Monday, December 31, 2012

Shadow Army

Not to be confused with Shadow Gov - which stalks the real gov in the shadows ready to seize command - Shadow Army is more like an enabling enhancement of Great Satan's hyperpuissance

Nom d'guerr'd as the Global Response Staff - Great Satan's Shadow Army has been semi unshadowed by recent event in Lib LibLibya, AFPAK and Yemen
 The GRS, as it is known, is designed to stay in the shadows, training teams to work undercover and provide an unobtrusive layer of security for CIA officers in high-risk outposts. Of the 14 CIA employees killed since 2009, five worked for the GRS, all as contractors. They include two killed at Benghazi, as well as three others who were within the blast radius on Dec. 31, 2009, when a Jordanian double agent detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA compound in Khost, Afghanistan.

 GRS contractors have also been involved in shootouts in which only foreign nationals were killed, including one that triggered a diplomatic crisis. While working for the CIA, Raymond Davis was jailed for weeks in Pakistan last year after killing two men in what he said was an armed robbery attempt in Lahore.

The increasingly conspicuous role of the GRS is part of a broader expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary capabilities over the past 10 years. Beyond hiring former military commandos, the agency has collaborated with Special Operations teams on missions including the raid that killed ObL and has killed thousands of militants and civilians with its fleet of armed drones.

The work is lucrative enough that recruiting is done largely by word of mouth, said one former U.S. intelligence official. Candidates tend to be members of Special Forces units who have recently retired, or veterans of police department SWAT teams.

Most GRS recruits arrive with skills in handling the weapons they will carry, including Glock handguns and M4 rifles. But they undergo additional training so they do not call attention to the presence or movements of the CIA officers they are in position to protect.

Pic - "Shadow War"
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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Velayat-91

 
Oh! It's time!!

Preacher Command"s Grand Ayatollah Kamikaze Flotilla fired up Persian nautical naughtiness on Friday with six-days maritime maneuvers in, on and about the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman, north of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

Revo Guard Rear Admiral Habibollah "Skippy" Sayyari splains thusly: 
“Among the aims of the drill is to display the capabilities of Iran’s Armed Forces and the Navy to defend our country’s water borders and interests in line with establishing durable security in the region and conveying the message of peace and friendship to the neighboring states"
 Cats in the drill will practice an operation to block the Strait of Hormuz, which handles more than 20% of the world’s oil tanker traffic and include 23 warships, led by the Jamaran (Mowj Class)
destroyer (whale, more like a Frigate/Corvette than a real live DD) and the Bushehr Helicopter carrier 

At the same incredible instant - Great Satan"s CVN 74 sweetly hits the hood after patrolling the Arabian Sea together with a guided missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay. Meanwhile, the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu has entered the Oman’s port of Salalah on the Arabian Sea.

Pic - “They’ve invested in capabilities that could, in fact, for a period of time block the Strait of Hormuz. We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that.”
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WoW!!

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

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

Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t) 

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

See you next week! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitte
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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Stealth Arms Race?

Ah! Best way to handle a ginourmous nation state with wads of Dongfengs, conventional jet fighters and an LOLable Blue Water Navy?

Stealth attack bay bee - which funnily enough - comes from stealth deterrence
Great Satan has begun a staged, five-year process that will see each of her three main stealth warplane types deployed to bases near China. When the deployments are complete in 2017, Air Force F-22s and B-2s and Marine Corps F-35s could all be within striking range of America’s biggest economic rival at the same time. With Beijing now testing her own radar-evading jet fighters — two different models, to be exact — the clock is counting down to a stealth warplane showdown over the Western Pacific.

The gradual creation of the U.S. stealth strike force is an extension of the Pentagon’s much-touted “strategic pivot” to the Pacific region, and echoes the much faster formation, earlier this year, of a similar (but only partially stealthy) aerial armada in the Persian Gulf. That team of F-22s, non-stealthy F-15s and specialized “Bacon” radio-translator planes was clearly meant to deter a belligerent Iran, although the Pentagon denied it.

