0330 GMT December 31, 2004

·         NO NEWS DAY With the media's attention turned on the Indian Ocean tsunami, little others news is getting reported. Tragic as the disaster is, we wish the media at least would keep things in perspective. In 1970, half-million East Pakistanis (now Bangladesh) perished in a cyclone. Your editor was in the region at the time, and personally attest that little attention was paid. This tsunami is an example of how the manner in which media reports changes reality. Objectively, the 1970 cyclone was a much worse disaster. The world media was not present in any significant number, so we have a situation of the tree in the forest falling and no one to hear it etc. Subjectively, because of the media, the tsunami is being awarded superlatives. Lets also not forget the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, PRC. Official figures gave 242,000 dead; unofficial figures went up to three times that.

·         IRAQ Two incidents caught our attention. In the first, insurgents lured Iraqi police in Baghdad to a house and then blew up the house, killing 7 policemen and perhaps 21 civilians in surrounding houses. In Mosul, insurgents ambushed US reinforcements headed toward a previous incident; 25 insurgents were killed, and 1 American solider.

·         The first incident is of interest because it shows the insurgents have become desperate in the extreme. You do not kill 21 civilians whose only crime was to live adjacent to the ambush house. Insurgents depend on the civilian populace; if you keep blowing up the populace, you are going to alienate the population. Of course, several reports that have received scant attention say that's exactly what's been happening.

·         The second incident is of interest because it was meticulously planned and executed, the Americans themselves remarked on the high level of organization and command and control involved. Still, it did the insurgents no good. The minute US reinforcements began taking fire, airpower was called in, and then it was curtains for the insurgents. Of particular interest is a report that a US Stryker detonated seven sets of IEDs laid along a road the insurgents knew would be used by reinforcements. Clever planning, and some serious redundancy so that even if some of the IEDs were detected or exploded, the others would cause serious damage. But for all the planning that went into this, nothing happened because one Stryker destroyed all the bombs along that particular stretch.

·         So its of no use to focus on the insurgents' learning curve. Steep as it may be, the US's learning curve is steeper. The insurgents are still hopeless losers.

·         What about the mess hall? It now appears that US troops were seriously negligent and that despite widespread awareness that tight base security was needed, people were still acting carelessly. Okay, the insurgents got lucky. But the Americans are not going to make the same mistake again.

·         RUSSIA-PRC EXERCISES Agencies say Russia and the PRC are going to stage joint military exercises. An intriguing development, but perhaps less so than another: Russia has offered PRC 20% of the recently seized Yukos oil company. This follows on the heels of PRC and Iran penciling a multi billion dollar/multi decade agreement for the Chinese to buy Iranian gas. We'd mentioned this earlier: Iran is making an end run against possible US/EU sanctions over its nuclear programs. More important is the proposition that as PRC grows, so does its need for hydrocarbons. China's trade is expected to hit $1 trillion in 2005, making PRC third after the US and Japan. That trade, including hydrocarbons, has to be protected. Are the Americans sure they're doing the right thing by further downsizing their fleets? Most immediately 1 aircraft carrier of 12 is proposed to be cut, some plans speak of decommissioning as many as 3 carriers.

·         MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH...  So it would be reasonable to presume that the Indians are scrambling to counterbalance growing PRC military strength. Reasonable it may be, but you'd presume wrong. India is spending its time on asinine projects like preventing delivery of 20 older model F-16s to Pakistan, and on raiding the porn industry after a schoolboy used his vid-phone to capture him having sex with a female classmate, and then thoughtfully making the film available to his friends, who gave it to their friends, who gave it to...etc.

·         Your editor in the 1970s and 1980s used to be one of very few people in India who was in a position to know a bit about how the PRC looked at a possible Indian threat. Shocking but true: the PLA was not expending any thought on worrying about India even then.

·         Your editor recalls an analysis he did in the late 1980s, which showed that Indian forces against PRC in Tibet were so much superior that it would probably have taken the Indian air Force 72 hours to knock the PLAAF in Tibet out, crater all airbases, and block all transport routes from the mainland. It would have taken the Indian army 3 to 10 days to capture Lhasa, depending on the plan used. And it would have taken India 72 hours to recover Eastern Ladakh, which India lost to China in 1961-62. As the Indian Army and Air Force had absolutely zero interest in the analysis - ironically the study was funded by a disarmament think tank - your editor could get no feedback, not one little bit. On a visit to the Directorate of Military Operations, the sole comment was "Interesting. Have some more tea and sandwiches." Your editor does not drink tea or coffee, so he focused on the sandwiches, which were excellent.

·         So then your editor trotted off to the Chinese Embassy to see his pals in the Military Attaché's office. In those days you did not (a) go to the Chinese Military Attaché's office, and (b) if you did, you'd better have been prepared to be grilled by the Indian counter-intel lot. It is a fact that your editor never had trouble with the Indians, and it wasn't because he was working for them. It was because they thought him to be eccentric to the point he was simply a harmless nutcase, not worth expending energy on, particularly when it got to 120 F in the shade.

·         So in the lavish, palace like setting of some drawing room - one of many in the Chinese embassy - your editor had this exchange with the military attaché himself. The attaché was a very quiet, humble man who pretended he had no more importance than the junior gardener on the grounds, and certainly no more intelligent, but who knew everything that was worth knowing. "Did you have a chance to read my analysis?" I asked.

·         The attaché - speaking through the interpreter who was another sharp cookie - politely murmured: "Of course, and with utmost care. Another soda and a sandwich, perhaps". More soda and sandwiches presented - at least the Military Attaché was considerate enough to keep in mind your editor did not drink tea or coffee. Lengthy silence. You cannot rush the Chinese. Silence extends. Finally the Attaché murmurs: "Most interesting. But politically speaking..." Here he trailed off. There was no need for him to say more, because your editor had had the conversation with many generations of PLA attaches.

·         Decoded, this is what he said: "War is nine-tenths political and one-tenth military. The Indian military is formidable and much more advanced than ours. But the political will is so lacking, we feel comfortable protecting Tibet with a few interceptors, a couple of understrength divisions, and a handful of border troops." Later your editor was to learn the understrength divisions were already scheduled for reduction to brigades, so little did the Chinese worry about Indian military capability.

·         Now its almost 20 years later, and your editor has no plans to return to India. If he does, he has zero intention of visiting the Chinese military attaché. If the above is what they thought of India when the military balance in Tibet favored India by a factor of 3 to 5, we hate to think what the attaché would say now that the PLA's capability equals India's, with plans to reverse the former imbalance to 3-5 against India.

·         Unwanted advice to Government of India. Can you kindly get officials to stop salivating at the film and others that officers have seized from the porn industry and leave these youngsters alone? What's more important: the rising threat from China and the 1000 other equally serious problems India faces, or two school kids doing what young people do naturally? Here your editor slaps himself on the wrist six times for asking such a stupid question. Of course what two youngsters were doing is much more important...

0300 GMT December 30, 2004

·         IRAN-VENEZUELA Joseag238 tells us that on December 16 KCAL-TV carried a report that Iran had asked Venezuela for "bases". An associate of Joseag238 speculates: could the request be for stationing missiles capable of reaching the US? If all this is true, then we have nothing to fear from the mullahs of Iran. If this is the best they can come up with, clearly they'd be better off playing Go Fish with a bunch of 5-year olds - more chance of winning. And if Mr. Chavez agrees, then its goodbye to him too.

·         Again, assuming the report is correct: there is something called the Monroe Doctrine, which specifically says the US will not tolerate any threat to its security from Central/South America, or from a foreign power using the region as a platform to threaten the US. The last time there was a real threat was from Che Guevara, and we know what happened to him.

·         Before Che, there was the Soviet introduction of IRBMs into Cuba, and we know how that turned out too.

·         One of the great foreign policy myths is that actually Cuba 1962 was a victory for Moscow because the US agreed to pull IRBMs out of Italy and Turkey in exchange for the Soviets getting their missiles out of Cuba. The reason this is a myth is that US IRBMs in those NATO countries were slated to stand-down as more and more Polaris SSBNs took to sea. So the US gained a lot at the no cost. But - here was the genius of US diplomacy - to help the Soviets save face, the US quietly  "allowed" there had been a trade. Some scholars who didn't know better concluded the Soviets had pulled off a coup.

·         SADDAM TRIAL AFP says former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, well known for his leftist activism has joined Saddam's defense team. We personally thought Saddam should have been publicly executed after his capture, but now that Iraq has decided to give him a trial, he is entitled to his defense lawyers and Mr. Clark is entitled to be one such.

·         If, however, the US/Iraq wimp out on the question of where the money for the defense is coming from, then both fully deserve every misery this trail will bring for the good guys. Saddam's daughters should not have a plugged nickel to their name. If they and other Iraqis are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for Saddam's defense - as the daughters are believed to have said they are ready to do - Baghdad's first step should be to serve all members of Saddam's defense teams requiring them to account form where the money came. If these people are using money looted from Iraq, they are violating the laws of Iraq. Off with their heads.

·         Yes, anti-Americans around the world will scream foul play. Question is, whose country is this anyway? What right does the US have to dictate to Iraq how Saddam has to be handled? What business is it of the EU and the Human Rights lot? The more fair play the US/Iraq gives, the less the Arabs will respect them. As for the American critics: does Washington honestly thing their minds can be changed by a "fair" trial? The critics are saying the US has no business to be in Iraq in the first place. So how can any Saddam trial be fair?

·         US NAVAL MOVEMENTS IN TSUNAMI'S WAKE The US Navy's USS Abraham Lincoln carrier battlegroup is enroute to the South China Sea to help in relief efforts in Thailand. Meanwhile, the USS Bon Homme Richard expeditionary strike group has set course for the Bay of Bengal. US Navy P-3 Orions and USAF C-130s are providing reconnaissance and transport help.

·         The US Marines' III MEF is setting up HQ at Utapo Air Base in northern Thailand to coordinate the US relief effort. Utapo is, of course, the famous giant air base from US B-52s and other aircraft regularly struck Vietnam during Indochina II.

·         In case anyone is interested: this particular Bon Homme Richard is the latest in a line of US Navy ships stretching back to the War of the American Revolution. The Continental Navy's first commissioned officer, John Paul Jones, got into a sea fight of Northeast England  with HMS Serapis. The latter battered the Richard so badly that Jones decided the only chance he  had was to board the Serapis. When the Richard came alongside Serapis, the Americans had no flag - the flag had been shot down. The Serapis' captain, seeing the lack of a flag, hailed Jones, asking if he was surrendering. It is then that Jones uttered the immortal line "No, for I have not yet begun to fight!". Different times, different men.

·         The Americans captured the Serapis and Richard's crew transferred to the Royal Navy ship. What is often left out of popular accounts  is that the convoy Serapis was escorting, and that Richard wanted, escaped safely. And what is also often left out is that along with the enormous bravery of the Americans, it was a French Marine sharpshooter detachment on the Richard that helped make victory possible. First the Marines prevented sailors on Serapis from breaking the deadly embrace within which Richard had clasped Serapis, then they shot down eleven men at the Serapis' wheel. And as a footnote, once he saw his convoy was safe, Serapis' captain personally took down her flag and presented it to Jones. Different times, different men.

·         INDIAN OCEAN DISASTER We received sad news today from the office of Mr. Richard M. Bennett. He has been associated with Orbat.com since its inception and we are currently working together on a big new project. He was in the Far East to interview for a university position and due back in the UK. Several of his family members and friends were in the areas struck by the tsunami, and he has had to immediately return to the East

 

 

 

0300 GMT December 29, 2004

 

·         IRAQ Killings of government officers continues. Yesterday the toll included 24 policemen. For a long time now the terrorists have figured out that attacking US forces is unproductive and have been busy killing anyone trying to do something for their country, including professors, teachers, judges, lawyer, what have you. We've still to see a comment decrying this violence in the American papers. Washington Post has - correctly, we feel - written several editorials about Dafur, many of them lead editorials. WP has also said the US must stay the course in Iraq. But when it comes to the terrorists, they have a free pass in the WP.

·         OUTDONE AGAIN At Orbat, com we find that every time we take a strong position on an issue, something even worse turns up that makes our example look pathetic. Yesterday we condemned the Associated Press for trafficking with terrorists to get its news. Today Mike Thompson sends us a piece from another blog, which makes AP look like 4th grade naughty boys.

·         Apparently AFP was tipped off by insurgents that the latter were going to down an aircraft landing at Baghdad IAP. So off with the terrorists went two of AFP's finest. Turned out that the terrorists had two Strellas (SAM-7s) they were going to fire at a DHL plane. But the terrorists had no clue what DHL meant. The AFP aces helpfully explained DHL meant aircraft carrying mail for American troops. So our heroes shot off their two missiles, with cries of God is Great. Oopsies whopsies said the AFP aces: turned out it was a civilian aircraft - and luckily both missiles missed, said the aces.

·         Now lets go through this, as simply as possible, for the great minds at AFP - an agency we regard highly, by the way, so this is not personal like it is for your editor with the Washington Post. We take more of our press services material from AFP than from any other agency. Nonetheless, it appears to us we must speak slowly and clearly, based on our theory the higher the IQ, the lower the common sense.

·         Shooting down any civil aircraft is a crime. AFP not just watched while a crime was being committed, its reporters helped the terrorists with information. The reporters are criminally liable in two different ways. Then AFP ran the story, to enhance its prestige and profits, thus benefiting from a crime it participated in as a willing observer and by providing information.

·         Now supposing one of us at Orbat.com or among our readers - mere mortals, we - were to do the above. Our first stop would be many lengthy conversations with us as the guests of the FBI, CIA and so on, and our hosts are not known for their gentle touch. Our next stop would be an unbearably unpleasant American jail, committal to which - in our opinion at least - is a state crime. Our stay would be lengthy, and after a few words from the wardens to the trustees, and the trustees to the inmates, we'd be lucky to leave just with a few beatings and being raped a few times. Then we'd be in court, and then we'd be back in jail for many, many years, with the chances of parole being somewhat remote. The Divine forbid our terrorists actually hit the plane and downed it. The situation would be far, far worse for us.

·         So is all this happening to AFP? No, Sir, it is not. AFP, like other media, says it was just doing its job, citing the people's right to know and all that. If Orbat.com was to take the matter up with AFP, we have no doubt we would be arrogantly dismissed by AFP as thugs and fascists and all that.

·         Okay, so along with others we have ritually done our moaning and weeping at the perfidy of the press. The question is simple. Why are these journalists not being prosecuted, indeed, when they are not helping terrorists, why is the US military being required to keep them alive to the best of its ability? If we go and settle scores with the journalists and AFP for aiding and abetting terrorism, and gaining from such  - and we as people have a right to do that to AFP as much as AFP says the people - that's us - have a right to know - if we settle scores we will be labeled criminals and the state will punish us. So all we can do is ask the state to take action.

·         No guesses as to what the state will tell us: freedom of the press and all that, old boy, wuff wuff and hey ho and so on.

