0230 GMT July 28, 2008

Incidentally, this potpourri took more than an hour, as much as the usual update. But we were able to assemble it in bits and pieces over the course of the day.

This and That

• Is the 21st China's Century? John Pomfret writing in the Washington Post says China that's unlikely. He gives several reasons, but the one that struck us is that China's population is aging faster than any other country. This is thanks to the 1-child policy – despite which Chinese women bear 1.8 children, which, however, is still below the replacement rate of 2. At the same time, however, life expectancy has zoomed to 73 and soon China will have 100-million people over age 80. Normally this shouldn’t be an earthshaking matter, but with the consignment of China’s “Iron Bowl” to history’s dustbin, only 30% of people have old age pensions of any sort.

• The US, of course, has the fastest growing population of any industrialized nation, and if GDP is the measure, will continue to have the highest GDP for decades. For PRC per capita to reach America’s today, it will have to increase its GDP by 30 times. Assuming  US GDP continues growing at 2% annually, in the next 75 years (to 2083) it will quadruple to $60-trillion. As the Chinese economy matures over the next 30-50 years, its annual GDP growth will come way down from the current 9-10% rate, so you can see the problem for China to catch up in absolute GDP and even more so in FDP per capita.

• Something to make Greenies very happy: California has the toughest energy conservation rules in the US, and since 1972 has not increased its energy use per capita. The US overall has increased 50% in that time (Business Week, p. 24, August 4, 2008.) This leads us to think that if the US went into massive conservation mode, it could cut energy consumption by 33%. That would mean 300+ Gigawatts of coal-fired power plants could be jettisoned, and US oil imports reduced from 12-million barrels-per-day to 5-million bpd. That can be supplied by Canada, Mexico, and Brazil so the US could say goodbye to Mideast, Central Asian, and African oil. Think of the security savings that would generate.

• GDP may not be the best measure of National Happiness. On the Happiness index the US is a dismal place, 150^th among 178 countries. Iceland, Norway, Sweden are in the top three. Yes, you can’t be happy if you are too poor, but Mexico – much poorer than the US – is at 38^th; Canada, which is as rich as the US, is at 111^th. China is 31^st, India is 62^nd (one-fortieth of US per capita); Iran 67^th; Russia at 172^nd, Zimbabwe at 178^th, dead last. http://www.happyplanetindex.org/map.htm

• Further, GDP index needs modification to account for damage done to the environment. Nigeria’s Delta region is pushing up Nigeria’s GDP big time, but ordinary folk there are having a bad time of it because of the environmental damage and the way oil revenue is distributed.

• Mars Phoenix  www.aviationnow.com   (a web-lite version of Aviation Week and Space Technology) says that so far the Mars probe hasn’t been able to analyze the ice its scoops up. Because of the lack of atmospheric pressure, the ice sublimates before it can be analyzed. Now a new tool is to be tried that hopefully will get Martian ice into an oven before 30 minutes, the limit before sublimation at the coldest time of the Martian day.

• Latest Stealth Bomber News Read www.aviationnow.com for what’s happening on America’s new stealth bomber. The program has been taken into the black classification, and Bill Sweetman, perhaps the top expert on this sort of thing in the world, says its likely the bomber, due for 2018 service, will be based on the X-47. An unmanned version is also in the works. Rumor says the new bomber will have a radar cross section 1/10^th of a mosquito (phew!). Sweetman says Radar Cross Section engineers don’t believe these numbers, but points out when the B-2 figures were leaked in 1981, no one believed them either.

• A third of Muslim students in UK believe killing in Islam’s name is justified and 37% say they would prefer to live under Sharia law http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4407115.ece We’ve been saying the Islamic jihad has nothing to do with money or being poor or whatever, and UK has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world and an excellent social welfare system for the less fortunate. It is socially more liberal than the US. Still more than one-third of Muslim students want Sharia.

• People need to stop saying Islam is not a violent religion. No one cares if in some pure theoretical sense it is non-violent – though even that is doubtful – because its adherents, no matter what their economic  status and where they live in the world, use the Koran to justify their hate and blood lust. Wake up, people: this about pure ideology, not economics. America is about the only country in the world that goes to war for its ideology and now we have a collision with another ideological lot, Islamic fundamentalists.

• Life Imitates Art: Sort Of  The daughter of Italy’s Mafia “Godfather” was married at Corleone, Sicily. But unlike the Marlon Brando movie, Papa was unable to attend because he is in jail since 1993. Salvator Rinii’s daughter Lucia was given away by her brother in the absence of Papa and senior members of the family – many of the latter are also jailed.

   

0230 GMT July 27, 2008

A reader asks which day will we not update. The editor's schedule aside from his teaching job varies a lot, so there will be no fixed day. The intent was simply to commit  the editor to a minimum of six days; some weeks we'll update on all seven.

India, Pakistan, and Kashmir

• Just a little essay guaranteed to upset Indians, Pakistanis, and Kashmiris on some level, while hopefully giving our readers who belong to none of those tribes a bit more accurate take on this dead end conflict. For space reasons, we can touch on only main points.

• The Partition of India was not agreed to by the people of India. There was no referendum, nor did the British consult the people of India. Partition came about as a backroom deal between Indian politicians and the British.

• Not only was the concept fatally flawed, even the way the boundaries were drawn by a Brit civil servant who had no knowledge of India and just wanted to get out of the heat and dust ASAP was so perfunctory as to be arbitrary.

• India at that time had a dual-rule system, the direct British rule areas and the autonomous (not independent) kingdoms. The British, to give them full credit, had introduced democracy in their ruled areas. The so-called Princely States, the autonomous kingdoms, were absolute monarchies.

• The issue became: what if a kingdom lay on the borders of the two new nations? The British said it was up to the ruler to decide, because honestly, the ruler was the only legal authority at that time. It was understood that areas like the kingdom of Hyderabad, which was entirely within India's borders, had to remain with India. Similarly, the North West Frontier Province, whose political leaders would likely have voted for India if permitted, had to stay with Pakistan.

• Kashmir lay across the border of the new nations. Pakistan assumed because it was a Muslim majority state, it would go to Pakistan. But Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu king, who wanted to be independent. This was nowhere in the agreements, and made no more sense that - say - Rhode Island saying it wanted to be independent when American succeeded from Britain.

• When Pakistani tribal raiders invaded Kashmir to force the issue, the ruler hurriedly signed over to India.

• The Pakistanis have never accepted that, saying he had no moral right. True, but the terms of Partition had nothing to do with morality. Plus, if morality was to be considered, why was East Bengal given to Pakistan, separated as it was by 2400-kilometers and with a culture/history that had nothing to do with West Pakistan, but everything with West Bengal, which was in India.

• India soiled its copy book by an act which is not much mentioned. Junagarh, a Hindu majority kingdom on the borders of the new countries was ruled by a Muslim king. The people appealed to India, India invaded and took over Junagarh on the basis: we cant let Muslims rule a Hindu population.

• So, a war was fought over Kashmir; the UN intervened. As terms of the ceasefire, Pakistan was to withdraw its army from Kashmir and India was to agree to a referendum.

• Not only did Pakistan not withdraw its army, in 1954 it acceded to CENTO/SEATO and started building up its military, introducing a completely new factor into the equation that, the Indians say, justified India's nullification of its agreement to the ceasefire conditions.

• The Pakistanis cry foul, without accepting they did not abide by the first requirement of the ceasefire, to withdraw troops. When they point to Junagarh, they are on much stronger ground, but oddly, I have rarely heard a Pakistani make that argument.

• Before you cry foul, you have to consider a vital reality of Kashmir 1947. It was a multi-ethnic state composed of four distinct parts. And with the exception of the Hindus expelled from the Valley by terrorists, it is still multi-ethnic.

• There are the sparsely settled Northern Areas, who wanted independence. There are the Muslim districts of West Kashmir, including the Valley. There are the Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu, who wanted to be with India - there is a reason the place is called Jammu and Kashmir. There are the Shia Muslims of Ladakh, who wanted to have nothing to do with their Sunni brethren in the Valley, to the extent this part of the state has never been involved in the insurgency. Then there are the Buddhists of Ladakh, who wanted to be with India.

• The majority population was Sunni Muslim, though please understand, every part of the state was multi-ethnic. What did the Sunnis want? Here's the rub: they wanted to have nothing to do with either country. They wanted independence, and it was of a different kind from that demanded by the Northern Areas, who wanted to be simply wanted to be rid of everyone. The Sunnis wanted other Kashmir areas as part of an independent state. My hunch is they would have settled for the western districts of Kashmir if independence was granted.

• By the way, in Kashmir of those days, the concept of being a Kashmiri much transcended religion. Kashmiris identified with each other, in much the same way Punjabis did and the Bengalis did, more than with their religion.

• So with that background, lets look at the two solutions people propose and you will see they are no solutions at all.

• Independence is absolutely not an option. Americans should understand that better than anyone.  If there was a free vote tomorrow, day after you would have an independent Kashmir and the same night the Pakistanis would take it over.

• No solution that fails to take into account the wishes of the Northern areas, Ladakh, and Jammu is moral. If Valley Kashmiris want to join with Pakistan, then as far as I am concerned, that is quite different from saying that the entire state should join Pakistan.

• So right there, the Solution To The Kashmir Problem Train comes to a grinding halt before it leaves the station. Independence: infeasible, neither India nor Pakistan will agree. Accession of Indian Kashmir to Pakistan: immoral unless all regions are allowed to decide for themselves. Pakistan will not agree to just the Sunni districts of west Kashmir and under no circumstances will India agree to abandon the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Shias of Kashmir.

• Thus: there is no solution, and no one should waste any time trying to find one. All the fancy-shmancy American ideas of soft borders and so on will not work because if Pakistan cannot have Kashmir, with East Pakistan gone, with the Baluch wanting independence, with the Pathans in revolt over much of their territory, the entire rationale for an independent Pakistan evaporates.

• In conclusion, here's a few tips for the Indians, who are singularly incompetent in putting their case before the rest of the world. We don't have tips for Pakistanis because we don't know that  country well enough. If, however, any Pakistani reader wants to suggest tips, we will of course carry them

• Tip 1. Explain to the American media that if they continue saying Kashmir is the only Muslim majority state in India (India has as many if not more Muslims that Pakistani, BTW), the India media will start referring to the US as "Christian majority " and "Protestant majority". when a state attains a Hispanic majority, the Indian press will talk about "the only Hispanic state in America" and so on. Fair is fair.

• Tip 2. When Americans call for soft borders etc., the Indians should call for soft borders between Florida, Texas, Southern California, and Utah/Colorado/New Mexico/Nevada and Mexico proper. Also, threaten to trumpet these states as "American Occupied Mexico." Fair is fair.

• Tip 3. When Pakistanis and Kashmiri supporters overseas call for India to let Kashmiris decide their future, India should stop saying "Kashmir is an integral part of India." The correct response is: "Agreed. When Pakistan lets its Kashmiris, Baluch, Pathans, and Southern Sindhis decide their future we will let the Kashmiris decide. Fair is fair.

• A tip for our readers. If you have anything better to do, ignore the Kashmir problem. It is going nowhere. Pakistan is ramping up for a new round of insurgency, India will crush it just as it has crushed every insurgency since independence, and this time will inflict costs on Pakistan for sending insurgents into Indian Kashmir. That's your next 10-20 years taken care of, during which time you can focus on other, more important things.

• The editor is now going to withdraw and ponder a vital question much more important than Kashmir: his Hershey Chocolate bars come in 12 rectangles to a bar. Should he have six rectangles or half a bar?

• [Sitrep 4 hours later. The editor compromised by eating the whole bar.]

0230 GMT July 26, 2008

To our readers

The editor is very sorry to say that he cannot maintain the blog in its 7-day/week format. It requires 10+ hours a week, and because time is so short, every issue is a "First and Final" with no proof reading, tightening arguments and so on. Okay, some people like the stream of consciousness thing, but still a blogger is under obligation to at least make sense. In four weeks the editor reports back to teaching school and in five week his own graduate studies resume. Spring semester he spent much time on the blog that should have been been spent studying. Further, because of time constraints, income producing web activities have been shut down for two years.

