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While we wallowed in existential angst ...
Nicaragua The deposed prez slipped into the country and parked himself in the Brazilian Embassy, Talks are going on about talks. Since elections are just a few weeks away, we aren't sure what there is to talk about. Under the constitution, which the deposed prez tried to subvert, leading to his ouster, he can't stand for election again. So he's part of history now.
Pakistan The media has discovered that the Afghanistan Taliban has moved to Quetta since things got hot in the NWFP. This gave us several seconds worth of giggles. News for the media: Pakistan Government is moving the Taliban leadership to Karachi, where it's going to be near impossible for the US to send UAVs to kill the leadership. The move to Quetta came at least two years ago, possibly much earlier.
Global warming A scientist says that humans were changing the climate thousands of years ago because of slash-and-burn agriculture. Settled agriculture changed things for the better. Now, as far as we know nowhere has this scientist said that global warming is not a problem today. But people are after him because, they say, others less informed than themselves may take this scientists work to argue that humans have nothing to do with the current warming issue.
So this creates an interesting conundrum: to stop people from misusing a scientist's work to argue humans and global warming have little to do with each other, we need to suppress this man's work? So what's next? Censoring those scientists - and there a few - who argue global warming is a hoax? How is this different from what the Church did regarding unapproved thinking before the Enlightenment, and what totalitarian regimes have been doing since whenever?
Kashmir A sad but true story. An army unit received information terrorists, including two wanted leaders, were parked inside a house. A major and a lance-corporal climbed the roof of the house to surprise the terrorists inside. The terrorists detected the intruders, and fired through the ceiling, killing the major and the corporal. A firefight lasting two days resulted. A lieutenant-colonel and a major plus other soldiers were wounded in the firefight. The four baddies inside the house were killed.
Now look, people, we greatly admire the Indian Army re. its leading from the front policy. We absolutely respect and support its decision not to use firepower just to save the lives of its own men while killing innocent bystanders. But you cannot fight an insurgency by losing officers, who are already in really short supply (40%s shortfall), at this rate. It's different if this is some big, critical action. We asked the Army to come up with a better idea. Yes, we know the major and his lance corporal volunteered: it's always that way. But surely his commanding officer should have said no. And what is his commanding officer, plus another major, doing so close to the action that they get wounded? Indian army infantry battalions often operate with 12-15 officers, and these are big, 900 man battalions. You cant have three officer casualties just to kill four terrorists.

0230 GMT September 29, 2009

Afghanistan

Having said everything we have to say about Afghanistan, we feel its time to withdraw and start blogging about plastic pink lawn flamingos. The topic, it seems to us, is more meaningful than discussing Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, before we depart the field, we feel reader vladimirikanov deserves a reply a little more detailed than "Goodbye, and thanks for the fish".
Vlad has challenged us on two grounds: (a) we have been inconsistent in our editorializing on the subject, and (b) cutting and running is not an option, so where are our solutions?
So rather than agree with that point and refute this point, let's go back to first causes.
Why are we in Afghanistan? To deny global terrorists and in particular AQ a base. Lets forget the business about making Afghanistan a democracy - that's all post facto to our decision to go to Afghanistan.
Problem: the Taliban were never America's enemy, if they ever knew where America was in the first place. They hosted AQ, but then we chased AQ into Pakistan, where it thrives. The longer we stay in Afghanistan, the greater the risk we will make a whole new set of terror enemies, the Taliban in Afghanistan. Of course, after all these years there are all sorts of cross connections being built up between AQ, Afghan Taliban, and Pakistan Taliban and extremists of every hue. Nonetheless, suppose we were to tell the Afghan Taliban "sorry about that, we're leaving, lets discuss what we can do to advance our mutual interests and forget the past." It worked with Vietnam, no reason it shouldn't work in Afghanistan.
Are we prepared to go into Pakistan and sort out the problem of anti-America terror at its root? Answer: we are not.
Can we beat up the Pakistanis sufficient they will beat up their terrorists? We've been beating up the Pakistanis since 2001, and really using them for whack-a-mole practice these last few months. Result: Pakistan has become steadily more unstable. Pakistanis have allegedly won some victories in the NWFP, but all that's happening is that the bad guys in Sindh and Punjab are working hard to huff and puff and blow down the corrupt house of the Pakistan elite.
It's just a matter of time before Pakistan blows up.
If the US wants to add to its problems, we suggest it keep beating up Pakistan, raising the temperature higher quicker so that the explosion comes sooner.
Is the US serious winning about the GWOT? No it is not, because if it were, it would overthrow the Saudi monarchy as a start. For a few hundred million a year - about what we spend in a day in the GWOT - the Saudis have made sure Islamic extremists everywhere have enough money to keep going.
Our leaders and power elite is 100% corrupt when it comes to the Saudis. They are in bed with the Saudis, who use the money we pay for their oil to pay the extremists who kill our boys and girls on the world's battlefields.
Last, is there any chance the American people will rise up and hang their corrupt elite?
We will answer this question with another question. Is there any chance Editor will get a date this Saturday or any Saturday?
You know the answer to that one. So you know the answer to the primary question.