·         Now when the state refuses to act against criminals, what is our recourse as ordinary citizens? Rousseau said we as people make a pact with the state: we give up some individual rights to the state for the collective good, and in return the state protects us. Seems to us the good old GUS - or USG as us foreigners call it - is failing its duties not just to all of us as citizens of the world, but more appallingly, to its own soldiers who are dying or suffering horrible wounds.

·         The state is not keeping its part of the deal, and for once your editor has no answers as to what is to be done.

·         IRAQ FOLLIES We're not sure if we should be amused or exasperated, but some US Congressmen and officials are suggesting the Sunnis need not just fair representation in Iraq's parliament, perhaps they should be given more than their fair share of representation so their minority rights are not ridden over rough-shod.

·         The Iraq government has not-so-gently told these gentlemen to MYOB - that's sixth grade schoolgirl talk from when your editor was young, and it means "Mind Your Own Business". Good for the Iraqis.

·         If the US is so worried about the rights of the Sunnis, we've already said many times: arrange for a federation, ally with the Sunnis and the Kurds, and be done with it. After the Shias take power their first order of business will be to kill every Sunni terrorist/insurgent/sympathizer, and their second order of business will be to kick the US out of Iraq.

·         Are we being too cynical on the second point? After all, Iran is Shia, and its easy to concede the US will have no trouble dealing with the semi-secular Iranians who are expected to take power after the mullahs fall. Why can't the same thing happen in Iraq? Well, we suppose it could happen, just as it could happen that your editor wakes up tomorrow and finds a line of desirable young women aged 25 to 45 at his door, each of the women determined to - lets say - get to know your editor better. And if someone says to the editor "in your dreams", your editor will retort: "who's being cynical now?".

·         But seriously, are we saying the US made a mistake going into Iraq? Not at all. The job had to be done, the US is the only one that could/can do it. Create the conditions necessary for the Iraqi people to gain and keep their own freedom, and watch the fun and games in the Islamic world. But: the US needs to do the job and get out. If it wants something from Iraq, it has an excellent chance the Kurds will support the US, there's an excellent chance the Sunnis will align with the US, and there is little chance the Shias will oblige.

 

 

0530 GMT December 28, 2004

 

·         ANOTHER NO NEWS DAY We're not sure if its the holiday season that is leading to so many slow or no news days one after another, or if the world is going through a temporary phase of quiet. For many of our readers, our analyses are quite boring and we sympathize: we find them as boring to write. But when there is nothing to report, then perhaps there's no harm in throwing in a little analysis.

·         ASSOCIATED PRESS IN BED WITH IRAQI TERRORISTS Mike Thompson sends us news that originated with Bill Reggio's Fourth Rail blog that will not surprise anyone who knows non-print media people. Turns out AP has all but admitted that its using Iraqi photo-journalists who are intimate with the terrorists in order to get good pictures. The specific provocation is the picture taken by an Iraqi working for AP of terrorists murdering three Iraqi government workers in the middle of a busy artery in Baghdad. People immediately began asking: how did the Iraqi know to be there at the right time? Turns out the lot planning the murders told him where to come.

·         AP says terrorists also want their story to be told, and it has to use Iraqis with ties to the terrorists/insurgents because no one else can get close to them. Hmmmm. So we are back to the delusion of the reporter as a passive neutral without loyalty to any nation or anything else other than Getting the Story. This is one of the most moronic conceits the tribe of journalists has come up with, and the debate has been raging for years now. Suffice it to say that the American people, at least, do not believe their media should be legitimizing terrorists, and this is one reason of money that the American media is steadily losing credibility.

·         So: lets hark back to Pearl Harbor, and more specifically to the Bataan Death March. By the moral reasoning of today's media, American journalists should have been right there telling the Japanese side of the story, and Hitler's too, and Stalin's as well, to say nothing of the Japanese soldiers who slaughtered several million Chinese. Oh yes, interviews with the German death camp commandants would have been an absolute must.

·         So: what would have happened to our little preppy boys and girls of the AP sixty years ago? The best outcome would have been to get arrested and thus be safe from the mobs of soldiers and civilians that would have been screaming to tear our little intrepid newsboys and newsgirls from limb to limb.

·         You are welcome to go out there and report the news from any side you like. But the United States, and the US military in particular, is then under no moral compulsion to help you in any way. By putting forward the enemy's view - these people are killing American soldiers - you become a traitor to America. Sure, sure, you are called to bigger things than America. Your work is so important that national loyalties are petty. But you know what? Don't come crying when an American soldier puts a 5.56mm round through your colleague's head, the next time your are returning from telling the enemy's viewpoint. That soldier has a higher calling too, which is to kill America's enemies. You want to be a whore, please go ahead. Its a free country.

·         Sorry - we apologize to the men and women who are whores. They're doing an honest job, and they're not hurting anyone. Wrong simile/metaphor.

·         The laughable thing about this value neutral business is that you are living in a democracy, and you demand to be respected/protected. Guess who's going to among the first to get theirs if the terrorists win? The women journalists, and then its going to be the men journalists. Now isn't reporting what the terrorists have to say a productive way to spend your time if you happen to be a journalist? Arrogance we at Orbat.com can forgive. But people with IQs lower than than of a vulture we cannot.

·         Ooops. We did it again. Apologies to vultures. Did not mean to hurt your feelings. You are a critical part of nature and  perform a very important function. In doing so you actually help life thrive. Now you journalists please tell us: what function are you performing? Gosh, we cant come up with a single valid simile/metaphor because everyone and everything in creation does something useful. These darn journalists are not making it easy for us to categorize them. Will have to come up with new definitions.

·         SAUDI UPS OIL RESERVE ESTIMATES Saudi Arabia says its probable it has 200 billion barrels more oil than its earlier projection of 270 billion barrels reserve, already the biggest in the world.

·         Oil production and politics determines the shape of our world to a greater extent than any other factor today, and we truly wish we knew more about the world of oil. An oil executive based overseas had promised to occasionally enlighten our readers, unfortunately, his work load is such aside from one anonymous article he  has been unable to contribute. So please take the below brief analysis as nothing more than at attempt to explain why this news is important.

·         Iraq's oil reserves - we believe about 80 billion barrels - are hugely understated. No one knows how much more oil Iraq has, but it may be in the hundreds of billions of barrels. So one aspect of Saudi's announcement is to clearly warn Iraq that no matter how important it thinks it may become, the big guy on the block is Saudi. This is geared not the Iraqis, but to the Americans. The latter have clearly indicated they are working to break OPEC, and have been busy as beavers putting down firm stakes all over the world where there is oil. The US diplomatic and military assistance take over of Black Africa is one example of US diversification .

·         Saudi is also to increase its pumping capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day. That is to tell the world that no matter what, Saudi will be the swing producer.

·         The message is aimed not just at the Americans. The Russians too are coming up very quickly, and as is the case for Iraq, its likely its oil reserves - or at least its hydrocarbon reserves are vastly understated. Russia plans to build up to an export capacity of 10 million barrels a day with Western money and know how. Saudi, preempting with its 12.5 million target is also reminding the Russians: don't get too big for your boots.

·         The huge advantage that Saudi has is that its oil is about the cheapest in the world to extract. If the Saudis crash the market, say to $20-25/barrel, people like the Russians and their western partners will be up the creek etc., because Russian oil is much more expensive. Saudi could lower the price to $10/barrel and still make a tidy profit, that price would ruin just about any non-Arab producer.

·         By the way, a few months ago people were talking of $80/barrel oil. Now they're saying in the summer of 2005 it go go down to $25/barrel.  This underlines a very important our oil executive made in his one and only article: one reason no one has developed alternatives is that anything below $40/barrel makes additional investment for oil and alternatives unprofitable. And guess who makes sure oil prices stay just low enough that major investments in alternatives are impossible? None other than our friends the camel jockeys, i.e., the Saudis. Like them or not, they are no one's fools. Any why should that surprise us? Their managers are American or American educated.

·         ISLAMIC VERSUS ISLAMIST Richard Pipes of Harvard fame known earlier for his tough stand against the Soviets and now against Islamic fundamentalism, says its wrong to use the term "Islamic" when referring to terrorists. The terrorists are a tiny fraction of followers of Islam; moreover they are perverting Islam simply to establish good old fashioned tyrannies. So Mr. Pipes suggests using the term Islamist. That seems fair and reasonable to us. We've always felt uncomfortable with the Islamic label. Your editor knows many Muslims, and in all his life he has met only one who subscribed to the terrorist creed.

 

0600 GMT December 27, 2004

 

·         ONE MORE FOR AMERICA With 60% of precincts reporting, the opposition candidate in Ukraine was leading 56% to 40% says AFP. Pre-voting polls had predicted a 15 to 20 point margin of victory. True democracy has come to Ukraine. There are quiet American men and women who played their part in this revolution, doubtless they are giving themselves a few moments to savor their success.

·         As for what role exactly the US played, well, its for Americans to tell the story, not for us. We know none of the close details, but we're willing to wager that the cash cost to America was probably between $30 and $50 million, if that. Of course, that's not a fair way of counting costs, because people have been working for years for this day. Still, its likely that over the last decade less has been spent than is spent in one day in Iraq.

·         But would this victory have been possible had Ukraine's Government, backed by Russia, decided not to permit a fair vote? In 1956 in Hungary, and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, Warsaw Pact tanks crushed revolution, just as in 1945-46 Soviet tanks snuffed out many democracies. When hard men play this game, the democratic revolution becomes impossible.

·         So it is in Iraq. Does anyone seriously believe the people of Iraq don't want democracy? If they believe that, they are saying Iraqis are less human than other people. Of course the Iraqis want democracy - democracy is the natural condition of humans. But for decades their hopes have been crushed, and if the US had not gone in, their hopes would have remained crushed. Yes, America has material interests in a free Iraq. But America is sacrificing blood and treasure also because America genuinely believes all humanity must have democracy as its right.

·         There is no other country in history that has done more to bring freedom to the world. All of us owe a huge debt to America. How sad, then, that so many elites around the world - yes, elites in free countries, countries that America helped free and helped keep free - hate America so much for what it is doing to bring democracy to the world. How sad that so many Americans hate their own country so much that they cannot appreciate or even understand what their country has done for freedom, and what it continues to do.

·         Let freedom flow like the waters of a mighty river. The circle of those who would oppress their people diminishes every year. Afghanistan, Georgia, Ukraine - 2004 has been a very good year indeed. Even if it takes a hundred years to free the Islamic world - and we predict it will take no more than 10 - the outcome is very much worth the cost. Unasked for advice to the petty tyrants in the Islamic world, in North Korea, Cuba, and most of all, in China. Get out of the way while you can, because that onrushing river cannot be stopped, by you or anyone else. Get out of the way or be drowned, and forgotten like a bad dream is when the new day dawns.

·         AND THANK YOU, OLD EUROPE  We suppose we could be cynical and say Old Europe did its part - a very major part, perhaps the major part - in bringing freedom to Ukraine because it advances Old Europe's security and because Ukrainians are white. We could also say this victory cost Old Europe very little, but when it comes to freeing yellow, black, or brown people, and where the cost is high, Old Europe is nowhere to be seen.

·         There would be much truth in our cynicism. Nonetheless, Old Europe has its idealists too, and regardless of what Old Europe gets from a free Ukraine, it too believes in humanity's right to be free. So from our side, at least, many thanks also to Old Europe. You redeemed yourself in the Balkans, now in Ukraine. By all means sit back a moment and enjoy your drink or your smoke.

·         But don't make it more than a moment. The non-white people need you, too. They are humans as much as Ukrainians.  You have a debt to them too, not because of imperialism, but because you are favored and they are not. If you let America go to it alone, America will do so. But for sure America, the oppressed, and us at Orbat.com, would be mighty glad to have you as a partner in this crusade, a crusade not for religion, but for the simple right of people to be free.

 

 

0230 GMT December 26, 2005

 

·         AFRICA MILITARY NEWS  [Thanks to BBC] President Bush signed the Sudan Sanctions Bill, which gives him more leverage in forcing Khartoum to settle the Dafur problem peacefully. The President also now has authority to spend $300-million to help Dafur; some of that money will be used to support the African Union force

·         UN investigations in Ivory Coast show appalling human rights violations in the last two years by government and rebels alike. Mass executions, loot, rape, and ordinary murder seem to be the all the rage. The evidence includes film coverage, and is to be made available when and if Ivorians from both sides are charged with war crimes.

·         Fighting between rival government forces in DR Congo has subsided. Meantime an arms monitoring group says weapons are being freely smuggled across the eastern DRC borders, and blames the UN for not having troops better trained in monitoring arms flows.

·         In our opinion, this report's arrogance is breathtaking. While most nations now have troops they train for peace-keeping operations, soldiers are still soldiers. They are trained to fight wars, not monitor arms smuggling in foreign countries, especially where they find themselves under tight rules. The UN does not have any soldiers of its own, and makes do with what it gets. Blaming it for these sort of  perceived shortcomings is mindlessly stupid. We thought reports such as this one were the specialty of Americans, but now must concede that the British - a Parliamentary committee is the author - are right up there with our American friends in the low IQ department. If Parliament feels so strongly about the inadequacies of the 3rd world armies who primarily fill UN missions, why isn't it pushing to send British troops to DRC? Ooops, we forgot: The British are overstretched. But why are they overstretched? Because the same uneducated people who produce these reports also have forced cuts so severe on British forces that one brigade in Iraq and a few battalions in other places around the world has overextended the British Army. We expect very little from the Europeans, but it's sad to see the British go the same way: moral outrage, talk, more hot air, unrealistic solutions, and when the times comes to actually do something, excuse us, please, we have lunch to do. Bah.

·         HONDURAS The Government conducted a show of force in several cities as it searched for the persons responsible for the bus atrocity. One man has been arrested; he is a member of a Honduran gang. Apparently there is some sort of competition between his gang and another to see who can kill more civilians. Meanwhile, the Honduran government has been pushing for the right to use the death penalty against gang members, something that upset the gangs. This gives the idea for a new competition: Honduran judges can compete to see who sends more gang members to the gallows.

·         In a vague sort of way, we can understand the motives of insurgents and terrorists who target civilians. We cannot understand, or accept, the motives of these gangs. First their members abused the hospitality of the United States and disgraced their communities. Hispanic immigrants are the new Irish in America: they work harder than anyone else and do their absolute best to get a better life for stay-behind family and for their children. But the gang members are scum. After being deported, they now feel they have the right to destroy their own countries. There is only one way to deal with such people just as there is only one to deal with terrorists: kill them before they kill you.

·         IRAQ Reader Mike Thompson sends us an article from the Jerusalem Post in which a US officials says the US is contemplating crossing the Syrian border to capture or kill insurgent leaders and insurgents using Syria as sanctuary.

·         The nice thing about the US is that it seldom wastes times in idle threats. Yes, this threat is part of psychological campaign against Syria to act against the insurgents. But threats have meaning only if you are willing to follow through. The Syrians as usual are bleating about how no terrorists operate from their territory. If they don't get more serious, readers can expect that the US will make a couple of raids, perhaps without making the news public. Big "Kilroy Was Here" signs will be left to give a hint to Damascus.

