of a new nuclear reactor to replace the existing aged facility.

Resuming the six party talks, which include the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and America, clearly has global ramifications. Pyongyang and Tehran have cooperated closely on ballistic missiles and almost certainly on nuclear matters, as the North's construction of a reactor in Syria, destroyed by Israel in 2007, demonstrates. It has long been a mistake to treat these rogue states as unrelated threats, a point that still eludes the Obama administration.

The talks themselves exemplify how, for almost a decade, Washington has followed Beijing's Korea policy as if it were its own. China does not want a bellicose, nuclear North Korea destabilizing East Asia, prompting Japan and others to seek nuclear weapons. But it has definitely prized the North as a buffer state against U.S. forces in the South. China would prefer a nonnuclear North Korea but has feared to act on that goal lest the North itself collapse and the Koreas reunify. The talks are Beijing's mechanism for maintaining the uneasy equilibrium of its contradictory policies, and keeping both the U.S. and North Korea in line.

New Start: What Would Reagan Do?

2010-12-05T04:08:00.000-08:00

DECEMBER 2, 2010

By ED MEESE AND RICHARD PERLE

President Obama has taken to the airwaves to pump up support for the New Start Treaty with Russia by arguing that Ronald Reagan would have endorsed it. Both of us had the high honor of knowing our 40th president. We worked for Ronald Reagan, and we're sure that's not the case.

There are many reasons why this treaty falls short of those negotiated by President Reagan. For one thing, its verification regime is inadequate. For another, it gives the Kremlin an unwarranted influence over the structure of our nuclear deterrent. Most important, it will almost certainly reduce our freedom to deploy vital defenses against ballistic missiles.

Moreover, the administration is asking a lame-duck Senate, dominated by a party that was rebuked at the polls by the electorate, to vote for this major arms-control treaty, in contravention of the settled traditions of our country—a tactic Reagan surely would have deplored.

Never in U.S. history has a lame-duck Congress voted on a strategic nuclear arms-control treaty with the Soviet Union or Russia. That is why a group of 10 newly elected Republican senators sent a joint letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid demanding that they be allowed to perform their constitutionally mandated task of advice and consent on this treaty.

The main reason Reagan would have objected to this treaty is that it may well undermine his dream that our country might one day be shielded by a missile defense system from nuclear attack. On this issue, Presidents Obama and Reagan are diametrically opposed. Reagan was adamant that no arms- control agreement be allowed to encumber the pursuit of advanced ballistic missile defense technology. One of us (Mr. Perle) was present in Iceland when he turned down an otherwise desirable treaty with the Soviet Union precisely because it would have impeded work on his Strategic Defense Initiative.

The Emperor's Nuclear Clothes

2010-12-05T03:44:00.000-08:00

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Enough is enough. Every day, the events of the real world reveal that the American foreign policy establishment is wearing nothing but the emperor's new clothes—policies that make proper people murmur "how Nobel-worthy" while looking around to see if anyone else notices something odd.

Respectable wise men, in and out of government, talk of the importance of arms control and a nuclear-free world, when the reality is that Iran, North Korea and other countries have made the acquisition of nuclear weapons their highest priority. The government of Russia has committed itself to a military posture in which tactical nuclear weapons play a larger role in war fighting and war termination.

The bitter truth is that a world with fewer nuclear weapons really is in the interest of the United States. That is why it won't happen: Too many countries believe that a nuclear-free world will leave the conventional military superiority of the U.S. unchallengeable

read more>>>

U.S. Sees Greater North Korea Nuclear Threat

2010-12-03T01:42:00.000-08:00

DECEMBER 3, 2010

By JAY SOLOMON

VIENNA—The Obama administration told the United Nations nuclear watchdog that North Korea likely has built more than one uranium-enrichment facility, significantly raising the proliferation threat posed by the secretive communist state.

U.S. and European officials are pressing the International Atomic Energy Agency to better scrutinize Pyongyang's potential role in sharing its nuclear technologies with third countries. But the U.N. agency's ability to monitor Pyongyang is limited: North Korea kicked out the IAEA's inspectors in 2009.

The IAEA already is investigating evidence that North Korea transferred a nearly operational nuclear reactor to Syria, which Israeli jets subsequently destroyed in 2007. U.S. and U.N. officials now worry Pyongyang could begin exporting its advanced centrifuge equipment to its military allies in Iran and Myanmar.

"A uranium enrichment capability in [North Korea] could bolster its pursuit of a weapons capability and increases our concerns about prospects for onward proliferation of fissile material and of sensitive technologies," Glyn Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, told the agency's 35-member board Thursday.

Mr. Davies said the U.S. believes Pyongyang>>>

START Treaty Is Irrelevant From The Start

2010-11-27T04:25:00.000-08:00

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Posted 11/26/2010 05:59 PM ET

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It's a lame-duck session. Time is running out. Unemployment is high, the economy is dangerously weak and, with five weeks to go, no one knows what tax they'll be paying on everything from income to dividends to death when the current rates expire Jan. 1.

And what is the president demanding that Congress pass as "a top priority"? To what did he devote his latest weekly radio address?

Ratification of his New START treaty.

Good grief. Even among national security concerns, New START is way down at the bottom of the list. From the naval treaties of the 1920s to this day, arms control has oscillated between mere symbolism at its best to major harm at its worst, with general uselessness being the norm.

The reason is obvious. The problem is never the weapon; it is the nature of the regime controlling the weapon. That's why no one stays up nights worrying about British nukes, while everyone worries about Iranian nukes.

In Soviet days, arms control at least could be justified as giving us something to talk about when there was nothing else to talk about, symbolically relieving tensions between mortal enemies. It could be argued that it at least had a soporific and therapeutic effect in the age of "the balance of terror."

But in post-Soviet days? The Russians are no longer an existential threat. A nuclear exchange between Washington and Moscow is inconceivable.

What difference does it make how many nukes Russia builds? If they want to spend themselves into penury creating a bloated nuclear arsenal, be our guest.

President Obama insists that New START is important as a step toward his dream of a nuclear-free world. Where does one begin? A world without nukes would be the ultimate nightmare. We voluntarily disarm while the world's rogues and psychopaths develop nukes in secret.

We just found out about a hidden>>>

Why We're Always Fooled by North Korea

2010-11-25T02:38:00.000-08:00

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

By MICHAEL J. GREEN AND WILLIAM TOBEY

According to Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, North Korea is working on two new nuclear facilities, a light water power reactor in early stages of construction, and a "modern, clean centrifuge plant" for uranium enrichment. Mr. Hecker visited the facility over the weekend and says it appears nearly complete.

The centrifuge plant is particularly significant because it could produce more than enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon every year—and it may not be the North's only such facility. North Korea's artillery bombardment of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong on Tuesday makes it doubly clear that Pyongyang intends to leverage its new nuclear breakthrough for maximum concessions from the international community.

This nuclear revelation is not an intelligence failure. Over the past decade, intelligence analysts have consistently predicted North Korea's path to nuclear weapons and noted the increasing evidence of its missile and nuclear proliferation. The failure has been that of policy makers and pundits who denigrated the analysis, ignored it, or clung to the fallacy that North Korea would abide by a denuclearization deal.

Editorial Board Member Mary Kissel on the Korean border skirmish

In 1994, Clinton administration negotiators acknowledged that North Korea might be experimenting with uranium enrichment, but they chose to focus on an agreement called the Agreed Framework freezing the North's plutonium production at the Yongbyon facility. Intelligence agencies followed the uranium trail, but policy makers ignored it. As North Korea's most senior defector, Hwang Jang Yop, told us in 2004, the regime negotiated the Agreed Framework with every intention of "confronting the U.S. with a nuclear deterrent" before the reactors were complete and inspections became necessary.

In 2002, the Bush administration received compelling>>>

A New START Treaty? No Deal

2010-11-21T04:35:00.000-08:00

Posted 11/17/2010 07:12 PM ET

Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Democratic Sen. John Kerry, speaks to reporters about the need to... View Enlarged Image

National Defense: The election obviously means big changes coming on fiscal policy. But one national-security-conscious GOP senator just proved it's a whole new ballgame on defense, too.

The Republicans may have fallen short of gaining a Senate majority, but Minority Whip Jon Kyl just let it be known there will be no rubber-stamp approval by the lame-duck Senate of President Obama's highly questionable nuclear arms deal with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Under the Constitution, 67 senators are needed for ratification.

Kyl says New START can't be considered this year "given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization." Intricacies within the treaty's language aren't the real issue here, however.

At stake is something far beyond compliance procedures and bean-counting of warheads — the future of America and other free countries having a credible missile defense against nuclear attack.

As pointed out by Frank Gaffney,>>>

Scientist: N. Korea Secretly Builds New Nuclear Facility Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/21/times-n-korea-secretly-builds-new-nuclear

2010-11-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

Published November 21, 2010

| Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has secretly and quickly built a new, highly sophisticated facility to enrich uranium, according to an American nuclear scientist, raising fears that the North is ramping up its atomic program despite international pressure.

The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report posted Saturday that he was taken during a recent trip to the North's main Yongbyon atomic complex to a facility with a small industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility. The facility had 2,000 recently completed centrifuges, he said, and the North told him it was producing low-enriched uranium meant for a new reactor.

Hecker, a former director of the U.S. Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory

who is regularly given rare glimpses of the North's secretive nuclear program, acknowledged that it was not clear what North Korea stood to gain by showing him the formerly secret area.

The revelation could be designed to strengthen>>>

Iran's Realities

2010-08-22T03:51:00.000-07:00

Posted 08/20/2010 07:02 PM ET

Nuclear Terror: Democrats say bombing would only slow Tehran's nuclear program. The U.S. tells Israel that Iran is far from having a nuke. Are we lying to ourselves about the dangerous realities of Iran's nukes?

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, says the mighty U.S. arsenal can't destroy Iran's nuclear program.

"We can't stop it. We can slow it down," Smith told FoxNews.com last week.

The thinking is that there are too many targets, many of which are fortified and even built deep within mountains. Bushehr, Natanz, Qom, plus other facilities, known and unknown, spread out far and wide — we'd never destroy it all, we're told.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Obama administration has been telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Israel not to worry; Iran's nuclear activities are prone to glitches, and it will be a year or more before it can build a weapon, according to U.S. intelligence and U.N. inspector reports.

In fact, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has said it might take Tehran only three months. As Gary Milhollin, executive director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, wrote on the Atlantic magazine's Web site, President Obama's mantra that Iran's "nuclear clock has slowed" is false.

"The clock is still ticking, vigorously," according to Milhollin. "By the beginning of this year, Iran had produced enough low-enriched uranium to fuel two nuclear weapons if the uranium were further enriched to weapon-grade. By now, Iran has added almost enough low-enriched uranium to fuel a third weapon, and by the middle of next year (at current production rates) it will probably produce enough to fuel a fourth."

Plus, Tehran in February was enriching uranium to a higher level.

"All this is happening at a time when Iran is successfully fielding ballistic missiles that can carry a nuclear payload far enough to reach Israel," Milhollin noted.

Iran on Friday announced the launch of the Qiam1 surface-to-surface missile, with "new technical features and unique tactical capabilities," as well as an improved targeting system, as Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi bragged.

Are we really willing to bet our lives on a>>>

Hard Hats: No Mosque! No Mosque!

2010-08-22T03:49:00.000-07:00

Posted 08/20/2010 07:02 PM ET

SMOKIN' MAD: Bob Pernal, an engineer at the World Trade Center site, sports a sticker showing his opposition of the mosque construction. AP View Enlarged Image

Ground Zero Mosque: A grass-roots movement among construction workers and unions asks Cordoba mosque supporters: Who do you expect to build it? The same people who built the World Trade Center perhaps?