Thanks to the summer break (which still includes 25-hours/week of studying) the editor was able to revive Tiger Lily Books; we have six new titles and four more in various stages. But the orbat part of contemporary orbats, which was our main source of revenue, has been shut down as well as History. General Data LLC, our parent, continues to produce intelligence for its clients, but for reasons too tedious to detail, your editor ends up working for GD for nothing (really!). The situation is unfair to our contributors who for years send materials with very little remuneration, and now they don't even have the satisfaction of being widely read.

It is important to revive the Contemporary Orbats part of Orbat.com both to give our readers a platform and to generate the small sums of money needed to keep the site alive, which for the last two years has functioned on the editor's contribution, and in the case of TLB, on two microgrants with more in prospect.

We will still update at least six days a week, but most days will focus on news (albeit with the editor's twist on it) and will be short.

The editor has been "blogging" since the day President Kennedy was killed in 1963, going from bulletin board to print and then to the web. He enjoys the work. But one has to be realistic. Others have managed to monetize their blogs so they pay themselves, have good infrastructure, and correspondents etc. We seem to have a floor/ceiling level of 4000 readers a day, many of whom go to our popular historical pages. The editor has proved to the world he is no businessperson; with 40,000 page views a day we should be able to get SOME revenue which would allow us to build up the blog. The matter is not helped by the Webmaster's growing to adulthood with his own interests (which do not include Orbat.com, which he did the technical thing from age 14 in exchange for zero chores and for pocket money).

Readers have kindly suggested many ideas for income; unfortunately, the subscription models requires investment as well as shutting off the blog to Jane and John Q Public, which defeats the whole idea of a blog as a place accessible to anyone. The editor is particularly sensitive to the issue because for years and years he was a poor academic (still is) unable to afford subscriptions to journals or to buy books.

We shall nonetheless continue to Bash On Regardless (the unofficial motto of the Indian 1st Armored Division, which may been coined by the editor's late father). It is meant to suggest that in war no one in the division had any idea of what was going on, what they were supposed to do, and how they were supposed to do it. The solution was simply Bash on Regardless. A cynical, but very realistic, outlook on the realities of combat.

So: not to worry, we are going nowhere, format will be different somewhat, but the truth is that no one can put in more than 80 effective weekly working hours. If you count mandatory gym time and self-maintenance (shopping, washing, errands) the editor puts in 95. The editor has no objection to eating 4 ounces of spaghetti for dinner every day - it cuts cooking/eating time to 15-minutes, and not being with company for more than 4 hours a week, or no time to mow the lawn, or continue building his model railroad, or to visit his mother etc. We all have to make compromises on how we spend our time; we all could use a 48-hour day. So the editor is not complaining. But it is past time he gave SOME attention to activities that bring in money for Orbat.com, no matter if it is as little as $100/week. Dozens of people have their time invested in this thing. The editor has to meet his obligations to them as much as to our readers.

• At Long Last: A Rationale For Why We Must Remain In Iraq This is provided by Charles Krauthammer, the conservative political columnist for the Washington Post. We read his every op-ed religiously, because he is both intelligent and an intellectual. We can do without his reflexive, blind, always-on support for Israel, no matter what Israel does or what it costs the US, but then everyone has their idea fixe. (The editor's is to find a wealthy, intelligent, young lady to look after him. The problem is, if the lady was wealthy and intelligent, she'd see no reason to support the editor in the style to which he wants to become accustomed.)

• Mr. Krauthammer says we must remain in Iraq because we need it as a regional base to project power in the Middle East, and he wants something on the lines of the US's successful partnerships with Japan, ROK, and Germany. Odd as it may seem, this is the first time we read in the mainstream media a proper rationale for staying on.

• The problem with Mr. K's very sensible argument is three-fold.

• First, did we go to Iraq with this objective? And even if we did not, was this worth spending close to a trillion and counting? And even if that money is gone, dont look back and all that, has Mr. K toted up the future costs and benefits? To spare him the embarrassment, he has not.

• Second, does anyone notice a slight difference between Japan, ROK, Germany and Iraq? Two of the countries we completely destroyed and so could impose any terms we wished. We went to defend ROK, it too was completely destroyed during the war, and it was a dirt poor country (no metaphor that) to begin with, so we could fairly much dictate the terms of staying on.

• In all three cases, the host nations WANTED us to stay on because we were their sole protection against their enemies: Soviet Union (Japan and Germany), China (Japan), and DPRK (ROK). All three countries still want us to stay on.

• In the case of Iraq, we destroyed it, but not because we needed to defeat any enemy of Iraq - Saddam was our friend - but because we were dangerously incompetent and no one was strong enough to hold us to account.

• And the Iraqis do NOT want us to stay on.

• Three, does Mr. K. realize when he innocently says the US could use Iraq as a base to contain Iran that he is, in effect, treating Iraq as a colony? Why on earth would Iraq want the US to contain Iran? Both are Shia majority countries engaged in a to-the-death competition with the Sunnis. They have very close ties which have only deepened since the Sunnis, installed as overlords of Iraq for 400 years by the Ottomans precisely because Iraq was Shia, were overthrown by the US.

• Does Mr. K. realize that the Iraqis, indeed the world almost without exception, sees the US intervention in Iraq as American imperialism, to gain access to oil and new bases? Does he realize that the entire Iraqi opposition to the US presence since 2003 has been precisely because the Iraqis, of every stripe, say "No oil, no bases"? Kurdistan is the exception on bases but they want the US to protect them against their enemies - which happen to include Turkey, a US ally, as also the rest of Iraq.

• Does he understand that the Iraqis have tolerated the US overlordship only because the US has repeatedly said it does not want bases or Iraqi oil - and we have shown that indeed, the US has gained very little oil advantage. But back home we have people like Mr. K. saying we need bases, and our job is to "persuade" the Iraqis to accommodate us.

• Sure, and presumably Mr. K. is willing to fight a 50-year war with the Iraqis to stay, the same Iraqis we went to liberate from tyranny?

• Mr. K.'s complete lack of comprehension of the Iraqi people is typical of the way so many people in Washington operate and why we got into the mess in the first place. By the way, it is not that Mr. K. does not about Iraq: he has traveled there and is very, very well informed. He knows about Iraq, but he does not know about the Iraqi people. The notion that Iraqis are humans like us with their own aspirations is something Mr. L. does not seem to acknowledge.

• Or, if he were to acknowledge it, he would say "but what we want is best for the Iraqi people, so how can you question our motives?" Right you are, chief. That's exactly what every imperialist colonizer thinks.

• In concluding this essay, we repeat what we have said repeatedly about Iraq. Iraq is not a cost-opportunity free venture. It cannot be justified by saying "we have stabilized the country, the quitters want to deny there is progress." We've said again and again, there is progress. But that is irrelevant. That progress has cost the US enormously in money and blood, and above all in opportunity cost, and continues to so do. There is no way in which the return justifies the cost.

• If bases was the issue, why not have made a deal with Saddam? He would have been too thrilled to oblige because everyone in the region was his enemy. The US could have peacefully landed in Iraq and then worked to democraticise the country from within. After all, is democracy came about only because the US invaded a country, we wouldn't have many democracies would we now?

• Look at Africa, look at Asia, look at South America, Central America, Eastern Europe. Most of our readers are to young to remember, but 40 years ago almost every country in these vast region was NOT a democracy. How many did the US invade so that freedom could ring? Aside from Iraq, one. And we all know what happened to South Vietnam.

• And by the way, no one has explained to us, at least, why those Iraq bases were needed to begin with. We had all the bases we needed in the Middle East because every country was scared witless of Iran and Iraq.

• This whole Iraq thing, the reasoning behind going in and the reasoning behind staying in, is no reasoning at all, and that's the problem.

• Also by the way, suppose the US had spent one trillion dollars in the last five years on rebuilding our own infrastructure and winning free of Mideast energy. What a different country this would be. and as for the argument we had to go to Iraq to stop the terrorists, well, it certainly isn't worth our dignity to reply.

• We agree that the Great Crusade to defeat the Great Jihad has to be fought. Our gripe is the way the US has gone about the Great Crusade, it has weakened its ability to fight the Great Jihad. It is not us at Orbat.com that are the wimps and the defeatists and the appeasers. It is those who rule in Washington. Doubt us on the appeasement part? Have you be keeping track of what's going with Iran and DPRK and Syria lately?

• We cannot speak for anyone, but we think new developments constitute about the closest to treason the US government has every gotten. Treason against a government is not treason. Treason against a people is treason. By going to Iraq the US government has set the stage for massive appeasement and treason against its people.

• We've told you what the punishment for treason should be: death. Are the American people willing to arrest, try, convict, and execute the leading 100 people who have done this to us? The editor, for  one is not American, so again he cannot speak for any American. But he will say this: if the people do not stand up for themselves, their government will tyrannize them. Its all there in the documents that led to American independence and its aftermath.

0230 GMT July 25, 2008

• Really Good News For Once A significant development occurred while the editor was brooding about the US economy, the 6th Dimension, and why did the 1950s have to end (listening to Buddy Holly songs).

• Russia announced that it is considering refueling its strategic bombers in Cuba as a response to the advancing US plans to deploy ABMs in Eastern Europe.

• Though the US has asked Russia to participate in a European ABM deployment, the Russians still continue to get upset. They came up with a true genius remark the other day, when the Iranians staged their missile tests: The Iranians are years from deploying missiles that can reach Europe or the US, they said. This proves the US is just using Iran as an excuse to aggress against Russia.

• Its this kind of brilliant reasoning that threatens the credibility of the formidable  President/Prime Minister/Czar of Russia Mr. Putin. In the unlikely event that Mr. Putin doesn't know, the US is also years away from operationalizing an ABM deployment. In case he also doesn't know, Moses did not come down from the mountain with an Eleventh Commandment that says: "Thou shall not prepare defense against an inevitable enemy attack till he has demonstrated beyond question his capability, preferably by nuking a couple of your cities".

• We've said this before: if Russia is so worried about the US/Europe ABM deployment, he has only to join - and not just by offering to integrate one of his Iran facing radars into the system.

• To be entirely fair to Russia, America has done that country a Big Dirty thanks to its usual blind arrogance demonstrated during the first six years of the Bush presidency - Mr. Bush has completely changed and is now the epitome of thoughtful moderation and cooperation.

• After 2001, the Americans asked the Russians for semi-permission to base aircraft in the former Soviet Central Asian republics, which happen - by one of those remarkable coinky-dinkys - to be smack on the Russian periphery. Think Russia semi-asking US permission to base aircraft in Canada and Mexico, and you get the picture.

• In a remarkably generous gesture, the Russians said "yes". In fact one of the great mysteries of the 21st Century's first decade is how Mr. Bush managed to convert the greatest display of global pro-American solidarity ever, consequent on 9/11, to the greatest display of global anti-Americanism ever. Anyhows, if we keep pondering mysteries, we'll never get our story told.

• So when the situation in Afghanistan stabilized, the Russians said to the Americans "What ho, laddies, time to pack the tucker and go poke back home" - or whatever it is they said, the intent being "Yankee, We Love You, But Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder". Whereupon the Americans gave sinister sneers and said "we have no recollection that we said  we'd go home. We're your new neighbors, so get over it," or something similarly rude.

• Well, the Russians got good and mad and are getting madder by the minute. (You've doubtless heard the expression about mad dogs and Russians.)

• We haven't, of course, mentioned the relentless expansion of NATO eastward and the US's considerable - and successful, all kudos to the Americans - efforts in wresting away FSU states away from the grabby paws of the Russian bear.

• Nor have we mentioned the considerable and covert US effort to go after Russia so that eventually it collapses down to the Grand Duchy of Moskova circa 900 AD or whatever.

• Nonsense, you say, the US has no such thoughts, leave alone plans, leave alone setting things in motion. Sure, replies the editor, and he has a date this Saturday night.

• So to cut the short story shorter, Russia has made the one threat it knows will freak the pants off Sam - bombers in Cuba.

• The threat has already succeeded. The slated next USAF chief has said (quote from Reuters) "we should stand strong and indicate that that (refueling Russian bombers in Cuba) is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America."

• Matters are not being helped by Fidel editorializing that Cuba needs to prove the US no explanation of what its discussions with Russia may  or may not encompass.