The Editor's Problem...

...aside from the never-to-be resolved one of getting a date. Editor is not really the right person to deal with any ambiguous situations. Yes, Editor is Indian by birth and culture, and Indians are the world's experts in shades of grey.
The problem is not that he can't see the other person's argument. Give him any argument, and he'll make a better case than the original person.
The problem is that despite his Indian background, his formative influences - in India and much as in the US - lie in Protestantism.
Despite all his attempts to be liberal as liberal is defined in the modern sense, he is a liberal of the old school. There is one right and there is one wrong. Existence for an educated member of the elite - yes, I too am of the elite though I have spent decades pretending I am not - boils down to three simple words: Duty, honor, country.
The GWOT began because evil people attacked the US - not in 2001, but earlier. The US did nothing to deserve the hatred of the Islamic world. Just a few years ago, for example, US attacked a Christian country to stop it from killing its Muslims. The pro-Israel thing as a reason to hate America is absolute balderdash. People say we were unjustly attacked by the Japanese. Not so: we were strangling Japan to death, it had to fight back. But we have not done anything for the Islamists to attack us.
There is only one solution, which is to kill them all. They are wrong, and we are right. Editor says this as a liberal not as a conservative.
Since the US elite is NOT willing to do everything neccessary to destroy Islamic fundamentalism, and is in bed with the financiers, as far as editor is concerned, the US elite are traitors to their country.
So what's the sense of wasting more time discussing the GWOT? We're discussing the shadow play, not the real thing. That's the way the elite keeps us fuddled - after the cheap beer and free TV, that is.

So, back to the new Pink Plastic Flamingo Blog...

...the really urgent thing is not the GWOT, but should the flamingo's beak be black or yellow?
Readers' responses eagerly awaited.

0230 GMT September 28, 2009

A visit to DPRK

(In the Dream World, of course)