In real estate, it's said the price of a property is based on three things — location, location, location. The price in blood and treasure America has paid for the gaping hole where the Twin Towers once stood is incalculable.

The wounds are still fresh and the anger is still real, and it's something that supporters of the Cordoba mosque, named after a great Islamic victory over the West, simply don't get.

Two blocks from the proposed mosque, construction workers at the WTC site are trying get across their point, and ours.

The towers of the World Trade Center instantly became symbols of America, its strength, its embrace of freedom and free markets. It was the pride of the workers who built it, destroyed in just hours by madmen who turned passenger jets into flaming cruise missiles.

William McCabe, 31, who lost an uncle on 9/11, used black marker to scrawl "WTC No Mosque" on the back of his neon construction vest in protest. "It's like spitting in the face of all the people that died," he told DNAinfo.com.

McCabe, who lives in Queens and has been working on Tower One for five months, said: "What they're going to be doing is praying and laughing because they got the mosque. My uncle's turning in his grave. It's a disgrace."

Mark Sabay, 48, of Brooklyn, who's been working>>>

Bombs Away!

2010-08-22T03:34:00.000-07:00

U.S. Sounds Alarm at China's Military Buildup

2010-08-17T18:25:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 15, 2010

By ADAM ENTOUS

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon voiced alarm over China's military buildup, saying it was expanding its advantage over Taiwan and investing heavily in ballistic and cruise missile capabilities that could one day pose a challenge to U.S. dominance in the western Pacific.

In its annual report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities, the Pentagon also cited China's advances in electronic warfare. The U.S. government has been the target of cyber intrusions the report says appear to have originated in China and aimed to steal military secrets. "These intrusions focused on exfiltrating information, some of which could be of strategic or military utility," the report said.

View Full Image

Zuma Press

A Pentagon report highlighted a new antiship missile. Above, North China Sea Fleet soldiers parade on Aug. 1.

Though their two countries are increasingly interlinked economically, ties between the U.S. military and the People's Liberation Army of China have deteriorated since January, when the Obama administration notified Congress of a plan to sell Taiwan up to $6.4 billion in arms.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has appealed to the Chinese to re-engage to reduce the risk of any military miscommunications. But U.S. officials say they have seen few signs of a thaw.

Washington has long voiced alarm over>>>

Ending the Stigma of War-Related Stress

2010-07-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

JULY 21, 2010

By ROBERT MORGENTHAU

Recently the federal government moved to make disability benefits more accessible to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It's a welcome step, but it does not go far enough. The government should actively encourage private hospitals and other nonprofits to partner with the Veterans Administration (VA) in efforts to destigmatize this disorder, and to make adequate care more widely available in every community across the country.

During World War II, I saw men deeply affected by their combat experiences. Some very close to me never fully recovered, with devastating consequences for themselves and their loved ones. At that time, there was too little recognition of the seriousness of the mental health consequences of war. Today, the effects are more widely recognized. But it pains me to say we are still not doing enough.

Consider the numbers involved:>>>

China Filling America's Vacuum

2010-07-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

Posted 07/21/2010 06:41 PM ET

Strategy: As the U.S. retreats from the world stage, the nation's top military officer is warning us about China's military buildup and intentions. Already, China is telling us to keep off the grass.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, visiting U.S. troops at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea on Wednesday, talked about his growing concerns about China.

"I've moved from being curious about what they're doing to being concerned about what they're doing," the admiral said. "I see a fairly significant investment in high-end equipment — satellites, ships ... anti-ship missiles, obviously high-end aircraft and all those kinds of things. They are (also) shifting from a focus on their ground forces to focus on their navy ... and their air force."

The big question is why.

China's military ascendancy comes at a time of U.S. neglect. It's building and deploying a blue-water navy to protect its overseas interests and supply lines as well as to back up its territorial claims, which start with Taiwan, its "lost province."

Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has laid claim to two disputed island chains, the Paracel Islands about 200 miles from the coast of Vietnam and the Spratly Islands in the southeastern part of the South China Sea.

The recent sinking of a South Korean warship by a North>>>

New Terror Threat On Mexico Border

2010-07-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

Posted 07/19/2010 07:05 PM ET

A police officer runs after an attack on police patrol trucks in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The bombings represent an unprecedented escalation of... View Enlarged Image

Border: A Hezbollah-like car bomb explodes in a border town as a congresswoman asks Homeland Security about links between the terrorist group and Mexican drug cartels. This is more than an immigration problem.

Car bombs are a terrorist specialty and not a drug cartel modus operandi. The heavily armed cartels are more into shootings and kidnappings. So the car bomb that exploded Thursday in Ciudad Juarez, near a federal police headquarters, killing four, was either a change in tactics for the cartels or a sign of teaming up with a terrorist group, one of which could be Iran-linked Hezbollah.

Officials called it a well-planned trap using what may have been the first time that traffickers have used a car bomb since the start of a military-led offensive against drug cartels. It also may be the first indication of Hezbollah's growing influence south of the border.

Erick Stakelbeck of the Investigative Project, a counterterrorism research group, says Hezbollah has established a base in the Americas in what is known as the Tri-Border area, where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. As he reports, "the area is home to roughly 20,000 Middle Eastern immigrants — mostly from Lebanon and Syria — and has long been a hotbed for terrorist fundraising, arms and drug trafficking, counterfeiting and money laundering."

Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., recently sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking it to form a task force to investigate growing ties between Hezbollah and the drug cartels as well as growing evidence of a Hezbollah presence in Mexico.

"We have seen their cooperation in countries across South America, particularly the tri-border area of South America (bounded by Puerto Iguazu, Argentina; Ciudad del Este, Paraguay; and Foz do Iguanzo, Brazil). Hezbollah operates almost like a Mafia family in the region, often demanding protection money and 'taxes' from local inhabitants," Myrick said in the letter.

Last year we reported that Colombian officials>>>

Keynesian Diplomacy

2010-07-20T02:47:00.001-07:00

Posted 07/19/2010 07:05 PM ET

War On Terror: We know the White House thinks big spending will cure our economic troubles. Now the secretary of state is combating terrorism by delivering a big stimulus check to Pakistan.

Maybe we should take some of those big signs with their Obama-for-president-style logos claiming that your highway dollars are at work and put them on Pakistani streets. Except "Your" will be "Their" — meaning U.S. taxpayers.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given $500 million in foreign aid to the nuclear-armed Islamic power, the first chunk of $7.5 billion designed to win over Pakistani hearts and minds as U.S. forces next door in Afghanistan are killed by insurgents with Pakistan ties. After delivering the cash for economic development, apparently with a straight face, Clinton went to Kabul for an international conference on the Afghan War and announced her concerns about U.S. aid not making it through to its intended destination.

The one-time presidential candidate said>>>

Elite Fighting Unit

2010-07-19T04:06:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon announced TODAY the formation of a new 500-man elite fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces (USRSF)

These boys will be dropped off in Afghanistan and have been given only the following facts about terrorists :

1. The season opened today.

2. There is no limit.
3. They taste just like chicken.
4. They don't like beer, pickup trucks, country music, naked women or Jesus..
5. They are directly responsible for the death of Dale Earnhardt .

The Pentagon expects the problem in Afghanistan to be over by Friday..

What Is Torture

2010-07-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

I got shot down over N Vietnam in 1967, a Sqdn. Commander.
After I returned in 1973.I published 2 books that dealt a lot
with "real torture" in Hanoi . Our make- believe president is
branding our country as a bunch of torturers when he has
no idea what torture is.

As for me, I put thru a mock execution because I would not respond...
pistol whipped on the head...same event.. Couple of days later...
hung by my feet all day. I escaped and a couple of weeks later, I got

shot and recaptured. Shot was OK...what happened afterwards was not.

They marched me to Vinh...put me in the rope trick, trick...almost
pulled my arms out of the sockets Beat me on the head with a
little wooden rod until my eyes were swelled shut, and my unshot,
unbroken hand a pulp.

Next day hung me by the arms...rebroke my right wrist...wiped
out the nerves in my arms that control the hands...rolled my fingers
up into a ball. Only left the slightest movement of my L forefinger.
So I started answering with some incredible lies.

Sent me to Hanoi strapped to a barrel of gas in the back of a truck.

Hanoi ..on my knees....rope trick again. Beaten by a big fool.

Into leg irons on a bed in Heartbreak Hotel.

Much kneeling--hands up at Zoo.

Really bad beating for refusing to condemn Lyndon Johnson.

Several more kneeling events. I could see my knee bone thru
kneeling holes.

There was an escape from the annex to the Zoo. I was the Senior
Officer of a large building because of escape...they started a mass
torture of all commanders.

I think it was July 7, 1969...they started beating me with a car fanbelt.

In first 2 days I took over 300 strokes...then stopped counting
because I never thought I would live thru it.

They continued day-night torture to get me to confess to a non-existent
part in the escape. This went on for at least 3 days. On my knees...
fan belting...cut open my scrotum with fan belt stroke. opened up
both knee holes again. My fanny looked like hamburger...I could not
lie on my back.

They tortured me into admitting that I was in on the escape...and
that my 2 room-mates knew about it.

The next day I denied the lie.

They commenced torturing me again with 3- 6- or 9 strokes of
the fan belt every day from about July 11 or 12th..to 14 October
1969. I continued to refuse to lie about my roommates again.

Now, the point of this is that our make-believe
president has declared to the world that we (U.S..) are a bunch of
torturers...Thus it will be OK to torture us next time when they
catch us...because that is what the U.S. does.

Our make-believe president is a know nothing fool who thinks
that pouring a little water on some one's face, or hanging a pair of
women's pants over an Arabs head is TORTURE. He is a meathead.

I just talked to MOH holder Leo Thorsness, who was also in my squadron,

in jail...as was John McCain...and we agree that McCain does
not speak for the POW group when he claims that Al Gharib was
torture...or that "water boarding" is torture.

Our president and those fools around him who keep bad mouthing
our great country are a disgrace to the United States . Please pass
this info on to Sean Hannity. He is free to use it to point out the
stupidity of the claims that water boarding...which has no after
effect.is torture.

If it got the Arab to cough up the story about how he planned the attack on the twin towers in NYC ...

hurrah for the guy who poured the water.

____________________________________________________________________

"Bud" Day, Medal Of Honor Recipient

George Everett "Bud" Day(born February 24, 1925) is a retired

U.S. Air Force Colonel and Command Pilot who served during the

Vietnam War. He is often cited as being the most decorated U.S.

service member since General Douglas MacArthur, having

received some seventy decorations, a majority for actions

in combat. Day is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

--------------

Please pass on to your
family and friendS

Al-Qaida Terror: This Time, Africa

2010-07-13T03:34:00.001-07:00

Posted 07/12/2010 08:07 PM ET

Terrorism: Sadly, Spain's World Cup triumph was marred by a Somali terror strike on Uganda. It brought back memories of how Spain fled Iraq after al-Qaida's attack in 2004 — a response Africa shouldn't repeat.

The bombings that killed 74 soccer fans watching the World Cup championship between Spain and the Netherlands on Sunday night had all the earmarks of a classic al-Qaida operation: They targeted large crowds of bystanders; the victims were multinational, with Irish, Indian, American, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Ugandan nationals among the dead; the blasts occurred almost simultaneously in two places; and it happened on a date ending in 11.

The attacks also signaled another al-Qaida junior partner in terrorism — al-Shabab of Somalia, whose ties to al-Qaida are similar to Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia or the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Al-Shabab, which claimed "credit" for the suicide attacks, already controls a third of Somalia's land and has ambitions of conquering all of it. African Union troops, which support the weak Somali government, are all that stands in their way.

"Al-Shabab was behind the blasts," said Ali Mohamud Rage, the terrorist gang's spokesman. "Thanks to our martyrs who carried out the attacks."