·         What we don't understand is why the US hasn't smacked Syria a few times already. Something we do know nothing about seems to be in play.

·         Incidentally, your editor never thought the day would come when he'd say something nice about Assad, the father of the present president. In a world of serious tyrants, to us he looked like a pathetic tyrant wannabe. His terrorism, his oppression, his corruption hit the people of Syria very hard, but that still left him a nobody compared to other tyrants. But watching the bumbling of the son, we have to say whatever the old boy's faults, he was tough and ruthless, he played for high stakes, and he survived. The son is such a buffoon and such a puff pastry that Hollywood should be offering him deals to forget Syria and come act in slapstick movies. One can respect a hard man, however evil. One cannot respect a leader who looks like he'd be happier dressing in womens' clothes than running a dictatorship. We have the same problem with DPRK's Beloved Son. Anyone who forces the state media to constantly affirm he was born on a mountaintop by divine means, and the whole swans and flowers and rainbows bit, needs serious professional help. This supposed to be the 21st Century. Why are we tolerating people like Beloved Son and Assad Junior? Lets display some good taste by seeing them off the world stage.

·         US has captured two senior Zaraqawi aides in Iraq.

·         A few hundred Fallujah residents have been allowed inside the city. Apparently most take one look at their house and their neighborhood and get the heck back out of Fallujah. From the pictures we've seen, cant say we blame them.

·         Quite by-the-way. When US troops were fighting in Fallujah last month, a big worry was booby-trapped cars left behind by the insurgents. The US had a simple solution: every single car parked in Fallujah was shredded before US troops entered the street. Now, finally something the Americans have done something that we can feel pleased about. This is the way Americans used to work in their nothing-can-stop-us and no-problem and can-do days. Simple, innovative, big solutions.

 

0330 GMT December 25, 2004

 

·         HONDURAS VIOLENCE AP reports that the criminal underworld in Honduras, which claims 100,000 gang members, attacked a public bus killing 28 civilians. The attack is seen as an escalation against the government's zero-tolerance policy against gangs.

·         We mention this incident for two reasons. First we had narco-terrorism, then came fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, and now we have plain criminal terrorism. This is a new dimension to the security threats to nation-states.

·         And we wonder how much of the Honduras problem with gangs is an outcome of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The sharp rise in legal and illegal Hispanic immigration into the United States has led, over the last two decades, to the formation of hundreds of Hispanic gangs with total memberships running into the hundreds of thousands. The US has cracked down hard, and any arrested gang member who is not a US citizen is deported after serving his sentence. So we have tens of thousands of young men, hardened in the US, now back in their own countries where policing is not as effective as in the United States. No surprise that they have gone back to doing the only thing they know how to do, which is organized crime.

·         The United States, as is well known, has an ability to tolerate serious crime at levels that would bring down any other western government. The reasons for this are complex. In the interests of political correctness, Americans are not permitted to state the obvious. If you take murder, for example, and separate the rates for whites and non-whites, you will find US rates for murder committed by whites is in line with other countries where guns are easily available, such as Canada and Australia. The same thing goes for drugs: the great majority of persons in jail for drugs are non-white. We are not interested in getting into a debate about the socio-economic reasons for this. Your editor lived/worked in an all-minority, specifically in a black American, environment for 10 years and he has intimate knowledge of the problems blacks face and of the problems they create for themselves. We are merely pointing out some facts.

·         We mention this primarily from a national security viewpoint. Crime has gone global, multi-cultural, internet age etc etc. A big part of the insurgency in Iraq is tied up with criminal organizations; we hear it said that European organizations are getting involved. And fighting well-organized gangs these days is harder than fighting insurgencies.

·          RUSSIA FIRES TOPOL-M The 4th last test of the Russian Topol-M mobile ICBM has taken place. Russia has 40 missiles deployed, a minute number compared to what it could have deployed in the days of empire. Money is so short that acquiring even 3-6 a year has proved difficult. But with Mr. Putin vowing to get respect for Russia, it is possible that the deployment rate will pickup. The new missile the Russians have been threatening may be a development of the Topol-M. Presently the missile carries a single warhead, the design permits a MIRV payload of three warheads. If readers suspect that all this activity on the almost defunct Russian strategic weapons programs has something also to do with the activation of the US ABM system, we'd guess they suspect correctly.

·         Incidentally, if you want to talk about deploying weapons without full testing, talk to a Russian scientist or military person. The stories they will tell will raise the hair of most normal people. The point is that critics of the US ABM system would do well to heed Admiral Gorshkov's famous saying: "Better is the enemy of good enough". If US critics not just of the ABM system but any big weapons program were to have their way, the systems would be deployed just in time to become obsolete.

·         US F-22 and B-2 PROGRAMS Reader Paul Danish asks us to remind everyone that the B-2 cost of $1 billion per unit is a program cost; but we are uncertain as to how many years of spares are included in that figure. He also notes that the F-22 program was intended for purchase of 720 aircraft. If the US is going to buy half as many, the cost per fighter is going to go up by four times.

·         This is a story retold again and again. Part of the reason for program escalation costs is that the US military aims for giant leaps in capability rather than incremental ones, and many of the technologies needed work out to be much more difficult and expensive than first assumed. The lack of competition in the weapons field is another factor. But a third big factor is the constant attack every weapons program goes through: with ultra-critical scrutiny being the norm, its quite routine for anti-military interests to force cuts in programs, which pushes up the cost, which leads to more cuts.

·         By no means do we imply our simplistic framework is all there is on the issue. Nonetheless, we get truly bugged when people start saying: "This is not needed because the Soviet threat is not there." Fair enough, but how long as you going to keep F-15s and F-16s flying? A machine wears down despite the best maintenance. Your editor's sub-compact car is all he needs by way of performance. Immaculately maintained, and carefully driven, the car is in its sixth trouble-free year. But some day that car is going to have to be replaced - hopefully it will be at the same time as your editor is unable to drive anymore thanks to old age vision impairment. Ditto fighter aircraft.

·         And if US anti-military spending people think that with the Soviet empire having gone into history's dustbin America needs no more big ticket weapons, they need to think again. Clue: we're talking about the 5-letter name of a country.

1230 GMT December 23, 2004   Updated 1100 GMT December 23, 2004

·         FIRST PALESTINE VOTE IN 28 YEARS Agencies say Palestine went to the polls for municipal elections, for the first time in 28 years. AFP adds this is the first time the radical militant group Hamas has voted in an election. The election is seen as practice for the Prime Ministerial election scheduled for January.

·         PUTIN CONFIRMS STATE BOUGHT YUKOS President Putin confirms that the state purchased the oil giant Yukos. We personally think he was a bit over the top in saying "absolutely legal" means were used. The "company" that bought Yukos as a sole bidder is headquartered in a small shop in a provincial city, and had never been heard from before.

·         Certainly we at Orbat.com are not upset about the murky dealing surrounding Yukos. The company was created by looting state assets, it was run to loot the banks and minority shareholders, and if it has been looted back by the state, we're not about to shed tears. At the same time, there is an ugly rumor that state bureaucrats banded together to "buy" Yukos, and will sell it to the state and enrich themselves by several billion dollars. If it is true, then we think it will reflect badly on Mr. Putin and his nationalism.

·         MOSUL ARMY BASE BLAST MAY BE SUICIDE BOMBER'S WORK US authorities now believe the blast at the US Army base in Mosul may have been the work of a suicide bomber, and not rockets or mortar fire.

·         Naturally there is much media weeping and wailing about how the suicide bomber got through security. No doubt that needs the most careful investigation. This however, is a war. With near 350,000 US and Iraqi forces, plus contractors, mistakes are inevitable. That is life.

·         What disturbs us is another matter altogether. The base dining facility with a reinforced concrete roof is still under construction. Now, if this was a car/truck bomb, the reinforced roof wouldn't have mattered. But it seems to us the US Government and senior military are "fighting" [Think Austin Powers] this war at a lazy, comfortable peacetime rate.

·         We will be told about how the job couldn't be done any faster because of contracting rules and the need to hire reliable local managers and workers and so on until the cows come home and die of old age.

·         The real reason that dining hall is not finished is the US Army no longer has the military construction engineering capability it has had in past wars. This is another critical support function that has been outsourced.

·         If the US Government and the Pentagon are going to now organize for wars as if they were a civil corporation and cash cost-effectiveness is primary, then we have a word of advice for American soldiers. Take it for granted you will not be looked after, and leave the military as soon as you can.

·         Word of advice for the US people: if you support a system that tries to save a buck and then ends up paying ten more, and costs lives in the bargain, you need to get out of the war business. You are equally responsible for Mosul and all the other Iraq disasters, because this is your government, and your Pentagon, that is fighting the war.

·         As a start it will help if the media examine their own role in creating a system where a dining hall is not ready 21 months after the war began.

·         F-22 COSTS SOAR PAST $250-MILLION EACH F-22 Raptor costs have escalated to the point that, by our estimate, a squadron of 25 aircraft (18 UE, the rest as wastage and maintenance reserves) is going to cost $6-billion+. In case readers wonder why we highlight this aspect and not the F-22 crash during a flight, it is because we do not consider the crash to be of any significance. The Raptor is an immensely complex new aircraft. Aircraft crash all the time. Some financial and defense analysts have been getting hysterical about the blow to the Raptor program, leaving as at Orbat.com to scratch our heads at the sanity of these people.

·         Our hassle is the price. The B-2's price eventually escalated past $1-billion per aircraft - of course, that includes all sorts of thing other than the aircraft itself. Accordingly, 20 were purchased and not many more. The aircraft is a wonder: with 200 in the inventory, the US could have precisely attacked 3000 targets at a time, effectively putting any country out of business in a day.

·         We've no doubt the Raptor is every bit as good as claimed, probably better, because the Americans - contrary to popular belief - actually do conceal a great deal of defense-related information. But if the USAF is going to end up with one wing rather than four - more may have been planned, we forget now - than the whole exercise becomes a bit pointless.

·         Incidentally, the above story in the Washington Post also noted the USAF lost nine aircraft last year. That is so astonishingly low a loss rate that it beggers the imagination.

·         N. IRELAND RECORD BANK ROBBERY [Warning: this story has nothing to with defense but it did catch yuor editor's eye.] When push comes to shove your editor never emotionally developed past 6th grade, and he was thrilled to hear that a gang had walked off with $42-million from a Northern Ireland bank.

·         Then he learned the way the heist was conducted. The robbers kidnapped two key executives who had access to the vaults. They did not threaten to kill the executives if cooperation was not given - they kidnapped a bunch of relatives including a spouse and threatened to kill them. Now, gentlemen, whoever you are. What you did completely negates any skill or honor as thieves. You all are just a bunch of domestic terrorists. 100 marks deducted from each of your balance sheets, which puts you to zero as we'd given you 100 of 100 for the robbery.

·         What followed would normally be an ironic twist that still would not affect the marks. About half the money is in brand new notes, the serials of which are on record. The other half is in an odd sort of money we've never before heard about. These pounds work in the Irish Republic but are not commonly accepted in the UK, so its not going to be easy to spend them. It may be near impossible to spend them in any substantial amount because everyone will be watching people who bring suitcases of cash to the shopping mall.

·         So all your effort, gentlemen, has gone to naught. Maybe you can use the notes to feed the fireplace in the depths of winter? Couldn't have happened to nicer people.

·         MORE NEWS AT 1200 HRS.

 

1100 GMT December 22, 2004

·         ISRAELI SETTLERS TO RESIST EVACUATION Agencies say hard-line Israeli settlers will resist evacuation from Gaza. There has been criticism of some settlers who have demonstrated wearing yellow stars and comparing the relocation to the Shoah, the word used by the Jewish people for the Holocaust.

·         Orbat.com opinion. There seems to be a genuine fear in Israel that the evacuation is going to create trouble in the Israeli Army. Some rabbis, for example, have called for the Army to resist what they say are illegal orders to forcibly remove settlers who do not follow the evacuation orders. We are not sufficiently informed on the situation to comment on the situation vis-a-vis the army.

·         In the past, we have been troubled by Prime Minister Sharon's complete bullheadness and refusal to be reasonable. In fairness to him, we have to say that, in our opinion, these very qualities are what is needed now. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of Israel occupying Palestine land, Israel cannot afford to continue the prodigious expenditure of money and troops numbers to protect a few ten thousand settlers.

·         DAFUR CRISIS COOLS The fighting in Dafur seems to have ceased, with both sides pledging to avoid combat. Peace talks are to resume in January 2005. Frankly, it seemed to us that there wasn't much fighting to begin with and that the situation had been blown up thanks to dramatic announcements by the Governments, the rebels, and the African Union contingent. AU troops on the ground still number only one quarter of the sanctioned 3200, a figure itself that is hopelessly low if the security of Dafuris is to be reasonably assured.

·         PAKISTAN REARRESTS EX-PM's HUSBAND Jang of Pakistan has said that the husband of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been rearrested, ostensibly because he failed to appear for a court hearing in a murder case he is charged with instigating.

·         The government appears, to us, to be within its technical rights to rearrest him: he did not arrange in advance for permission to be excused personal attendance, and the trial judge refused to grant the last-minute petition for an excused absence.

·         While we shed no tears for Mrs. Bhutto's husband, we are somewhat concerned by his return to custody after having already served 8 years under arrest. He is one of the most corrupt persons anywhere in the world who never failed to take advantage of his wife's position. At the same time, there have been, and continue to be, corrupt people in power who need to be arrested, and we feel they have no moral standing to go all righteous about what is for a person of his stature a minor infraction of the law. We also don't understand the politics behind this move: just the other day President Musharraf's government was calling for the return from exile of Mrs. Bhutto, saying it was sure the courts would grant her and her husband some "relief" against numerous criminal charges pending against the couple. The rearrest is not likely to enhance Mrs. Bhutto's confidence in the government's promises, and if likely to further damage Pakistan's already fractured polity.

·         Incidentally, before anyone gets overcome by a rearrest after 8 years in custody, the husband was, and again is, actually under house arrest and likely being treated with kid gloves. As for the term in custody, cases in South Asia go on for years and decades without resolution. We believe the husband has been convicted on some charges, and the judgments are under appeal.

·         US SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES SUPER HEAVY BOOSTER In a development of great interest to the military, the US successfully launched the Delta 4 Heavy. The rocket is intended to put super-heavy military payloads into orbit, and is a replacement for payloads that were scheduled to go on the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle delays have very seriously hurt the US military-in-space program. It is being said that the Delta 4 Heavy is the most complex vehicle to be launched into space, exceeded in complexity only by the shuttle itself.

0300 GMT December 21, 2004

·         SNIPPETS So far its been a slow news day. A few items of interest from the global media:

·         2 of 3 Japanese believe DPRK should be sanctioned because of the games Pyongyang ahs been playing on the return of abductees. Most recently DPRK returned the ashes of an abductee who, it said, had died in North Korea. Turned out the DNA did not match and the Japanese are seething with fury. Simultaneously, 3 of 4 Japanese say they do not understand why the duty tour of the Japanese contingent to Iraq has been extended.