To be fair, the B-2s, F-22s and F-35s aren’t expected to fight alone. Besides the existing Pacific force structure of F-15s, F-16s, A-10s and other warplanes, drones and support aircraft, the Pentagon is planning on sending in the Navy’s new P-8 patrol plane and, eventually, the Air Force’s still-unbuilt KC-46 tanker.

Still, it’s possible that all three radar-evading planes could be flying together over the blue waters of the Pacific as early as five years from now. By that time China might have built and deployed combat-ready versions of its own J-20 and J-31 stealth fighters. That doesn’t mean the two aerial armadas will be fighting each other, of course. Conventional war with China is, and will likely remain, unnecessary and unlikely.

 For both sides the planned stealth strike forces are all about showing off, and impressing your rival so much that actually fighting him seems unthinkable. And that’s a good thing.

Sounds great! Unless, you know - it works out about as well as the  Great Britain/Deutschland Dreadnaught creating race from last century - and begats us all a new Jutland

Pic - "Castles of Steel"
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Wednesday, December 26, 2012

UnAssing AFPAK

Perhaps the most charming charm Conflict prevents (by her raison d'etre, nicht wahr?) is the hap hap happy fact that once she gets all crunk and disorderly - ain't telling what all will happen cap"n!

Like fakebelieve end dates for combat sans the ancient way of war - stomping away til your enemy screams "God! Please! Stop!" 

Kinda not much unlike the combat in AFPAK. As Great Satan's longest war ever, ebberdobby but the enemy is like rushing to split the AO and ignoring what 44 used to call the "necessary war"

Well, four short years later, by 44’s lights, Afghanistan is no longer the necessary war but a war to be ignored, a war to be “ended” regardless of the strategic consequences of doing so precipitously.

 Of course, saying the war will end on schedule doesn’t make it reality—a fact Afghans know all too well. With the Taliban on their heels but not defeated, Pakistani intelligence releasing incarcerated Taliban back onto the streets, roadmaps being drawn up for “peace talks” that would allow hardcore Taliban officials into Afghan governing posts, sounds like a state headed toward Hobbes’s “war of all against all.

The tragedy is that this needn’t be the case. As limited an effort as the surge in Afghanistan has been, it’s had real success. In Helmand and Kandahar, previously key Taliban strongholds, American, Afghan, and allied forces have cleared insurgent bastions and defeated every attempt by the Taliban over the past year to regain their lost territory. But because the administration was determined to go “light” on the number of surge troops and then draw them down more rapidly than had been recommended by commanders, the original plan to tackle simultaneously the insurgent presence in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces was never executed. 

Now, with the anticipated drawdown of the remaining troops over the next year, a full-on counterinsurgency effort in that region will never take place. In short, the insurgent cancer was going into remission but the White House, irrationally, wants to stop treatment. 
Nor is it the case that Afghan security forces have not stepped up their game. When partnered with American and allied combat forces, Afghan troops have learned their trade and begun to fight well. However, they still lack the logistics, intelligence, and mobility capabilities needed to go it alone. Sustaining our combat and support efforts for just a few more years would ensure that when our combat teams do leave Afghanistan, there is a force in place that can effectively defend its own homeland.
Critics of the war like to point out that the Afghan conflict is the longest overseas war in American history—implying that it’s a hopeless case. Yet, for much of that time, the effort in Afghanistan was a holding action, with the war in Iraq eating up time, resources, and energy until the American surge and change in strategy in 2006-07 turned that conflict around. The nation might well be tired of war, but it’s only been a little over three years since President Obama announced his own surge and new strategy. When it comes to counterinsurgencies, a little patience goes a long way.
But this is not a patient president. The pattern for Iraq, Libya, and now Afghanistan has been basically the same. End American military involvement as soon as possible, and damn the consequences.