Al-Shabab had at least two motives for Sunday's attack: its Talibanic hatred of soccer, music, drinking and all "unnecessary fun," and the gang's political goal of driving Uganda's African Union troops out of Somalia so that al-Shabab can take over. Uganda has an election soon, and al-Shabab wants to use terror to drive Ugandans to elect someone who'll remove Uganda's peacekeepers from Somalia.

This is exactly what al-Qaida did in Spain in 2004, when its suicide terrorists launched attacks on Madrid commuter trains days before an election, killing 191. After Spain's 3/11 attacks, Spanish voters caved in to al-Qaida by electing an anti-American leader who quickly withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq.

At the time, the enemy insurgency in Iraq was led by al-Qaida.>>>

Steele's Right: Afghanistan Is Obama's War

2010-07-13T03:19:00.001-07:00

By RICHARD COHEN Posted 07/12/2010 08:07 PM ET

View Enlarged Image

'Facts are the enemy of truth," Don Quixote tweeted so very long ago — and as if to prove his point, the Democratic Party in all its tawdry glory unloosed a barrage of facts in the direction of the slyly brilliant Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee and almost certainly to someday take his place in the conservative cable TV firmament.

For saying that the war in Afghanistan is "a war of Obama's choosing," he was, for a brief and shining moment, stating the absolute truth.

That moment has passed. Steele has softened his critique. These uncharacteristic second thoughts followed mortifying questions about his inner Republicanness by, among others, Sen. John McCain, Sarah Palin's irritable Geppetto, who created her out of discarded principles and furious opportunism.

Steele has his own principles, however, and declared that he is not going to quit. "I ain't going anywhere," he said. And he hasn't.

Of course, Steele was right from the start. His truth was the larger one, which is that enough time has elapsed so that the war in Afghanistan can be seen as Barack Obama's.

It began, as we all know, under the illustrious George W. Bush, who then got distracted by all that WMD in Iraq and veered off toward Baghdad. But these are mere details, pesky facts with which we need not concern ourselves.

The truth is that Obama found this war on his doorstep, took it in, nursed and even escalated it and swaddled it in his own clothes: more troops, and still more on the way.

One can appreciate how Steele got his "facts" wrong. It is how possession of the Vietnam War moved from Lyndon Johnson to Richard Nixon even though they both lacked absolute belief in the cause — whatever exactly that once was.

Nixon, in fact, even had a secret plan to end the conflict and was furiously de-escalating, rapidly Vietnamizationing and frantically trying to disentangle himself and the nation from the war. Still, when demonstrators gathered outside the White House, it was not to praise his peace efforts but to denounce him as a warmonger.

The rule in all these cases seems pretty apparent:>>>

WISDOM FROM TRAINING MANUALS

2010-03-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

'If the enemy is in range, so are you.'
- Infantry Journal-

'It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.'
- US.Air Force Manual -

'Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword, obviously never encountered automatic weapons.'
- General MacArthur -

'You, you, and you ... Panic. The rest of you, come with me.'
- Infantry Sgt.-

'Tracers work both ways.'
- Army Ordnance Manual-

'Five second fuses last about three seconds.'
- Infantry Journal -

The three most useless things in aviation are: Fuel in the bowser; Runway behind you; and Air above you.
-Basic Flight Training Manual- ;

'Any ship can be a minesweeper. Once.'
- Naval Ops Manual -

'Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do.'
- Unknown Infantry Recruit-

'If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up to him.'
- Infantry Journal-

'Yea, Though I Fly Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 50,000 Feet and Climbing.'
- Sign over SR71 Wing Ops-

'You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.'
-Paul F. Crickmore (SR71 test pilot)-

'The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.'
-Unknown Author-

'If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage it has to be a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe.'
- Fixed Wing Pilot-

'When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash..'
-Multi-Engine Training Manual-

'Without ammunition, the Air Force is just an expensive flying club.'
-Unknown Author-

'If you hear me yell;"Eject, Eject, Eject!", the last two will be echos..'
If you stop to ask "Why?", you'll be talking to yourself, because by then you'll be the pilot.'
-Pre-flight Briefing from a Canadian F104 Pilot-

'What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots?
If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; but If ATC screws up, .... the pilot dies.'
-Sign over Control Tower Door-

'Never trade luck for skill.'
-Author Unknown-

'Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight.'
-Basic Flight Training Manual-

'Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it.'
- Emergency Checklist-

'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you.'
- Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot) -

'There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime.'
-Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham AFB, AZ-

'You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal.' - Lead-in Fighter Training Manual -

As the test pilot climbs out of the experimental aircraft,

having torn off the wings and tail in the crash landing, the crash truck arrives.

The rescuer sees the bloodied pilot and asks,'What happened?'
The pilot's reply: 'I don't know, I just got here myself!'

Officials Investigating Crashes of 3 World War II Navy Planes in Oregon Woods

2010-03-27T12:05:00.001-07:00

Updated March 26, 2010

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A sheriff involved in investigating the wreckage of a World War II dive bomber found in the Oregon woods said Friday at least three U.S. Navy planes of that type apparently went down in the area from 1945 to 1948.

No human remains have yet been found by a U.S. Navy team and law enforcement officers at the crash site near the Oregon coast, not far from a Navy air station in operation during the war.

Tillamook County Sheriff Todd Anderson said he knows of reports of two Curtiss SB2C Helldivers going down in the Tillamook-Astoria area in 1945, and a third in 1948.

"We've got all kinds of clues and bits and pieces," Anderson said.

Investigators are especially interested in the reported 1948 crash.

"That's the one we're looking at now, but we're not eliminating others," Anderson said.

Helldivers -- a formidable aircraft that saw action in the Pacific -- were among warplanes stored in hangars at Tillamook after the war.

Anderson said he has been informed by the U.S. Navy that investigators were close to identifying the airplane.

The investigative work includes going over old Navy records that document plane crashes and missing crew members.

The wreckage was discovered on March 18 by loggers working in the densely wooded area.

Anderson said among the wreckage, spread out over an area of about 200 yards, are a large section of the plane's tail, sections of a wing and the remains of an engine. Some of the debris melted from the heat of the crash.

He said the plane apparently made a deep impact>>>

Distrust And Verify

2010-03-27T04:02:00.000-07:00

Posted 03/26/2010 07:10 PM ET

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, accompanied by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, discusses the new nuclear arms reduction treaty between the U.S... View Enlarged Image

Arms Control: The secretary of state claims the nuclear arms deal with Russia "puts us in a very strong leadership position to make the case about an Iran, about a North Korea." Missile defense makes a better case.

History has a remarkable way of sometimes appearing to be written by a hidden hand. How extraordinary that as a child attending boarding school in England, William F. Buckley Jr., who grew up to the intellectual bane of appeasers, was there in the crowd at the Heston Aerodrome as Neville Chamberlain waved his "piece of paper" signed by Adolf Hitler.

Will it be remembered as equally extraordinary that the day a nuclear arms deal was announced between the U.S. and Russia was also the day that North Korea apparently thought it could get away with torpedoing a South Korean naval ship?

Have our enemies concluded that President Obama's faith in diplomacy is a weakness they can now exploit?

Americans are all for reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world, and the missiles that can carry them. Indeed, this was one of Ronald Reagan's great aspirations.

But the history of the 20th century teaches us that pieces of paper are not to be preferred to credible deterrents and defenses.

We were taught that not only by Chamberlain, but by Reagan, who in 1986 wisely picked up his papers and walked out of the Reykjavik Summit rather than give away the chance of a missile defense against nuclear aggression.

How exactly, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims, "it's in America's interest in the particulars of this treaty and it's in America's interest because it puts us in a very strong leadership position to make the case about an Iran, about a North Korea" is very much yet to be seen.

Not only history but common sense tells us that neither Iran nor North Korea give a fatwa or forced famine about America's moral credibility in the sphere of nuclear proliferation — or in any other sphere for that matter.

Nothing we in the West do will impress or shame such megalomaniacal regimes into changing their threatening ways. Might is the language they understand.

As for Russia, run by ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin, it has been expanding and enhancing its long-range missiles, to the increasing distress of its former Soviet satellites.

Will it end up being yet another insult to the>>>

Defense Industry Pursues Gold in 'Smart Power' Deals

2010-03-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

MARCH 23, 2010

By AUGUST COLE

MONROVIA, Liberia—Lockheed Martin Corp. became the nation's No. 1 military contractor by selling cutting-edge weaponry like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Its latest contribution to the U.S. arsenal: training prosecutors in Liberia's Justice Ministry.

The U.S. government has hired the defense contractor to test an emerging tenet of its security policy. Called "smart power," it blends military might with nation-building activities, in hopes of boosting political stability and American influence in far-flung corners such as Liberia.

U.S. officials are concerned that nations imperiled by poverty and political strife could spark regional conflicts and foster terrorist networks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the problem posed by failing states "is in many ways the ideological and security challenge of our time."

The Pentagon and the State Department are now leaning on defense contractors to come up with ways to stave off crises before they occur, with programs as simple as mentoring lawyers or teaching auto repair. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has advocated for "smart power" initiatives abroad. In a speech earlier this month, the Pentagon's top officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, talked about the need for more civilian efforts—or "soft power"—overseas, instead of just military muscle.

"Secretaries Clinton and Gates have called for more funding and more emphasis on our soft power, and I could not agree with them more," Adm. Mullen said. "Should we choose to exert American influence solely through our troops, we should expect to see that influence diminish in time."

Defense firms are eager to oblige. "The definition of global security is changing," says Lockheed's Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Stevens. He wants the maker of the Air Force's most advanced fighters to become a central player in the U.S. campaign to use economic and political means to align countries with American strategic interests.

Last year, Lockheed had two of its highest profile programs, the F-22 Raptor fighter and a fleet of presidential helicopters, ended by the Obama administration. Now, Lockheed is one of several defense firms expected to bid for a State Department contract to support "criminal justice sector development programs world-wide," that could be worth up to $30 billion over five years.

Northrop Grumman Corp., the No. 3 Pentagon contractor behind Boeing, has trained Senegalese peacekeeping troops in the basics of human-rights law. Another giant defense contractor, BAE Systems Inc., has provided anthropologists to accompany U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to aid understanding of local cultures. BAE said it is seeking more "smart power" contracts, including in Africa, where much of the government's efforts are being targeted.

The Obama administration has requested $39.4 billion in funding for civilian foreign operations in fiscal 2011; part of that will be for programs such as the Peace Corps, while some will go to defense contractors for development or training programs.

Morgan Stanley defense analyst Heidi Wood says Lockheed's early push into this realm sets it apart from competitors. It is too soon to pinpoint a financial impact, she says, but the moves will pay off. "It's a complete paradigm change."

Some question whether big military>>>

Obama's Legacy and the Iranian Bomb

2010-03-23T12:25:00.001-07:00

MARCH 23, 2010

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

The gravest threat faced by the world today is a nuclear-armed Iran. Of all the nations capable of producing nuclear weapons, Iran is the only one that might use them to attack an enemy.

There are several ways in which Iran could use nuclear weapons. The first is by dropping an atomic bomb on Israel, as its leaders have repeatedly threatened to do. Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran, boasted in 2004 that an Iranian attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Mr. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated with its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose about 15 million people, which he said would be a small "sacrifice" of the billion Muslims in the world.

The second way in which Iran could use nuclear weapons would be to hand them off to its surrogates, Hezbollah or Hamas. A third way would be for a terrorist group, such as al Qaeda, to get its hands on Iranian nuclear material. It could do so with the consent of Iran or by working with rogue elements within the Iranian regime.

Finally, Iran could use its nuclear weapons without ever detonating a bomb. By constantly threatening Israel with nuclear annihilation, it could engender so much fear among Israelis as to incite mass immigration, a brain drain, or a significant decline in people moving to Israel.