·         48% of Americans believe that restrictions should be imposed on Muslims in America - we presume this includes Muslims applying for an American visa or travelling to the US.

·         Military.com says a US company has developed new body armor that can stop an AK-47 bullet at 15-feet, with minimum "deforming" of the armor. That in turn reduces the chances of an injury.

·         Military.com also says the US is working on ways to increase its infantry strength, if necessary by "borrowing" recruit spaces from the Navy and Air Force. These two services are working on a restructuring of their establishments to meet the realities of the new war. The Navy, for example, is thinking of reducing its carrier battle groups from 12 to 9. The Air Force is to make major reductions in its purchases of new combat aircraft.

·         The US 3rd Infantry Division is returning to Iraq. Interestingly, the division is not going in as a light force, but as a full scale mechanized division including its SP Artillery. All "soft" vehicles in the division have been armored; the only soft vehicles will be those confined to army bases. This is a quiet but important setback for the Rumsfeld Doctrine which - readers will recall - calls for small numbers of  light infantry working with heavy application of airpower. The Rumsfeld model worked very well in Afghanistan: the US had hardly any combat troops on the ground when it attacked and destroyed the Taliban army. But what Mr. R perhaps forgot was that there may not have been more than a few hundred US ground soldiers involved, but there were tens of thousands of Afghan forces present participating in the war. This situation did not replicate itself in Iraq.

·         After the rising criticism in the US Congress of Mr. Rumsfeld comes support for him not just from Mr. Bush, but from many Congressmen who say he should not be replaced at such a crucial time. It seems many Congressmen are as concerned about the military transformation Mr. Rumsfeld is pushing through as they are about Iraq, and feel only he can push through the radical changes required.

·         At which point, we ask readers to refer back to the 3rd Infantry Division story, and we will excuse any who asks" What changes? The 3rd is going to war even more heavily armored than it was at the height of the Soviet threat". As for the immense changes coming about because of electronics, sensors, and remote devices, that has nothing to do with Mr. Rumsfeld. It is the culmination of three decades worth of work US military R and D have been putting in, and the changes this is bringing about would have been embraced with or without Mr. Rumsfeld.

·         Saddam says the Iraq elections are a US plot to split the country along ethnic and religious lines. Perhaps. We have opined many times that only a 3-way split has any chance of bringing peace to Iraq. The peace Saddam and his predecessors imposed was the peace of the grave. Iraq is an artificial creation; moreover, it was Caliphate policy to have the Sunni minority rule the country by oppressing everyone else. In case Saddam has not noticed, the Caliphate ended almost 90 years ago. Yugoslavia was an artificial creation after the First World War; the west, and the majority of Yugoslavs, have decided that it could not work today, and so we have six states where one once stood. We are mildly amused that some US establishment people are taking up the theme, though usually with a confederation scenario - defense, foreign affairs, internal and external trade reserved to Baghdad, everything else to the three confederating states.

·         CNN reminds us that 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces are peaceful. Thank you CNN, and we at Orbat.com are putting a credit in your account. We will let one foolish statement of yours go without making fun of you.

·         Beijing wants to pass a new law making secession illegal. The media says its to give Beijing the legal basis for annulling ROC's de facto secession. This report, we must confess, quite baffled us. If PRC has to pass a new law, wouldn't that imply that secession is legal at present? And in any case, you cannot date these things retroactively or there is no end to it. Its a bit like the British Parliament passing a law saying the US secession from the Empire is illegal. [We put this thought to a British friend. His response: "Are you mad? No one in Britain wants the US back; rather, we all wish the US would simply go away, to another dimension or something like that." An uncharitable feeling, but we do have to admit America can get on everyone's nerves by insisting democracy is the right of every person on earth and other inconvenient ideas that disturb "Old Europe's" tranquility.

·         The thing people forget is America has always been a revolutionary state. Because of the USSR and China, between 1950-1990 America was forced to become a reactionary state. At a time America believed it was in a fight to the death against communism, it had no choice but back any regime that pledged enmity to communism. Survival was more important than ideology, and America was correct in this. After all, we don't hear the Europeans slamming the UK and US for allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler during the Second World War. Hitler was such a scourge that had the Devil herself offered Europe she would get rid of Hitler, and as a price demand she be worshipped, we believe most Europeans would have made that pact - holding crossed fingers behind their backs.

·         So enormous is the European intellectuals' hatred of America that they forget in 1975, most of the world was not free. In 2005 most of it is free, though time will elapse before people like Turkmenistan meet Westminster standards. The revolution was begun by Jimmy Carter at a time the Soviet threat had never seemed darker, and it has been followed by every US president since.

·         If the Europeans would understand the revolutionary drives that motivate America - and we have talked to many Europeans who do so understand - they wouldn't be going ballistic about Iraq. "Revolution: That's What We Do TM and ©". In the event anyone wonders about the Trade Mark and Copyrighted, Orbat.com has claimed the right to the slogan and is filing the necessary paperwork.

 

 

0200 GMT December 20, 2004

·         YUKOS SOLD TO MYSTERY BUYER AFP reports that Yukos Oil was sold for 9.3 billion dollars to an unknown company suspected of being a front for the state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The latter is already in the process of taking over another privately owned oil company; with Yukos in its fold it will become the largest global energy group.

·         Orbat.com comment: Russia seems to discover huge oil reserves with nonchalant frequency. Some say with the proper investment and management, Russia could export 10 million barrels a day within 5 years. If that happens, Russia could become the dominant determinator of oil prices. OPEC, of course, exports about twice as much. Yet, OPEC is a collection of countries often at odds with each other. If oil exports from Russia come from government owned companies, then by 2010 we could get into some very interesting and uncharted waters where oil is concerned.

·         CONFLICTING NEWS FROM DAFUR  First we learned that yesterday Khartoum had agreed to cease its latest Dafur offensive. Then we were told that fighting was still underway.

·         WASHINGTON POST SAYS SOMETHING POSITIVE ABOUT US MILITARY   Your editor has been chewing anti-acids all of yesterday. The Washington Post produced a story on US Army efforts to provide services for the people of Sammara, another hot bed of insurgency in Iraq. Post detailed how US has been rebuilding schools, providing supplies, making health care possible etc., and the enthusiasm with which US troops are greeted by kids wherever the army. Nonetheless, Post then reverts to its usual "neutral" position in detailing how insurgents are continually destroying what the US Army has put up. Not a word of condemnation for the insurgents. So your editor cheered up quite a bit to see despite its gallant effort to tell the truth about Iraq for once, the Post is still the Post.

·         Post also carried a factual article about US air operations over Iraq. No cheap personalizations - "Captain ABC climbs confidentially into his F-15 cockpit..." that sort of rot. No false weeping and moaning about collateral damage. The article reports that US PGMs have been scoring an 80-90% success rate - success being measured by the PGM hitting the target exactly as planned. Your editor was waiting for a "the US claims extraordinary accuracy for its PGMs but despite these claims we have learned 1 of 5 PGMs miss their targets. This is disturbing..." cut to family sitting around a bombed house "'What accuracy?' scoffs Fallujah resident XYZ as he sits mourning on the rubble of his life's work, 'Do you see any insurgents here? We never see insurgents here. Why did the Americans have to come and kill us, and the world says nothing? Where is this freedom Americans say they have given us? The Americans have not done one thing for us..'" etc etc  But none of the above happened.

·         A figure of interest. It is still taking the US 44 hours of lead time to work up the master plan for a day's operations. We don't know know under what conditions that 44 hour figure is given. We seem to recall in Gulf I the Air Tasking Orders used to be cut and delivered within 24 hours for the next day. The US has been meeting the need for quick Close Air Support by keeping aircraft up around the clock over problem areas. And, of course, the US has the ability to clear the most politically sensitive targets of opportunity with the White House and put bombs over the target within 4-6 hours. This assumes a cold start; if the aircraft required are already airborne, then a 25 minute lead is required for bombs over target according to the article.

·         PORT AU PRINCE DESCENDING INTO CHAOS AGAIN Apparently armed gangs are again creating increasing problems of security in the Haiti capital. Reuters reports Sri Lanka UN troops trying to retake a police station that has been overrun by thugs were forced to retreat.

·         Before anyone gets into any judgments about Sri Lankan soldiers etc., please remember the Sri Lanka Army has been at war more or less for 15+ years. It has a lot of experience. But troops specially trained for peacekeeping and operating under tight rules of engagement are often unable to perform well even against rag-tag militias and the like.

·         We recall a story from decades ago about an outpost of Indian troops in Gaza as part of UNEF being surrounded by a large number of Israeli soldiers and forced to standby without reacting as the Israelis snatched their rifles. Indian soldiers do not make a habit of handing over their rifles to the first passerby who asks. With clear instructions, they will fight regardless of the odds against them. But  they were under the strictest of orders not to let the Israelis provoke them into opening fire. Some of the men were crying with frustration and anger when they returned to base. As good soldiers, they had complied with orders, but they could not so calmly shrug their shoulders and say "well, we weren't dishonored, not really, because we were told not to fire unless fired on".

·         The Americans don't have similar problems not only because they are good soldiers, but because they don't accept anyone's rules but their own. During the first Haiti intervention, a Marine rifle squad gunned down 12-13 Haitian policemen when one policeman pointed a rifle at them. Pointed a rifle, mind you, not opened fire. The policemen had 3 rifles between them. The Marines were backed up all the way to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who issued some asinine statement about the Haitians learning what happens to them when they confront a well-trained US Marine squad. Had UN Danish or Pakistani or Rwandan troops pulled a stunt like that, there would have been heck to pay - led by the US media.

·         Because the US operates by its own rules, it is absolutely against giving any international court jurisdiction over its troops. On the one hand, your editor believes the US is doing 100% the right thing here. On the other hand, its not right to scoff at other troops who have to follow a very different set of rules.

 

0400 GMT December 19, 2004

·         ZARQAWI IS IN BAGHDAD Readers know your editor makes it a point NOT to get involved with Washington people. At his age he has to focus on serious work and that means ignoring the "informed sources" lot. Once in a while, someone does telephone him with a bit of news. This is one of those occasions.

·         Mr. Zaraqawi is in Baghdad, Iraq/US forces are diligently and systematically searching for him, and our source opines its just a matter of time before he's caught.

·         Not much progress was being made in the search till the Jordanians did what any sensible government would have done at the outset. The Jordanians began seizing every family member they could find - tis was in the papers some weeks ago. Muslims being very family minded - the family comes before tribe, and the tribe before the nation - Zarqawi would always be in contact with his family and trust his family more than other people. So apparently its a 3rd cousin or something equally remote that is singing the Zarqawi Song to the rapt attention of Jordanian, Iraqi, and US intelligence. We wont elaborate on the usual manner in which these operations are conducted, but will note money is used as a big incentive, and saving the family members from the police - especially the women, is another big incentive.

·         SUDAN GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES DAFUR OFFENSIVE  AFP reports the Sudan Government yesterday launched an offensive against Dafur rebels. Khartoum says the area it is operating in is under its control per the Ndjema agreement between rebels and government, and so government is justified in pacifying the area.

·         MOSCOW PROCEEDS WITH YUKOS AUCTION  The beleaguered Russian oil giant Yukos goes on the auction block at 1300 GMT today. We mention this in the geostrategical context of Russia's increasing turn toward authoritarianism. There has been global concern at what is in effect Russia's nationalization-without-compensation of Yukos; critics of the action agree that the company violated many laws but question the lack of due process in the seizure of Yukos and the jailing without bail of its founder and chief executive. Not coincidentally, the owner has been a vocal opponent of Mr. Putin's. As far as the latter is concerned, he is not about to let the new robber barons of Russia run the country. He is also not about to let provincial governors, who are in effect independent regional satraps, run the country. Nor is he about to let the press, which he has successfully muzzled, run the country.

·         While it is understandable the west in particular is crying bloody murder, at Orbat.com we are less confident the case against Putin is that clear cut. Lacking democratic institutions and a market economy, Russia has been in chaos since the fall of the Soviet Union. From the Russian viewpoint, NATO's relentless advance against Russia's last buffers is not helping. We, at least, do not doubt that when Ukraine becomes truly democratic on December 26, assuming the opposition wins, that will become the first step to Ukraine's eventual entry into NATO. Of course, NATO will argue Moscow is as welcome to join as any other European state that meets NATO's political requirements.

·         Fair enough, but we don't see anyone in NATO - the US included - worrying overmuch about the prospect of a genuinely democratic Taiwan being swallowed by PRC. There is no Pacific Treaty Organization happy to provide a shield to Taiwan, pressure PRC to get out of Tibet, and to pave the way for the northwestern minorities to decide their own future. Nor is there a PTO adding insult to injury telling Beijing the latter is welcome to join as soon as it shifts to western democratic norms.

·         Incidentally, its worth noting that Russia had direct control of Ukraine for 400 years. That's a lot longer than the Chinese have had direct control of Tibet.

 

0400 GMT December 18, 2004

·         IRANIAN ACADEMIC SPEAKS OF STRATEGY Mike Thompson sends us an article written by an Iranian academic at Teheran University, detailing the "assymetric" war Iran will wage if attacked by the US. Most of the information is garbage and shows only the Iran general staff, despite its claims of having studied US operations, is quite ignorant about its adversary. One point of interest emerges: Iran, says the academic, will use chemical and biological weapons.

·         Possibly Iran things these threats will make the US think twice about attacking. First, the US is not going going to attack in any conventional manner. Second, if Iran uses CBWs, they will be handing their own heads over to the US on a plate. Certainly we cannot claim any real knowledge about US retaliation, but we have no doubt it will not be pretty.

·         ISRAEL BUSY ATTEMPTING TO FOOL US AGAIN Let's call a spade a spade. Israel took the US but good on Saddam's WMDs. Maybe Saddam had them and maybe he didn't, but Israel certainly convinced important people in the US that he did have them. The US had its own strategic objectives in invading Iraq, yet it would be foolish of us to deny one reason was to remove Israel's biggest and most immediate threat.

·         Now the Israelis are trying to sell another Empire State Building to the US. The Iranian nuclear program is so huge, say the Israelis, that its dispersed over 350 facilities. Helpless little ol' us cannot do such a big job, but Sam, you gorgeous hunk of manhood, you can do it - eyelashes go bat-bat-bat.

·         Bosh and nonsense. The target list is not 350 facilities, its three facilities, and Israel could knock them out any time it wanted. Naturally the military part of the mission is not cost-free, the political fallout is, of course, so huge that its understandable Israel would rather the US do the job.

·         Why bother when Sam the Man is straining at the leash, raring to go, ready to sink his salivating jaws into the Iranian tushie? Butter him up a bit, feed him a bit more misleading "intelligence", and off he'll go while Israel does what Israel did when the US was polishing off Saddam - change into its swimsuit, psoition itself to advantage at the pool side, paint its lovely toenails, sigh languidly, order another martini, and arrange something better to do with its evening than fight a horrible mucky gross filthy war.