Pic - "Bellum omnium contra omnes"
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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Best Chick For The Gig

Since 44 has picked like the first guy in eons to become the new Madame Sec of State, reckon it's time to continue the swappage and do a girl at Defense?

GsGf"s Defense and Democrazy mentor and guest host says "Heck Yeah!!"
Courtney,

I am not deeply familiar with Michele Flournoy’s record at the Defense Department or with her overall qualifications to be Secretary of Defense, but I know about one aspect of her work as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy that weighs heavily on the plus scale in considering her credentials for that important post.

When a new commander, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, was sent to Afghanistan in November of 2009 to take charge of the mission of training and organizing Afghan Security Forces, Flournoy told him – very correctly – that the success of his mission was the key to US success in Afghanistan and she didn’t think we were doing it very well. “I’m not sure what it takes to do better, but we must do better and I hope you will tell me what we need to do.”

In fact, the training mission was on the brink of failure. In the previous month, more personnel had left the Afghan Security Forces than had joined it. General Caldwell was given only 1,200 US personnel under his command, whereas he quickly concluded that the minimum requirement was for 3-4,000. But coming just months after a surge of combat troops, his requests for trainer support fell on deaf ears.

The story might have ended there. But fortunately, Flournoy kept her finger on the pulse of “the details” and – working with General Caldwell and other military officers – was able to get the Pentagon to move with a speed that is rare in a place that is affectionately dubbed “the five-sided puzzle palace” by those who work in it. Admiral Mike Mullen, then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, directed that the next battalion arriving in Afghanistan be reassigned from a combat mission to a training mission.

Over the next two years, under General Caldwell’s leadership and with Flournoy’s strong support, Afghan Security Forces grew from just under 200,000 to 305,000 when General Caldwell left and reached 352,000 this October.

And the quality improved as well, although it still leaves much to be desired. Again, Flournoy played an important role, backing up General Caldwell when he pushed for basic literacy education for Afghan recruits, an initiative that wasn’t part of the typical mission statement.

The resulting training in minimal basic literacy – and in other “civilian” skills such as driver education – has improved both the effectiveness and the morale of Afghan soldiers.

None of this would have happened if one three-star general hadn’t had the moral courage to challenge bureaucratic inertia, and if a senior civilian named Michele Flournoy hadn’t encouraged him to do so even before he took command. Flournoy understood the importance of empowering Afghans to fight for their own country. By insisting that General Caldwell report problems to her, she enabled him to say – when challenged for “taking complaints outside the chain of command” – that he was merely answering his civilian superiors honestly, as he was obliged to do.

Flournoy grasped the fundamental strategic point: That the only way to win in Afghanistan is to empower friendly Afghans to take on most of the burden of keeping their country out of the hands of the Taliban. And the numbers of Afghan casualties suggest that they are doing so. Estimates of casualties for Afghan Security Forces this year alone total roughly 3,400 killed (1,200 Army and 2,200 National Police), which is more than ten times the number of Americans killed this year and more than the total of all coalition fatalities – hostile and non-hostile, US and non-US – during the eleven years of this long and difficult war.

Those are grim numbers, but they show that Afghans are bearing an increasing share of the war’s burden. As they should. After all, it’s their own country that they’re fighting for. But it’s also vital for Great Satan to prevent the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan, so we have a huge stake in the Afghan Security Forces.

Flournoy not only grasped the centrality of that strategic point, but she pursued it skillfully and without seeking credit for what she did. 

Now, as far as I know, none of this has been reported before. 

Yet it deserves to be.

It leads me to think that Flournoy might be the best possible candidate for the top Pentagon job during the coming difficult years in Afghanistan. She does not seem to be someone who would comfortably let that war be lost.

Pic - "Oh! She"s got the bona fides bay bee!"
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Sunday, December 23, 2012

Killing Our Enemies On Christmas Day Since 1776

"...You, the officers and men of this American Army must remember that you are free men fighting for the blessings of liberty. 