So as there no news worth reporting tonight, I thought I'd give my five loyal readers (or is it four? I tend to exaggerate, sometimes) a glimpse of what I mean when I repeatedly say "I need to get a life."
Sound asleep in my cozy bed, with five pillows instead of the usual four because my four Teddy Bears decided they wanted to spend time in their own room, thus freeing up half the bed, and permitting a sound sleep - the Bears sleep during the day and party at night, and believe me, having four rambunctious bears partying on top of your head all night can result in lost sleep - I woke with a start to a bright new day - in a mountain resort for foreign diplomats in DPRK, somewhere NW of the capital. Very clean air, very quiet, lots of trees. Slight nip in the air, fall is coming.
I was only mildly puzzled: in dreams I often take a wrong turn and end up where I was not planning to go. But no matter.
The resort was full of diplomats from many countries, gathered for no particular reason. The DPRK hosts were dressed casually, and unfailing polite and quickly responsive to requests, such as "May I have a second bucket of hot water for my morning bath?"
So I am wandering around, attempting - futilely - to have "conversations" with the young lady diplomats who are quite acceptably cute, but not very interesting "conversation" wise. So I am in a room and when I open the door to another room to see if there are any cute young lady diplomats there, the door won't open.
Rumor says the DPRK is not pleased at the way its being treated by the west, and so is restricting our access to parts of the building. I am mildly amused - ah, just another crisis, here I am caught in a strange land, and see I have left my passport, ID, wallet at home back in Washington DC. My cell phone too - which is odd, as I don't have a cell phone to begin with. But anyway, everything will work out. Or not.
So as the day progresses, more and more rooms are closed off. So I hie over to one of the DPRK minders to complain. "You Americans are not good to our people," he says politely but firmly.
Aha! I say to myself. This misunderstanding shall soon be cleared up. "I live in America, but I'm not an American," I explain. "Moreover, I'm not even a diplomat, just a lowly school teacher in a low-performing school district. I hve no clue what I'm doing here. I should get back, the school will be wondering why I'm not at work."
Well, eventually the DPRK lot decide yes, its all a mistake, they have clearance from the Ministry, I can leave. Once they realize I have no wallet, leave alone credit cards or money in the wallet, they say: "No problem, we'll put you on a flight home. Just remember to tell your President how considerately we've treated you. we love America and Americans."
"But I'm not America, and the President won't listen to me anyway," I say.
"Haha," say the minders, "You cannot fool us. You work for the CIA as an NOC, and the President is waiting to hear our message." I resign myself. After all, I have done stranger things that land up at the White House insisting I see the President as I bear an important message from DPRK.
So we go outside, and parked in the driveway I see a DC-4 with no markings. I frown. Does anyone even fly DC-4s anymore? Anyway, why worry. A plane is a plane, and I do remember fondly the DC-4s in my younger days.
So we board, and we start taxiing - and continue taxiing. DPRK doesn't have enough fuel to actually fly the 'plane, so we're just going to roll down the road to Pyongyang IAP, where they'll put me on a Boeing 707 for home.
The only problem is, the "road" is unpaved and the width of a single lane jeep track, so I am repeatedly going "Watch out, the wing is going to clip that tree." All in my head, of course. It never helps to show fear.
So everything is going well till the road starts sloping up and mountains are looming up on both sides. Uh oh, I say to myself, but of course, outwardly I am all calm. The plane starts accelerating and I know just exactly what's happening: the road is going to come to an abrupt end and we're going to be airborne, madly scrambling for altitude to get across the next mountain range.
Lurch in the pit of stomach as we fall off the edge of the range; engines are screaming as we try and grab height, the next mountain range is coming closer and closer and we are not going to make it....but we do, scraping the side of the mountain...
And then we're up and over, and before us is the most beautiful sight - and, I remember, the reason I came to DPRK just for this, valley after valley, with cold winter's grasp over everything, the mountains frozen under green ice, visibility 200-kilometers...
Lovely...till I look out of the window and see our DC-4 has only one engine on that side, not two, and its been a few decades since I've been in a DC-4, but I do know a plane that size and weight cannot fly on two engines, it needs four, and we are g-o-i-n-g d-o-o-o-o-w-n...
And I am shrieking - all inside, of course, must maintain the stiff upper lip and all that - "...its only a dream wake up before we crash, wake up, wake up..."
So I do wake up, sweating all over, but perfectly calm on the outside, a gentleman does not panic and all that...
Before falling asleep I scribble 2 notes to myself: "Are you really so bored with life that you're willing to fly over DPRK in a 2-engined DC-4?" and "Yes."