These are the specific ways in which Iran could use nuclear weapons, primarily against the Jewish state. But there are other ways in which a nuclear-armed Iran would endanger the world. First, it would cause an arms race in which every nation in the Middle East would seek to obtain nuclear weapons.

Second, it would almost certainly provoke Israel into engaging in either a pre-emptive or retaliatory attack, thus inflaming the entire region or inciting further attacks against Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas.

Third, it would provide Iran with a nuclear umbrella under>>>

Reality Sets In, So U.S. Policy Is 'Reset' Again

2010-03-13T04:27:00.000-08:00

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSONPosted 03/12/2010 06:39 PM ET

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Almost every element of Barack Obama's once-heralded new "reset" foreign policy of a year ago has either been reset or likely soon will be. Consider Obama's approach to the eight-year-old war on terror.

Plans made more than a year ago to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay by January 2010 have stalled. Despite loud proclamations about trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, in a civilian court in New York, such an absurd pledge will probably never be kept.

Talk of trying our own former CIA interrogators for being too tough on terrorist suspects has also come to nothing. And why not put an end to second-guessing anti-terrorism protocols since the Obama administration has quadrupled the number of assassinations by Predator drones of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan?

After all, the targeted killing of hundreds of suspects is far more questionable than waterboarding three confessed killers.

The Obama administration seems to have embraced the once widely criticized Bush-Petraeus strategy in Iraq of gradual withdrawal in concert with Iraqi benchmarks. Indeed, Vice President Joe Biden in Orwellian fashion claims that our victory in Iraq may be one of the administration's "greatest achievements."

Was it not a defeatist Biden who not long ago advocated the trisection of Iraq into separate nations?

And after months of waiting, Obama finally sent more troops to Afghanistan, adopting a surge strategy that looks a lot like Bush's 2007 escalation in Iraq — this after he once assured the country that Bush's surge, in a tactical sense, "wasn't working."

Almost all of the once-derided Bush anti-terrorism protocols are still in place — wiretaps, intercepts, tribunals and renditions. And given there were more foiled radical Islamic terrorist plots in 2009 than in any year since 2001, the president will probably stop his outreach speeches to the Islamic world and his serial recitations of American sins.

Our efforts to reach out and negotiate directly with Iran failed. Secretary of State Clinton effectively acknowledged the impasse, citing the unexpected de facto military coup by the Revolutionary Guard. In any case, does anyone think more Obama speeches, videos, diplomacy and deadlines will halt an Iranian nuclear bomb?

President Obama was once a fierce critic>>>

Marines Battle Snipers in Marjah Offensive

2010-02-15T05:25:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY 15, 2010, 7:16 A.M. ET

Associated Press

MARJAH, Afghanistan -- Sniper teams attacked U.S. Marines and Afghan troops across the Taliban haven of Marjah, as several gunbattles erupted Monday on the third day of a major offensive to seize the extremists' southern heartland.

Multiple firefights in different locations taxed the ability of coalition forces to provide enough air support as NATO forces forged deeper into the town, moving through suspected insurgent neighborhoods, the U.S. Marines said.

In northern Marjah, an armored column came under fire from at least three separate sniper teams, slowing its progress. One of the teams came within 155 feet and started firing.

Moving Into Marjah

The Campaign in Helmand

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Bryan Denton for the Wall Street Journal

Marines filed through a field toward Marjah. In the first 24 hours of the assault, which began before dawn Saturday, one U.S. Marine and one British soldier were killed.

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See how British and U.S. troops have waged a campaign against the Taliban.

Regional Violence

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Follow events in Afghanistan and Pakistan, day by day.

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Troops braced for the estimated 2.5-mile march to link up with U.S. and Afghan troops who had been airdropped into the town. Small squads of Taliban snipers initiated firefights throughout the day in an attempt to draw coalition forces into a larger ambush.

The massive offensive involving some 15,000 U.S., Afghan and British troops is the biggest joint operation since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

On Monday, Afghan military officials gave a more optimistic view of the progress being made, with Brig. Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai saying Afghan and NATO forces have largely contained the insurgents and succeeded in gaining trust from residents, who have pointed out mine locations.

"Today there is no major movement of the enemy. South of Marjah they are very weak. There has been low resistance. Soon we will have Marjah cleared of enemies," Gen. Zazai said at a briefing in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province. He added that only three Afghan troops had been injured.

However, the mission faced a setback on Sunday when two U.S. rockets slammed into a home outside Marjah, killing 12 civilians. NATO said Monday that the rockets missed their target by about 600 meters, or about a third of a mile. NATO had earlier said the rockets missed their target by just 300 meters.

The civilian deaths were a major blow to NATO and Afghan efforts to win the support of residents in the Marjah area, a Taliban logistical center and a base for the lucrative opium trade that finances the insurgency. Before the offensive began Saturday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had pleaded for the Afghan and foreign commanders to be "seriously careful for the safety of civilians."

Mr. Karzai has called for a thorough investigation into the airstrike.>>>

Trace Adkins and The West Point Cadets

2010-02-11T19:29:00.001-08:00

Trace Adkins and The West Point Cadets

Be sure to watch until the video is completely finished and a screen will come up to show how many people have viewed it!

Http://media.causes.Com/611645?p_id=44185871

WW II : RARE COLOR FILM : MIDWAY : DIRECTED BY JOHN FORD

2010-02-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

Prabhupada : Just like we had experience... I think in the First World War none of you had seen because you were all young men. And we were child. When the First World War was declared, we were all boys, schoolchildren. My age was at that time fourteen years old, in 1914, when there was fight declared between Germany and Belgium. So that was the First World War. Then Second World War was in 1939. That was also German and Englishmen, like that. But actually, this was also World War, this Battlefield of Kuruksetra, because all the kings of the world, they joined either this party or that party. So there were a great assembly of all worldly kings. Now, Krsna says that "Either Myself, either yourself, or these persons who have assembled here, they are individual. They were individuals in the past, they are now individuals, and they will continue to be individual even after annihilation of this body." Now, how you'll adjust? There are two theories, that after liberation all these souls, they become one. Just like all drops of water, if you put into the sea, they become one entity. There is no distinction. And the Lord Krsna says that "No, they keep their individuality. They do not mix." Now we are supposed... We are all laymen. We are ignorant, what is actually position, what is the actual position. But we have got our discretion also. Just like every one of you has some knowledge in the history. Now, in the history in the past... Suppose you are now thirty years old or thirty- five years old, and suppose two hundred years before, the history which you read, you find that all people were individuals. And at the present you are experiencing that all individual, they are. All living entities--either human being, or animals or birds, or anywhere--you can see that they are individual. Then why should you not believe that in future they will remain individual? Do you follow? In the past they were individuals, in the present they are individuals, and why not in future they'll remain individuals? It is naturally concluded that they will continue to be individuals. Even we do not have any sufficient knowledge in either of these two theories, mixing up or keeping individual, but by our own small reasoning we can understand that in the future history we have information that there were individual persons. At the present moment also, we are seeing that there are individual persons. So why not in the future? How it is that in the future they'll mix up and become one, homogeneous thing? It is quite reasonable. And this conclusion is like this: just like in two hundred years before, in the month of March, the climatic position was like this. And in 1966 we find in March the climatic position is exactly the same. And in future... Naturally I conclude that in future in March the same climatic condition will be there. In astronomy also, if you find that in March, in such and such date, the sun rising is like this, and actually in the present March, month of March, 1966, we see the same exact time... And the whole calculation of astronomy is made like that. They prepare hundred years' astronomical charts. Hundred years'. How they do prepare? By this calculation, that in the past it was like this, at the present it is like this, so naturally, in future it will be like this. Just like you are speaking of the imminent springtime, that the nature, how will be decorate, how springtime, it will be nice, because you had past experience. So you are foretelling. It is not foretelling. From past experience, you are telling that this will take place. This will take place.

Iran's Defiance Spurs Rise In U.S. Military Defenses

2010-02-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 31, 2010, 8:33 P.M. ET

By PETER SPIEGEL

WASHINGTON—The U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf have stepped up their military defenses in recent months in response to Iranian missile tests and Tehran's continued defiance of international efforts to curtail its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials.

The moves, which have included upgrades, new purchases of American-made Patriot antimissile batteries and the addition of advanced air- and missile-defense radars, illustrate both growing concern with the Iranian moves and a new willingness by Arab allies in the region to more publicly tie their defenses to the U.S.

"President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad has been the best recruiting officer for U.S. Central Command in the Gulf region," said a senior U.S. military official.

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Associated Press

A U.S. Navy boat patrols the harbor in Manama, Bahrain.

Although some of the buildup has been going on for years—the Bush administration repeatedly sent envoys to the region in a bid to persuade Gulf allies like Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar to link their air and missile defenses in response to Iranian saber-rattling—the heightened profile of the moves comes as the Obama administration has toughened its rhetoric against Tehran.

After months of attempting to engage Iran in nuclear diplomacy, the administration has been working in recent weeks to win an international consensus for a new round of sanctions against Iran. Another U.S. official said the willingness of Gulf allies to work more closely with the U.S. on their defenses is a sign of shifting attitudes toward Iran.

"Clearly the opportunity cost of working with>>>

U.S.-China Relations Cool on Arms Deal

2010-02-05T03:47:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 31, 2010

By ANDREW BROWNE And JASON DEAN

BEIJING—China's suspension of military exchanges with the U.S. in retaliation for a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan heightens the risk of friction between Beijing and Washington at a time when they are already at loggerheads over a host of security and economic issues.

China announced the freeze on military exchanges Saturday, and summoned the U.S. ambassador to Beijing for a formal complaint, following the Obama administration's announcement Friday that it is proceeding with the sale of antimissile systems, helicopters and other arms to Taiwan.

U.S. officials believe the risks with China can be contained, with neither side wanting to allow what is arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the world to veer out of control.

Still, relations are likely to get rockier before any improvement, as the Obama administration appears increasingly frustrated by Beijing's refusal to budge on a range of sensitive subjects, from Iran to currency policy to climate change. Further raising the temperature, President Barack Obama is expected to meet soon with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader Beijing denounces as a separatist for his efforts to win greater autonomy for the Himalayan region.

The Chinese foreign ministry said Saturday that the suspension of military exchanges would affect vice-ministerial meetings scheduled soon on security, arms control and antiproliferation. China also will impose sanctions on those U.S. companies involved in the arms sales to Taiwan.

In the meeting with U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said the arms package for Taiwan "constitutes a gross intervention into China's internal affairs," according to a foreign-ministry statement. China is "extremely indignant," it said.

Beijing previously suspended military>>>

Corpsman

2010-02-04T23:18:00.001-08:00

I say Corpsman--He says Corpsman!

I say Idiot--He says Corpsman!

I say dumb as a stump--He says Corpsman!

I say identity crisis--He says Corpsman!

I say double DUH--He says Corpsman!

I say where is that hope and change?--He says Corpsman!

Bare Warning

2010-02-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

Posted 02/03/2010 06:38 PM ET

Homeland Security: When it comes to foul balls, a "heads up!" is no big deal. But when the government warns of imminent and "certain" attack by al-Qaida, complacency is not an option.

A chilling spectacle just took place before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Panel Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked, "What is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the U.S. homeland in the next three to six months, high or low?"

And one by one, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller all agreed an attack was "certain."

But log onto the Department of Homeland Security's Web site and all seems fairly calm. The first news item listed says, "Secretary Napolitano Announces More than $23 Million in Recovery Act Funding for Fire Station Construction Grants." And three of the other four news items on the main page tout the ways the department's $56.3 billion fiscal year 2011 budget request would be spent.

You have to look for the fine print and click a couple of times to find out the nation's terror alert condition — yellow or "elevated," like during most of the time since 9/11.

But if an attack is "certain" as the U.S.