"...At this fateful hour the eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us. The eyes of the world are watching. Let us show them all that a freeman contending for Liberty is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

"...And when the hour is upon us fight for all that you are worth and all that you cherish and love. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct that you show."

Pic - "It is a great stake we are playing for."
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Friday, December 21, 2012

WoW!!

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

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

Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t) 

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners


See you next week! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter
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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Systemic Fail


Ouch

 "Systemic failures and management deficiencies" left Great Satan's Especial Mission in Benghazi "grossly inadequate to deal with the attack." 

The report deals with the talent of the staff on site  - talented but relatively inexperienced. Cats were like 40 days at the gig granting "diminished institutional knowledge."

And Security  - with 29 ways to make it more better including NOT using the totally suspect eLibyan February 17 Martyrs’ Brigade for guard duty

Notably missing from the Unclassified version is the hap hap happy fact that Benghazi is a very short distance from Derna - the most profligate city in North Africa for sending cats to fight in Iraq or the Stan 

Or any mention of why cause the video falsely kept getting massive play as a raisan d'etre until finally - it was the cause of over 20 riots in various turf betwixt Suez and Indus  

Pi - "The mess left behind" 
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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Disposable People

The inevitable tendency of slavery is to concentrate in a few hands the soil, the capital, and the power of the countries where it exists...  they fail, by the inherent vice of their constitution and its attendant consequences, to create enlightened, powerful, and advancing communities of men, which is the true object of all political organization.

Direct Hit!

Fire For effect!!
The leading demographic accounts of contemporary slavery project a global slave population of between 20 million and 30 million people. Most of these people are in sedentary forms of slavery, such as hereditary collateral-debt bondage. But about 20 percent have been unwittingly trafficked though the promise of opportunity by predators through varying combinations of deception and coercion, very mobile, very dynamic, leveraging communications and logistics in the same basic way modern businesses do generally. 
Children literally sold by parents or relatives in order to pay off debt or to lessen their economic burden. The highest ratios of slaves worldwide are from South and Southeast Asia, along with China, Russia, Albania, Belarus, and Romania. There is a significant slave presence across North Africa and the Middle East, including Lebanon. There is also a major slave trade in Africa. Descent-based slavery persists in Mauritania, where children of slaves are passed on to their slave-holders' children. And the North Korean gulag system, which holds 200,000 people, is essentially a constellation of slave-labor camps.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates the number of slaves in the world today at around 21 million. Kevin Bales, of Free the Slaves -- the U.S. affiliate of the world's oldest human-rights organization, the U.K.-based Anti-Slavery International -- (and the author of Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy) puts it at 27 million. Siddharth Kara of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy says more than 29 million.

 Pic - "Disposable Ppl"
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

After Bashar

Suriya al- Kubra! 

 As Bashar Bay Bee's sphere of influ shrinks up - what all may happen captain, when he gets the old heave ho?

 A bloody sectarian civie war for starters?
"An alliance between foreign jihadists and some Syrians that risks tearing the country apart, leading to religious extremism, long-term sectarian war, and the persecution of minorities and various civilian groups. 

One thing is certain: the fight for Syria will last a long time, and will not end with the fall of the regime.


Pic - "The escalation inside Damascus is yet another sign that the regime is fighting on borrowed time"



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Monday, December 17, 2012

Spy Craft


The Hoochiefication of Spycraft
While fictionalised representations of women working on the front lines of anti-terrorism may capture the popular imagination, their cooler-headed real-life equivalents appear to be showing their male colleagues how it should be done.

According to Peter Bergen, the author and global security expert, “the prominent role that women played in the hunt for bin Laden was reflective of the largest cultural shift at the CIA in the past two decades”. Tamir Pardo, the director of Israel’s formidable Mossad agency, has reported finding that women are better-suited than men to several aspects of intelligence work – particularly at “suppressing their ego in order to attain the goal”.