0230 GMT September 27, 2009

Afghanistan Round One goes to US President The US president makes it very clear he is not going to authorize anything for Afghanistan until his strategy review is completed. No indication when that might be.
So the effort by US generals in Afghanistan to get an immediate commitment of additional troops has been batted to a standstill. Lets see what the generals' response is.
But here is one problem with the President's strategy The strategy relies heavily on negotiation with the Taliban to give up their bad old ways and to convert to brushing their teeth twice a day, using deodorant, and changing their underwear at least once a day - you know, the American way.
The problem is that the Taliban have nearly won this war. So why should they negotiate. Kind of like the Allies are on Germany's frontiers and Berlin says: "Time for a strategy change! Lets negotiate with our enemies!"
Too late, good buddies. That train has not just departed the platform, it's completed its journey. Even if the US manages to turn Afghanistan around, it will take a minimum of five years of beating up the Taliban before the baddies get the picture and decide negotiations is the only way out.
In one of those masterful statements that makes American media into a laughing stock the New York Times says that the President has discovered the military is not monolithic in its support for a troop increase. Does the NYT read its own op-ed pages? Civilian bigwigs are also not monolithic in opposing a troop increase. We generally read the WashPo more than the NYT, but its our impression the influential civvies editorializing in WashPo are at least 3-1 against the Obama idea of no more troops.
And how is any of this supposed to matter? US strategy in Afghanistan is not a popularity contest, where the Prez tallies up pro people and con people and then decides who has the most votes. He's supposed to do the right thing for the United States regardless of if its popular or not. There's a word for this: it's called leadership.
Zimbabwe The UK Telegraph says that President Mugabe combined several previously white-owned farms into a 10,000-acre holding he farms.
Readers may recall that Zimbabwe's complete collapse - as opposed to partial collapse - began in 2000 when Mugabe "nationalized" white farms. That crashed the agriculture economy and the country, which used to be a food exporter, became unable to feed itself, and now suffers from widespread malnutrition,

0230 GMT September 26, 2009

Water on Mars is today's news, water on the Moon is so yesterday. The presence of ice on Mars has been known for some time, but now it's learned that the water is 99% pure and likely in thick ice sheets.
Meanwhile, New Scientist says a NASA experiment might be one way to get water from the Moon's surface. NASA heated a -150 C lunar soil analog to -50 C using microwaves, and the water went straight to vapor which can be collected.
Iran caught with pants down Seems Iran has a secret uranium production facility underground at Qom, which the west has been tracking for some time.
So US waited till the Iran president arrived in New York. Then a Time interviewer, primed with the story, asked the Iranian president about the facility. The magazine says he was shaken. So now the west has demanded a reply from Teheran within six days.
But far from acting shaken, the Iranian president has brushed off the charges, saying Iran has no secret facilities, and the US should apologize for making false accusations.
Orbat.com readers, please don't hold your breath. This discovery and confrontation will get Iran to do - what, exactly? We think it will get Iran to be much more careful on concealment.
Gaddafi's interpreter thrown in the towel Readers will know about the Libyan leader's 96-minute speech in the UN - he was allotted 15-minutes. He brought his own interpreter instead of using the UN staff because the Libyan leader believes he speaks a special Arabic. Apparently 75-minutes into the speech his interpreter lost it, shouting into the open mike in Arabic that he couldn't take it anymore. It is said that the interpreter went goggly-eyed trying to make sense of his president's rambling, convoluted, and wide ranging remarks.

0230 GMT September 25, 2009

Water on moon More details have been released. The water layer on the moon is only a few molecules thick. This means to get a liter of water you need to harvest at least one hectare (2.4 acres). But scientists believe that water runs off toward the poles during the lunar day. So there may be more water there, and we will know in a couple of weeks how much more. And scientists are still trying to figure out if water is trapped below the surface.
Somali insurgents expand control says New York Times, but we are unsure what this means because they are said to have taken over a small town. They already control most of Somalia, and control of areas is constantly changing. So seizing a small town may mean precisely nothing either way.
Civilians offer different Afghan strategy This would focus on counter-terror and not on counter-insurgency, and rely on building up the Afghan armed forces. The problem, as Bill Roggio notes, is that this strategy likely will not work. Read http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/09/counterterrorism_ops_will_expa.php
Of course, as we've said before all choices in Afghanistan are bad. You're looking not for good choices, but for least bad.
Meanwhile, again there is rising unhappiness in Italy and Germany about the Afghan mission. While the German government for now, at least, is hanging tough, the Italian government is openly saying it's looking for a way out.