·         The question is not what Israel is up to. Its barely making an effort to even pretend to subtlety in influencing Washington. The question is, is Israel going to succeed?

·         Your editor is now going to make a few comments that are his own, and that will definitely earn him many smacks on the hands from friends of Israel - your editor is one too, but one does not have to be blind to the faults of a friend in order to be a friend. Here goes:

·         No responsible US intelligence agency or agent ever takes a anything Israel says without a 40-ton wagon of salt. American intel is quite aware of Israel's attempts to pull the wool over its eyes. So if this is so, what happened in the case of Saddam and the WMDs? Wasn't the US fooled?

·         Well, actually no. But what the Israelis managed was to get the information to people they knew would read it the way Israel wanted, regardless of what US intel was saying. An end run, so as to speak. In a large sense this all is irrelevant, because WMD or not, the US needed to attack Iraq as part of its overall global strategy. Who were these people? Let's just say - wink-wink-nod-nod - that our lips are sealed.

·         Is the US being fooled by Israel on the 350 facilities business? US intel, we can assert for a fact, is not the least bit being taken in. Here again, however, the US has its own reasons for disarming Iran. Its not just the Israelis know this, the Europeans know it too.

·         So everyone is pulling a "Canadian" on America. Its just as vital for us to see Iran does not go nuclear, but since we know the US will do the job for us, why offer to pitch in? In fact, we win both ways, because we get to tell the Iranian how much we hate those crude Yanks and how we're doing our best to restrain the madmen in Washington.

·         This game is called real politick. We earlier mentioned that any US ABM defense will also protect Canada en passant, so why should the Canadians get their hands dirty by agreeing to help the US?

·         Two problems with the Israeli/European approach. First, its immoral. We can hear the French laughing at us across the Atlantic. Moral? Gosh, what a naif petite. There's no morality in foreign affairs! Get a life, Orbat.com!

·         That leads us to the second problem. America was founded on the principle of enlightened self-interest. People would do the right thing, the moral thing, because it was in their self-interest to so do. By and large, Americans have respected this principle, even if sometimes they weren't clear on what their self-interest was (think Indochina II).

·         But if you're going to play the game, so can the Americans. They're already doing it in the case of the DPRK nuclear weapons program. America is acting blase because it knows the danger to the neighborhood - Japan, ROK, Russia, China, is far greater than the danger to America. These countries have been playing little kids-put-on-their-daddy's size 20 boots and trying to act tough with the US, in part because they figure the US will have to kill the program in its own interest, and they can escape the political/military costs.

·         The Americans, however, are playing hard ball. You're going to have to help us, they're telling Moscow, Beijing, and Tokyo. If you aren't going to help us, well, we'll just sit in the easy chair and smoke a nice cigar, and we'll wait for you to come begging.

·         The same thing applies in the case of Iran. The threat is greatest to Israel, and then to the Europeans. America is least threatened of all.

·         Unasked advice to the Israelis and the Europeans. Don't automatically assume you can manipulate Sam to your own ends. If you're not going to play your part, Washington is prepared to stand aside till you come begging.

·         The terms will less favorable then.

 

1130 GMT December 17, 2004

·         CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS WANT RUMSFELD TO RESIGN US media says the Republicans increasingly want US Defense Secretary to resign. A top neo-con idealog, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard wrote a slashing attack on Rumsfeld in the Washington Post. Several Senators have expressed growing unhappiness.

·         In your editor's opinion, the catalyzing point is a relatively minor one. Rumsfeld is well known for his quips. In Iraq he was asked about the shortage of armor for the standard US utility light vehicle, the Hummer, and he responded by saying you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want. This, of course, is perfectly true. Moreover, the US Army goes to extraordinary lengths to protect its soldiers.

·         Nonetheless, because the US is a media-driven society, Rumsfeld's comment was taken as callous and offensive, and has provided a rallying point for the extensive but so far diffuse opposition to him.

·         This said, you editor is perfectly aware Americans will judge the state of their equipment by their own standard, not that of other countries. That standard is so high that the UN usually does not want the US to be part of a peacekeeping force: no one else can meet the standard.

·         That said, one is forced to question why armored vehicles are lacking. It is true US factories are working 3 shifts to produce the armored version of the Humvee. It is also true the Humvee is a 1-1/2 ton jeep, not an AFV. But if more armored vehicles are needed, why have not more M-1s and Bradleys been sent? Why has the US let its military industrial capacity deteriorate to the point that 18 months after the need for more heavily armored vehicles became apparent, sufficient numbers are not available?

·         The issue is not as simple as we may have made out. With the Washington Post and its sorry ilk around to pounce on every extra dollar spent in the name of urgency, its easy to see a situation noone wanted to take the responsibility for ordering an all out - which means no-expenses spared - effort on this issue. Nonetheless, the issue is not so much the Humvees as Mr. Rumsfeld's casual and dogmatic approach to fighting the Iraq war.

·         US ARMY GUARD TO ASK FOR MORE MONEY To meet recruiting shortfalls caused by the Iraq War and the strain imposed on Guard units, the Guard is to triple recruiters, increase reenlistment bonuses, and request $20 billion to replace equipment that is worn out and lost. There are two sides to the issue of Guard retention. First, it is indeed unprecedented for the Guard to be kept mobilized in lieu of regulars, in a situation short of a direct threat to the US. Conversely, the Guard has met its recruit targets in the past because of lavish perks for relatively little sacrifice on the recruit's part. The most well known is the money the Guard gives enlistees to go to college, which is a huge expense in the US. It does offer ordinary people who would otherwise not be able to learn marketable skills, earn a degree, and put away some money to better themselves.

·         Yet, we at Orbat.com do have to agree with the "what's the emergency?" argument. The burden of this war is touching 99% of Americans not at all; most Guard members find it hard to make ends meet when they are recalled from their civilians jobs, and many return to no job or to lower-paying positions because athe same job they eft is not assured.

·         US ABM INTERCEPTOR WAS SHUT DOWN To opponents of the US ABM program this may seem a distinction without a difference, but reader Mike Thompson forwards the news that the ABM interceptor did not fail to launch: it was shut down because an anomaly would have led to the loss of telemetric data from the booster. In an operational situation no one would be interested in telemetric data, so the missile would have been fired anyway. The idea of a weapon system is not that it work perfectly each and every time, but that overall it does what its supposed to do despite failure of parts of the system. And in a situation where adversaries are deploying missile capable of attacking the US, it is important to "go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you wish". The way the US calculates readiness of a new weapon system, people like the Russians and Chinese would never get to deploy anything more complex than a rifle.

·         CANADA GRACIOUSLY PERMITS US TO DEFEND IT  The Canadian government has said it will participate in the US ABM shield only if it does not have to put up any money, give up land for ABM installations, and has a complete say in when and how the system is used. This is the Canadians' way of telling the US "Fuggedboutit". Its ruthless self-interest, because any shield that protects the US will also automatically protect Canada. Many Canadians feel their government's policy is selfish and morally wrong, but there it is. US and defense are not words that go over well with most Canadians today, thanks to the Iraq war. In any case, Canada is heading for a de facto unarmed pacifism as it continues to finish off what little remains of its military.

 

 

 

0400 GMT December 16, 2004

·         PALESTINE MILITANTS WONT RENOUNCE VIOLENCE Reacting to a call by Palestine's interim prime minister and likely winner of next month's election to shun violence, Palestine militant groups say they will not lay down arms.

·         So we may get back to the cycle of the years since Oslo, with the government trying to rein in militants and unable to do so to Israel's satisfaction, followed by attacks on Palestine which undercut the government's authority. There is one big difference this time. Abu Mazan, the Prime Minister, sincerely wants peace and is unlikely to play the double, triple, and quadruple double crosses that Arafat specialized in. So its likely Israel will raise the level it feels the Palestine government is not doing enough to stop the violence.

·         In the meanwhile, both the US and the EU are determined to get the Syrians out of Lebanon, and the US at least is ready to crack down on Iranian intervention in regional affairs. Both measures will weaken the ability of rejectionist militant groups to operate.

·         CUBA'S EXERCISE "BASTION" Reader Mike Thompson sends us details of Cuba's Exercise Bastion, and we supplement those with details from an AFP report.

·         The exercise lasts for one week, and involves  100,000 regulars plus 400,000 reservists, and 4 million militia. The island state has a population of 11 million people. What Cuba wants from this exercise is unclear: all we can say for sure it is a massive propaganda play. Obviously the US is not going to invade Cuba - it didn't 43 years ago, and it even failed to support the operation it had organized around Cuban exiles. So is Castro aiming at internal enemies? Is he demonstrating to the US that the old tiger is not toothless?

·         Whatever the reason, he is giving the US a great opportunity to update its orbats for Cuba plus an enormous amount of other vital information.

·         Given Cuba is destitute, how is it paying for this huge exercise? If we look closer, it should not be that expensive. Sending the militia out to pull rifles from armories and have them shoot off - say - 5-10 rounds each and fire a few mortar shells etc is not a financial big deal. Ditto with the Army. Much of Cuba's equipment has in any case been in storage, so running trucks and tanks around for a week - or a few hours in the week, should not be expensive either. The Air Force has almost stopped flying. To give a handful of pilots a few short-duration sorties is also not going to bankrupt the treasury. Meanwhile the film/video crews will be busy taking a few shots, and the state TV will again and again run clips of marching thousands and a dozen artillery pieces firing off a few rounds, and a couple of jets taking off, a few helicopters inserting infantry, 3-4 transports dropping paratroopers, gunboats racing around, etc etc.

·         We forget the name of the Hollywood director or special effects master who said he needed only 17 men to simulate an army of thousands. Likely Orbat.info will not get any real details for some months, and even then it may not be able to share details with Orbat.com, but your editor, at least, will keep an eye open.

·          PRC TO SELL 2nd 300-MW REACTOR TO PAKISTAN AFP says Beijing has agreed to sell and help partially finance a second 300-MW power production reactor at Chasma. For Pakistan, a 300-MW reactor is equivalent to 2,000-MW for India in terms of impact on the economy, so it an important deal.

·         We are not going to discuss Chasma II in terms of proliferation: it would be foolish and wasteful of Pakistan to try and trick the US and the IAEA by using Chasma II for weapons grade plutonium when it has an unsafeguarded reactor doing its shakedowns. The 40-MW reactor can give Pakistan sufficient plutonium for 3-5 warheads per decade - we are talking in practical engineering terms, not the theoretical figures arms control advocates like to use.

·         Rather, the significance lies in Chasma II as a manifestation of the ever-deepening strategic ties between the two countries. A development that seems to have passed noticed is one Chinese foot is firmly planted in Gwader, near the entrance to the Persian Gulf; another is planted in Bangladesh and off Bangladesh. China wants to control its oil lanes, outflank India, and buttress Pakistan. And this it seems to be doing quite well.

·         IRAQI PM ALLAWI TO LOSE POSITION? After all that he has done to bring Iraq to democracy, ironically, one of the first casualties of democracy is like to be the interim Prime Minister, Mr. Allawi.  It seems likely that an MP nominated by Grand Ayatollah Sistani will be Prime Minister, as Allawi's attempts to forge a coalition have fallen way behind that of Ayatollah sistani and his associates.

·         The press says on the one hand, his ouster will be a big blow to the Americans. On the other hand, it will give Iraq a Prime Minister who does not carry the stigma of having been chosen by Iraqis.

 

 

1100 GMT December 15, 2004 [2nd Update]

·         FRANCE BANS HEZBOLLAH TV CHANNEL Jang of Pakistan, possibly using AFP as its source, says that France's highest administrative court has ordered Eutelsat to stop broadcasting a Hezbollah TV channel within 48 hours. The reason was incitement of racial hatred.

·         Orbat.com comment This is one of the two straws in the wind we have noticed recently about Western Europe's growing reaction to Islamic extremism. Another is a quote in a story about an increased number of Dutch citizens wanting to leave their country: a person says that the murder of the Dutch filmmaker who highlight Arab mistreatment of women was "our 9/11". To Indians and to Americans the Dutch case may seem insignificant. The Dutch, however, have for centuries prized themselves on their tolerance and peaceful society. For the above to happen is actually a serious development. The French action speaks for itself.

·         DRC ARMY SAYS IT CAPTURES TWO RWANDA SOLDIERS AP reports Democratic Republic of Congo army officer as saying his men have captured two Rwanda soldiers. DRC has been accusing Rwanda of reentering its territory after a Pretoria-brokered agreement in 2002 for Rwanda to withdraw. That agreement itself was subsequent to Rwanda's failure to observe the Lusaka Agreement of 1999, which required all foreign forces to leave the DRC. The UN force in DRC has said it is almost certain Rwanda has reentered, despite the latter's denials. Your editor should have known this: it's near impossible to tell who is from which country in this region because the ethnic groups in Rwanda, Burundi, and Eastern DRC are the same. The Hutus who were pushed out of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide have based themselves in Eastern Congo and kept themselves going through plunder plus recruitment of DRC and Burundi Hutus. Rwanda participated in the DRC civil war as one of 7 foreign powers, both to fight the rebel Hutus and to enrich itself by plunder of DRC resources. The civil war was the first pan-African war; 3 million DRC civilians are said to have died.

·          ABM TEST FAILS A test of the US ABM system failed when an interceptor failed to launch in the Pacific against a target missile that had been fired 16 minutes earlier. We personally do not think this is a Big Deal, though critics of the ABM program will undoubtedly so claim. Anyone old enough to recall the disasters that befell the US ICBM program in the late 1950s will also recall the US deployed ICBM/SLBM systems without waiting for full reliability because the need was perceived to be so urgent. Cartoonists had fun with  themes on the failures. One was of a kid reciting numbers in Kindergarten: "10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-Nuts!"

 

0200 GMT December 15, 2004

·         TWO HIGH LEVEL TALIBAN OFFICIALS ARRESTED The chief of household security for the wanted Taliban leader Mullah Omar and and another high ranking official have been arrested in Afghanistan. From equipment found on them the government obtained several other names and has arrested 27 persons.

·         HAITI   CNN says Jordanian and Brazilian UN troops have moved into a slum whose population is loyal to the ousted president, Mr. Aristide in the Haitian capital to restore order, and will stay for two months till local police can reassert their presence. The slum had decided it had the right to function the way it wanted; accordingly, after several murders of policemen and other unpleasantness the populace had seized control of the area.

·          IRAQ LOGISTICS One reason the Americans are so difficult to beat in war is their extraordinary mastery of logistics. That mastery has been much in evidence in Iraq, where despite every effort of the insurgents, supplies have flowed uninterrupted to every corner of the country. The Washington Post has a figure of interest: Against the approximately 900 annual miles M-1 tanks and Bradleys are allotted in peace, in Iraq these AFVs have been doing four times as much. Under battle conditions in open terrain, of course, the AFVs can easily notch up 3000+ miles in a month, and we assume that many units did as much in Gulf II.