“Women have a distinct advantage in secret warfare because of their ability to multitask,” Mr Pardo said earlier this year. “Women are gifted at deciphering situations. Contrary to stereotypes, you see that women’s abilities are superior to men in terms of understanding the territory, reading situations, spatial awareness. When they’re good, they’re very good.”

While Britain boasts two former women directors of a major intelligence agency in Baroness Manningham-Buller and Dame Stella Rimington – both, in part, inspirations for Judi Dench’s “M” in the recent James Bond films – the US has always given the top jobs to men. Tara Maller, a former CIA analyst, says that 44 has a chance to correct this, following David Petraeus’s recent resignation as CIA director, by appointing a woman to the role. 

Pic - "The old tricks are the best tricks"

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Sunday, December 16, 2012

Battle Of The Bulge

On or about this date in 1944, Americans woke to read in alla papers that a war that was almost won looked like it might just get lost.   

Beleaf it or don't - few Americans are aware of the Battle of the Bulge in the last millennium. Nineteen thousand American soldiers were killed with more than 70,000 casualties. It was the largest combat action in the history of the American military.

Dec. 16. 1944. Out of the fog and snow with complete surprise and bitter cold, 3 Wehrmacht armies along with multi dreaded Waffen Ss contingents crashed through American lines on a 50-mile front. 2K pieces of heavy German artillery bombarded the Ardennes. 250K Deutsch soldaten and 1,000 panzers and associated guns attacked, defended by green American troops with zero combat experience.

Shells shrieked overhead, mortars and machine guns fired, search lights stabbed through the morning light. V1 buzz bombs dropped to the ground. It was a complete surprise, and the defending Americans were completely unprepp'd.

And it lives evermore with those This We'll Defend cats
After a day of hard fighting, the Germans broke through the American front, surrounding most of an infantry division, seizing key crossroads, and advancing their spearheads toward the Meuse River, creating the projection that gave the battle its name.

Stories spread of the massacre of soldiers and civilians at Malmedy and Stavelot, of fallschrimjager paratroopers dropping behind the lines, and of English-speaking German soldiers, disguised as Americans, capturing critical bridges, cutting communications lines, and spreading rumors. For those who had lived through 1940, the picture was all too familiar. Belgian townspeople put away their Allied flags and brought out their swastikas. 

Police in Paris enforced an all-night curfew. British veterans waited nervously to see how the Americans would react to a full-scale German offensive, and British generals quietly acted to safeguard the Meuse crossings. Even American civilians who had thought final victory was near were sobered by the Nazi onslaught.

But this was not 1940. The supreme Allied commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower rushed reinforcements to hold the shoulders of the German penetration. Within days, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. had turned his Third U.S. Army to the north and was counterattacking against the German flank. But the story of the battle of the Bulge is above all the story of American soldiers. 

Often isolated and unaware of the overall picture, they did their part to slow the Nazi advance, whether by delaying armored spearheads with obstinate defenses of vital crossroads, moving or burning critical gasoline stocks to keep them from the fuel-hungry German tanks, or coming up with questions on arcane Americana to stump possible Nazi infiltrators.

At the critical road junctions of St. Vith and Bastogne, American tankers and paratroopers fought off repeated attacks, and when the acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne was summoned by his German adversary to surrender, he simply responded, "Nuts!"

Within days, Patton's Third Army had relieved Bastogne, and to the north, the 2d U.S. Armored Division stopped enemy tanks short of the Meuse on Christmas Day. Through January, American troops, often wading through deep snow drifts, attacked the sides of the shrinking bulge until they had restored the front and set the stage for the final drive to victory.

Never again would NSDAP Time Deutschland be able to launch an offensive in the West on such a scale. An admiring British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill stated, "This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory." Indeed, in terms of participation and losses, the battle of the Bulge is arguably the greatest battle in American military history.