0230 GMT September 24, 2009

We'll return to the GWOT tomorrow

Moon has water Nothing to do with GWOT, but a discovery that deserves the headline. The Indian mission to the moon last year was equipped with eleven instruments from around the world, including two from NASA. One of the two could detect the presence of water, and it has; further, water is still being formed on the moon.
The water means that aside from H2O to drink and to use is laboratory and industrial processes, you have oxygen and you have hydrogen for fuel. So - assuming all this works out, of course, you could refuel your rocket on the moon for outward missions. and further down the road, you could even build rockets on the moon. This will change the shape of space exploration.
But before we all start rejoicing: we read somewhere else that the problem of radiation in long manned missions is much more serious than originally believed. Unless someone comes up with light-weight shielding, for now we may not be going anywhere in space.
The mission, an orbiter, failed before its service life ended, but managed to send back enough data on water and other things before it croaked.
US has an orbiter around the moon that on October 9 will crash a probe into the moon. Hopefully this will throw up a plume of detritus including water which can be examined by telescope.
Meanwhile, another US orbiter has detected lots of hydrogen at the poles, and has determined that in spots the moon is even colder than Pluto. This last suggests there may be water trapped under the surface from the days the moon formed.

0230 GMT September 23, 2009

Acknowledgement The news that the US commander in Afghanistan has threatened to resign if his requests for more troops are not met was not, as we assumed, from the mainstream media. It was from McClatchy Newspapers, reported by Bill Roggio in his blog the Threat Matrix. Please see http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/09/mcchrystal_to_resign_if_not_gi.php for Mr. Roggio's story and a link to the original story.
Another scuffle on global warming With the UN about to take up the issue at its annual meeting, a new scuffle has broken out. The anti camp says temperatures have gone up just 0.01 F since 1999 and indications are we are in a cooling period. The anti camp does not say there is no global warming, they say we have time to properly study the matter before rushing to judgments and precipitous action.
The pro camp, however, is not impressed. It says that a decade is too short a time to give a proper base for evaluating climate change.
When you read up on this stuff, remember, trillions of dollars are at stake if global warming is declared as irrevocably here. This is a whacking great amount of money. Keep in mind that the pro camp, however honest and genuine most of its members may be, has a vast stake of $$$$ in this debate.
We are not taking a stand on the matter. We are simply pointing out it is hopelessly naive for anyone to believe that science nowadays is all about scientists dedicated to the truth toiling away the lonely hours. Science is about Big Bucks, just as everything is about Big Bucks now, and truth is the first casualty. So, as responsible citizens, our readers have a duty to apply their own mind to the pro-con debate. Sure, none of us are experts, but you would truly be aghast at how often experts are dishonest and are pushing agendas, be it science, medical insurance, foreign policy, education, crime, economics, conservation, and so on.
On living forever Ray Kurzweil says that in 25 years immortality will be here. We're a bit surprised its that long, we were kind of under the impression it was 5-10 years. Of course, surely people have different sets of assumptions about their choice of this time frame or the other.
In case you can't wait 25 years, here's a way of extending your life we learned of the other day. Apparently if you stick yourself in the middle of a giant mass, time slows. To dilate time by a factor of 4 - one hour passes for you while four pass in the outside world - all you need to do is to reassemble Jupiter into a dense sphere with a six meter diameter chamber inside. You pop yourself into the chamber, and voila! Four hundred years becomes the new one hundred years.
Please don't ask what would be the point of this. We're from Iowa, how would we know? You want to live forever, here's a start.
Equally, you could park yourself in the middle of a super-massive black hole - we don't know how to do the calculations, but it seems to us if you get it right you should be able to able to live inside the black hole for 10^100 years.
Mind you get it just right, though, or else you'll become one very long and very thin limp noodle.
So you emerge after 10^100 years, and what do you see?
(a) President Obama still trying to get his health care bill through Congress. (b) The Material Girl making yet another comeback. (c) Branjelina adopting their googleth kid. (d) US debating another boost to troops levels in Afghanistan. (e) Israel continuing settlement construction, by now the settlements fill known space in 10 raised to the fazillion universes. (f) Virginia Department of Transportation has just shut all rest stops along the road that runs from one end of the Israeli settlements to the other, which creates a problem if you really, really, have to go. (g) Bill Gates resurrected for the shmishllionth time, still looks like he could have been the Fourth Stooge. (h) Mars mission still waiting to be approved. (i) Huge Chavez still giving the speech he began in 2009. (j) Editor still to get a date on Saturday night, or any time of any day of the week, in any universe.