U.S. Upgrading Approach to Defending Persian Gulf Allies

2010-01-31T08:18:00.000-08:00

Updated January 30, 2010

The United States has quietly increased the capability of land-based Patriot defensive missiles in several Gulf Arab nations, and one military official said the Navy is beefing up the presence of ships capable of knocking down hostile missiles in flight.

WASHINGTON -- As the Obama administration edges toward imposing tougher sanctions on Iran, it has begun upgrading its approach to defending its Persian Gulf allies against potential Iranian missile strikes, officials said Saturday.

The officials discussed aspects of the defensive strategy on condition of anonymity because some elements are classified.

The moves have been in the works for months and are part of a broader adjustment in the U.S. approach to missile defense, including in Europe and Asia. Details have not been publicly announced, in part because of diplomatic sensitivities in Gulf countries which worry about Iranian military capabilities but are cautious about acknowledging U.S. protection.

The administration will send a review of ballistic missile strategy to Congress on Monday that frames the larger shifts. Attention to defense of the Persian Gulf region, a focus on diffuse networks of sensors and weapons and cooperation with Russia are major elements of the study, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

and much more here>>>

China to Suspend U.S. Military Exchanges Over Arms Deal

2010-01-30T02:18:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 30, 2010

China will suspend military exchanges with the U.S. over its arms sales to Taiwan, state news agency Xinhua said on Saturday.

"Considering the severe harm and disgusting effect of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the Chinese side has decided to suspend planned mutual military visits," Xinhua quoted the Defence Ministry as saying.

China angrily summoned the U.S. ambassador on Saturday and warned that a plan to sell $6.4 billion in arms to Taiwan would harm already strained ties. One Chinese expert said the sale would give Beijing a "fair and proper reason" to accelerate weapons testing.

The planned sale, posted Friday on a Pentagon Web site, is likely to complicate the cooperation the U.S. seeks from China on issues ranging from Iran's nuclear program to the loosening of Internet controls, including a Google-China standoff over censorship.

Cutoffs of military ties top the list of possible punishments that Chinese state media and academics have publicly discussed in recent weeks as Beijing repeatedly warned the U.S. against the arms sale.

The U.S. is "obstinately making the wrong decision," China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday after Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei warned Ambassador Jon Huntsman that the sale would "cause consequences that both sides are unwilling to see." The vice minister urged that the sale be immediately canceled, it said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy, Susan>>>

Will Washington Pay for the Terror Trials?

2010-01-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 21, 2010, 7:12 P.M. ET

By JAMES Q. WILSON

The plan to put five terrorists on trial in Manhattan (and possibly to put other terrorists on trial in neighboring Brooklyn) has raised profound questions.

How can a civilian trial protect classified information? Will the judge dismiss the charges if the defense claims the defendants were tortured? Why should murderers be tried so close to the place where thousands of their victims died? Is there any chance of finding disinterested jurors in a city that suffered so much from radical jihadists?

Recall what happened when Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and his associates were tried in New York City for attempting to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. The government was required to disclose the identity of all of its unindicted co-conspirators in the case, a list that included Osama bin Laden and many of his followers. Bin Laden and others knew immediately that they had to be on the lookout.

But there is another question that deserves an answer: Why should New York City and law enforcement agencies there bear the burden of a trial foisted on them by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder?

The trial will take place in lower Manhattan.>>>

Al Qaeda's Deep Tribal Ties Make Yemen a Terror Hub

2010-01-24T03:42:00.001-08:00

JANUARY 22, 2010

By CHARLES LEVINSON And MARGARET COKER

SAN'A, Yemen—In nearly a decade of rebuilding its terror network here, al Qaeda has put down deep roots, a move that is now complicating U.S.-backed efforts to battle the group.

Unlike other chapters of the global terror network, Yemen's Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a largely homegrown movement, with carefully cultivated ties to the local population. That sets it apart from other affiliates of al Qaeda, and could make it much more difficult to dislodge.

The group's strategy: apply lessons learned from mistakes by affiliates in other Mideast havens, particularly Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

In both those places, al Qaeda's footprint weakened significantly as local support for the group turned sharply against it. To avoid a similar fate in Yemen, the group has worked hard to curry favor with local tribes—so much so that it is now largely interwoven in the country's tribal fabric.

"They've worked hard to put deep, and what they hope are lasting, roots that will make it very difficult for them to be rooted out of Yemen," says Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University. "They've done a good job of looking at the mistakes that other versions of al Qaeda have made elsewhere."

Since late last year, Yemen has emerged as one of the biggest and most dangerous hubs for al Qaeda operations. U.S. officials have tied al Qaeda militants based here to two attacks against U.S. targets, including the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing allegedly by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who told U.S. Officials that he received his training from al Qaeda operatives in the Arab country. The push into Yemen, say U.S. officials, shows the group's increased ability to wage jihad against the U.S. and its allies, a main al Qaeda goal.

In recent months, a top al Qaeda leader publicized moving his foreign family here, while another married into a local tribe. The group is providing social and financial assistance in some of the country's poorest areas, according to tribesmen, local residents and a former al Qaeda member. Its leaders have also tempered its message of global jihad to fit local grievances—including the lack of economic benefits from Yemen's oil revenues—to recruit new members.

In exchange, some tribal leaders are welcoming al Qaeda members, allowing their sons to sign up, and providing protection from government troops. That has made al Qaeda militants almost indistinguishable from many of the rugged tribesmen and sympathizers they now mix with.

"As long as Qaeda respects the tribes, some tribes will welcome them," says Sheikh Abdulqawi Sherif, the head of the pro-government Bani Dhabian tribe, whose land borders Mareb and Shebwa provinces, two areas where al Qaeda cells are based.

Gen. Yahya Saleh, nephew of Yemen's>>>

Do You Remember 1987......

2010-01-23T05:45:00.001-08:00

Do You Remember 1987......

I had forgotten all of this. Do you
remember when the senators were giving Ollie North such a
bad time? This brings it all into perspective doesn't
it? Have a great day.

Thought you
might be interested in this forgotten bit of

information............

It

was 1987! At a lecture the other day they were
playing an old news video of
Lt.Col. Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra
hearings during the Reagan
Administration.

There was Ollie in front of God and country getting
the
third degree, but what he said was stunning!

He was being drilled by a
senator, 'Did you not recently spend close to
$60,000 for a home security
system?'

Ollie replied, 'Yes, I did, Sir.'

The senator
continued, trying to get a laugh out of the
audience, 'Isn't that just a little
excessive?'

'No, sir,' continued Ollie.

'No? And why not?' the
senator asked.

'Because the lives of my family and I were
threatened,
sir.'

'Threatened? By whom?' the senator
questioned.

'By a
terrorist, sir' Ollie answered.

'Terrorist? What terrorist could
possibly scare you that much?'

'His name is Osama bin Laden, sir' Ollie
replied.

At this point the senator tried to repeat the name,
but
couldn't pronounce it, which most people back then
probably couldn't. A couple
of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator
continued. Why are you so
afraid of this man?' the senator asked.

'Because, sir, he is the most
evil person alive that I know of', Ollie answered.

'And
what do you recommend we do about him?' asked the
senator.

'Well, sir,
if it was up to me, I would recommend that an
assassin team be formed to
eliminate him and his men from the face of the
earth.'

The senator
disagreed with this approach, and that was all that
was shown of the clip.
By
the way, that senator was Al Gore!

Also....

Terrorist
pilot Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in
Israel
in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and
imprisoned him. As part of the
Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993,
Israel had to agree to release
so-called 'political prisoners.'

However, the Israelis would not release
any with blood on their hands. The American
President at the time, Bill Clinton,
and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher,
'insisted' that all prisoners be
released.

Thus Mohammad Atta was freed and eventually thanked
us by
flying an airplane into Tower One of the
World Trade
Center . This was reported
by many of the American TV networks at the time
that the terrorists were first
identified.

It
was censored in the US from all
later
reports.

If
you agree that the American public should be made
aware of this fact, pass this on.

Do Not Break - it is 8 years strong.

This has not been broken since 9/11/01,
please
keep it going...

This has been kept alive and moving since 9/11. In memory
of
all those who perished this morning; the
passengers and the pilots on the
United Air and AA flights, the workers in the World
Trade Center and the
Pentagon, and all the innocent bystanders Our
prayers go out to the friends and
families of the deceased......

A Call To Arms So Ambivalent And Dispiriting

2010-01-10T14:20:00.000-08:00

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMERPosted 12/03/2009 06:42 PM ET

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We shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills — for 18 months. Then we start packing for home.

We shall never surrender — unless the war gets too expensive, in which case, we shall quote Eisenhower on "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs" and then insist that "we can't simply afford to ignore the price of these wars."

The quotes are from President Obama's West Point speech announcing the Afghanistan troop surge. What a strange speech it was — a call to arms so ambivalent, so tentative, so defensive.

Which made his last-minute assertion of "resolve unwavering" so hollow. It was meant to be stirring. It fell flat. In August, he called Afghanistan "a war of necessity." On Tuesday night, he defined "what's at stake" as "the common security of the world." The world, no less. Yet, we begin leaving in July 2011?

Does he think that such ambivalence is not heard by the Taliban, by Afghan peasants deciding which side to choose, by Pakistani generals hedging their bets, by NATO allies already with one foot out of Afghanistan?

Nonetheless, most supporters of the Afghanistan war were satisfied. They got the policy, the liberals got the speech. The hawks got three-quarters of what Gen. Stanley McChrystal wanted — 30,000 additional U.S. troops — and the doves got a few soothing words. Big deal, say the hawks.

But it is a big deal. Words matter because will matters.>>>

Kinder, Gentler Stalin

2010-01-10T14:15:00.000-08:00

Posted 12/03/2009 06:57 PM ET

Russia: The U.S. victory in the Cold War was once viewed as "the end of history." It turned out freedom is not that easy, and ex-KGB operative Vladimir Putin now plans to have history repeat itself.

Former Russian president and current Prime Minister Putin, who after more than a decade in power has made Moscow less democratic and more imperialistic, smiled during a phony TV town hall program and said "don't hold your breath" when asked if he would leave politics.

Even worse, Putin, suspected of ordering the radioactive poisoning of dissident writer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, now hails brutal Communist dictator Josef Stalin for making the former Soviet Union a superpower (thanks to stealing U.S. nuclear secrets). Guilty of the genocide of tens of millions over three decades of rule, "Uncle Joe" ranks between Mao and Hitler on history's list of worst mass murderers.

Yet earlier this year the restoration of Moscow's busy Kurskaya>>>

Chinese Checkers

2010-01-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

Posted 01/08/2010 07:11 PM ET

Proliferation: Iran ran circles around United Nations sanctions last week, using the good offices of China to procure nuclear equipment from Taiwan. It's about par for Iran, but spotlights China's double game on security.

For a while, China was selling the international community the line that there should be no sanctions on Tehran without the "consensus" of the global community. All for one and everybody a good team player — except that China never intended to be on the team. It merely wanted to veto attempts to stop Iran's wildcat nuclear program.

On Wednesday, Beijing followed with the notice that there would be no sanctions, because "China always believes that the Iranian nuclear issue should be resolved properly through diplomatic channels," as a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Friday.

"Sanctions have never been a fundamental solution," he intoned, suggesting that China was being the adult here. After years of Iran breaking its word to the United Nations and defying sanctions, all of a sudden talking is the solution.

But the mask is off now: It turns out China has been helping the other side all along, not just by roadblocking U.N. efforts to stop Iran from destabilizing its region, but doing so at a profit.

In 2008, an unnamed Chinese company, probably with>>>

Yes, Be Afraid — Be Very Afraid

2010-01-10T02:51:00.000-08:00

Posted 01/08/2010 07:11 PM ET

War On Terror: Our top counterterrorism officials were "shocked" that an "individual" conducted an al-Qaida plot. They must have been asleep when the shoe bomber struck eight years ago. Are they still asleep?