• If you are normal person, you will say "Come on, America, the Eagle is perching along almost every kilometer of the Russian frontier - and facing outward so that its poopy lands on Russia's head every day; why are you getting upsetting about Russian bombers refueling in Cuba, or even basing in Cuba?"

• But if you are one that dying breed, the Cold Warrior who never got over the unsporting collapse without notice of the Soviet Union. then you are thrilled and delighted at the bomber news. (In case you wonder, we are thrilled and delighted.) This is the best thing to happen in many years, and Orbat.com is shouting: "You go girl!" to Mother Russia.

• We fear nothing is going to come of this, it's a storm in a vodka shot glass, but we can hope.

• A minor historical note on the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 We're surprised to learn that a great many people still believe that the great secret of the crisis was that while at that time US portrayed itself as facing down the Russkies with steely-eyed determination, the US actually compromised by agreeing to remove missiles on the Soviet periphery, such as those in Turkey. Some people still believe the Russians won a great victory because their aim was to get the US to withdraw those missiles.

• The sad truth of the matter is, as we thought everyone knew, is that the missiles in UK, Italy, and Turkey (the Thors and Jupiters) were obsolete. They were liquid fuelled, and took some hours to ready for launch. While they made good sense when the Russians had no missiles and would attack using bombers flying at 450 knots, giving the missile people lots of time to launch before the Russians got near enough to neutralize the missiles, by 1960 it was clear the Russians had an excellent intermediate and medium range missile capability, and were on their way to an ICBM capability. (The latter was, at the time, only six missiles and the US belief it was much more, led to the greatest single escalation of the nuclear arms race - but that is another story.)

• In short, the US/British missiles were darn near useless. A replacement was already underway: the Polaris missile submarines had begun deploying, and the US SLBM system was - and still remains - about the closest thing to invulnerable anyone has gotten. The US went on to station three Polaris boats at Rota, Spain for Mediterranean operations, targeting the same targets as the missiles in Italy/Turkey.

• That Kennedy agreed to withdraw the missiles was no compromise, no defeat; indeed, it was an audacious move to get something for nothing.

• Of course, if you say the Soviet effort was oriented toward protecting its new and very important client state, the Soviets won a big victory. The Soviets were forced to withdraw their troops from Cuba, but not before they got what was for them a worthwhile gain, the US promise not to attack Cuba.

• Both sides kept their word: the US did not attack Cuba, Russia did not deploy, route, or refuel nuclear weapons that could threaten the US. So in a sense we understand why the US is going all Freaky Time on Mr. Putin's threat.

• BTW, sorry, but we cant resist: had the US attacked Cuba, and had the Soviets counterattacked the beachheads with N-weapons, the editor for one believes that escalation was by no means inevitable. US would simply have retaliated with nukes against Cuban/Russian targets inside Cuba.

• And had the thing escalated, its quite likely half-a-dozen US cities would have burned. But all the Soviet Union would have burned, and the Soviets knew it. There would have been no Soviet counter-counter attack against Florida bases. Cuba, of course, would have been wiped out. We don't want to sound cynical, but we don't think anyone in either the US or Soviet high commands was particularly bothered by that prospect.

0230 GMT July 24, 2008

• No Afghan Reinforcement this year, according to media. Mr. Bush will leave that decision to the next president. "Hundreds' of combat support troops are likely to be sent this year, such as helicopter units and engineers. For the three brigades the military wants, that is a No Can Do at this time.

• We are not going to blast USG for this delay because it's true, there are no troops available. First we have to get to the stage where 12-month tours become the norm again; next the Army has to figure out how to limit overseas combat tours to 1 every 4 years. Since raising additional troops is not a reality either the military or civilians are ready to concede, though by next three of the extra six brigades sanctioned years ago will become available, it really will be next year before additional troops are available.

• Elsewhere we have argued the US Army should have added an additional maneuver battalion to its 42 brigades instead of adding new brigades and support troops, and heavied up the reconnaissance squadron which is supposed to be the brigade's third maneuver battalion. US could have had a 40% increase in boots on the ground rather than the the 15% it is getting. But the thing with armies is that they like new brigades and divisions - looks better and more senior command slots.

• Meanwhile, the US really needs to give serious consideration to reducing the use of airpower in Afghanistan and its traditional shoot-first, ask questions later policy. This is absolutely the way to go in conventional operations, its the way to lose in CI. Every week it seems there is another incident in which civilians are needlessly killed and more Afghans get angry with the US.

Wise Words On The Economy - Part III

• The editor was looking forward to several bitter attacks and had his consoling chocolate milkshakes lined up. But all we got were two comments and neither was bitter. We drank the milkshakes anyway.

• Reader Flymike says he is mind-boggled by the socialization of failed debt. If you and I go bankrupt, the government doesn't come rushing up to rescue us. But these days the USG is rescuing capitalists left and right, You don't have to be a leftie to note that even the government mortgage rescue is oriented more to saving the sorry rear ends of the capitalist class and less towards ordinary folks.

• But this, unfortunately, has been a long-standing feature of the American capitalist class. They are constantly attacking the government for getting in the way of the "free-market". To them the free market means differently than for you and me. We ordinary sods think free-market means competition, and may the best wo/man win. To capitalists "free-market" means the government should make rules that help them make money without any consideration of anyone else, and if they still lose money due to their own stupid mistakes, the government (i.e., you and me) should pick up the bill.

• Well, there it is, what can one do, short of staging a revolution. Having studied this issue long and hard the editor has concluded the problem with revolutions is that generally the revolutionaries create new problems that can be even more severe than the old - that standard trio of Mao-Hitler-Stalin being only the most egregious example in modern history. The other problem, as we are all aware, the capitalist class has drugged the rest of the population with cheap alcohol, legal drugs, TV, advertising, fast-food, and fantasies. This process has been underway for 60 years and we are all fairly much enslaved.

• Your editor, for example does only legal drugs (Prozac and Desyrl, both primarily to sleep), but he is completed enslaved by the Internet. He should be back in India doing a revolution or two; instead, he'd much rather write this blog and research obscure subjects on the Internet. For example, why is our 4D universe connected to a 6D universe and not a 5D universe. (One of the creation theories is that on the "other side" is a 6D universe which collapsed into a singularity that gave birth to our 6D universe; shortly after the birth, the 5th and 6th Dimensions were jettisoned, sort of like the booster phases of the Apollo rockets, and so we have 4-dimensions. When our universe collapses into a singularity, it will be reborn as a 6D on our "other side" and the process will continue.

• This is not the answer Flymike was looking for, but its the best we can do.

• A second reader who wants to remain Anon says while it is true the huge contracting in lending credit due to deleveraging will very seriously hurt the economy, the real issue is the loss of wealth the ordinary Jane/John is suffering and which will s/he will continue to suffer for years. No one is bothering about this loss of wealth. For example, you lose your job because of the Wall Street Whores, so you lose your house and you have to pull out all your savings just to say alive till you get another job, which likely will pay you less than the one you lost. It will take you at least ten years to get back to where you were today. If you owned stock in any of the collapsing institutions you are even worse off. (BTW, has anyone done a study on how the Enron employees have managed and how much of their lost wealth have they managed to win back years later?)

• Anon should relax: his point is exactly the one we were going to make along with another. That is, first the oil interests mess us up by pushing up the price so high that a serious transfer of American wealth is taking place, then the same lot uses that money to buy up American companies in trouble at throwaway rates. That irony is enough by itself to mess up anyone's happiness.

• The sole remaining point we want to make is, who is responsible for this mess? To hear the Vox Populi, the ordinary Barbaras and Bobs tell it, its the greedy capitalists did this to us.

• The sad reality is: we did it to ourselves. We abdicated all responsibility for ourselves and then we blame the predators. Folks, predators always exist. It doesn't matter how many rules the Nanny State enacts, new predators with new ways of predating will come up.

• I am going to give a very simple, very specific example of myself and Mrs. R.

• We purchased our modest house in 1995 (3 beds, 1 bath, 1940 construction, almost nothing improved or added since that time) for $138,000.The house was 2.8 times our income - we could have gotten a much better one, but we were sensibly cautious.

• I am considerably older to Mrs. R. My plan was to scrimp and save and pay the mortgage off within 10 years. So then I could four-paws-up-in-the-air at anytime after, in my sixties, and not worry, my wife would face reduced income but at least she'd have a house. Instead of paying double every month, however, we found we had to spend money on furniture and this and that and a house is more expensive to run than a rented apartment.  So we started consuming - a tiny fraction of what others do, but nonetheless.

• Well, in 2000 Mrs. R wanted to extend the house a wee bit. I did not want to refinance for the above reasons. Another crisis. To keep Mrs. R. happy I agreed. When we went to the mortgage people, they pointed out Mrs. R's student loans carried a high interest rate, we'd cut it by 3% if we took more money than for the extension. Well, the extension was handled very frugally by Mrs. R, just $7000, and the house was a whole lot nicer, but our mortgage went up to $160,000 because of the student loan repayment. So had our salaries, we were still 2.8 on the income:house ratio. But because we had taken that first step on "living better", the extension, we still were not putting accelerated money into paying off the house.

• Now, you will laugh at our "living better". We'd eat out at an inexpensive place once a week. Mrs. R. would pick something for the house from a yard sale. We purchased a new but obsolescing notebook for Mrs. R. for her work, bought a Pentium for the child genius (he'd been the only with a computer till then), and I took the kid's computer. Cars were still the same 1998 Neon and 1985 Chevvy Spectrum. Mrs. R began to go home every two years. This wasn't living terribly large; besides, our new mortgage was a 15-year due to my instance. I'd now have to be sure to live into my 70s to pay it off, but I took an insurance policy for that.

• Okay. Then in 2004 Mrs. R decided to move out, I refinanced to buy her out, she bought her own place, and off a sudden, wham, our combined mortgages went from $1650/month to $3600/month, both 30 year thingys. I would have to work well into my 80s to pay off mine, and Mrs. R would have to work into her early 1970s to pay off hers. This radically worsened our economic outlook, for all that our salaries kept increasing.

• Who is to blame for this? No capitalist, just ourselves. We knew enough that for both refis we avoided the shady brokers/lenders; in return, we had to have a minimum average FICO of 730 between us.

• There is no way we are going to believe that people who were making less than we were but were buying houses twice, three times as expensive as ours were duped into anything by anyone except their greed. Even an idiot knows you can't buy a much bigger house without earning much more, and you cant keep raiding your equity for consumer spending. (Mrs. R took out an equity line, but only to buy a property back home).

• I read stories of people who were earning less than $50,000/year buying houses of $300,000, and then when they are about to lose their house they cry and say "my dream was to have a beautiful house of my own..." and of course the WashPo is right there to make another tear-jerker story out of it, but nowhere do I see any acknowledgement that no one cares what your dream is, you have to live within your means at all times (and that includes saving an absolute minimum of 10% of your income).

• This is life, this is reality. There is no government in the world, not even the Swedish, that says you have a heaven-given right to live better than you earn.

• That's all it's really about.

0230 GMT July 23, 2008

Part III (and last) of our essay on the US economy is delayed. After the initial comments, we haven't heard one word. That means either our readers agree with us - unlikely, or that they are scratching their heads wondering "what on earth is he talking about?" - more likely. The editor escapes a significant part of the derision, disrespect, and insult normally accorded to editors because his vast age, and his rapidly gaining iconic status as one of that selected band of husbands, the ones who are complete, utter, total, useless, 100% doormats. But please - let neither age nor doormat stand in the way. Criticize away. The editor will merely weep a few bitter tears in the chocolate shake he will need to console himself.

• This Is So Not Fair Zimbabwe may knock six zeroes of its dollar because calculators are having trouble processing transactions. And we find - for the first time, shows how uninformed we are - Zim in 2006 already knocked off three zeroes.

• So overnight, instead of being a Zim Dollar Trillionaire (editor's cash assets equal US$10 counting unused postage stamps), if this move goes through, he will be worth only Z$ 1-Million! Aaaaargggh! And the editor worked so hard to become a trillionaire - even looked in the vacuum cleaner bag, and found 11 US cents.

• And had Zim not knocked off the three zeroes two years ago, editor would now be worth Z$ 1-Quadrillion!

• Don't these people have any sense of justice?

• Zimbabwe: Negotiations And Sanctions To the surprise of many, the opposition leader has agreed to open negotiations with the President. Theoretically these negotiations are for power-sharing. How that is to work out is, of course, the devil in the detail.