0230 GMT September 22, 2009

Afghanistan: Autumn Surprise

So the US Government fired the previous commander in Afghanistan, saying he wasn't being sufficiently aggressive. In his own defense he could have said he had so few troops he couldn't do much of anything except hang in there by the tips of his fingers.
By giving the new commander five more brigades, the Government agreed the previous commander lacked troops, and if the process seems unfair, it is. Why couldn't the previous commander have been given five brigades? That's life at the top of the command chain.
The old commander stuck strictly to soldiering. He kept a low profile; as far as he was concerned, Washington made the decisions on troop levels, he had to make do what Washington gave him.
So USG decides to find a really aggressive go-getter to show its serious about turning Afghanistan around, and it chooses the epitome of aggressiveness, the head of US Special Forces Command.
So Washington has a go-getter at the helm and has given him more troops. Washington expects him to pull the rabbit out of the hate, or the hat of the rabbit, heaven only knows what Washington wants. It's a bit like Freud's classic comment: "What does a woman want? Dear God, what does she want?" Which goes to show the old boy may have had no idea how to heal your mind, but he sure as heck knew that neither God nor man can ever understand a woman. This, of course, presupposes that God is a man. If God is a woman, then She knows darn well what a woman wants, and that is everything. But we digress: this is supposed to about Afghanistan, not about women.
So Washington goes back to snoozing, thinking Afghanistan is taken care of, the Prez is seen as toughly decisive on national security, all is well with the world.
Suddenly, there is an unpleasantly loud noise and Washington de-snoozes to realize the new general has fired a heavy cannonball across Washington's butt. That being the part of the anatomy that Washington reasons with, so that was sensible of the new general. But we digress.
The new general clearly says he wants a complete change in strategy to make it into a classic counterinsurgency: hearts and minds, focus on protecting the civilians instead of killing the insurgents, get the government to work, etc etc. All good stuff, with one problem: no one has shown it works better than the old way, which was Kill Them All and Let God Sort Them Out, which has the virtue of being very cheap, very effective, and very quick. But digress.
So Washington's a bit unhappy that the new general talks so much, after all, you'd think an experienced SOC veteran would hike 1000-kilometers through the jungle as silently as a shadow, and then cut the throats of the enemy at their camp one by one, making no more noise than an owl making poopy. But the press, Congress, administration has decided to make the man a star, and sure enough, he is starting to demonstrate the characteristics of a star. They have invited him to the casting couch, and he's starting to claim the whole couch.
Then come the whispered little hints: the good general is preparing a range of options for between two and more eight brigades, but its not his job to choose what level, that's for Washington, but just in case youse in Washingtoon don't get it, WE'RE LOSING THE WAR, but really, it's for you to decide, I', just a little ol' general, blush, flutter, and so on.
Well, Toon Town is not happy with this. They're not looking to get out of Iraq just to make an equally large and indefinite commitment to Afghanistan. Secretary Gates goes around making the point not every problem can be solved by throwing troops at it, and at what point to do the Afghans say: Wait a minute, these Yankees are no liberators, they're blooming occupiers, and we all know the word occupiers to the Afghans is the same thing as dangling half a freshly killed cow in front of your pet tiger and saying, "come on snookums, din din, mind your manners."