White House counterterrorism czar John O. Brennan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the two highest-ranking officials charged with protecting America from terrorist attacks, say they failed to see the tree because they were busy looking at the forest.

The two held a joint White House briefing after the president's statement last Thursday. They were asked, "What was the most shocking, stunning thing that you believe came out of the reviews?"

Their answer is what was stunning.

Brennan said that "we had a strategic sense of sort of where they were going, but we didn't know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here. And we have taken that lesson, and so now we're all on top of it."

According to Secretary Napolitano, "the tactic of using an individual to foment an attack, as opposed to a large conspiracy or a multiperson conspiracy such as we saw in 9/11 ... really emphasizes now the renewed importance on how different intelligence is integrated and analyzed, and threat streams are followed through."

Why is it so hard to envision a young, radicalized African Muslim like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab being willing and able to act alone? Shoe bomber Richard Reid did the same thing in December 2001 on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami, failing to detonate explosive footwear in his case rather than underwear.

Reid's admitted accomplice, British-born Saajid Badat,>>>

Time For Enhanced Interrogation

2010-01-03T05:08:00.000-08:00

Posted 12/30/2009 06:57 PM ET

War On Terror: The U.S. now holds a prisoner of war who has knowledge that could foil future terrorist operations. The Obama administration has a moral obligation to extract it from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The White House seems very big on the idea that fear is our enemy, not our friend. When sheer luck prevented the destruction of Northwest flight 253, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano instantaneously insisted there was no larger conspiracy involved — even though the failed bomber himself said otherwise.

And for nearly a year now it has been official U.S. policy, from the commander in chief on down, to eschew wartime terminology. Forget "global war on terror" and substitute "overseas contingency operations." Cut "terrorism," paste in "man-made disasters."

Quelling fears, however, isn't the real purpose behind the altering of the U.S. government's post-9/11 language. This is:

If the public stops believing the free world is in a protracted war with Islamofascist mass murderers, then the question of which party's anti-terrorism policy is better loses all meaning. You can't lose a non-war, any more than you can win one.

If Abdulmutallab is akin to the D.C. Sniper or the Son of Sam, then why turn him upside down in search of information? What's the point in placing another David Berkowitz in a cold jail cell, or depriving a John Allen Muhammad clone of sleep so he'll tell us what he knows?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney hit it on the head this week in charging that this administration is playing an inexcusable game of "Let's Pretend." If we close Guantanamo Bay and send terrorist POWs to some hamlet in Illinois, if we have ACLU-friendly judges try 9/11 conspirators in liberal New York City, then the American people will realize that the big-government sophisticates can take care of these problems.

The voters will come to see that this is a job for superlawyers, not those guys with the fruit salad on their uniforms and the twang in their voices, who commit faux pas like calling senators "ma'am."

And should anything go wrong, the politicians>>>

US general: British hostage held in Iran

2010-01-03T04:54:00.000-08:00

American intelligence contradicts foreign office line as Peter Moore arrives in UK

US general: British hostage held in Iran

American intelligence contradicts foreign office line as Peter Moore arrives in UK

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 January 2010 19.32 GMT

Peter Moore gets into a waiting car after arriving at RAF Brize Norton today. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

US intelligence is convinced that Peter Moore spent at least some of his 31 months of captivity in Iran, one of America's most senior military commanders said today.

As Moore, a computer consultant from Lincoln, flew back to Britain, General David Petraeus, the head of US central command, confirmed the American assessment that Moore – seized with four bodyguards in Baghdad in 2007 – had "certainly" been taken across the border into Iran. The Iranian role in the abduction, reported on the Guardian website on Wednesday, suggests Tehran's influence in Iraqi politics is even more pervasive than previously thought.

Moore flew into RAF Brize Norton this evening>>>

The Latest UAV

2010-01-02T11:55:00.001-08:00

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AP) The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It is outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there is no one on board.. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq , will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada .. The arrival of these outsized U...S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill. That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected "soon," says the regional U.S. .. air commander. How soon? "We're still working that," Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview. The Reaper's first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan , and senior Air Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring. They look forward to it.

"With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home," North said.

The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a 400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq , 50 miles north of Baghdad . That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers. It is another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq , supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years. The estimated two dozen or more unmanned MQ-1 Predators now doing surveillance over Iraq , as the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, have become mainstays of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne "eyes" watching over road convoys, tracking nighttime insurgent movements via infrared sensors, and occasionally unleashing one of their two Hellfire missiles on a target. From about 36,000 flying hours in 2005, the Predators are expected to log 66,000 hours this year over Iraq and Afghanistan .

The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan is comparable to the profile of the Air Force's workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.

UNDER THE RADAR: Air Force ramps up in Iraq

While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons, or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs. "It's not a recon squadron," Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command's air component, said of the Reapers. "It's an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability." "Kinetic" Pentagon argot for destructive power is what the Air Force had in mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with death. "The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September. General Atomics of San Diego has built at least nine of the MQ-9s thus far, at a cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment. The Air Force's 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established on May 1, is to eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan will be classified. The Reaper is expected to be flown as the Predator is by a two-member team of pilot and sensor operator who work at computer control stations and video screens that display what the UAV "sees." Teams at Balad, housed in a hangar beside the runways, perform the takeoffs and landings, and similar teams at Nevada 's Creech Air Force Base, linked to the aircraft via satellite, take over for the long hours of overflying the Iraqi landscape. American ground troops , equipped with laptops that can download real-time video from UAVs overhead, "want more and more of it," said Maj. Chris Snodgrass, the Predator squadron commander here. The Reaper's speed will help. "Our problem is speed," Snodgrass said of the 140-mph Predator. "If there are troops in contact, we may not get there fast enough.. The Reaper will be faster and fly farther." The new robot plane is expected to be able to stay aloft for 14 hours fully armed, watching an area and waiting for targets to emerge.

"It's going to bring us flexibility, range, speed and persistence," said regional commander North, "such that I will be able to work lots of areas for a long, long time." The British also are impressed with the Reaper, and are buying three for deployment in Afghanistan later this year. The Royal Air Force version will stick to the "recon" mission, however, no weapons on board.

Ronald Reagan

2009-12-29T18:12:00.001-08:00

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose."
- Ronald Reagan

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
- Ronald Reagan

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan

"Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong." - Ronald Reagan

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment's would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."- Ronald Reagan

"The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination." - Ronald Reagan

"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." - Ronald Reagan

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

"I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting." - Ronald Reagan

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book." - Ronald Reagan

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. - Ronald Reagan

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." - Ronald Reagan

2009: The Year Of Living Fecklessly

2009-12-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMERPosted 12/24/2009 06:17 PM ET

Last Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not just reject President Obama's latest feckless floating nuclear deadline. He spat on it, declaring that Iran "will continue resisting" until the U.S. has gotten rid of its 8,000 nuclear warheads.

So ends 2009, the year of "engagement," of the extended hand, of the gratuitous apology — and of spinning centrifuges, two-stage rockets and a secret enrichment facility that brought Iran materially closer to becoming a nuclear power.

We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity.

In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election and culminating this week in huge demonstrations mourning the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri — and demanding no longer a recount of the stolen election but the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship.

Obama responded by distancing himself from this new birth of freedom. First, scandalous silence. Then, a few grudging words. Then relentless engagement with the murderous regime.

With offer after offer, gesture after gesture — to not Iran, but the "Islamic Republic of Iran," as Obama ever so respectfully called these clerical fascists — the U.S. conferred legitimacy on a regime desperate to regain it.

Why is this so important?

Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation?

Apart from ostracizing and delegitimizing these gangsters, we should be encouraging and reinforcing the demonstrators. This is no trivial matter. When pursued, beaten, arrested and imprisoned, dissidents can easily succumb to feelings of despair and isolation.

Natan Sharansky testifies to the electric effect Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire speech had on lifting spirits in the Gulag. The news was spread cell to cell in code tapped on the walls. They knew they weren't alone, that America was committed to their cause.

Yet so aloof has Obama been that on Hate America Day (Nov. 4, the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran), pro-American counter-demonstrators chanted "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them," i.e., their oppressors.

Such cool indifference is more than a betrayal of our>>>

In Russia, foreboding about America's war in Afghanistan

2009-12-24T06:37:00.000-08:00

Posted on Tuesday, 12.22.09

By TOM LASSETER

McClatchy Newspapers

MOSCOW -- Thirty years ago this week, the Red Army began its invasion of Afghanistan, a move that sank the Soviet Union in a decade of guerrilla war and hastened the collapse of the Cold War empire.

Today, as former Soviet soldiers watch American troops trying to pacify the same stretches of Afghan land they once fought for, aging Soviet generals and grunts alike are reminded of a war they would rather forget.

While Russians are willing, and often eager, to predict utter defeat for U.S. efforts based on their own failure in Afghanistan, they're much less comfortable talking about the pain of reportedly having lost more than 14,000 lives in a war that ended in retreat.

Comparing wars is a process riddled with inconsistency - the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was far different from the American presence today - but on the eve of the anniversary of the Soviet war, the somber and at times anguished way that veterans in Russia spoke of their time in Afghanistan was a disturbing reminder of the hurdles that American forces now face.

The retired soldiers talk about Afghanistan in terms that echo the American experience in Vietnam: of winning battles but losing the campaign, watching the local population throw its support behind an insurgency and, finally, coming home to a country that no longer understood or supported their war.

As the Obama administration sends in 30,000 to 35,000 more troops by next summer - raising the total of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan to at least 140,000 - men such as Alexander Tsalko say they can't fathom why anyone would want to fight in that land of sharp mountain ridges and hot desert sands.

"Nothing was achieved while I was there. ... There wasn't anything good there; they fired at us, we fired at them," said Tsalko, who commanded a helicopter unit in Kandahar from 1982 to 1983.

Tsalko was later the deputy head of a Soviet state defense committee and then a member of a Russian government commission for veterans affairs. He has spent the last several years working for an organization that helps disabled veterans.

What are his thoughts in late December, the period when the Soviets thrust into Afghanistan with a troop buildup on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25 and then the overthrow of the government on Dec. 27?

"Bitterness and regret that we were drawn into this war," Tsalko replied.

In short, he said, "those who fought there do not want to talk about it when they're not drunk."

Unlike Russia's springtime celebration>>>

Medvedev: Russia to Build New Nuclear Missiles

2009-12-24T06:12:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Russia will begin working on a new generation of nuclear missiles to ensure its nuclear deterrent remains effective, President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.

Medvedev said the new missiles would be developed in full accordance with arms agreements made with the United States.

"Of course, we will develop new systems, including delivery systems, that is, missiles," Medvedev said in an end-of-year interview with state-run TV channels.

"This process will be continued,>>>

New U.S. Spy Plane to Be in Afghanistan by Christmas

2009-12-22T04:34:00.000-08:00

Updated December 21, 2009

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are getting a new tool in their fight against terrorism in the form of a spy plane that will provide ground troops with still images, video and eavesdropping, Bloomberg reported.

The first of the 24 new Hawker Beechcraft four-man twin-propeller plane is expected to arrive by Christmas -- one month ahead of schedule, Lt. General David Deptula said in an e-mail, Bloomberg reported.

In April 2008, the planes were ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to up the number of manned and unmanned aircraft collecting intelligence data, and will now be used to help support the 30,000 troops Obama ordered to Afghanistan.

The planes have the capability>>>

Penetration Even At The Pentagon: Muslim Spies Setting Muslim Policy By PAUL SPERRY

2009-12-20T05:08:00.000-08:00

Posted 12/17/2009 07:34 PM ET

Gordon England, then deputy secretary of defense, is shown in 2006 at a convention that focused on issues facing American Muslims and their evolving...View Enlarged Image

IBD Special Series:
Jihadist 5th Column: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt.