• Meanwhile, European Union has imposed new sanctions against Mugabe regime supporters and officials. Their bank accounts overseas will be frozen - presumably they each have a hundred billion Zimbabwe dollars, since any goof could tell additional sanctions were coming; and their travel in Europe banned. No one can stop Mr. Mugabe from visiting the UN, but his wife will not be given a visa to accompany him.

• EU apparently hopes not that Mr. Mugabe will relent, something no one expects him to do, but that his supporters will see less and less percentage in backing him. At some point his supporters have to trade-off their gains from being part of the dictator's circle versus their losses fro being part of his circle. They also have to judge their chances of personal survival should Mr. Mugabe be forced from office. The new government will surely open enquiries into the actions of the old; Mr. Mugabe's supporters could be looking at long jail sentences for their role in the violence Mr. Mugabe uses to keep control plus for all the other illegalities they have committed.

• Christian Bale, Actor Ever since we realized Brittany Spears had genuine problems not of the drugs/alcohol/self-indulgence genres, we stopped making fun of her because obviously it makes no more sense than making fun of a physically handicapped person. That self-interdict ended our attention to the entertainment world.

• So you may be surprised to see mention of the British actor Christian Bale, most recently of Batman "Dark Knight" fame.

• This pleasant young man "allegedly" beat up his mother and sister in a hotel before the premiere of his new movie. He was arrested today and let out on bail.

• The point of our rant: the Metropolitan Police, London's Finest, allowed him to attend the première. He went to the police station under his own steam.

• No, No, and No. The Metropolitan Police, for whom we have great respect, need to be officially reprimanded for favoritism, unless they can show they would have treated a young man from the London slums with the same deference.

• The organizers of the event should have barred him from attending. And  Hollywood needs to openly, publicly, and mercilessly shame this man, and strip him of any honors he may have gained.

• His behavior, no matter what the provocation, is completely unjustified. Its bad enough when a famous sports or entertainment idol beats up someone in a bar or is repeatedly arrested for drugs and alcohol and treated with kid gloves. Hitting your 61-year old mother and your 40-year old sister is a heinous act in many cultures. The British need to show the world that they will deal with equal severity with everyone regardless of their "status".

• Asking the Americans to do that is, of course, pointless. But the British pride themselves on being different, for them fairness and justice is supposed to be the underpinning of society.

• Let's see some of that fairness and justice in this man's case.

0230 GMT July 22, 2008

• Mr. Bush, Iraq, and Credit This may be the last time we point out that all of us, pro- or anti Iraq War (we were pro- then became anti-) have to give credit to Mr. Bush for the much improved security, political, economic situation in Iraq. It's really the job of the pro- lot, not our job, to keep calling for fairness.

• Before the antis get on our case, we freely admit (a) the war's results are inversely proportional to the effort: Mr. Bush set out to bake a giant chocolate cake for America and he's given us a burnt cookie without the chocolate chips; (b) the war has diverted America's attention from more important theatres in the GWOT; (c) Mr. Bush has proved nothing except that if you are a stubborn, unreasoning person with unlimited time and money fighting midgets, you can win; (d) the reasons Mr. Bush is winning likely have nothing to do with the US and everything to do with the Iraqis not wanting to give America an excuse to stay, and the Iraqis wanting to spend their new found wealth the way they want; (e) several very basic issues essential to the secure future of Iraq have not been resolved and will likely erupt once the US leaves.

• Okay, so are the antis happy now? We've slammed Mr. Bush in every possible way.

• BUT - a very large, fat but: none of this detracts from what Mr. Bush has achieved. That the achievement is utterly pointless does not mean the achievement does not exist - we have to be fair and logical.

• Just as when things were going wrong, Mr. Bush was getting whacked with a limp noodle 10 times a day, now that they are going well, he needs to be praised. That's because in war there is a general principle: it does not matter an iota why and how you lost if you lost. But conversely, it does not matter an iota why and how you won, you won.

• So yes, continue beating up Mr. Bush if you want. But dont beat him up by saying he is losing this war. He isn't losing this war. He is winning the war.

• Last point, self-congratulatory. Go back to what we said even before the surge seriously got underway. We never doubted it would work. we said (a) it wasn't worth it, and (b) what happens after the US draws down.

• We are even more convinced the war and the surge was not worth the opportunity cost. As to what happens after the US draws down, we'll find out soon enough. The Iraqis are so anxious to get America out they are already rolling out the brass bands, the flower maidens, and the red carpet. America is getting the bum's rush. Thanks to the Iraqis, the Americans have been saved from further foolishness such as keeping 100,000 troops for some years and then 60,000 for decades or whatever.

• Okay Mr. Commander-in-Chief, Mission Accomplished. You wanted to win and get out the same year except for a training and advisory mission of some serious size. Six years later - 2009 - you will have achieved your objectives. Better late than never.

Orbat.com's Wise Words On The Economy - II

• A Few Things To Clear Up Before We Resume Readers ask what sources are we relying on for our analysis. We've been reading for months, but because American reportage is so biased and partisan, it's difficult to get a neutral over-all picture. The whole thing came together for us in the Business Week article "How Wall Street Ate The Economy" July 28, 2008. The article is focused on the Street Of Whores, as it should now be renamed, but the article provided the framework allowing us to put a lot of loose facts in perspective.

• A reader asks: how do you conclude the economy will take a $15-trillion hit? Business Week speaks of $15-trillion in lending power as wiped out, that's not the same thing as an actual loss of $15-trillion that has to be made up by tightening out belts. Correct. But we are not going solely by what BW says. BW's focus is on wall street and the mortgage thing. The economic crisis is much bigger than that: BW says the wipeout of $1-trillion worth of capital is from the mortgage mess alone.

• Summary of the argument What people have been doing is taking $1 in capital, provided by you, a shareholder, and using it to borrow up to $30. The mechanism is too technical for us to explain; we're trying to put some general ideas before you and then you can proceed further.

• So now Lehman Brothers puts the $30 to work. (We use it as an example because it was indeed leveraged at 1:31). If it makes 10% on the money, it has made $3 for every $1 of its own money. This is a whacking huge profit if you know anything about business and mundane realities of making money. That's a 200% profit, compared to - say - 4% in municipal bonds, 8% long-tern on the stock market etc. But if you lose 10% on the money, you've lost $3 for every $1 of your investment. Is that a disaster or what?

• So now what happens to Lehman? If it has been run prudently - which obviously it hasnt, because who in their right mind but a Wall Street person think they could safely leverage money by 30 times - Lehman has reserves. It pays the missing $2 from reserves, its share holders take a hit, but Lehman is still solvent. Most financial institutions don't have enough reserves because their greed outstripped their prudence. So then what does Lehman do?

• Two options: beg from Uncle Sam, or bring in more capital.

• Uncle Sam has already obliged Lehman by stomping down interest rates, penalizing all those prudent savers who now have less money than they did before the rate cuts. That reduced income means reduced spending from that sector of the economy, loss of jobs results, loss of houses, assets wiped out, personal and corporate bankruptcies galore. We dont have the figures for how much damage has to been done by basically giving savers a negative return on their money, because if you are getting - say 3% instead of 6% on your CDs at a time inflation has jumped from 2% to 4% - you are losing money and in turn everyone who relies on you (multiplier effect) also loses. We are sure the figures exists for what the rate cuts have cost the economy, what they gained for the economy, what the net loss is etc.,  but one thing is for sure: inflation has been unleashed and that adds to the toll.

• So suppose Uncle Sam says yes. He gives you IOUs, takes your money to bail out Lehman, and hopes in the long run he will get his money back with interest sufficient to give a profit for all the hassle and risk he took. In short-term crises, this can work well. But what if you have a 10-year crisis, such as Japan had in the 1990s? GDP was essentially flat, people got nothing on their savings, normal inflation was there so they were losing money, and the government has to keep paying interest on that IOU - which is does by giving you another IOU. (Never wonder why libertarians hate the government so much.)

• The betting is that this is a long-term crisis because it wasn't just the housing thing. We were all, each and every one of us, living high off a non-existent hog for the last 12 years of so. We were borrowing money to spend frivolously, hoping tomorrow we would make more money and pay off our debts. We never did pay off our debts because when our incomes went up, we borrowed even more. There is a huge overhang that has to be now brought back into balance between what we spent and what we earned.

• Now, this is another place where the economy takes a hit. Bankruptcies goes up, for example, putting credit card companies into trouble, and wiping more capital aside from the mortgage thing. People have less money, they spend less, fewer jobs are created, unemployment rises, government tax revenue falls, government has to issue more IOUs etc etc.

• In our third and last installment, we will deal with Lehman's  theoretical options if Uncle Same says no.

• For now, just use common sense. If you earn $1/year, you cant keep spending $1.10 for ever because though the economy keeps going up in the long-term, there will be times the economy goes down. The mortgage crisis alone is being labeled the biggest financial crisis to hit the US since the Great Depression. Bit scary, what?

• Previously the drops have been short - except for the Depression. This one looks to be a long one. Meanwhile, the money you borrowed has to be repaid one way or the other: either you tighten your belt and pay, or you go banky and someone else pays.

• It will be foolish of us if we think the excesses in which we indulged will correct themselves without us undergoing major pain.

0230 GMT July 21, 2008

As usual we have the date mixed up. The Editor doesn't do dates. He goes by the days of the week and is always off on the date.

Late again and a short update again. Definitely Mrs. R's fault. Can someone please do the Editor an enormous favor.  Just shoot him. Failing that can our readers send over half a dozen attractive, fit, and very intelligent women between the ages of 40-65 to help him get over Mrs. R? Thank you in advance.

Orbat.com's Wise Words On The Economy - I

• While we have a good sense of economic matters - you have to if you're in national security - we have only recently turned our Giant Brains to the matter with the US economy. We'd like to share our findings with our readers, both because this impacts on national security, and because it impacts on all our lives.

• First, remember Orbat.com does not have a stake in any part of this. We are not selling anything, or buying anything, or lobbying for anything, or attempting to hide our mistakes, or make money on a downward spiraling economy, or whatever. With the exception of the Editor, none of our core people lives in America and none if economically affected in their own country. The Editor is a teacher; very junior teachers do sometimes get laid off in serious economic downturns, but its a secure job. All that happens is we don't get our cost of living adjustment, so that in the Editor's county all teachers this year are taking an effective 5-7% pay cut, because that is the real CPI increase in the Washington Metro area, and they are likely to take several more years of effective pay cuts - the editor assumes it will be 20% pay cut before his income rises again. But still, he has a job.

• Okay. To start with what went wrong. A whole lot of greedy little piggys on Wall Street decided that they weren't making enough money. 4% before inflation on municipal bonds? Boring. 8% average gain before taxes and inflation in the stock market? Boring. Etc.

• So these little piggys came up with a whole bunch of very technical, highly speculative financial instruments, of which the correctly much reviled mortgage finance derivatives are only one.

• Forget the complexities and technicalities, they worked like this. They would take $1 and leverage it between 10 and 30 times, gaining $10 to $30 of paper money to play with. If the bet (they didnt see it as a bet, but as a sure thing) played well, instead of getting 10 cents on that dollar as they would normally, by investing in factories and roads and so on, they could now get $1-$3 back on their investments - 100- to 300% profit, before taxes/inflation/expenses, etc., but you get the point.

• So, for example, as long as everyone is buying houses and selling them at a profit and then buying more houses and selling them at a profit, the Ponzi scheme works. But the minute the housing market softens - as it had to because so many houses were being built for sale at so high a price, and because oil/food/commodity increases were taking more money out of people's pockets so they couldn't afford those high mortgage payments any more - what happens is the reverse of the Ponzi scheme: things collapse even faster than the builtup.

• Consider. If business falls by 10%, you are not out $1-$3 on your leveraged capital. You see, "leveraged" is another word for borrowed. The person who lent you that $30 for the $1 you put in (we'll use the higher figure, which applies to banking stuff, generally the leveraging is around 10x to 15x) panics, and wants his $30 back. How do you pay him? You only have $1 as the asset against the $30 you have borrowed. Those housing bonds you brought with the $30 are no longer an asset: people will buy them, but at $20. You are left owing your lenders $10, and you have only $1.