So by now weeks have passed, and New Gen is fed up, because Toon Town does not seem to be getting the point.
So a couple of days ago, he fires not a shot, but a whole series of salvos, across the Toonsters' butts, and they suddenly wake up, realizing that the wind and noise beneath their sails is not - er - the recycling of their latest great meal at a fash Washington power restaurant, but actually dangerous stuff that will blow your - er - thing-you-sit-on off if you don't move fast. Because this salvo says "PEEPS, EVEN IF YOU GIVE ME EVERYTHING I'VE ASKED FOR, WE COULD STILL LOSE THIS, BUT ALL I AM SAYING IS, IF YOU GIVE, THERE IS HOPE, IF YOU DON'T GIVE, MIGHT AS WELL QUIT NOW BEFORE WE'RE THROWN OUT." In other words, the subtext is, Shades of Vietnam: Never ending war, but the light's at the end of the tunnel, and those of you who say there is no exit for this tunnel because its a dead end shat, and the light you see is a lightbulb halfway down, are idiots.
Well. From what we hear, Toon Town starts drawing in its collective breath to yell back at New Gen, "HOW DARE YOU TRY AND TELL US WHAT TO DO, YOU DUMB SOLDIER. WHO TOLD YOU TO COME IN THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR, THE SERVANTS ENTRANCE IS THE BACK," when another salvo arrives, and this is not iron cannonballs, but 5th Gen guided weapons that zero in on individual hairs on the -er - place-where-you-sit. This salvo is very subtle: GIVE ME WHAT I WANT OR I RESIGN!
So: as far as we are concerned, this is the funniest thing that has happened in a long time. On the one hand you have a hand-selected general who has gotten out of control so quickly Toon Town does not know what hit it. You also have a general who for the first time in a very long time in US history is standing up to the pols and civilians instead of kissing them on - er - place-where-you-sit and telling the civilians "It's my way, or I'll take the highway and YOU figure it out."
And on the other you have a Prez who thinks he has simply to keep talking till those who disagree with him keel over and die, and who won't face realities. The number one reality being Afghanistan is not about us, its about the Afghans, and there is nothing we can do if the Afghans wont play ball with us. And they've made it clear they wont, and its also very clear that what America wants - efficient armed forces, clean police, a government that delivers, zero corruption etc are simply pipe dreams and we aren't going to get it.
The number two reality is there are no cheap solutions in Afghanistan. One hundred thousand troops is not going to do it. May be 250,000 can, and may be not. For all the PhDs that America seems to have in its military, government, academia, whatever, no one seems to have the slightest common sense. It may never have been possible to win this war cheaply, and now the only question is, is it going to cost half a trillion or a trillion or two, or what, and is it going to take five years or ten or twenty or fifty or what, and what exactly is it we are doing there to begin with except daily expanding the mission, or what?
You, the American people have to face the reality. Regarding foreign policy, your leaders/power elite are completely clueless. So it was during BillyBob's time, so it was during W's time, and so it is during Mr. Yes We Can's time. Bush I and Mr. Reagan were supremely lucky because the other side messed up to give us great triumphs; still, our instinct says that these were gentlemen of the old regime, and if presented with a real life-death crisis, they would have won through. Now we've had the Boomers and now we have the Gen Ys or whatever, and all we at Orbat.com can do is give you the old advice we used to get in school in the 1950s in case of nuclear attack: Sit under your desk, grasp your knees, and kiss your - " er - place-where-you-sit " - goodbye."
Goodbye, good buddies.