As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran interference for the Islamic Society of North America and other radical fronts for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of my new book "Muslim Mafia."

For example, Islam persuaded brass to sack a Pentagon analyst, Stephen Coughlin, after he advised cutting off outreach to ISNA, which he accurately ID'd as part of a covert terror-support network in the U.S. — something the Justice Department recently confirmed in a major terror finance trial.

Islam invited ISNA officials to lunch with the avuncular England, known by insiders as Gullible Gordon, who in turn spoke at ISNA confabs. Islam also helped set up a Pentagon job booth at one recent ISNA convention to recruit Muslim chaplains and linguists.

Most disturbing, Islam met regularly with Saudi and other embassy officials lobbying for the release and repatriation of their citizens held at Gitmo. He in turn advised England, who authorized the release of dozens of Gitmo detainees. Some have resumed terrorist activities.

No one really knew who Islam was when he was promoted — in fact, the Pentagon removed his bio from its Web site after reporters noted major inconsistencies in it — yet he was allowed to get inside the office of the Pentagon's No. 2 official.

"In effect," a senior U.S. Army intelligence official told me, "we've got terrorist supporters calling the shots on our policies toward Muslims from the highest levels."

Meanwhile, politically incorrect prophets like Coughlin have been frozen out. After the betrayal at Fort Hood, the military could use his analysis of Islamic doctrine more than ever.

I attended a private briefing by Coughlin in February.>>>

New President Causes Shift In War Politics

2009-12-20T04:50:00.000-08:00

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSONPosted 12/18/2009 06:29 PM ET

View Enlarged Image

We don't hear all that much about Iraq these days, do we?

The war at one point almost tore apart this country. Public anger sent George W. Bush's approval ratings plummeting. And the outrage over our losses helped elect vocal anti-Iraq War candidate Barack Obama. But Iraq is hardly in the news anymore. That seems odd, given that 120,000 American troops are still stationed there.

Why the silence?

In short, Americans are not dying in Iraq as they were from 2006 to 2008. Twice as many Americans have died in Afghanistan this year as in Iraq. As of this writing, in December, there have been four coalition fatalities. That's one-tenth the number of people murdered per month in Chicago in 2008.

Perceptions of the war in Iraq have also changed in unforeseen ways. "No blood for oil," for example, was once a common anti-war cry. But Iraq's auctioning of its oil leases has gone mostly to Europeans, Russians and Chinese — not Americans.

The U.S., it turned out, did not go to Iraq to steal its natural resources. Apparently, we instead ensured a fair auction by a constitutional government that preferred non-American companies to pump its oil. In the end, we were more idealistic — or naive — than conspiratorial.

Then there is Iran, which, many argued, was supposed to have been empowered after we removed its nemesis Saddam Hussein. It sure looked that way when Iranian agents were stirring up violence in Iraq.

Yet this year, a million Iranians went out in the streets to demand free and fair elections of the sort they hear constantly about across their border. In other words, perhaps the democratic experiment in Iraq — where Shiite Muslims enjoy freedom — will prove destabilizing in the long term to the Iranian theocracy.

Here at home, the portrayal of the two wars we're engaged in is just as topsy-turvy. When fewer than 100 Americans were dying each year in Afghanistan, and the Taliban were in hiding, the Afghan conflict was proclaimed a necessary, good war — in contrast to the optional, costly and apparently failed effort in Iraq.

But in 2009, George Bush's bad war quieted down.>>>

U.S. Negotiations With Iran

2009-12-20T04:37:00.001-08:00

Iraq Says New Saddam Hussein-Era Mass Grave Found

2009-12-20T03:55:00.000-08:00

Saturday, December 19, 2009

BAGHDAD — A mass grave discovered in northeast Iraq contains dozens of bodies, mostly of women and children believed killed during a crackdown against Kurds by former dictator Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi official said Saturday.

The grave was originally found nearly two years ago west of Kirkuk, though its discovery was only made public this week after forensic pathologists began examining it, said Majid Abdullah Karim, an official with the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights.

Investigators initially put the number of bodies found at 185, though Karim said the number could be "significantly less" based on the number of bones and skulls recovered Friday by pathologists. Karim did not give an exact number, estimating only "dozens."

Mass graves across Iraq have been turning up with some frequency since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam's regime.

The latest discovery was made at a former military detention camp used by Saddam's forces in Tubzama, just west of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, said Karim. The grave was discovered after people reported seeing bones and bits of clothing at the camp, he added.

The remains were believed to be those of Kurds killed between 1988 and 1991, Karim said. Many Kurds were taken to the detention camp by Saddam's forces, he added.

The bodies were determined to be mostly>>>

Dither, Then Duck!

2009-12-15T18:25:00.001-08:00

Posted 07:28 PM ET

Iran: Our policy against a regime of would-be nuclear terrorists has degenerated into "duck and cover" atomic attack scenarios, as the secretary of state admits diplomatic failure. Welcome to Appeasement, U.S.A.

The U.S. government's attitude about Iran's obvious nuclear ambitions is getting so weirdly enmeshed in double-think, you can almost hear the twangy strains of "The Twilight Zone" theme.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency on Monday announced an upcoming simulation of an Iranian nuclear attack. Costing about $150 million, an anti-missile missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California will be aimed at a mock-Iranian missile fired from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. Previous exercises have assumed North Korea as the aggressor, with a warhead taking longer to reach its U.S. target.

In Las Vegas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is planning a simulated nuclear detonation for May involving 10,000 federal, state and local emergency personnel. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., with a tough re-election fight looming, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano of his "strenuous objections" to the drill. Seems the city's business and tourism figures are worried about it causing "undue anxiety."

Here we are preparing for>>>

The General Calls It Like It Is!

2009-12-14T18:42:00.000-08:00

http://downloads.cbn.com/cbnnewsplayer/cbnPlayer.swf?aid=11991

http://downloads.cbn.com/cbnnewsplayer/cbnPlayer.swf?aid=11991

Slang Links Warriors to Home, Front Lines

2009-12-14T17:51:00.000-08:00

Updated December 14, 2009

By Tina Irgang

- FOXNews.com

Like their fellow soldiers in Germany, Vietnam or Korea, those deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq have created a language all their own, filled with black humor, cultural references and even the occasional crudity.

WASHINGTON -- Like their fellow soldiers in Germany, Vietnam or Korea, those deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq have created a language all their own, filled with black humor, cultural references and even the occasional crudity.

Most of us have heard of RADAR -- originally a military acronym standing in for the cumbersome term "Radio Detection and Ranging."

We may even have encountered, or experienced, the occasional SNAFU, for "Situation Normal: All (Fouled) Up."

But what on Earth is a "death blossom?" Or a "fobbit," for that matter?

The Department of Veterans Affairs has published a list detailing the vocabulary of Operation Iraqi Freedom -- a list that contains such entries as "death blossom," a term originating in the 1984 science-fiction film "The Last Starfighter." It is used by servicemen to describe fire sprayed indiscriminately in all directions. The list also includes the terms "Mortaritaville" and "Bombaconda," both referring to LSA Anaconda, a base near Balad, Iraq, that is frequently the target of mortar attacks

Muslim Intimidation

2009-12-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

I did a search for the link below, it was gone. I found this one and
> many more, http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17508
> Marie
>
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>
>
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>
>
>
> -------Original Message-------
>
>
> From: Vonda
> Date: 12/3/2009 12:12:04 PM
> To: Vikki
> Subject: Muslim Intimidation
>
> This did happen!!!!!!!!! Do a search for:
>
> Flight 297 Atlanta to Houston Nov 17 2009
>
> And all kind of things come up. I read this one:
>
> http://homelandsecurityus.com/?p=3312
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> One week ago, I went to Ohio on business and to see my father. On
> Tuesday, November the 17th, I returned home. If you read the papers
> the 18th you may have seen a blurb where a AirTran flight was
> cancelled from Atlanta to Houston due to a man who refused to get off
> of his cell phone before takeoff. It was on Fox.
>
>
> This was NOT what happened.
>
>
> I was in 1st class coming home. 11 Muslim men got on the plane in
> full attire. 2 sat in 1st class and the rest peppered themselves
> throughout the plane all the way to the back. As the plane taxied to
> the runway the stewardesses gave the safety spiel we are all so
> familiar with. At that time, one of the men got on his cell and
> called one of his companions in the back and proceeded to talk on the
> phone in Arabic very loudly and very aggressively. This took the 1st
> stewardess out of the picture for she repeatedly told the man that
> cell phones were not permitted at the time. He ignored her as if she
> was not there.
>
>
> The 2nd man who answered the phone did the same and this took out the
> 2nd stewardess. In the back of the plane at this time, 2 younger
> Muslims, one in the back, isle, and one in front of him, window, began
> to show footage of a porno they had taped the night before, and were
> very loud about it. Now….they are only permitted to do this prior to
> Jihad. If a Muslim man goes into a strip club, he has to view the
> woman via mirror with his back to her. (don’t ask me….I don’t make
> the rules, but I’ve studied)
>
> The 3rd stewardess informed them that they were not to have electronic
> devices on at this time. To which one of the men said “shut up
> infidel dog!” She went to take the camcorder and he began to scream
> in her face in Arabic. At that exact moment, all 11 of them got up
> and started to walk the cabin. This is where I had had enough! I got
> up and started to the back where I heard a voice behind me from
> another Texan twice my size say “I got your back.” I grabbed the man
> who had been on the phone by the arm and said “you WILL go sit down or
> you Will be thrown from this plane!” As I “led” him around me to take
> his seat, the fellow Texan grabbed him by the back of his neck and his
> waist and headed out with him.
>
> I then grabbed the 2nd man and said, “You WILL do the same!” He
> protested but adrenaline was flowing now and he was going to go. As I
> escorted him forward the plane doors open and 3 TSA agents and 4
> police officers entered. Me and my new Texan friend were told to
> cease and desist for they had this under control. I was happy to
> oblige actually. There was some commotion in the back, but within
> moments, all 11 were escorted off the plane. They then unloaded their
> luggage.
>
>
> We talked about the occurrence and were in disbelief that it had
> happen, when suddenly, the door open again and on walked all 11!!
> Stone faced, eyes front and robotic (the only way I can describe it).
> The stewardess from the back had been in tears and when she saw this,
> she was having NONE of it! Being that I was up front, I heard and saw
> the whole ordeal. She told the TSA agent there was NO WAY she was
> staying on the plane with these men. The agent told her they had
> searched them and were going to go through their luggage with a fine
> tooth comb and that they were allowed to proceed to Houston . The
> captain and co-captain came out and told the agent “we and our crew
> will not fly this plane!” After a word or two, the entire crew,
> luggage in tow, left the plane. 5 minutes later, the cabin door
> opened again and a whole new crew walked on.
>
>
> Again…..this is where I had had enough!!! I got up and asked “What
> the hell is going on!?!?” I was told to take my seat. They were
> sorry for the delay and I would be home shortly. I said “I’m getting
> off this plane”. The stewardess sternly told me that she could not
> allow me to get off. (now I’m mad!) I said “I am a grown man who
> bought this ticket, who’s time is mine with a family at home and I am
> going through that door, or I’m going through that door with you under
> my arm!! But I am going through that door!!” And I heard a voice
> behind me say “so am I”. Then everyone behind us started to get up
> and say the same. Within 2 minutes, I was walking off that plane
> where I was met with more agents who asked me to write a statement. I
> had 5 hours to kill at this point so why the hell not. Due to the
> amount of people who got off that flight, it was cancelled. I was
> supposed to be in Houston at 6pm. I got here at 12:30am.
>
>
> Look up the date. Flight 297 Atlanta to Houston .
>
>
> If this wasn’t a dry run, I don’t know what is. They wanted to see
> how TSA would handle it, how the crew would handle it, and how the
> passengers would handle it.
>
>
> I’m telling this to you because I want you to know….
>
> The threat is real. I saw it with my own eyes….
>
>
> -Tedd Petruna
>
>
> A. Gene Hackemack
> 979-251-2310 cell & home
> buttonbox01@gmail.com
> 8725 Hwy 290 W
> Brenham TX 77833
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> In God We Trust

Terror: A Global War

2009-12-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

Posted 12/07/2009 07:30 PM ET

GWOT: The arrest of a Danish cartoon terror plotter for an even more lethal role in 2008's Mumbai terror attack reminds us the war on terror is global. So why is this being treated as a mere law-enforcement matter?