• Result? Wipeout. Default. Bankruptcy. The people you borrowed from have only $20 back for the $30 they lent you. They're out $10, owe $30 to the people they borrowed to lend you, but have paper worth only $10.

• Ten dollars? Why? You just said they had paper worth $20. Well, you can pay back $30 when you have only $20 only if you have big fat reserves against a rainy day. Some companies have those reserves. Other companies can rush to the Arabs and sell their rear ends (sorry to be rude) for the needed money. But you know, Arabs have 100 people a day groveling at their feet for money. They take only the very, very best deals, pay half what the company is worth. So they bail out one person a day. The other 99 go bankrupt even if that paper they hold is worth $20.

• But it isnt worth $20 anymore. With money flying out of the market as people start hunkering down, that Ponzi paper for $30 which was worth $20 is now worth $10. Poof! Another bunch of companies go banky, and the spiral continues.

• The Fed has been bailing and bailing and bailing, making up for the capital losses and putting its name behind them. Where is the Fed getting its money? Well, the Fed can print money. Its giving you and me an IOU - the deficit - and shifting the problem further down the road. But this is the Fed's Ponzi scheme, isnt it because an IOU given to you and me is worthless because the only way the Fed can redeem that IOU is by raising taxes on you and me. So it isnt the Fed bailing out Fannie and Citi and Bear Sterns or whoever (who care about the names) it's YOU and ME. And the Fed didnt even ask our permission! And the people the Fed is bailing out are ultra-millionaires - they put up little of their own money in the game.

• Okay, so by now you've realized that this thing stink to high heaven and low hell. Something is very, very wrong here.

• Indeed it is. And to lay it on the bottom line, pessimistic estimates are that $1-trillion worth of initial money will be wiped out - that's not much, except there's $15-trillion borrowed (Business Week July 28, 2008).

• $15-tril, my darling boys and girls, is the size of the US GDP. Yup, a whole year's income for everyone including the government. That's what has to be paid back to squeeze out the excess or whatever you want to call it - some also use the term revalue assets realistically.

• But how are you and I going to repay our share of the money, which is a year's income for each of us. Here's the editor's math. He makes $60,000/year, he now owes that as his share. Of that he gets $40,000 net. He has to repay 150% of his salary, while continuing to pay his mortgage and to live. By really clamping down on everything - in the Editor's case there's no cable, new car payment, vacation, eating out, new clothes anything to begin with, the editor estimates he can "pay back" $4000 a year. Fifteen years. For most people it will be ten years.

• So, that's what you need to be prepared for: cutting back on your standard of living by 15% a year for 10 years.

• Your 15% a year will be taken from in the form of new taxes and a loss on your 401K and other savings.

• We will continue this cheerful story tomorrow.

0230 GMT July 19, 2008

No update Saturday. For once it was not Mrs. R's fault. Unresolved family business emergency.

• US Wins By Losing To no one's surprise but that of the US Administration, Iraq has refused to permit US troops to stay indefinitely in Iraq - indefinitely being defined by the US. We dont know who comes up with such strange ideas in Washington, our general reaction is "Dont Bogart That Joint, My Friend". This is a democracy, why is the Good stuff being kept for the Administration's private use? US loves to say "The enemy gets a vote", and now the Iraqis have shown "When you are occupying a country, the occupied also get a vote."

• Mr. Bush has gracefully acceded to the Iraqi demand for timelines for withdrawal, and has agreed there will be no permanent presence.

• Incidentally, one of the things we really like about Mr. Bush is that when he gets shot down - as he did on Saudi oil, and Palestine, most recently, he is always polite, gracious, low-key, and never holds grudges. He is not upset in the least about the Iraqi decision to gut the American plan for a permanent Iraq colony.

• Possibly he realizes that by their demand for timelines, the Iraqis are doing exactly what Mr. Bush set out for them to do. He wanted to topple Saddam, and leave in two years, with a strong, independent Iraq in place.

• Incredibly, this is what is happening, and that it is happening against the Administration's will makes no difference to the reality this is a very big success for Mr. Bush. After all the years of going completely wrong in Iraq, his protégés have grown up.

• The price of oil has a lot to do with the Iraqis confidence. That they want their money the way they want without the US saying "but that's corrupt, we cant allow it" has everything to do with their wanting the US out.

• More than that, Iraqis are simply fed up with the ponderous American presence and are saying: "Look, we may not do it your way, but we will do it, even though it will our way".

• Washington should not say "The Iraqis are not militarily ready" etc etc. Iraq is, and always was, a Big Boy. America infantilized Iraq, making it completely dependent. The Iraqis are now standing up for themselves.

• Mr. Bush, our sincere congratulations. 4-5 years later than scheduled, true, but nonetheless you have succeeded. The Iraqi Eagle has tested its wings. It has told its Elder Brother the American Eagle "We ready to solo". This is a great achievement for Mr. Bush, and we hope even his most ideological critics will at least admit this. Be gracious. After all, Mr. Bush is.

• As for ourselves: we cant wait to see the end of this rat hole, already.

• Dignity For The Dollar: Drop A Zero Your editor has known for 10 years he is dyslexic, but has never thought about it. It's like being told: "You're short". You're born that way, there is no treatment for being short - as there is no cure for dyslexia - so let's get on with life. Recently, however, a very perceptive professor has forced him to confront the issue and how it influences his learning (this is the editor's 14th consecutive year of college, after 6 years in two stints previous). So the editor has realized that a characteristics of dyslexics is that their minds run much faster than their mouths and that they will speak half a sentence, jump to something else altogether, and not realize they have finished the thought for their listeners and have omitted verbalizing the transition to another part of the problem, leaving everyone confused.

• So the editor was waiting for plaudits from his appreciative audience of 5 faithful readers on his rant about the dollar not being worth what it was. When no plaudits were to be heard, he examined the issue and saw he hadn't put in the point of the rant.

• The point is: we need to drop a zero. Ten cents will become 1 cent and so on. Cars will again cost $3000, houses will again cost $50,000, and so on. The dollar will have some dignity.

• Dignity is what it lack when we're headed for 1 Euro = 1 dollar: oh please, anyone remember the Euro countries were poorer than the proverbial churchmouse at the end of World War II, and that it was American foresight, generosity, and planning that made them rich again.

• So what they do in gratitude? Leave the once mighty dollar eating their dust.

• So about we do something about it instead of feeling sorry for ourselves? The Orbat.com solution is to drop a dollar. Then the dollar buys 6 Euros, makes the Euro look trashy and cheap, doesn't it?

• President Charles de Gaulle dropped TWO zeroes off the French Franc and overnight it became 5 to the dollar from 500 to the dollar. His reason, which everyone laughed at in those days, because it was fash to laugh at de Gaulle, pompous old ass that he was,  was that as part of France's new image it didn't need to be an Italian currency - used to be 800+ lira to the dollar if we recall right - the Italians being the laughing stock currency wise.

• "Cry and the whole world cries with you, laugh and you laugh alone" - that's from a very famous New Yorker cartoon of one hyena telling another hyena. President de Gaulle had the last laugh because the double snip worked as he intended. People began to respect the franc. A case of less is more, smaller is better and so on.

• Okay, so you're going to say "inflation". People will round up prices and we'll have inflation. Okay, so let's do a simple exercise.

• What can you buy for a penny today? Nothing. What can you buy for a nickel today? There must be something, but it cant be terribly important. A dime is where you start getting serious, though again, we're hard out to think what a dime buys.

• So your gas will cost - gasp! what a shock - 40 cents a gallon instead of 3.999 cents a gallon. we dont need to keep on, you see the point.

• The Editor Is a Trillionaire The Editor added up all his money today, not including the nine 1 cent stamps and an untouched 39 cent stamp. It came to almost $10 after raiding the youngest's penny jar.

• You're shaking your head: poor fellow, he's lost it finally. Ten dollars to his name and he thinks he's a trillionaire.

• But he is, silly - in Zimbabwe. They now have a Z$100,000,000,000 bill. It's exchange rate is US$1. Inflation is at 2.2-million percent. Any minute now Zim is going to beat the old German record: Marks 2.5-trillion to one dollar. We need an inflation of only 2500%.

• From Anthony Absi On Air Tankers You forgot to mention a major new role, refueling UAVs.

• Editor's Note  Did not forget - didn't even think to figure out that all these UAVs that the military says will have 24 hour endurance and 48 hour endurance and so on need refueling!

0230 GMT July 18, 2008

• That Delightful Terrorist Boy The gentleman who was one of the five live persons (and 199 cadavers, some held for 30 years) Israel traded for the bodies of two of its soldiers is in the news. He vows to continue the struggle.

• Well, last time he shot a civilian father in front of his 4-year girl, and then crushed her skull with his rifle butt. What a hero! What a blow for the oppressed Palestinians! May we suggest a Nobel Peace Prize for the gentleman? A trifling honor we shall no doubt will have to beg him to accept.

• So, good buddy good pal, what's next on the agenda? Raping a few Israeli women before killing them and setting a few babies on fire? We breathlessly wait for word of your new heroic deeds on behalf of Palestine.

• We've said this before, but it's worth repeating again. In Kashmir the Indian army had a simple policy. If the captured man was a foreigner, i.e., Pakistani or other, he was shot on the spot. If he was a local, i.e., Indian Kashmir, he was sent for reeducation.

• This sounds barbaric, but you have to understand the Indian criminal justice system, even the special courts, are really not set up to deal with insurgents. In the Punjab insurgency, where those nice clean cut boys were murdering 1000 civilians a month - no bombs either, BTW, just pulling people off buses and shooting them one by one, the criminal justice system was completely paralyzed. The terrorists would kill the police - along with their entire families; they would kill witnesses; they would threaten judges. No one could stand up against them.

• So the Punjab Police took to killing captured terrorists then and there and saying the terrorists had died in an "encounter" with the police, wink wink nod nod. Was it brutal? Yes. Were innocents killed? By American definition of innocent, we have no doubt they were. Was it effective? Yes. Within a very few years the insurgency was finished.

• Were human rights violated? Yes. But weren't the terrorists violating the human rights of 25-million on a large scale? And - as we've said - the terrorists paralyzed the criminal justice system. This wasn't Northern Ireland, folks, where 3000 people were killed in 20 years. That was a 90-day total for the Punjab - not every 90-days, but you get the point. So what else could be done?

• When we say "American definition of innocent", we should explain that America may be the only country in the world where two men can get together to kill another, and if caught one can actually use the defense "I didn't fire the fatal shot". That doesn't save you from jail, but it can spare you the death penalty.
  Singapore has it right: you carry a gun and fire it during the commission of a crime, you're eligible to hang. No one cares what your intent was, and in any case intent is subjective. You had a gun. That means you were prepared to use it. You fired the gun. You intended to kill someone, and that he was only wounded or escaped unharmed is quite irrelevant. Had things played out a little differently, the victim could be dead. You cannot let someone escape with his life because he was either incompetent and didn't kill a person he shot at, otr it was the person's good luck he survived.

• In any case, folks, what's merciful and respecting human rights when you lock up people for the rest of their lives in an American prison. And what's merciful about keeping people on death row for 10 years or more?

• If you go for the "better 100 guilty men go free than one innocent die" then perhaps the American system makes sense. But if you're fighting a war - as the Indians were in the Punjab and Kashmir and the Israelis are, then you cannot use normal criminal procedure.

• We've asked this question before. The Washington Metro area is about the size of Baghdad, population-wise. Now suppose 100 civilians a day are being blown up with bombs, or simply slaughtered in cold blood. Can any American please tell us: how long will you insist that human rights of suspects and captured terrorists be respected? Ten days? Two weeks?

• So don't judge other countries like India who are democracies and trying to protect themselves.

• As for the Israelis, we've said before. Its their business what they do with their terrorists. But the great revolutionary fighter you let go has given his thanks publicly: he has said he will be back.

• Letter From Isaac Redmont on Boeing In your comments on Boeing yesterday, you did not mention that the tanker contract has been overturned for a second time. The first time Boeing won the contract by bribing Pentagon officials, one of whom went to jail. It is not clear to me why Boeing was permitted to rebid on the contract.

• A Washington Post Reader says a new tanker is unnecessary because the US no longer needs to keep B-52s on airborne alert.