·         NEWS OF THE ABSURD Agencies say the trials of Saddam's associates will start next week. CNN says its likely that "Chemical Ali" Majid and a cousin of Saddam's are going to be the first to appear in court. Several sources say, however, that this is simply going be a court appearance; the Iraqis are not ready to start the actual trials.

·         We predict the trials will provide our readers with much hilarity and mirth, thanks to the circus clowns masquerading as lawyers for the defense. That is why we are carrying the news under our "Absurd" category.

·         True to form, one of the defense lawyers has said that the interrogation of the suspects was conducted with lawyers present, and this is illegal. Er, dare we point out that that the regime for which these people worked was itself illegal? And please let us know which Iraqi law says accused are entitled to legal consul during interrogation? And who told you the State is going to use  confessions obtained without lawyers being present?

 

 

 0200 GMT December 14, 2004

·         NEWS OF THE ABSURD Today its the US being absurd. Cuba is staging maneuvers. Why we don't know, as our brother publication Orbat.info, (responsible for our contemporary orbats) tells us Cuba's military is in such bad condition the lot needs to be retired to an old folks home. But that's not the relevant issue here. Washington says the Cuban  military exercises are a "distraction". Last we heard, Cuba was still not a vassal of the United States. aren't sovereign countries entitled to assure their defense the best they can? so what right does Washington have to get "distracted"? And distracted from what? Pravda's Brittany Spears story? - see below.

·         Frankly, your editor has always been ambiguous about Castro's Cuba. On the one hand, Castro is just another totalitarian thug. On the other, are we supposed to feel sympathy for the pre-1960 Cuban elite, which had turned Havana into America's whorehouse, and who's whites oppressed their black brothers?

·         Americans do not believe in sportsmanship. But sportsmanship requires that America bestow some admiration on this hirsute and priapic old man. He has outlasted 44 years of America's best efforts to get rid of him - that's the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan (two terms), Bush the First, Clinton (two terms), and Bush the Second, now about to start his second term. That's nine presidents.

·         That said, he does need to drop dead ASAP. He did a lot for his people. But that was then. Its a different era, a different game, different expectations. The world no longer finds benevolent dictators acceptable, particulary dictators incapable of delivering the goods. The USSR fell 12-13 years ago. How many more years is Castro going to use that as an excuse for his failings?

·         WHITE HOUSE SUPPORTS ANNAN The White House says its silence on Mr. Annan has been misconstrued and that President Bush supports Mr. Annan.

·         Excuse us, no one has misconstrued the White House's position. Please rewrite the above sentence to read "President Bush "supports" Mr. Annan" (think Austin Powers).

·         Meanwhile, we learn the company that hired Kojo Annan was responsible for certifying export shipments headed for Iraq under the Oil-For-Food program. Lloyd's was the original agency but then Kojo's company got the business. He was paid $125,000 over 4 years, plus the $2,500 non-compete compensation.

·         US HAS IT IN FOR IAEA DIRECTOR II US sources say they have not found anything incriminating via the wiretaps placed on the IAEA director's communications. Yesterday's story:

·         Readers may recall IAEA allegations that the US has been negligent in securing Iraqi facilities - the missing explosive story. Now Washington Post reports that the US has been wiretapping the IAEA Director, looking for anything it could use to deny him another term. Absent the US effort he would apparently be elected unopposed. Can't blame the US on this, no one asked the director to stick his nose into stuff that isn't his business, especially when the leak concerning the so called missing explosives looked suspiciously like an attempt to influence the US election against Mr. Bush.

·         Meanwhile, reader Owen Benerka emails to say: "Australian media sources have been reporting that American Department of State officials asked Australia's quite hawkish Foriegn Minister, Alexander Downer, to be a alternative candidate for the position of IAEA Chief. However Mr Downer refused

·         THE LOW STATE OF PRAVDA AND IZVESTIA  We've hammered the US media in particular and the western media in general for their idiotic military reporting. Seemed only fair to see what the Russians were doing in this department. Pravda and Izvestia are icons of the age of the USSR. They were, along with Tass, taken very seriously indeed. we found no military reporting. Instead we reproduce the lead story from Pravda December 13, 2004.

·         "No one expected that from Britney Spears. The muse of an artist and just a beautiful girl caused trouble on board a passenger jetliner. The incident happened when Britney was flying from Los Angeles to New York. Needless to say that it is not a short flight at all. The pop star was traveling along with her hubby, Kevin Federline.

·         "Everything was absolutely fine in the beginning. The problem came up later, in the middle of the flight, when passengers felt numbness in their legs and arms. A horrible odor, comparable to stagnant marsh gases, appeared in air. Panic gripped the passengers, who were sitting close to the source of the stench. Some of them asked air hostesses for help - they begged them to remove the object, which was emitting the unbearable evaporation.
"The disturbing object was found immediately. The smell was coming from a pair of shoes, which were left in the center of the liner's saloon. As it turned out later, the shoes belonged to America's pop princess Britney Spears. The bravest air hostess approached the star and kindly asked Britney to put her lovely shoes back on her feet. Otherwise, the hostess added, the passengers would have to continue the flight with oxygen masks on.

·         "Britney Spears showered her apologies and tried to joke a little to ease the confusion. The pop star said that those shoes were not good on her feet. If shoes don't match feet, they start producing awful smell."

·         Izvestia, which is a news agency, bylines another story in the Pravda of the above date: "Sex and Space Don't Mix". This story cannot be reproduced in a family newspaper like ours.

·         Now before we get a host of emails saying "Come on, don't you see Pravda is merely delivering the straight-faced humor of the absurd the Russians are famous for?", we'd like to say, yes, we do get it. But we are not talking about the Russian equivalent of the National Enquirer. We're talking of the Russian New York Times. If this kind of sophomoric humor is what's taking up Pravda's space, where do we go to get a serious look at Russia's take on world affairs?

 



 

 

 0200 GMT December 13, 2004

·         FALLUJAH When US forces entered some suburbs in Fallujah with a 700 strong Iraqi work force to begin clearing rubble, they were fired on. The troops called in air support throughout the day. With civilians still externed there is little concern over collateral damage. Returning residents will be finger printed, in some cases iris scans will be used, and each will be issued an identity card. We don't know if a nation-wide identity card system is already coming into force.

·         KLASSE KLOWNE AWARD And today's award goes to the two insurgents who pulled up next to an M-1 tank in their bomb-loaded car. No US soldiers or tanks were hurt in the insurgents' gallant attempt to earn our much coveted award. We have sent a message on the GodLine they have, indeed won the award. Unfortunately, we do not pay for return trips to Earth for purposes of receiving the award.

·         NEWS OF THE ABSURD Mr. Tariq Aziz's lawyer says 11 high level detainees are on hunger strike to protest their being held for a year without charges. They are on strike also because they believe after January 30 they will be turned over to a government they don't recognize. The US says the detainees have been happily snacking and drinking fluids.

·         Question for Mr. Aziz's lawyer: have you laid out your defense for when the trials start? If so, Mr. Aziz needs to fire you immediately. Do we need to tell you that it matters nothing if Mr. Aziz etc refuse to recognize the government that will try them? And why this rush to get your client/s to the hangman. Of course, Mr. Aziz is unlikely to go to the hangman. His potential as a stand-up comic for American TV is too valuable. People complain American mass TV is moronic. For once Mr. Aziz and his lawyer will be perfectly matched to their audience.

·         US HAS IT IN FOR IAEA DIRECTOR  Readers may recall IAEA allegations that the US has been negligent in securing Iraqi facilities - the missing explosive story. Now Washington Post reports that the US has been wiretapping the IAEA Director, looking for anything it could use to deny him another term. Absent the US effort he would apparently be elected unopposed. Can't blame the US on this, no one asked the director to stick his nose into stuff that isn't his business, especially when the leak concerning the so called missing explosives looked suspiciously like an attempt to influence the US election against Mr. Bush.

·         Meanwhile, reader Owen Benerka emails to say: "Australian media sources have been reporting that American Department of State officials asked Australia's quite hawkish Foriegn Minister, Alexander Downer, to be a alternative candidate for the position of IAEA Chief. However Mr Downer refused

·         JAPAN NATIONAL DEFENSE SHIFT Your editor finally had a free moment to look up Japan's Asahi Shimbun concerning the new Japanese defense policy. He was taken aback to realize the new National Defense Program Outline heralds a seismic shift in Japan's security planning. We must leave this matter for experts to elaborate, and we did get from the American media that Japan has for the first time named PRC as a threat, and has allowed export of weapons/weapons technology to the US so that Japan can do its share in the ABM program. [Japan's first step, on its end, is the acquisition of 4 Aegis destroyers and 3 Patriot PAC 3 batteries.]

·         But the report contains something even more important. The new plan, which will soon be submitted to Parliament so the Prime Minister can obtain the authority he needs to implement the plan, specifically calls for Japanese troops to strike terrorists wherever they may be. This is the first time since 1945 that Japan has talked about the need to take offensive action, complete with a rapid deployment force and long-range airlift.

·         In your editor's opinion, it is decades past time that Tokyo began to pull its weight on defense. The ABM defense and proposed RDF are important, but Japanese needs also to ensure control of its sea lanes against the PLAN. Navies take 20 years to build up or to change track. Japan is already very late on a true blue-water navy with all that implies, including aircraft carriers and nuclear attack submarines. If Japanese still insist on being politically correct and saying "oh my gosh, we're too quiveringly sensitive to build carriers and SSNs, and if we do historical distrust of us will get exacerbated", we'd like to ask them one question. Can they point to one case where PLAN has held back because the Japanese have been extra careful not to upset anyone's naval sensibilities? We doubt such evidence exists. China is going to do what it takes to become the second superpower ASAP, and then the first, no matter how much restraint Japan shows.

 

 

 0330 GMT December 12, 2004

·         TAIWAN ELECTION UPSET Chairman Mao must be smiling wherever the old boy is lodged. Despite wide expectation that the pro-independence ruling party would be returned with a big margin, the badly disorganized opposition has managed to block the ruling party from a parliamentary majority. Apparently people who were worried that the pro-independence lot would create a dangerous situation voted for the opposition. Besides which - and your editor is giving himself whacks on the hand because he knew this - many ROC citizens want reunification with PRC. This would be the descendents of the KMT that took over Formosa in 1949 and proceeded to ignore the locals.

·         MORE ON THE PLAN TYPE 094 SSBN Reader Terry Shifflet, who is au courante with the comings and goings of the US Navy's Atlantic fleet, tells us the Type 094 was trailed from the time it left port to the time it rounded Guam to the time it got back to port. So who got more information from the cruise, the PLAN or the USN, is something to debate. One thing for sure: this particular 094 has been "fingerprinted". The US Navy has for decades been fingerprinting all the warships and merchant ships sailing the world ocean. Each submarine/ship has its own distinctive engine/screw signature. A few seconds or minutes of tracking and analyzing, and the US Navy can say, "Yo, its that prototype 094 again".

·         RANDOM THOUGHT  The one thing your editor never wanted to be is a naval sailor. One reading of Nicholas Monsarrat "The Cruel Sea" while your editor was a pre-teen was sufficient to put him off the Navy forever. This book is reality dressed up as fiction, and tells the story of a little ASW corvette's war in the North Atlantic campaign. Its one of the best war books ever written, and even now, 50 years after your editor read it, he can visualize the unforgiving ocean, the bitter and constant cold, and the horrible, unrelenting fear of death the book evokes. Then when still a pre-teen he started to read naval histories of World War II, he decided that burning to death in the water was not his idea of Being Heroic. Water puts out fire - normally. But when a warship is badly damaged or is sinking, and its fuel tanks are breached, the oil in its tanks spreads over the sea, and since the ship is on fire, the sea catches fire too. Another random thought that will make pacifists of people. Getting doused with oil or petrol and getting on fire - such as could happen with a tank or an aircraft crew, is absolutely the worst way of dying.

·         Nonetheless, one thing your editor wanted to be even less was a submariner. he forgets the exact figure now, but weren't something like 90% of German submariners killed in the war?

·         With modern submarines, given the depths at which they operate and the lethality of today's torpedoes, if you get hit, everyone dies. Not a Nice Thing.

·         US EXAGGERATING DPRK N-THREAT: US REPORT A report by Selig Harrison, an expert on the politics of DPRK's nuclear program, says that the US is exaggerating DPRK's nuclear progress in the same manner as it exaggerated the Iraq WMD threat.

·         Perhaps this is news to some, but it is no news to your editor, who for years now has been arguing Washington is exaggerating the threat.

REGIME CHANGE IN IRAQ/DPRK 

·          Thanks to several articles forwarded by reader Mike Thompson, it emerges the US has no intention of directly attacking Iran or the DPRK. The US instead is counting on internally generated regime change, with discreet and not so discreet help from the US.

·         The internal situation is both countries is known. Perhaps as high as 70% of Iranians want the mullahs to be replaced by democracy. The actual figure may be higher, because many people will not speak their true mind in Iraq out of fear of government reprisal. Iran is ready for revolution. We have no hard information on what the US is doing, we do know something is up. Iran will be taken the way Afghanistan was: a handful of American SF troops aided by trusted Iranians, weapons, ammunition, radios, and if needed, US airpower.

·         In DPRK, the people have been mistreated to an extent that even Stalin and Mao never managed in their countries. A fourth of DPRK's people died because the leaders did not want to admit to the world their harvests had failed; it is said the regime agreed to aid imports only when the members of the military and the elite started starving.

·         Incidentally, the allegation has been made that Divine Leader Junior was more concerned to hide the famines from his father, Divine Leader Senior, than he was to hide the bad news from the world. Had Daddy come to know what was happening, he would have Not Been Pleased with Junior. Daddy would have taken away Junior's mistress as well as his boxer shorts adorned with the "I Luv NY" logo.

·         Much to your editor's surprise, at least, is the news that North Koreans are still starving in large numbers. The government has allowed a sort of free market in the agriculture sector, but has not raised the salaries to compensate. Unlike PRC, which was overwhelmingly rural when the capitalist reforms began, DPRK is overwhelmingly urban. So in PRC, when agriculture prices were floated, the bulk of the population gained money with which to buy urban-produced goods. But with 60% of DPRK being urban, most of the people have no money to buy food. It is said that a month's salary buys 3 kilos of rice. So the family eats badly for a week, but at least it eats; for the other 3 weeks it starves.

·         As many be imagined, DPRK citizens are not happy campers. The cell-phone thing has cost the regime dear. It introduced cell phones for its elite, as a way of increasing its repression. Then Chinese entrepreneurs erected relay stations on the border, and however it was done, a brisk influx of smuggled cell phones began. The government has cracked down with its usual ferocity, but a cell-phone is any easy thing to hide.

·         The people are now in a state where DPRK government has issued a whole raft of new repressive regulations. This includes, according to ROK papers, a law against armed rioting. 

·         At which point even the densest analyst has to go: "Wait a minute - where is the populace getting guns from?" Equally to the point, the DPRK people are actually rioting?