Pic - "If you don't know what 'Nuts' means, in plain English it is the same as 'Go to Hell'. And I'll tell you something else, if you continue to attack we will kill every goddam German that tries to break into this city."
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Friday, December 14, 2012

WoW!!

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

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

Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t) 

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners


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

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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Sino Style Warfare

As the big 50th Anniversary of China stomping India passes - the 1962 War has a few things to learn from -
The 1962 war lasted 42 days, longer than the 1965 war (38 days). Even after China unilaterally declared a ceasefire on November 21, 1962, its troops kept firing on the outgunned and outnumbered Indian troops in the East. The war really ended on December 1 when China, while holding on to its territorial gains on the Aksai Chin plateau, began withdrawing its forces from the East, simply because it did not have the logistics capability to maintain forces across the McMahon Line once snow cut off mountain passes.

The war — which ranks as the world’s highest-altitude full-blown war in post-World War II history — left 3,270 Indian troops dead, compared with over 1,100 military men killed in the 1947-48 war; 3,264 in 1965; 3,843 in 1971; 1,157 in Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka; and 522 in Kargil. Yet a couple of analysts at a Mumbai seminar last week had the temerity to call 1962 a “skirmish”.

By baring key elements of Beijing’s strategic doctrine, 1962 indeed holds lasting lessons for India and other countries locked in territorial disputes with China.

Here are some of the 1962 principles China replicated in its subsequent aggressions:

Take the adversary by surprise to maximise political and psychological shock
Strike only when the international and regional timing is opportune
Hit as fast and as hard as possible by unleashing ‘human wave’ assaults
Be willing to take military gambles
Mask offence as defence
Wage war with the political objective to ‘teach a lesson’, an aim publicly acknowledged in the 1962 and 1979 invasions
Pic - "All warfare is based on deception … Attack where the enemy is unprepared; sally out when it does not expect you. These are the strategist’s keys to victory.”
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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

P4 In The Pantheon

“I have plenty of clever generals, just give me a lucky one.” L'Empereur Napoleon possibly LOL"d to cats on the eve of doing Russia

The American Pantheon of Generals features the lucky like Generals Washington, Sherman and Patton as well as unlucky Generals like Rosecrans and Fredendall.    

What about P4 - the Surgin' General? 
Sitting in what surely feels like a retirement come too early, Petraeus must wonder where he will rank in the pantheon of American generals.

In recent years, the most esteemed officer in America—the very model of the modern general—was David Petraeus, whose public image combined the theorizing of the new school with a patina of old-fashioned toughness and rectitude. Before a sex scandal forced him to step down as the director of the C.I.A., a few weeks ago, he was widely regarded by politicians and journalists as a brilliant thinker and leader, the man who saved America in Iraq and might work a similar miracle in Afghanistan.

It’s too soon to tell exactly, of course, but his legacy looks reasonably clear. Iraq was a bloody tie, but without his extraordinary efforts it would have been much worse. Afghanistan, which he was called in to rescue, looks as if it will end badly. That’s probably not enough to get him into the temple with Ike, but, given the wars that he was handed, it’s hard to imagine an American general who could have done better. Petraeus was lucky—just not lucky enough.

Pic - "The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today"
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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Jabhat al-Nusra

Suriya al Kubra!

As the fighting grinds on in Syria - Great Satan took the op to add another gang of creeps and murderous jerks to her Official Enemies List!

 Ansar al-Jebhat al-Nusra li-Ahl al-Sham - roughly meaning Supporters for the Front for Victory for the People of Syria and sweetly shortened to the way more handable Jabhat al Nusra or as the cool kids nom d'guerre it - al Nusra Front.

 Sounds like an al Qaeda posse, right?