• It is true the original KC-135 program was tied up with the B-52, on a scale of one tanker per bomber. Only a portion of B-52s were on airborne alert; the reason each B-52 had a tanker was to extend the bomber's range. Just the simple business of taking off and reaching cruise altitude for a heavily laden aircraft takes up 30% of fuel (at least it used to), so a top off was essential for maximum range and maximum contingency fuel. B-52s on extra long-range missions topped up more than once.

• But even in the heyday of the B-52, the USAF was using tankers to support tactical missions in Indochina, in deploying aircraft throughout the world, and to refuel cargo aircraft.

• As the US has reduced its overseas bases simultaneous with the need to strike anywhere in the world on almost zero notice or to deploy troops anywhere in the world, air tankers have become even more important.

• Yes, the numbers needed have fallen as the number of US aircraft in the inventory has fallen. But you still need tankers - just ask any fighter pilot flying in Afghanistan or Iraq.

• Another "We Can't Believe It Has Come To This" Story So we're reading Aviation Week and Space Technology and there's this story about how the military is considering a major step-up in CV-22 procurement. That's the Marine aircraft that can take off and hover like a helicopter but fly at conventional aircraft speeds and ranges. Its main function was to replace the Marines' primary assault transport, the venerable CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, but of course you can use it for many tasks. The Special Operations people are very interested in this aircraft.

• So we thought to ourselves, a major increase in procurement of this vital aircraft is a Good Thing.

• So then we learn the  procurement rate is 6 (get that folks, six! our heads are spinning because it's such a "huge" number) per year and the step up will mean another three aircraft a year.

• Woozers! 3 as in three, a number so large as to be completely incomprehensible as is the number of stars in our known universe (10²² the last we checked), or the number of days your editor has gone without a date (number is classified for obvious reasons).

• This is so exciting. If the editor lives long enough, doubtless he will soon see the day where the military buys 1 bomber a decade, and 1 fighter, 1 cargo plane, and 1 helicopter a year and the military will be calling this a major modernization. Bah.

0230 GMT July 17, 2008

• Israel Prisoner Swap: Color Us Confused Your editor prides himself on his high empathy and so on, but even he cannot figure what the Israelis have done with this prisoner swap. They have given to Hezbollah/Lebanon five live prisoners including one gentleman who was their longest serving convict. This person's claim to fame is that as a teenager he took part in a raid against Israeli civilians and killed a 4-year-old child by crushing her head with a rock.

• That Hezbollah and Company are celebrating shows they have lost whatever moral compass they may have/had.

• But we are not bothered by the Arab reaction. In this matter of conferring hero status to murderers of civilians we expect nothing better. And please - we are aware the Israelis also kill civilians, but for a whole lot of reasons you cannot equate the Israelis and Arabs on this one. Not least because the Israelis do not make heroes out of their soldiers who kill civilians.

• No. We are bothered by the Israelis' loss of moral compass. Along with the five live ones, they also handed over the bodies of 199 Lebanese/Palestinians that have died while attacking/infiltrating Israel.

• First, is it just us, but isn't this business of keeping bodies to trade not just ghoulish but also morally wrong? It is universally understood that no matter how deep your hatred toward your enemy, you hand over his dead as soon as possible. This is a moral act. Frankly, we do not know enough about the Old Testament to say if the Israelis have also violated religious law, but the Israelis, while they ethnically may be Mideastern, are culturally westerners, and as an upholders of western ethics, your editor believes keeping the bodies was absolutely, unequivocally wrong.

• Yes, the Arabs - Hezobollah specifically - kept the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers to trade. So now we have to compare the Israelis to Hezbollah to justify Israel's wrong? Anyone see the irony here?

• Please notice we are not saying a word about the Israeli tactic of exchanging to get back their two dead soldiers. If the Israelis had swapped 100 or 1000 Arab prisoners for the bodies, we'd have said, we don't think its a good tactic, but it's none of our business.

• Incidentally, we are unable to learn if the Arab bodies were disinterred or if they were kept in morgues.

• We are talking about the Israelis holding on to Arab bodies as being wrong. We hope the Israelis will examine the issue.

• Airbus Beats Boeing 10-1 at Farnborough in the passenger aircraft sales competition. Okay, while it's true that there is no such thing as national aircraft anymore, because everyone collaborates with everyone, but we are running short of patience with Boeing. After doing its best to play up delays in the Airbus 380, Boeing has been coyly revealing, like a scarf stripper, one scarf at a time that it's 787 is nicely behind schedule too. Then there was its failure to win the tanker competition despite its home field advantage which included building the USAF's tankers since the Paleolithic Era. Yes, we know Boeing said the competition as unfair, but Airbus will argue it won despite the USAF's every effort to give Boeing the award. Why should it even have come to a reversal on appeal? Boeing should have won cleanly without a dispute.

• If Boeing can't get its act together, here's a suggestion: sell yourself to Airbus. The editor is not bothered by the prospect of 90% of the world's jetliners being Airbus, since he doesn't fly anyway. Or go anywhere by any means of transportation. So he, at least, will not suffer the personal humiliation of getting onto an Airbus. He has ONCE flown on an Airbus, 25 years ago. He was somewhere or they other where there was one airline and it did not fly Boeing aircraft. It was either be unpatriotic, or hitch rides with the sheep and the chickens. And the sheep and the chicken traveled in Japanese pickups, so he'd be unpatriotic. Please don't suggest he could have rented a cycle and done his 3000-km return trip that way. The cycles available were all Chinese.

• So tell us what Americans make any more? Oh, that's right, they make great movies. And they make great financial instruments. If you as an American are in deep economic trouble at this time, it's because of all those great financial instruments only Americans are smart enough to invent.

0230 GMT July 16, 2008

The Taliban May Be Fighters, But They Are Not Soldiers

•  We learn from the International Herald Tribune that the Taliban who last Sunday attacked the US outpost in Kunar Province, Afghanistan numbered about 200. There is surprise that such a large group assembled undetected a few hundred meters from the US outpost, and there is speculation that some locals joined in the attack because they were angry about an earlier US air attack that killed civilians in the area. we don't see how such speculation is relevant: the Taliban may use Pakistan as a base and have many Pakistani members, but they are mostly Afghanis. That close to the border with Pakistan, it's reasonable to assume that many locals are Taliban. Anyway, we are getting off-point.

• The Taliban came into this village overlooking the outpost, told the locals to leave, and for four hours attacked the outpost, managing to penetrate the perimeter before being defeated by US artillery and air strikes.

• The airstrikes damaged several houses, but no civilians were hurt as they had left. This we find interesting: whatever else may be wrong with the Taliban's moral system, they are to be commended for not fighting from among civilians. US airpower is so destructive that had the Taliban not cleared the village, any number of civilians would have become casualties, adding to the growing anti-NATO feeling caused by civilian deaths. Compare/contrast with the various Iraqi militias, who invariably fight from within the civilian population.

• The US lost 9 men, 15 were wounded; 4 Afghans were lightly wounded. Up to 100 Taliban may have died.

• What struck us about this Taliban operation was the four hours bit.

• Let's go back to Vietnam and you'll see what we mean when we say the Taliban may be fighters, but they are not soldiers.

• If this had been the Viet Cong, there would have been no four hours business because the communists knew very well once US firepower got into the fight, it was over for the attackers. The VC would have attacked at night, and used an initial mortar/rocket barrage solely to provide cover/surprise/disruption for their sappers, who incidentally were the elite. The sappers would have very rapidly closed to the outpost, breached the defenses, and been so intermixed with the defenders before US could react that using firepower would have meant the defenders would have been just as dead as the attackers.

• That's if the VC intended to occupy the post. Had they been at so big a disadvantage as the Taliban were, they would never have planned to occupy anything. They would have been in and out before the firepower arrived.

• Also, the VC would have put in at least one diversionary attack, and they would have moved up their flak so that US helicopters/fighters would not have immunity. Yes, Afghanistan is not Vietnam, where you could hide flak within a few thousand meters of the outpost. Nonetheless, seeing as the outpost is in the boonies, the VC would have come prepared, backpacking everything if neccessary. And they would have deployed very heavy firepower for their assault: AK-47s and the odd mortar and RPG wouldn't have done anything for the VC. The whole thing would have lasted an hour, maybe two, and they would be gone.

• The Taliban are recreational fighters - as are the Iraqi militias. Get together for an operation, fight for a few hours, and then go back home and relax for as many days or weeks as neccessary before cooking up another attack.

• And the Taliban - like the Iraq militias - substitute raw courage for using their heads. That is why they suffer such disproportionate casualties.

• We wonder if they have by now understood a few facts about the Americans. Contrary to the oft-heard theme that the Americans are casualty-averse, since now they have a volunteer military, no one is particularly casualty averse, least of all the public back home, whom the war affects not at all. Well, the troops have been in Afghanistan 7 years and in Iraq 5.

• Americans don't like the Iraq war for any number of good reasons, the incompetent way it has been fought being the most important. But they have no problem with Afghanistan. That is a worthy cause even by a liberal-liberal's standard because it really is a fight between good and evil.

• If the enterprise could be fought at an affordable monthly price, and if soldiers got two years off for every year deployed, the Americans would keep this game up indefinitely.

• Next, given Afghanistan's geography, it hardly matters to the Americans that they don't control 50, 60, 70, 80% of the terrain. In its best days, the Afghan government controlled little outside the main cities. To defeat the Americans, the Taliban need to assault the cities, and since they are not soldiers, that is going be a quick ticket to heaven. General Giap had to learn this the hard way at Khesan, but you simply do not defeat Americans who are operating behind prepared defenses. Blowing people up from the air is something the Americans excel at, moreover, it's something they truly love, and they're willing to hold for as many hours, days, weeks, months as neccessary for you to give up.

• Last, losing 100 of your men to kill 2-3 Americans is not a good way to fight a war. We commend the Taliban for their willingness to take appalling casualties, but folks, this is like World War I all over again. It didn't matter how brave you were and how many casualties you were willing to accept - read about Verdun if you want to know about courage, the reality was the machineguns would cut you down as many times as you charged. Same thing here.

• Our complaint about this Taliban acceptance of casualties is a simple, practical one. You cannot go losing so many men on each attack because you will never build up an experienced force. So many are being killed that each operation has to be conducted with what has to be a large number of new men. Not only do you not build the experience, just by being new the new folks get slaughtered that much faster. This is one reason for the US's unbelievable losses in Vietnam by the way - lack of training. If you're going to send a rifleman into combat after 90-days training, you have a high probability that you are going to get a very dead rifleman.

• We wrote the other day that the Islamists are fighting for their faith. So were the PAVN/VC. But just as faith was no protection against a B-52 strike, it is no protection once American airpower gets into the fray.

• If all the Taliban want to do is uselessly commit suicide at the hands of the infidel, they have come to the right enemy. Americans will gladly oblige for as long as you want. There is no more detached, remorseless, expressionless and fighter than the American.

• If, however, the Taliban want to actually make an impact in their war, its time to start doing things a bit differently, and to stop treating each operation as a BYOG happening. (Bring Your Own Gun.)

0230 GMT July 15, 2008

• Russia To Resume Arctic Patrols says Prime Minister/President Putin. An ASW destroyer and a missile cruiser will be first into the area since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

• Good job, Mr. Putin, is what we say. About time the North Americans woke up. People in these parts have been getting terribly slack and arrogant thanks to the lack of a real threat. The Canadians are not just asleep at the switch, they've gone into a near terminal coma. On national security, the Canadian body temperature is down to the single digits Kelvin. Hopefully a patrol or two will get them to wake up and smell the oil.

• Sure, it'll take 20-years for you to become any kind of threat to the west again. In particular, navies once run down take a long time to resurrect. Sure, your military capability now is very seriously a joke, because of the way you ran it down, and because so many key factories went to the new republics. But one patrol is better than none, six new aircraft a year are better than none, and 100 new tanks a year are better than none.

• Note to readers: because of global warming, the Acrtic, which has been physically off-limits, is now becoming accessible. All sorts of goodies down there, particularly oil and gas - and a lot of it. But its also a matter of shipping routes. Russia has always been hampered because of the warm water ports business. So even a hot Arctic is not warm water, but it will change Russia's prospects much for the better.