·         Into this very interesting situation comes the US, with another one of its genuinely bright ideas. Drop tens or even hundreds of thousands of tiny radio receivers over DPRK. Our guess is they will cost a couple of dollars each, and be made in PRC - of course. Radios the size of a US quarter have been available for years; ring DPRK with 50 KW AM transmitters, and sit back to watch.

·         So who says the Bush regime has not learned from its mistakes in Iraq? In DPRK the US will airdrop needed weapons - if it isn't already doing so; ROC will supply a few hundred SF troops that can pass for northerners or are actual northerners, and off we go. DPRK is mountainous, as long as the airdrops continue, the revolt will grow and become increasingly harder to suppress.

·         DPRK can do nothing to stop the airdrops. The SF version of the OH-1 scout helicopter makes about as much as a brisk wind throwing up leaves - and that was 15 years ago. The bigger helicopters, the MH-60s, are similarly silenced. They can fly at night without lights, and land within 5 meters of their aim point. A single flight at half load (need more fuel and altitude reduces payload), a UH-60 class helicopter can deliver a ton of cargo. A few back of envelope calculations, and voila, that's 50 AK-47s with 1000 rounds each, with 250 kg left over for rations, medical supplies, radios and so on (have to allow for the packaging).

·         Any why helicopters only? An MC-130 can deliver 10 tons of cargo; using low level extraction - men and equipment delivered by stealth helicopter. And why C-130s only? DPRK has a coastline near impossible to protect against stealth boat teams. And so on.

·         EN PASSANT A reader emails: "the US media has been repeatedly saying that while the insurgents have been forced out of Fallujah, their organization is intact and they remain as great a threat as before. But isn't this what happened with the Taliban? Three years ago they were forced from their bases. Their organization has never been disrupted. The consequences? A free election which the insurgents couldn't disrupt, and an inauguration they couldn't stop. Ditto Iraq." Well said, indeed.

  •  

 

0330 GMT December 11, 2004
 

 

 

 

US ACTIVATING 3 NEW DIVISIONS? THOUGHTS ON THE NEXT TWO REVOLUTIONS IN WARFARE

  •  Reader Francis Marinelli researched the origin of the story about the three new US Army divisions. Turns out it was from a paper written by an Army officer who  seems to be a lineage expert. He argued that there was a simple way of restoring some serious and unfair gaps in the Army's battalion/regimental line up of today, and he gave examples of how the matter could be resolved. Purely theoretical.
  • Incidentally, a reminder to our non-US readers who might be wondering how the US Army plans to get 48 Units of Action, or brigades, without increasing its manpower ceiling. Its natural to think of a UA as having three maneuver battalions, but many of the UAs do not. Rather, many have two, plus an artillery battalion, and a new reconnaissance/surveillance/targeting battalion. The new battalions do have four companies instead of three, so with the establishment of the new reconnaissance battalion, the UA is back to the combat company strength of an old brigade.
  • Okay, so where did the manpower for the new reconnaissance battalion and the 4-company structure come from? The US Army figured it did not need to maintain as many ADA battalions as before, because for practical purpose, there is no air threat today. It also decided it can reconfigure the numbers/organizations of its artillery, because with the new technologies and the recon battalion, two batteries can do the job of three. The old rule of one artillery battalion per maneuver battalion no longer applies - the extra battalions used to come from corps artillery. Now one battery per maneuver battalion suffices. You not just have very fast response, very accurate, and very lethal batteries, the US has managed to seamlessly integrate every component of indirect fire that is loitering around in the theatre and is within range. So artillery, attack helicopters, tactical air from the Marines, Navy, and Air Force, UAVs, long-range missiles, naval gunfire etc all support the UA as needed.
  • Why are we elaborating on this on the news page? Mainly because we sense that the rest of the world simply has not grasped the revolution the US military has gone through since Gulf I. And you'll recall that Gulf I was a revolutionary break with the past. All the old rules of thumb about force ratios no longer apply. In Gulf I, a US division could destroy an Iraqi corps losing a handful of men. The technology today allows a UA, a brigade, to destroy a corps. Of course, right now the battlefield would have to be open, like the desert or the North German Plain. Basically the UA is acting like scouts for the indirect firepower. If all this wasn't enough, the US has a third revolution underway. We've discussed the networking of every single soldier, tank, or gun in a corps area. This is the revolution we're seeing glimpses of in Iraq, because the insurgency has forced deployment of some systems that we might not otherwise known about for several more years.
  • And if all that wasn't enough, the US is busy doing R and D on a fourth revolution you'll see in the second decade of the 21st Century. Mike Thompson sent us a list of the main systems under development, suffice to say that the future is here. Has anyone figured out how they're going to defend against a soldier encased in armor within an exoskeleton that permits him to walk a hundred kilometers a day without tiring - and while he is carrying a weapons load of a couple of hundred kilos, and allows him to jump obstacles etc etc? Have they figured out how they're going to defend against armies of centimeter sized mobile robots, Which when let loose will swarm all over the battlefield doing different things. Some will intercept signals. Some will provide positional information for long-range fire. Some will be looking to crawl up an unwary soldiers leg and blow up. Some will be working on gumming up machinery - radars, tanks, generators, trucks. You're going to be in a situation where the US not just knows where every one of its own men is, it will know where everyone of your men is.
  • Anything you have today - be you German, Chinese or Russian is near worthless right now, just today. There is simply going to be no way that any country is going to give the US much pause before being crushed. Your editor has to laugh at the claims and scenarios of Chinese military persons and analysts, scenarios that are set 10 and 20 years in the future. The systems the Chinese envisage for the future are already yawn-inducing for the US military.
  • If you are old enough, or historically minded, look up US weapons development in the period 1940-1960. The productivity of US weapons designers was staggering in its width and depth. The US just kept coming up up with one system after another. Weapons technology developments flowed like water from a 48-inch main pipe. Then suddenly the US began declining in its prolific, prodigious, fantastic weapons productivity to the point people like your editor began worrying. But thanks to advances in computers and electronics, a new phase began in 1980. Most of us didn't understand its implications because like any new thing, developments appeared slowly. Those developments gave victory in Gulf I, at which point everyone around the world sat up and started paying attention. In the 1990s, however, weapons productivity started increasing in geometric progression, to the point now in the Double Os the US is proceeding at warp speed.
  • The US has almost reached a situation where the real limitation on new weapons is not technology, but humankind's limited imaginations.
  • A key development in bringing about this new productivity - just one key among many - is supercomputer technology. You can now design and send into "battle" your system without cutting a single piece of plastic or metal. This cuts years off the design process, and billions off the developmental cost.
  • Foreigners often look at the US economy and society to convince themselves the US is in decline. The steady erosion of the industrial base, the ever increasing reliance on foreigners buying US bonds to keep the consumer economy growing, the rotting of the inner cities, the spiraling-out-of-control crime, the ever advancing gap between the top 20% and the bottom 20%, the sad state of America's schools, its crumbling infrastructure - we can forgive any foreigner who thinks the US will, by the middle of the century, rank among the has beens. After all, Britain ruled the world for three centuries and look where it is now. On a smaller scale, Argentina before the Great Depression was one of the most economically advanced countries in the world, look where it is now. Why not a similar fate for America?
  • No similar fate because the gap between American military capabilities and those of the world is steadily growing. Without Iraq spending, the US spends five times on health what it does on defense, and perhaps twice on education compared to defense. Its defense spending is around 3% of GNP. So America pays very little for its military. The burden on America is very affordable. Okay, so you may not be able to drive your car across Washington DC without throwing your wheel alignment off or even damaging your car. You want to know where the 3rd world is, look no further than Washington DC. But that doesn't mean the US cannot destroy any combination of military power we can come up with for the next 50 years.
  • Your editor leaves his harangue with two thoughts for you. PRCs foreign exchange reserves are now $555-billion. In another 10 years, its not inconceivable it may have reserves of 2 trillion dollars - of course, there's all kinds of reasons not to build up reserves to that extent, but its possible. PRC has this idea soon they'll be able to stroll into Taipei and if the US as much as squeaks, the PRC can destroy the US economy by dumping dollars. Nice fantasy. Who is the PRC going to sell those dollars to? Once the PRC starts selling massively, the dollar will drop like a rock, so the $2 trillion is not going to be worth anything as much. If the PRC floats the yuan, its goodbye PRC economy. If it keeps the yuan tied to the US dollar, goodbye PRC economy because the PRC uses dollars to pay for its imports; the dollar depreciates by half, PRC starts paying double for its oil, iron ore, and so on. And if the dollar goes down by half, its good bye EU and Japan. These powerhouses will reduced to selling fine perfume and haut couture, because nothing they make will be competitive in the world. Has PRC ever heard the phrase: "Too big to fail?" Sir and Madam in Beijing, the US has messed you up but good. You bring down the dollar, you go down too. We aren't as yet even talking about the 100-million Chinese who will be thrown out of work in 2015 if you crash the dollar.
  • Clearly, the above is so starkly outline as to be a caricature. The economists can argue the details, we're just putting one brush stroke on the canvas as a caution to those who think China's growing economic power is a big problem for the US ion geostrategical matters.
  • Next, lets talk about US casualties in Iraq. Okay, so its 1200 and the media does its best to soak every box of Kleenex in America with the public's tears each time another soldier dies. So 1200 dead over - say - 20 months is 60 dead a month. In the same period, 2000 Americans have been murdered each and every month, and - broadly speaking - 4000 have died each month in auto accidents.
  • So we are not saying the US strategy in Iraq is wonderful. Lets face facts: the strategy after the fall of Baghdad has been pathetic. America has been riding on the backs of a handful of its citizens whose dedication to duty, extraordinary soldier skills, and absolute determination the people of Iraq are going to be free is all that stands between Iraq and disaster. These youngsters have achieved miracles in the time they have been in Iraq, and it is only a sullen, petty, whining media that is failing to acknowledge the achievements. But these achievements have not come because of strategy; they have come inspite of American strategy.
  • None of that changes the reality that the 60 soldiers who die in Iraq are at least dying to make the world a better place. Hard to argue that even one of the 6000 Americans dying each month by murder or auto accident died to make the world a better place.

 

 

 

The below mess is what FrontPage does so well. Your editor asked simply for a box around the whole update for yesterday. Not only did he get the peculiar lines, he cannot erase them no matter what he tries. Yes, he could hand code the corrections. That would take him 20-30 minutes because he is no HTML expert.

 

Meanwhile, consider this. What You See Is Not What You Get. You Get what Bill Gates sees, and the gentleman needs to get some serious therapy and medicine immediately, because he actually thinks he has a brain. And "Where Do You Want To Go Today?" Anywhere but the same universe Bill Gates inhabits. Maybe its too late: Maybe he's already messed up the alternative universes. You like conspiracy theories, theorize this: Gates is the agent of a jealous superior being who does not want humans to grow up to compete with him/her/it. Gates is empowering no one, he is enslaving us all. Your editor's spot in the Downstairs Place (where its very hot) is reserved. But for sure so is Mr. Gates'. And when your editor meets Mr. Gates Downstairs, your editor is not going to be throwing cream pies.

 

1200 GMT December 10, 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

0300 GMT December 9, 2004

 

  • US, UN SUPPORT FOR ANNANReader Chris Lock brings our attention to press reports that 16 Democratic senators say they support Mr. Annan. Also, in a pre-arranged gesture, Mr. Annan received a standing ovation at the UN General Assembly yesterday.

 

  • US ACTIVATING 3 NEW DIVISIONS?Reader Joseph Stefula sends us an orbat for three new brigade Units of Action, one each belonging to the 5th Mechanized, 9th Light Infantry, and 11th Airborne Divisions. We are unclear if this implies the US Army is activating three new divisions or if the new divisions will exist simply on paper. The 11th was last activated 40+ years ago, when it served as the test bed for the fully airmobile 1st Cavalry Division; the 5th was last reactivated for Vietnam service, as was the 9th.

 

  • JORDAN WARNS OF UPSET IN MIDEAST BALANCEJordan, among others, is waning the US of an upset in the Mideast balance caused by Iran pouring in money and personnel into Iraq. We are not quite sure how to assess Jordan’s position, but frankly, we are a bit baffled. Just because a Shia government will take over Iraq and the Iranian are Shia, means nothing to us. Nationalism seems to be the stronger force. We accept that Iran is meddling massively in Iraq. What this gains Iran we do not know, because the days of the mullahs are numbered. Once the Shias assume power in Iraq, of all the possibilities one can think of, the least likely is that the Iraqis will tolerate Iran interference in Iraq.

 

  • WE ARE SHOCKED, SHOCKEDThe Washington Post finds that the Iraq insurgency is being supported more actively by Baathists based in Syria than was previously assumed. Assumed by whom, Kemo Saby? Maybe this is news to the Post, but as far as we know it has been a given from the start that the Iraqi diehards fled to Syria and have been doing everything possible to keep the insurgency going.
  • Why hasn’t the US been able to do anything? Well, its built a berm along the Syria-Iraq frontier, and this berm has to be causing unhappiness among Syria-based rebels. The berm that Morocco built to stop Polisario rebels from entering was a key factor in breaking the back of the insurgency in Western Sahara. Also, the US has been steadily increasing its surveillance of the frontier and using every means at its disposal to attack those who cut through the berm, a process that takes time and is easily detected.
  • Aha, some alert reader will tell us, Morocco stationed 120,000 troops west of its berm: a berm itself is not going to achieve much. Adjusting for distance, a back of the envelope calculation indicates 60,000 Iraqi security forces would be required to man the Syria frontier berm. If the US is to do the job, at the very minimum it will require 10,000 troops, or three brigades. In actuality, one Marine battalion is available for the frontier, and that’s about it. Yes, one day the Iraqis will be able to manage on their own. Till then, its best to assume a leaky frontier. Not as leaky as a year ago, when convoys of trucks simply strolled back and forth between Syria and Iraq, but still…

 

  • UKRAINE Agencies say Ukraine’s Parliament overwhelmingly passed a bill weakening the powers of the presidency. We are not going to even try to under why this move, which was pushed by the current President, has been met with great enthusiasm by the opposition. Why is the President making nice to the opposition?

 

  • STYLE CHANGESIn case anyone is wondering what’s going on with the news page, we’ve had people who don’t have the eyesight of a 25-year old fighter pilot that the page was a strain to read. So we’ll keep trying out different things. The bigger type has the added advantage of imposing a check on your editor’s ramblings.

 

 

 

 

0330 GMT December 8, 2004

 

·          CIA PESSIMISTIC ON IRAQ The CIA station chief in Iraq, who cannot be identified because he is under cover, sends a “candid” report back to Washington saying until Iraqi security forces improve, the security situation will continue to deteriorate. While ambassador Negroponte dissented on one point concerning Iraq security forces, the US Army commander had no comments, which means he agreed with the report.

·          UN CONFIRMS RWANDA ATTACK ON DRC The United Nations confirms that it is “almost certain” Rwanda forces have entered Eastern DRC to fight Rwanda rebels, despite Rwanda’s denials.

·          DAFRUR Only about a third of the 3,000 African Union troops sanctioned for Dafur have arrived; even the full contingent will find it near impossible to protect refugees and civilians under attack because of the size of the region.