 Ranging from bombing TV stations to a murderous trend of  killing captured unarmed combatants, al Nusra also enjoys suicide bombing, deploying car bombs and may be the most effective anti Assad fighters around.
The Al Nusrah Front has by far taken the lead among the jihadist groups in executing suicide and other complex attacks against the Syrian military. The terror group has now claimed credit for 42 of the 51 suicide attacks that have taken place in Syria in the past 12 months. The group has also conducted numerous other attacks against the Syrian military and government.

Known to conduct joint operations with other Syrian jihadist organizations. In mid-November, Al Nusrah reported that it attacked a base in Idlib along with the Ahrar al Sham Brigades, and even shot down a Syrian MiG fighter aircraft.
 Al Nusrah Front is also conducts joint operations with the Free Syrian Army, which is often upheld as the secular resistance to Assad's regime. On Oct. 11, Al Nusrah, the Free Syrian Army, and Chechen fighters overran a Syrian air defense and Scud missile base in Aleppo  In August, Al Nusrah said it attacked a police station outside of Damascus along with the Al Sahaba Battalion, a unit of the Free Syrian Army that operates in the capital
Al Nusrah has become more appealing to Syrian rebels as the group's fighters are better organized and have expertise from waging jihad in Iraq and elsewhere, and have integrated their operations with the Free Syrian Army.

Pic - "Salafi-jihadist groups such as Jabhat Nusra is far more dangerous because it represents a metamorphosis of a Salafi-jihadist ideology into a domestic platform that is able to achieve popular resonance."

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Monday, December 10, 2012

Benign Neglect.


When the UN granted non mem peeking Tom privs to the twin Palestines - the West Bank and the rocket rich Strip's Preacher Command - Little Satan fired back by announcing more shopping malls, apartments and bookstores will be all crunk up in E 1 Wester Bank - effectively LOLing any chiz about the 2 State Solution.

Europa freaked and talked about recalling their ambassadors to Little Satan.
And Great Satan didn't really do much at all.

It's 44's new Palestine/Little Satan strat: Benign Neglect!

See,
Contrary to reports in Little Satan's press, Team 44 didn’t mastermind the angry European response. But neither did they tamp it down. Even though E1 has long been an American red line. And even though the Israelis alerted the White House mere hours before they announced the decision, the Obama administration’s response was pro forma and bland. Publicly, 44 said nothing. It was the first sign of what senior administration officials predict may be a new approach to the conflict in 44’s second term: benign neglect.

Consider the view from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On the one hand, BiBi keeps doing things—like expanding settlements and refusing to accept the 1967 lines as the parameters for peace talks—that American officials consider bad for America and catastrophic for Little Satan. On the other, every time 44 has tried to make Netanyahu change course—in 2009 when he demanded a settlement freeze and in 2011 when he set parameters for peace talks—the White House has been politically clobbered. Administration officials might like to orchestrate BiBi’s defeat in next month’s Little Satan's elections, as 42 did when he sent political consultants to convince cats to replace BiBi with Ehud in 1999. But they can’t because BiBi has no serious rivals for power.

So instead of confronting BiBi directly, Team 44 has hit upon a different strategy: stand back and let the rest of the world do the confronting. Once America stops trying to save Little Satan from the consequences of her actions, the logic goes, and once she feels the full brunt of its mounting international isolation, her leaders will be scared into changing course.
Administration officials are quick to note that this new approach does not mean America won’t help protect Little Satan militarily through anti-missile defense systems like the much-heralded Iron Dome. And they add that Great Satan will strongly resist any Palestinian effort to use its newfound U.N. status to bring lawsuits against Little Satan at the International Criminal Court. America will also try to prevent further spasms of violence: by maintaining the funding that keeps Mahmoud Abbas afloat in the West Bank and by working with Egypt to restrain Hamas.

Really?