• From Guy Cole I live in Shasta County, California which is suffering a lot of fire activity this year (along w/neighboring counties such as Trinity and Butte). Of course, I am not the last word on anything but there is no foreign assistance up here.  The closest foreign support I know about is a contract Martin Mars fire bomber from Canada.

• Editor's note We should have been clearer than the foreign help was on the way when we wrote. Of course, sitting here we have no idea how/where the foreign crews will be used, and given the magnitude of this year's fire problem the help is likely to prove token.

• BTW, the Marines have been complaining that they've been fighting the fires for weeks and most of the media mentions are about the Guard.

• More Non News Reuters has a headline: "Cindy McCain could reap payout from Bud deal". Okay, so we've all been told how the mysterious Mrs. McCain is a wealthy heiress to a brewery fortune. So imagine our surprise when we learn from Reuters she could earn between $2.8-million and $5.6-million from selling her shares.

• We don't know when last Reuters and the media in general went to their HMOs for a reality check, but today $3- to $6-million does not qualify as "wealthy" anywhere in the world except Zimbabwe. And that includes shares in the name of her children!

• Whatever else she may be, Mrs. McCain apparently is not a wealthy brewery heiress.

• Reuters is an excellent agency, incidentally. What upsets us is the pressure on all media to produce cheap sensationalist stuff in preference to hard news. Times London is starting to read like a soft porn daily. Why not let the tabloids do this stuff and for people like Times London and Reuters to focus on real news?

• How about a newspaper of - say - 24 content pages with high quality reporting of facts and no editorializing or injecting the report into the story? Editorials should be for the editorial page. Whoever brings out such a newspaper may be pleasantly surprised by the public's response.

• More "It's Really About Me" The Washington Post's Sunday "Outlook" section is supposed to carry serious commentary. That does not mean every for every story we should don our black suits and put on a mournful air and give up eating meat or drinking alcohol for the day. You can write amusing but well-researched, substantive commentary.

• We were hugely offended to see a piece in last Sunday's "Outlook", concerning an Army medic who had served in Iraq and who has committed suicide. The author of the piece is now a lawyer (or about to become one), but in 2003 he was a photojournalist during Gulf II, and his one claim to fame in his eyes seems to be a photograph he took of the medic with a half-naked Iraqi child in his arms rushing - presumably to get aid for the child.

• Nothing wrong with covering a serviceperson's suicide, but the author tied the whole thing to his photograph and his theme was "was I responsible for this man's suicide?"

• We got so disgusted just by the opening paras that we threw the whole of Outlook into the recycling bin.

• First, there is nothing iconic about the photograph. We have seen tens of thousands of war photographs in our time, and it was just another photograph of a medic aiding a child. Second, what darn business does this ex-photographer have putting himself into the middle of the medic's tragedy? Did the medic not have a life, an existence, a job, a purpose before and after the photo was taken? Or did he enter this world's reality only because the photographer took the shot?

• The medic is dead, and so we have no way of knowing what role - if any - the photograph played in his decision to kill himself. The article's author seems to believe that the medic hated publicity and because of the photograph achieved recognition and lost his privacy.

• Come on, someone. The medic is an American archetype, and the combat gear so completely depersonalizes him that we find it difficult to believe that 99.99% of the public ever recognized him as the person in the photograph - not least because the photograph is NOT an icon, whatever the photographer wants to believe. It is not something you saw a thousand times and that was discussed a thousand times even in 2003; by 2008 its safe to wonder who remembered the photograph.

• The article is a shamefully cynical effort on the part of the photographer to exploit his photograph in the context of the medic's suicide. That the Washington Post would run it is, of course, no surprise. When it comes to emotional exploitation of ordinary people, WashPo is second to none. we are not upset about the WashPo. We're upset about this young photographer and his low ethical standards.

• The truth is, while we all may dream of the iconic photograph, a microscopic fraction of photographs ever reaches the standard needed to be considered famous. A good photographer is only a ghost on the scene, a recording mechanism. He never injects himself into a photograph. He lets the photograph speak for itself, and while the photographer may well have a story about how he took the photograph, he stolidly keeps himself out of the photograph. Because the photograph is about the subject, not the photographer.

• By this standard the youngster is a lousy photographer. We trust he's a better lawyer.

0230 GMT July 14, 2008

US May Withdraw 3 Brigades From Iraq For Afghanistan...

• ...says Washington Post. There are a large number of "depending on" qualifiers and so this is by no means a done deal. In any case, the military has no plan to send additional troops to Afghanistan till next years. If this happens, three brigades slated for Iraq in 2009 will retrain for Afghanistan.

• So why are we not happy?  Haven't we been yelling and screaming for more troops for Afghanistan? We are not happy for two good reasons.

• First, the US has an absolute shortage of combat brigades. That three may go to Afghanistan and not Iraq changes nothing: the Army/Marines are still way  overcommitted, even with the five surge brigades having returned. We see a complete, asinine, blockhead refusal on the part of Americans to understand the  1:1:1 rule for overseas deployments: one brigade on expeditionary duty means one brigade rotating and one brigade resting/training. If the American people and government and military persist in this psychotic refusal to face reality, all we can say is "Good luck to you, bro. You're half way to losing the GWOT."

• Second, we've often noted there is a huge difference between one brigade deployed immediately a crisis develops and three deployed too late. This is why things went wrong in Vietnam and why they went wrong in 2003/subsequently.

• The three brigades people are talking about for 2009 were needed in 2006. Right now you need at least twice as many, and by 2009 you will need thrice as many.

• It is a cardinal rule of warfare to win you do not let the enemy adapt. If you send one brigade when three are needed, he adapts. The enemy in Afghanistan had adapted. And there is very bad news coming down the pike. The enemy has always had Pakistan as safe haven for R and R, money, and fresh recruits because official Pakistan doctrine calls for Afghanistan under Pakistani control, not under the West's control. But now that President Musharraf is gone, no one is making a pretence of fighting the Afghan-Pakistan-international militants operating in Afghanistan. If you color Afghanistan green to symbolize Islamic insurgency, instead of pushing back that green, the green has pushed east and is in the process of eating up Pakistan's NWFP.

• If the Americans think they can merrily go into Pakistan and make direct strikes against the militants, then we see no alternative to hospitalization in a high-security loony-bin. You will simply add 150-million more fanatics wanting to kill you as opposed to the 20-million Pakistani citizens who now want to do that.

• We are by no means arguing along the lines of "escalating the war is no solution because it will create more problems than it resolves and we must try other means". By this criteria was is never the answer, whereas the reality of recorded human history is that often war is the only answer.

• It is total bilge to say "if we worked to change the living conditions of poor Muslims we wouldn't need to fight them." Has it not occurred to the west by now that the Islamists and what they represent has very little to do with money? It is more a matter of faith.

• According to the money theory, Germany should not have gone to war in 1914 or 1939. The Germans were very well off by the standards of the day. They fought for their faith. America should not have acted in a way guaranteed to ensure that Germany in 1917 and Germany/Japan in 1941 would attack America if money was what Americans wanted. Americans fought because of faith. The Japanese began their colonial expansion because of economics, but is anyone going to argue the unbelievable fanaticism with which they fought had anything to do with money? No, because it had to do with faith.

• Was America a poor country went it went to Korea and Indochina? It was by far the richest country in the world. It fought those two wars because of faith. Did America go to Iraq in 1991 because of money? Hardly. Saddam was an almost-ally, America was still hugely prosperous. America fought because of faith.

• So please, please, try and give the Islamists a little more credit. Rich or poor, certain Islamic sects are engaged in this crusade because of their faith. The seat of the infection is Saudi Arabia, which had/has one of the highest per capita incomes since the 1970s. Bin Laden and his followers did not/do not come from impoverished backgrounds.

• Similarly, to suggest the Pakistani frontier tribes are fighting because they lack roads and so on is completely to mislead ourselves. They are fighting because of their faith. The west needs to stop already this pathetic argument that more development will reduce the incentive the Pakistani tribes have to fight. Indeed, if you give them development, they will happily take your money and your development, and they will then attack you twice as ferociously because now they will more resources.

• War Is The ONLY Way In Which The New Crusaders Can Be Defeated But here is a sad little fact about war. You either fight it as a matter of life/death, or you're going to get whupped by the adversary who does believe it's a matter of life/death.

• The west is not fighting with the slightest degree of seriousness. So 9 American soldiers get killed at a dusty, lonely outpost in Afghani Kunar, and you'd think the world has come to an end. 4100 American combatants have died in the GWOT and the tears Americans have wept would fill the world ocean. Yet, Americans are hypocrites because they willingly tolerate frightening death rates due to murder, neglect of their children, lack of universal health care, and alcohol, just to mention a few factors. Your editor has yet to see anyone weep for his students at Bladensburg High School who are trapped in a jail with impenetrable bars thanks to the way American society and priorities are structured.

• Those 4100 soldiers who have died? Personally, we at Orbat.com salute them because they died for their faith, which happens to be freedom. We all have to die sometimes. So what is better, the death the Baby Boomer generation faces as it grows old and starts to die, amid the greatest volume/quantity of whining, moaning, weeping, complaining from these folks who are, grown bloated and unable to move because of their moral gluttonies and self-indulgence, or the death that our military youngsters willingly face each day?

• But personally, we also feel when our entire way of life is under assault, the sacrifice of 4100 lives is not even a comma in a sentence. The American population grows by 3-million people a year, and America has a near $14-trillion economy. And three brigades for Afghanistan, next year - maybe, is the best we can do?

• If America is serious about Afghanistan, its going to have now send nine divisions to Eastern Afghanistan. Surely we exaggerate, some will say in horror. No we do not. You want to bring the situation under control, you want to fight the infection at its heart, you need nine divisions.

• If you send one division, you are going to lose even more badly than you are already in danger of losing.

• War has many cardinal rules, distilled over the millennia through bitter and costly experience. If you aren't serious about fighting, stop and look for an alternative to war. The only alternative to this war is to accommodate the Islamists and Muslims, to give them what they want.

• But wait a minute. Didn't we give Hitler what he wanted, Stalin what he wanted, Mao what he wanted, and didn't all they want is more? Appeasement never works.

• Our point exactly. And the way the west/America is fighting the GWOT - all shadow and little substance - is even worse than appeasement.

• If you are a Boomer, doubtless you are on your knees saying: "Lord, Lord, why me? Why have You brought this misfortune down on MY head? Why do you interrupt my orgy of self-indulgence by forcing me to make hard choices?" and so on.

• We have a suspicion that when the asteroid hit Yucatan and the world began to die, the Baby Boomer Dinosaurs were also running around screaming "Why ME?"

• And we're willing to wager that the Lord didn't deign to reply. Just as he won't deign to reply to those westerners who howl "Why Us?"

• The Greatest Generation did not waste any time weeping: "Why Us?" They dropped their tools, books, pens, lives, picked up guns and went to war like they meant it. Sorry to be cynical, but if westerners cannot figure  "Why Us?", then the west is likely going the way of the dinosaurs, and its better evolutionwise that that happens.

0230 GMT July 13, 2008

• Hezbollah Now Has Veto Power In Lebanese Cabinet So when the recent fighting in Beirut took place the pundits somberly informed us that Hezbollah's star was now on the wane, it had blotted its copybook by unleashing its guns on the Lebanese, instead of solely on the Israelis. We argued at that point that Hezb knew exactly what it was doing, and it would emerge stronger, not weaker, from the confrontation with the Western back Lebanese government.

• And so it has. It now has 11 cabinet positions, sufficient for a veto. From being an outsiders group treated by the Lebanese government as it was composed of thugs, it has now advanced to holding negative control over Lebanon's governance.

• The next step will be positive control.

• And, of course, Hezb gets to keep its private communications network. That was the issue that got the Lebanese government agitated enough it confronted Hezb, and led it to defeat.

• If analysts would analyze instead of attempting to find facts to supporter their preconceived positions, and if they'd refrain from shooting off their fat mouths without thinking, they would better serve the public.

• PRC, Russia Veto Zimbabwe Resolution to our great disappointment. The way the scheduled vote was being talked up is that Russia had agreed to come on board, and as such we expected PRC, keenly aware of its new position in the world, to also vote for the resolution. Apparently neither country was on board.