·          SOMALIA BBC says two of the big Somali warlords have joined the government, which is being formed in Nairobi, as the situation in Mogadishu is too dangerous for the new government. One of the warlords is the sun of Mr. Mohammed Aideed, the other is his chief rival. While this improves the chances of a new national government actually taking power, it appears much further work is needed before the new government can take power. Meanwhile, a relief agency says that the death rate among children has reached 5 per 100,000 in Somalia. Not being demographers, we wonder if this is excessive given that Somalia is a very poor country to begin with.

·          PLAN & TYPE 094 A reader says: “The issue is not if the US can track the new PLAN SSBN or if it can stop incoming missiles. Rather, can the US afford the chance of losing even one major city over Taiwan however low the theoretical probability of missiles getting through”. An excellent point. We’d answer: “Can PRC afford to take the chance that the US will bomb the country back to the stone age if PRC launches missiles, whether or not they get through?

·          We feel that if the US does not make clear Taiwan will be defended at all costs, the next step is going to be PRC embarking on getting the US out of the West Pacific. Substitute Tokyo 1940 for Beijing 2014, and we can see the dimensions of the problem. The issue, then, is not Taiwan, but US hegemony over the world. This is not something the US is going to give up easily: an integral thrust of US foreign policy for over 110 years has been that no power should arise to challenge US control of the Pacific.

 

0230 GMT December 7, 2004

 

 

0300 GMT December 5, 2004

 

·          UKRAINE The opposition suffered a setback when Parliament refuse to pass election amendments the opposition has demanded. The feeling is these matters are best debated after the election, and reasonably, one must agree the nay sayers have a point.

·          PLAN The US has “discovered” a new PLAN SSBN that is capable of firing 6000 km missiles. The missile submarine was expected, but not so soon. It remains unclear if the missiles the boat is supposed to carry are operational.

·          Meanwhile, PLA has started replacing its 20 ICBMs with newer models and analysts say it plans to have 60 by 2010.

·          In our opinion, PRC has just done the US Navy and the ABM program a big favor. This is the best news for at least 15 years. Newer and more numerous US attack submarines are assured, and the ABM lot are now assured of even more money. Good job, PRC, the US defense industry also salutes you.

·          PAKISTAN F-16s Pakistan’s President is in Washington. Among topics discussed is the purchase of 25 F-16s, to bring Pakistan’s air force back to three squadrons. Of the 40 originally delivered to Pakistan, perhaps 25-26 are still flying.

·          The Indians, as usual, are going hysterical. Does Pakistan need F-16s to fight terror, the Indians ask? Obviously not, so obviously Pakistan intends to use against us.

 

 

INDIA’S REACTION

 

·          Twenty-four years ago, your editor waged a one-man crusade back in India, telling the government and the media: if you start frothing at the mouth because Pakistan is getting 40 new fighters, you may as well don tutus and start ballet dancing. All you show is your gross insecurity. You are telling the world we are a great power, but we don’t think we can handle Pakistan even with a 3-1 superiority in aircraft.

·          This time around, your editor intends to keep his comments to Government of India very brief. So, we are told India is buying another 40 Mirage 2000s and aims at a total of 200 Su-30s. Are you going to use these aircraft to fight insurgents in Kashmir? Are you going to fight China? Obviously not. So your intent is mala fide, because you’re going to use them against Pakistan.

·          If the US approves the purchase, Pakistan will have 50 modern fighters. India has in service or on order 250 modern fighters. Moreover, the Su-30 is different class of aircraft altogether. You were claiming in the recent exercises between USAF F-15s and IAF Su-30s that you whomped the F-15s. The F-15 is a far more capable aircraft than the F-16. So, are you saying that Pakistani pilots are so good that at 5:1 odds in your favor, with much more advanced aircraft, you cant handle the PAF between morning tea and 11 AM snacks? If you cant, why are we wasting all this money?

·          The US also offered you the F-16, and basically in any quantity you want. But you rejected the F-16 – not good enough for us. So how come this plane in limited numbers is such a threat? Are PAF pilots supermen that at a 1:5 disadvantage in numbers, and with inferior aircraft, Pakistan is a threat to us?

·          Okay Government of India folks. Watch your mail, in two weeks you should be receiving a present of bangles from Orbat.com’s editor. That gives you two weeks to learn where bangles are worn, but the editor doubts you’’ figure it out.

·          [Explanation to non-Indian readers. Indian women give bangles to their men when the later act like cowards. It’s a sign of total contempt. But you are not a woman, our readers will astutely reply. True, but these days aren’t we supposed to have gender equity? If Indian women can present bangles, why can’t your editor send some over to his government? The ones he wants to send are plastic bangles – made in China. Double insult, Government of India – have to spell it out, doubt you’ll figure it out yourself.]

 

YOUR EDITOR FROTHS AT THE MOUTH

 

 

·          ANOTHER KLASSE KLOWNE AWARD Gosh, it never rains but it pours. We gave a Klasse Klowne award just last week, and here we have to give one again.

·          Our latest award goes to the UN special representative for Iraq. Lest readers get the mistaken idea this gentleman is an idiot, we hasten to add he is nothing short of brilliant, as an administrator, a scholar, and a diplomat. But you see, having all these qualities seems to be no guarantee that a person has balance or common sense.

·          This gentleman says, as starters, that elections cannot be held in Iraq till security is assured. Well, old boy, sorry to break the bad news to you, but 80% of Iraq is at peace. You really should get out more and stop relying on the American media. Now, the20% that is not at peace is because naughty people among the 20%, are creating a problem.

·          Now look at the implication of your statement. It seems to me you are very clearly telling the US/Iraq: go smack some sense into these troublemakers. So presumably you supported Najaf and Fallujah, and that there is no peace in the Sunni areas means you support even harsher measures? Okay. Mr. Bush, you just got the authorization from the UN you wanted. No elections without peace, so darn it, go and make the place peaceful!

·          But maybe the esteemed representative is not implying that, if you take another one of his utterances. The US invasion of Iraq has solved nothing, he says, it has made things worse. Oh, okay, you’re saying that under Saddam there was peace. The peace of the grave, but still, peace. So you support murderous tyrants who can bring peace to their countries? Great news for all murderous tyrants! Beijing will welcome you with garlands and flowers if you care to visit, because the Communist Party wants peace in China. Send this man to the Sudan, for gosh’s sake, he’ll solve the problem there right quick: kill all the Dafuris, and you have peace. Why stop there? Sudan has some 20 or even more tribal groups who want to overthrow the government. Kill them too while you’re at it.

·          But then why do you hector the Israelis when they try and bring peace to Palestine?

·          Now, if Bush aint doing it right, why don’t you do the job? Mr. Bush would gladly turn over the whole thing to you in a jiffy. Eh? You say Bush created the mess let him clean it up himself? Well, that’s what he’s doing, and elections are integral to bringing peace to Iraq. Bit of a paradox, what? Oh, yes, lets not forget you refuse to increase the UN presence in Iraq because you worry for their safety.

·          Lets also not forget that people who say they do not want any democratic elections in the first place are causing the trouble in the Sunni areas. So by insisting elections must be postponed, it seems you are really on the side of the terrorists.

·          Another question. As a young man, did you not revolt against the white man because he was always telling you that he knew what was good for you, and you, as an Arab or an African were too stupid to understand democracy? So, boss, what now gives you the right to tell the people of Iraq what’s good for them?

·          Another question. Sixty percent of Iraqis – the Shias – say they want elections. The Kurds say they don’t care one way or the other, and what they are not saying is regardless of who wins, that man is not to enter Kurd Land. Now, of the 20% who are Sunnis, lets blandly assume that none want elections. That’s not  true, of course, but lets assume. So 60% of the country say it wants elections. So, bearer of the Brown Man’s Burden, isn’t elections the right thing to do?

·           Tell you what, Sir. Zap over to Najaf, and tell the Grand Ayatollah he can’t have elections because all of Iraq is not at peace. Do you have the courage to do that? If not, keep quiet, because Mr. Bush is certainly not going to tell the Iraqi people – Shia, Sunni, or Kurd, that they cant have elections on schedule.

·          As a teacher, I can tell you that if Jane is tearing up my classroom, I do not hold up my teaching for the minutes, hours, or days it takes to get Jane to be peaceful. I send her out to the office with a request to the office to call her parents immediately.

·          Normally, after we give you the Klasse Klowne award, we’d ask you to face the class while they make fun of you. But this time, we’re going to give you the award, and send you to the office. Please call your parents to get you and to take you home. Hopefully after they smack you a few times, you’ll see sense.

·           

0500 GMT December 4, 2004

 

·          UKRAINE The Supreme Court ruled the election of the official candidate invalid, and ordered new elections on December 26. There will be 2 rounds as before; the opposition candidate is expected to win a runoff. The opposition and official candidates met; opposition promises to lift blockade of government buildings.

·          DAFUR Rebels have apparently launched their threatened offensive. Thirty police are reported killed, but we are not sure as to the authenticity of the sources. Sudan government declares state of emergency. Relief agency says Sudan military jet attacked a population center.

·          US WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ? Again being said Pentagon has suggested withdrawal of US forces by end 2005 and that the government has accepted. Said that the news is being kept under cover so as not to affect morale of new Iraq security forces. Pentagon said to believe the US presence is now counterproductive.

·          UK IRAQ REINFORCEMENTS ON STANDBY? AFP quotes Jane’s as saying British Army units are on standby for deployment if needed to boost election security in Iraq. Troops will be flown in directly for the mission. We estimate 2 battalions are on standby.

·          MORE ON ANNAN JR Washington Post mentions in a story that the Swiss company Annan Junior worked for has handed over documents to the US Congress. We’re glad our unsolicited advice along the same lines was heeded. (Only kidding, the company handed the documents over before we suggested it.) In documents is an explicit memo from Annan Junior saying he joined his father while the later was on an 8 day visit to to Africa, and that he, Junior, made many high-level contacts. We don’t know if this is enough to cause serious trouble for Mr. Annan, but it does cast doubt on  his claim that he did not discuss his son’s business with him.

·          EU LOSES IT AGAIN The EU has declared its support for Mr. Annan. Obviously it again a case of pique directed at the Bush Administration, but if indeed something is pinned on Mr. Annan, EU is going to look a bit silly. Not that that bothers the EU. Again, as is being repeatedly pointed out out to Orbat.com, the issue is not if Mr. Annan took advantage of his position. Issue is a massive fraud was being conducted by his official(s), on his watch, and instead of cooperating to get the matter cleared, Mr. Annan is obstructing inquiries.

·          INDIA-PAKISTAN RAIL LINK TO BE REBUILT BBC says that Indiana nd Pakistan have agreed to restore the rail link between the two countries in the Rajasthan-Sindh desert region. The link was broken during the 1965 Kashmir War and never reactivated. An Amrister-Lahore link has been again open for many years now.

 

0400 GMT December 3, 2004

 

 

0400 GMT December 2, 2004

 

·          UKRAINE The government has agreed to let the Supreme Court decide if a new election is to take place. That does not mean the problem is resolved: the current president says that the entire election, including the run-off vote to select the two strongest candidates, must be held again. The problem is (1) no one disputes the run-off election; (2) revisiting the process from start to finish could take several more months; and (3) the electoral rules are so obscure that the current President may find a way of disqualifying the vote winner and the challenger- which fits with the vote winner’s plan. He has said he will not run if the opposition candidate also withdraws.

·          Its not clear to us that the current President has much leverage to influence a new election. With the US, Canada, EU all pressing for a quick new vote, with the protesters in the street and the economy is jeopardy if the instability continues, the current President may have run out of options.

·          Western hypocrisYBefore your editor asks the western governments a question, let him be categorical that he was, and is, a staunch anti-communist. He believes the defeat of communism will feature as one of America’s greatest achievements since 1776.  Now, the EU chief is reported as saying that the territorial integrity of Ukraine must be maintained. So where was he when the west was exulting over the break-up of the Soviet Union? What’s so special about Ukraine? And remember the little unpleasantness where the west assiduously worked to destroy the Yugoslav federation?  If the people of Ukraine’s eastern provinces feel better by joining Russia, why is it not okay for them to hold a referendum? After all, there is hardly a western government who wouldn’t welcome a plebiscite on Kashmir. [The Indian government’s position on Kashmir is that according to the way in which the UK set the terms for partition, for the princely states, the ruler was the only one who could decide, and Kashmir’s ruler decided for India.]

·          IRAQ VOTE The US will temporarily boost troop strength in Iraq for the scheduled January 30, 2005 election. The following units are being extended: USMC 31st MEU, US Army 2nd Brigade, 25th Division, and 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. In addition, two battalions of the US 82nd Airborne Division will be sent.

·          AMERICA AND ITS MILITARYWe are not happy at the way the 82nd, which is America’s sole global contingency reserve, is being dispersed all over the place.  Either don’t use the 82nd, or call up reserves. Ultimately, increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps. This foolishness of “we have enough troops” has gone on long enough. Soldiers, airmen, marines are deploying for their 3rd overseas deployment since September 2001.

·          Meanwhile, what are the people of the US doing? Stuffing their faces with more food, feverishly spending more money on stuff they don’t need, and pausing only long enough to burp and say the ritual words about “our brave heroes”. Stop this nonsense, people. If you really cared about your service people you’d be out there telling the government more troops are needed. And there is no shortage of volunteers willing to spare you the burden of fighting, so you can stuff your faces with even more food and buy even more junk. Bah.

·          SOLDIERS AS HEROES Reality check, people of the United States. Stop this verbiage about “our heroes”, such as US News and world Report’s latest cover, which says: “saving our heroes”. A person does not become a hero by electing to enlist and by serving in a war zone. It is the duty (um, Grandpa, we though 4 letter words are not allowed in this magazine?) of a person in the military to serve. Yes, that person goes through unbelievable stress doing her/his job in peace or in war, but that’s the job. A hero is someone who does something extraordinary –not by the standards of Americans TV remote pushers, but by the standards of the military. And while you all are yapping on about “our heroes”, your editor doesn’t see a whole lot of concern or remorse for the way the Vietnam vets were treated – and the great majority had absolutely no choice but to go, because they were drafted.

 

·          0400 GMT December 1, 2004

 

·          DID US THREATEN IRAN WITH NUCLEAR STRIKE? Reader Dean Brunkhardt forwards an article from USA Today, which features an interview with General Abizaid. The US CENTCOM commander says:” "We can generate more military power per square inch than anybody else on Earth, and everybody knows it," Abizaid said. "If you ever even contemplate our nuclear capability, it should give everybody the clear understanding that there is no power that can match the United States militarily." Mr. Brunkhardt asks for our opinion on the statement.

·          As far as we know, the US has always explicitly reserved the right to make a nuclear first strike, and there’s nothing more to this statement than refreshing the memories of mullahs who may not be current on their deterrence theory. Mr. Brunkhardt points out the General’s statement must have been cleared at the top, and we go along with Mr. Brunkhardt on this.