Look - few cats in Little Satan fear Europa and any press press pressure (pressure) they may bear would prob only make Bibi more better in the rough and crazy tumble of Little Satan's Parliamentary politics. And if ICC chiz is to be all LOLing blocked by Great Satan anywrought - kinda hard to see ointment for the flies.
Team 44 had better hope its hands-off strategy for saving the two-state solution works. Because at this rate, by the time they’re ready to try something else, it will be too late. 

Pic - "Greater Little Satan"

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Sunday, December 9, 2012

NoKo"s Persian Missile Launch


Axis of Evil!!

2 Koreas - the yankee part is little more than a starving, slave trading underground rocket factory with an unfree, unfun new clear weaponized nation state attached led by the Young General

While the Juchelicious DPRK has been missile happy for eons - it's also true they"ve shared the love with fellow Axis cats like Persia"s Preacher Command

Sometime betwixt now and Dec 22 - NoKo plans to launch a new Unha 3 (glorified Taepodong)....

So why launch now? 
That’s a mystery, but the one reason that should concern us involves Iran. In short, Tehran needs a launch vehicle for the warhead it has been developing, and the North Koreans need a successful test for their best missile customer.

For more than a decade, Pyongyang and Tehran have run what is essentially a joint missile development program. Iranian observers, for instance, were present in the North for all four of its long-range missile tests, those in 1998, 2006, 2009, and this April. Moreover, American intelligence sources indicate Iran tested a North Korean missile for Pyongyang and the North almost certainly provides missile flight-test data to Iran.
In view of these links, it’s no surprise that Iran’s Shahab-3 is based on a North Korean Nodong missile and more advanced Iranian missiles, the Shahab-5 and Shahab-6, appear to be variants of North Korea’ long-range Taepodong models.

Iran has been financing the North Korean program either by purchasing the North’s missiles or by sharing development costs and receiving missiles in return. Tehran’s support explains how a destitute North Korea has the funds to carry on a sophisticated weapons program. In early September the two countries signed a technical cooperation agreement.

More ominously, Japan’s Kyodo News on Sunday reported that Iran started stationing personnel in North Korea in October at a military facility close to the Chinese border. The Iranians, from the Ministry of Defense and associated firms, are there to develop stronger cooperation on missile and nuclear programs, according to an unnamed Western diplomatic source.

Analysts have puzzled over the timing of Pyongyang’s launch, especially because it comes in close proximity to the December 19th South Korean presidential election. Most observers believe the attempt to orbit a satellite—essentially a ballistic missile test prohibited by two sets of Security Council resolutions—will boost the prospects of the candidate that Pyongyang detests, Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party. Park is more skeptical of North Korea than her dovish rival, and a launch would tend to validate her position just before the balloting.

Some Korea watchers speculate that Kim Jong Un wants to mark the first year of his rule with a “celebratory firework.” That is possible too, but, whatever the reason for the launch, the Iranians will get the benefit of the exercise. Yes, the test will take place on Korean soil, but we need to keep thinking about Iran.

Pic - “Let Us Defend the Revolutionary Spirit of Independence, Self-Reliance, and Self-defenseMore Thoroughly in All Fields of State Activities”










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WoW!!

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

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

Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t) 

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

See you next week! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter
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Thursday, December 6, 2012

Infamy Day

The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.

Eighteen months earlier, 32 had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese aggression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. 

In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable. 

By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well. 

The U.S. Fleet's Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World's oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead.

Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya. 

These great Japanese successes, achieved without prior diplomatic formalities, shocked and enraged the previously divided American people into a level of purposeful unity hardly seen before or since. For the next five months, until the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, Japan's far-reaching offensives proceeded untroubled by fruitful opposition. 

American and Allied morale suffered accordingly. Under normal political circumstances, an accomodation might have been considered. 

However, the memory of the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor fueled a determination to fight on.

Once the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 had eliminated much of Japan's striking power, that same memory stoked a relentless war to reverse her conquests and remove her, and her German and Italian allies, as future threats to World peace.

Source - US Navy Historical Center
 

Pic - "Pearl Harbor"
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