• So what was achieved? We wonder if PRC/Russia see the US is playing the same game against them that they used to play against the US? Both nations would keep introducing resolution after resolution against the US/allies/friends, knowing full well the US would veto the move. US would duly oblige, feel self-righteous, and its name would be mud all over again in the rest of the world.

• In the last 20 years, even most of the 3rd World has become serious about democracy and human rights. True, this revolution is yet to influence some governments, but as a general proposition, you will be hard put to find 3rd worlders who actually support Zimbabwe.

• The US has scored another psychological victory and made PRC/Russia look bad. The losers either way are the people of Zimbabwe.

• Foreign Fire Crews Help California We wonder why we haven't heard more of this in the ordinary media. Military.com quoting AP says fire crews from Australia, Canada, Greece, Mexico, and New Zealand are coming to work alongside US firefighters and Guard troops in California. This is the sort of good news that helps make one a bit more cheerful in the face of the daily barrage of negative news.

• Non News: Iraq Had Yellowcake Someone in a blog entry yesterday asked why the media was keeping so quiet about several hundred tons of yellowcake removed from Iraq. Did this not vindicate President Bush and 2003 etc.?

• The reason the media kept quiet may have something to do why the White House kept quiet. That Iraq had yellowcake has been known for at least 20 years that your editor recalls, and it probably had yellowcake in the late 1970s/early 1980s as well, though unlikely it was as much as the 550-tons removed.

• BTW, yellowcake is  U₃O₈ leached from uranium rich ore; the process is a simple one, and any producer shipping uranium ore uses the process to reduce the transport expense. Shipping the ore itself would be like shipping the tons of  mud, rock etc in which you expect to find a  grams of diamonds. You need to convert it into uranium hexaflouride gas ("hex", from UF₆ , the feedstock for uranium enrichment).

• Your editor used to know all this stuff in the days he was trying to convince people Pakistan would not have N-weapons till 2000. In that year he shifted his estimate to 2005, and then to 2010, a date in which he has confidence. So what about the six N-explosions Pakistan staged in 1998? Please don't get the editor started on that line.

• He gave up studying the issue because no one except him cared about it - yes, you can be lonely among 7-billion people. Also because after returning to the US he could not get any money to thoroughly study the issue, and also because after he asked a professor of N-engineer at U. of Maryland a simple question: "How fast does U234 build up when you use centrifuges to get U235?" he was greeted less enthusiastically than he expected. A well-known weapons designer did agree to talk to the editor, but when you are trying to put food on the table working as a manual laborer for the May Company for $5.85/hour, you don't have the opportunity to gad about the country. The weapons designer was already in his late 80s, and by the time your editor got it together to go visit him, he was dead of old age. Really, old people just have no consideration.

• Which reminds the editor: since he is now a bona-fide old person, if you have a question you needed to ask, better get it to him while you can. For complicated questions you will have to visit with the required gift of a Hershey chocolate bar. Used to be ten cents back in the day, now its between 75 and 90 most places. Sometimes one has to wonder if life is really worth living: 75 cents for a Hershey Chocolate bar? 65 cents for 12-ounces of Coke? A dollar for a piece of dead plastic passed off as hamburger? $9.50 to see a movie in a grubby, filthy, stinky movie theatre? $30,000 to buy a decent car? In the editor's day, $30,000 would buy you a 4-bedroom town house less than 8-miles from Harvard Square in the blue-collar towns. Its the End Times, for sure.

0230 GMT July 12, 2008

• The Wonderful World of the Washington Post This is what the WashPo thinks is journalism. Under the headline "Varying Estimates" the newspaper informs us that here is the most recent of changing  assessments of when the Iraqi forces will take over full responsibility for Iraq security:

• The outgoing chief of Iraq training says "next summer", which could mean 12-14 months.

• The previous COAS in October 2006 estimated 12-18 months.

• A retired army general in December 2006 said 18-24 months.

• The US NIE for March 2007 said 12-18 months.

• An independent commission said in September 2007 12-18 months.

• Lets set September, 2009 as the date implied by the first source. The COAS estimate gives an outside date of May 2008. The retired general's estimate gives December 2008. The NIE gives September, 2008. The independent commission says April 1, 2009.

• So we are looking a range of May 2008 to September 2009. So that sure looks like "varying estimates", doesn't it, particularly if you say it with a roll of the eyes to imply "that's what they say now, let's see what they say in 2009".

• So lets ask WashPo a few questions.

• (a) What are the real estimates? The ones you cite are all estimates made Under The Influence, i.e., political influence and for political purposes. Are you aware that none reflects what the US Army actually believes and as such, you should be asking why the politicos gave the military hopelessly inadequate resources to achieve any but the first objective (defeat Iraq Army), and what role has political pressure played in all five estimates.

• (b) Can you assure us that the estimates each rigorously compare to each other in the matter of apples, oranges, and truffles?

• (c) Are you aware that the size of the Iraqi army/security forces to be trained according to 2006 estimates and those now planned are quite different?

• (d) Have you ever yourself done project estimates for a large project being conducted in the middle of a war, and are you aware of the aphorism "the enemy gets a vote too?"

• Have you examples of other similar projects and the correlation between estimates and final results?

• If a civilian mega-construction project - say order of magnitude $100-billion and 1-million workers - fell behind schedule, without factoring in changed mission requirements, by 1-2 years, would your eyes still be rolling?

• Now little boys and little girls of the WashPo: why don't you use  your  allegedly Giant Brains to figure out these matters before you write about them? If you do a good job, Granny Ravi will provide you with a special treat: a super 20 cubic meter excavator of the sort they use in Alberta for the tar sands. You can use it to remove some of the poop you've been dragging around in your diapers all this time.

• US Training Mission The really bad news is that just 16 battalions are fully capable of independent operations - after five years training effort, with a population that already had half a million men in the army/security forces, and a couple of million more who had served in the last 8 years (estimate).

• The good news: those 16 battalions are trained to standards the US has set for Iraq. The standards have no relevance to the Iraqi ability to look after their own security. The Iraqis have their own way of doing things, and had the US let them reorganize the armed force and conduct operations, from the start, you would find that the US training mission would have concluded 2 years ago, aside from specialized training which is an ongoing process.

• The fatal flaw with the US training mission has not been the trainers, who have done a darn good job from what we hear. The flaw is the way the mission was defined and still continues to be defined: train the Iraqis according to US-set standards. The Iraqis are not, never will be, colonial brown Americans. They are Iraqis. Better to have done things their way if speed was the objective. and it should have been the objective. US could have drawn down to 3-4 permanent-based brigades by now.

0230 GMT July 11, 2008

• US Oil Demand Falls 400,000-Barrels/Day Its difficult getting an accurate figure because everyone uses a different base to calculate the drop in demand and talks about different things. The figure most often quoted is the drop in miles driven and an extrapolation to drop in gasoline consumption, but even here it's not clear precisely what's happening.

• Nonetheless, demand is down, and that's good. But economic growth has also braked to a near halt. Of course, economy or not US oil demand keeps growing because its population keeps growing. That the demand is falling is a good sign, slow economy or not.

• What's bad is that Americans so blithely were able to swallow a doubling in oil/gas prices between last year and now. It shows what anyone knows, that Americans do have fat in their household budgets and if an essential good costs more, they have more leeway in paying for it - in this case a lot more - than people in most countries. Americans have a LOT of fat in their driving budgets; till recently we treated the cost of gas as near zero.

• What's good is that obviously a sudden doubling of prices requires time to adapt. You cant just alter every aspect of your life because prices spike. So, for example, SUV sales are down about 50%, which is a huge, huge drop given it's happened in one year. People definitely think twice about buying homes huge distances from work and so on. But if you already live 50-miles away and your whole life is in Town X, you cant just overnight move to Town Y which is 20 miles away. For one thing there's a housing slump, for another, prices of homes in Town Y will go up and the tradeoff may not work. Similarly, it will take 20 years at least to change the layout of American cities and towns so that the critical dependence on personal automobiles is reduced and public transport is built/improved.

• So 400,000-barrels/day is just a start; this figure is going to increase, especially since its likely that oil prices will continue increasing.

• It's only 3% of imports, but its a start. If by conservation Americans can save - say 5% - and by increasing production they can save another 5%, in the short term they can reduce imports by 10-15%, which will be an excellent start.

• The best development is that Americans on both sides of the debate - more conservation versus more production - are starting to move to the middle, and appreciating you need both. Given how ideologically hardline Americans have become on every issue big or small, that is a very big gain indeed.

• A Note On Free Markets And Futures Futures are critical to free markets and the efficient allocation of resources because they smooth price peaks and valleys. They permit consumers/producers a measure of price stability.

• A corn consumer, say a big livestock producer, can lock in prices 1-2 years ahead, eliminating pricing uncertainty. A producer also greatly benefits, he knows what he should plant for the next 1-2 seasons. Everyone gains, and if a futures trader is making fractions of one cent on each dollar worth of goods trades, so what. There are always transaction costs.

• The oil lobby would have you believe that the doubling of oil prices in one year represents no more than demand outstripping supply.

• Next time someone makes that argument to you, be sure to chant "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

• Because oil production is NOT a free market. The word "futures" has an implicit qualifier, which is "free market". But oil production is cartelized. OPEC is not the only cartel. It is to no producer's advantage, be he private or government-owned, to see a reduction in price. The only exception will be a country so desperate for money it will produce all it can.

• Okay, but which country is that? Any major producer is already pulling in gazillions of bucks a day. A minor producer will not shift the price by much, and in any case, say if tomorrow Country X decides it has to have the cash and starts pumping 400,000 barrels/day as opposed to 200,000, the major producers will simply reduce their output by 200,000 and prices will stay the same. Moreover, a country may be desperate, but once you have $30-million of hot, hot, hot cash ("cold cash" seems inappropriate here) coming into its grubby paws, it has little incentive to slay the golden goose.

• And in any case, the cartel - which basically includes all producers and all traders - sets its prices knowing some members will cheat.

• Back to corn. Say the price triples. The entry cost of becoming a major corn producer is - what? Get 100,000 acres on lease, if the price of good corn land is now $2000 (we don't know the figure, haven't looked at agricultural prices recently), a lease will cost you $3,000,000. Get the farm machinery on lease, say cash down payment of $2,000,000. Operating costs for two years - labor, seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, whatever, throw in another $5,000,000. These figures are arbitrary, but we're making a point.

• So in total, $10-million and you're a major corn producer.

• Now say you want a minor oil producer, say 10,000-barrels/day. We have no figures on what it will cost you, but safe to say it will be a lot, lot more than $10-million, possible 10x that, and it will take you 10-years to get output as opposed to say 1-2 years for corn, and in any case, assuming you get the money together, since the entry cost is so high, you have a great incentive to join the cartel. Normal economics stops working.

• Moreover, you have a captive user. US sells about 12-million autos/trucks a year, each vehicle lasts 16 years. That's approaching ~200-million. Imagine what that's going cost to replace with - say - electric cars, leave aside the problem of getting the materials/energy for the switch.

• Remember, only half of US oil goes to fuel vehicles. There's heating oil, lubricants, chemicals, fertilizers, synthetic fibers etc. etc. People are working on a lot of the stuff, for example, someone has come up with - er - synthetic plastics using biological material. (Flash Back: Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate drooling over Anne Bancroft and the gent slides up to him to whisper in his ear "synthetic plastics". But really, this is a great future field.)

• All these problems are resolvable, 30-50 years down line.

• So, oil is not a free market.

• Bush Bashers Beware Do you have a pension coming one day from a state government employer or private employer? Do you have a 401/403 or whatever plan? Do you own shares in mutual funds etc.?

• Then you are in a for a very unpleasant surprise. Look carefully at the breakout of income your savings produced last year. You'll likely find that almost 90% or so of the income came from - Mama, Tell Me It Aint So - oil and commodities.

• Yes, Bush Bashers. You will live better in retirement thanks to Mr. Bush, and 2-billion poor people will live even worse thanks to you.

• Hahahahaha!

• Sorry about that juvenile display, we cant stand people saying dumb things about Bush, Iraq, Oil when they themselves are big gainers.

• BTW, did we tell you? President Obama will hop on to the Increasing Oil Prices Unlimited just as fast as Mr. Bush did - if he did. This thing is beyond any one political leader's control - if he wanted to control it to begin with.

0230 GMT July 10, 2008