David Copeland Headley, 49, a Pakistani-American resident of the north side of Chicago, was arrested in October for plotting the terror-killings of the editors of Jyllands-Posten, a Copenhagen-based newspaper that ran unflattering cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

A month later, the public learned it wasn't his first time. Headley, 49, a failed businessman and convicted drug dealer who'd changed his name from Daood Gilani, was arrested again on Monday, as an agent in the attacks at India's Oberoi and Taj hotels in Mumbai.

Headley was the advance man for the Pakistani terrorists, casing and filming Mumbai along the terror route as well as the hotels for months before they launched their multiday killing spree. The massacre that followed left 166 dead, including six Americans.

What's stunning here is that these incidents have thus far been viewed through a local lens — India's problem, Denmark's affair, America's issue, Pakistan's woe. They shouldn't be.

The same faces with the same Islamofascist motives are turning up no matter where or what sort of attack happens. It points to a ruthless enemy at war with the world, not a string of local crimes.

Yet the Danish cartoon imbroglio was viewed as an issue of civil rights and freedom of speech. The India massacre was dismissed as a function of its Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. The Afghanistan-Pakistan war is viewed as a nation-building venture rather than ground zero in the war on terror — which is what it is.

Remember 2001's shoe bomber Richard Reid?>>>

Blinded Prison Guard: Don't House Terror Suspects in NYC

2009-11-15T03:34:00.001-08:00

Saturday, November 14, 2009
By Joseph Abrams

The high-security prison in New York City where 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is expected to be sent to await his trial has a supermax wing to keep even the most notorious criminals quiet — but it isn't perfect. Just ask Louis Pepe.

Ten months before Al Qaeda in 2001 struck a deathblow in the heart lower Manhattan, one of the terrorist group's founding members plunged a sharpened comb through Pepe's left eye and into his brain, blinding the 42-year-old prison guard and causing severe brain injuries that plague him to this day.

Pepe told FoxNews.com he worries that sending Mohammed and four of his alleged fellow 9/11 conspirators to New York could compromise the safety of the guards at the MCC prison. Keeping the prisoners in one location, he said, was especially dangerous.

"Could you imagine over there what they're gonna do, God forbid?" asked Pepe, now 52, who lost feeling in the right side of his body and most of his ability to speak. "After all these years, you'd think they should know."

On Nov. 1, 2000, Pepe was ambushed in the cell of Mamdouh Mahmud Salim — an alleged top aide to Usama bin Laden. Salim's cellmate, another Al Qaeda suspect, joined in the attack, which prosecutors say was an attempt to steal Pepe's keys to the cell block to free other prisoners and take hostages.

The two had been granted permission by a federal>>>

Justice Denied

2009-11-14T03:36:00.000-08:00

Posted 11/13/2009 07:14 PM ET

In this March 1, 2003 file picture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. Attorney General Eric Holder...View Enlarged Image

War On Terror: Eric Holder's move to try the 9/11 masterminds in Manhattan makes it official: This administration has reverted to pre-9/11 "crime" fighting.

Amid all the talk during the attorney general's surreal press conference of the "crime" committed eight years ago, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon wasn't even mentioned.

Lest anyone forget, the military headquarters of the United States was attacked that day along with the Twin Towers.

An entire wedge of the Ring was gutted when the Saudi hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into it. Nearly 200 military personnel were killed, along with the passengers and crew of the hijacked jet.

The jet was a weapon used to attack the very center of our military. That was not a "crime," as some say. It was an act of war.

And 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with the four other al-Qaida terrorist co-conspirators Holder wants to try, are no mere criminals. They are enemy combatants — and should be treated as such.

Yet this administration has adopted the same crime-centered mentality as the last Democratic administration. The one that treated al-Qaida's first World Trade Center bombing as a "crime." And al-Qaida's attack on the U.S. embassies in Africa as a "crime." And even al-Qaida's attack on the USS Cole as a "crime."

All were prosecuted in U.S. courts. A lot of good that did.

While President Bill Clinton was busy preparing indictments against the terrorists, al-Qaida was already plotting its next move. It hit the Pentagon just nine months after Clinton and his crime-fighters left office.

Maddeningly, this administration>>>

The Most Sinister Of Motives

2009-11-14T03:19:00.000-08:00

Posted 11/13/2009 07:54 PM ET

Geopolitics: Why would China give uranium to Pakistan? Why would Russia help Iran build an A-bomb? Regional balance of power plays a role, but a nuclear 9/11 could restore Moscow and Beijing as superpowers.

Think of the destabilizing effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The country's fastest form of transportation was paralyzed as we picked up the pieces. Financial markets had to be closed, and when they reopened, private industry was dealt an immediate body blow.

Recession was a foregone conclusion. Business decisions had to be reconsidered, massive investments re-evaluated, new hirings postponed and layoffs expanded. Many firms folded.

Meanwhile, a nervous public wondered if the Golden Age of American dominance and prosperity was over. Was this the first of a series of attacks? Were we now so vulnerable within our own homeland that terrorism would become routine, part of the new fabric of the lives of those residing in free countries?

All of that came from the destruction of three buildings (the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center) and the severe damage to a fourth (the Pentagon). Several thousand died.

A nuclear version of the 9/11 attacks would destroy dozens of buildings, kill hundreds of thousands, and poison maybe millions with radiation. The Ground Zero of such an attack would not be a meeting place for prayer and remembrance, the site of a memorial monument, or a place where a new tower would rise to the skies.

The entire region would, instead, be uninhabitable, bathed in deadly cancer-causing emissions.

Would the U.S. be able to bounce back from such a catastrophe, as we did after 9/11, simply by mobilizing our forces against terrorist havens?

Perhaps. But maybe not. The annihilation in an instant of an entire city by a band of rogues would be an unprecedented event. For a superpower to be found so exposed to risk from a small group of fanatics might be too much to bear.

And who would fill the vacuum?>>>

And Then He Sang !

2009-11-13T19:19:00.001-08:00

NOTE: You've just got to take the time to hear this young man sing; it will make you proud to be an American, and to know there's hope for the future; you'll be the loser IF you don't!! Just click on video.aol below!!

This young man sings the National Anthem prior to a
college basketball game. Notice two of the players in tears

HE IS ONLY 7 YEARS OLD!

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/7-year-old-sings-national-anthem/40945200

Ralph Scott’s Gunnery Sergeant Stripes Fit

2009-11-13T18:41:00.001-08:00

By DAVID HOGBERG, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILYPosted 10/30/2009 05:43 PM ET

Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Scott spent 7,361 days in the Marine Corps.

Nov. 12, 2004, was the most dangerous.

During the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq, Scott rescued a wounded buddy by creating a distraction — in the heat of enemy fire.

"Anybody from that platoon, seeing what he did," said Scott's platoon sergeant, Michael Chambers. "My words can't do him justice."

For that, Scott was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor.

Scott became a Marine in large part because his stepfather was one.

"During my impressionable years, I grew up on military bases," Scott told IBD. "I just fell in love with the Marine Corps. I had an up-close-and-personal exposure to it."

Teen In Uniform

Scott joined in 1989, in the middle of his senior year in high school in Tallahassee, Fla. Since he was still 17, his mom had to go with him to the recruiting office to give him permission to sign up.

While in uniform, Scott>>>

When No Means No

2009-11-13T18:18:00.001-08:00

NOVEMBER 2, 2009, 11:12 P.M. ET

By BRET STEPHENS

I once overhead a guy try to make a date over the phone. His end of the conversation went roughly as follows:

"How about Friday?" (Pause.) "Not Friday? Because I'm free most of the weekend." (Pause.) "Not this weekend? What about next Saturday?" (Pause.) "Are you free at all next week?" (Long pause.) "Well, are you ever free?"

Apparently she was not, at least as far as he was concerned.

Now it's the turn of the Obama administration to play the guy who won't take a hint. And it falls to the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the girl who's hard—actually, impossible—to get.

Tehran's most recent abrupt rejection came last week, when it reportedly decided that it was not enough for the U.S. to trash four binding Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran cease enriching uranium. Nor was it enough that France and Russia were prepared, with America's blessing, to convert Iran's existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to a grade of 19.75%, a hair's breadth shy of the 20% needed for a crude nuclear device.

"The key issue is that Iran does not agree to export its lightly enriched uranium," an unnamed senior European official told the New York Times. "That's not a minor detail. That's the whole point of the deal."

Perhaps this is merely some tactical>>>

Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?

2009-10-31T17:19:00.000-07:00

Diplomatic Rubes

2009-10-31T17:02:00.000-07:00

Posted 10/30/2009 07:45 PM ET

Iran Nukes: The mullahs ruling Islamofascist Iran are having a fine laugh at the easily beguiled infidels running U.S. foreign policy. First they agree to a nuclear "diplomatic breakthrough." Then they say no.

The week before last, when Iran's negotiators agreed to send most of its enriched uranium out of the country, diplomats in the U.S. and Europe were popping the champagne corks.

But last week Iranian officials backtracked on the agreement reached in Vienna to send three-quarters of its nuclear material to Russia for processing, after which it would be returned. Some 2,600 pounds of uranium was to be shipped by mid-January.

The pact was supposed to give the U.S. a year of extra time to work its negotiating magic on the Islamist terror state, as well as hold off an attack by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities.

In 1981, out of self defense, the Jewish state successfully used F-16s to bomb Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor.

On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a meeting with U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell to endorse, albeit cautiously, the agreement the U.S. thought it had, apparently in an attempt to be seen as part of a united international front opposing Iran rather than a hawkish outsider.

The International Atomic Energy Agency head,>>>

Rare-earth metals more precious than ever

2009-10-30T17:23:00.001-07:00

Anxiety over possible Chinese domination of crucial materials in new technologies sparks a push for U.S. production.

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif. — Fear of a shortage of rare-earth metals used in high-tech military and industrial products has spawned global efforts to reopen abandoned mines, including the formidable Mountain Pass Mine in California's Mojave Desert.

Discovered in the 1940s by uranium prospectors, Mountain Pass contains an array of rare earths, including cerium and lanthanum, in concentrations almost double those found at the world's biggest rare-earth mine, China's Bayan Obo.

"You're looking at the greatest rare-earth deposit in the world," says operations manager John Benfield as he ushers a visitor around the 2,200-acre site 60 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Benfield's employer, Molycorp Minerals in Colorado, has just begun a two-year effort to restore Mountain Pass to its former role as a leading global producer. Those plans were given a boost recently amid fears that China was poised to ban exports of some of the scarcer rare-earth metals and to sharply limit shipments of others.

Although the Chinese government has sought to allay those concerns, a possible ban served as a reminder that the Asian nation is nearly the sole source worldwide for rare-earth metals and is likely to remain so for at least the next two years.

"You always want multiple sources for your raw materials," said Jim Hedrick, commodity specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "There could be a natural disaster that significantly disrupts the supply, or there could be geopolitical issues."

The reopening of the mine and related processing facilities would create about 900 jobs at Mountain Pass – about 100 people work there now – and provide U.S. companies with a reliable source for many key rare-earth metals.

These minerals, such as samarium>>>