0230 GMT September 21, 2009

For the complicated ties between Pakistan military and the Islamists, read

http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/09/ilyas_kashmiri_was_a_pakistani.php

Random Thought: PRC Machinery Exports to US are seven times (~$140-billion) the US's machinery exports to PRC. First it was toys, clothes, shoes. Then it was consumer electronics. Now its the hard core stuff in which China is out-exporting the US. Machinery alone accounts for half the US trade deficit with China.
So what exactly is the US supposed to sell China to pay for the huge monthly import bill from that country? Currently US runs a $20-billion/month deficit. The Chinese are not going to continue buying US paper.
There is a bright side to this: when China becomes a first-world economy and we become a third world economy, we can export toys, shoes, and clothing to the Chinese.
Divorce is bad for the environment says New Scientist: "...if all the couples who divorced in the US had stayed together, in 2005 alone they would have used 2373 billion liters less water and 73 billion kilowatt-hours less electricity. Each divorced person spent 46 per cent more on electricity and 56 per cent more on water."
By our calculation, the electricity part means 10.5 GW less installed generating capacity at 0.8 utilization, or a bit more than 1% of US installed capacity.
So how about comparing that with the costs of disharmonious living such as more liquor and pills consumed?
Just a thought.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327261.700-better-world-share-things.html

0230 GMT September 20, 2009

Rohit Vats on Nyoma, Ladakh airfield Please follow the URL below to see the location of Nyoma Airfield in Ladakh:

http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=33.2042224&lon=78.64151&z=10&l=0&m=h

If you navigate on the map towards North-North East, you can make out Chusul and Spanggur Gap.

You can also check the photographs of airfield and AN-32 takeoff at his URL: http://livefist.blogspot.com/
While the requirement for all weather road to allow for movement and induction of troops and stores is desirable, don't you think in light of absence of same (all weather road), activation of forward airstrips is a positive move? This will at least help build capability of quick induction of troops ( Bde strength at least) initially. The work on tunnel below the Rohtang Pass is to begin this year and will completed in 2013 (hopefully!!!). Till the time we can achieve all weather road status, there are 3 more treacherous passes on Manali Leh Road, the current opening of forward airfield should help.
You have categorized Chusul-Demchok as souther sector (of Ladakh Sector; can you please elaborate as what will constitute the North and Central Sector of this section?
Editor Changchemo is the central or middle sector. I have reproductions of the US Army Engineer series 1948 1:250,000 maps but it is is night here and I cannot read the map. Will check tomorrow and let you know what I can make out. The northern sector is the so-called 22 Sector.
Changchemo and 22 sectors are held primarily by Ladakh Scouts and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
Getting to Leh from the northern and central sectors is out of the question because of the geography, so the real threat comes from the southern sector. India has a brigade each at Chushul and Demochok (3 Division, Leh) but the reserve brigade of this division (163) which used to be at Leh has been gone for almost 40 years and was never replaced. 102 Brigade at Thoise can provide cover for the northern sector providing there is no threat from Pakistan 323 and other brigades.
Nonetheless, the army is not short of troops to send to Eastern Ladakh is the need arises. The issue is, rather, the Indians need to increase their permanent presence in the area because of the sustained Chinese buildup in capabilities and roads. China is consistently and steadily encroaching on Indian territory. They act like they are doing India a favor by letting Indian forces stay in Eastern Ladakh. This has to end and the Government of India has to make clear it is doing the Chinese a favor by letting them stay in the region.
There is also the larger question of recovering Ladakh. Its fine for the government to say "Oh, well, there's nothing we can do about it, we can't fight China". With that defeatist attitude India is not going to get anywhere. China respects only strength. This is a lesson that should have been learned in 1962, but if it was learned, it has been forgotten.
China meanwhile is determined to assert itself all along its periphery, and why should it not. That is its right as a rising power. But that doesn't mean the GOI should go into a complete funk, the way it has. This will only encourage the Chinese to push more. The Chinese used to fear the capabilities of the India Army along the Tibet border. India has significantly weakened that capability, thinking there is nothing to worry about, and naturally the Chinese are taking advantage.
By the way, more of the typical nonsense the Government puts out to the media and the media swallows whole. First there was the business of the government sending a Flanker squadron to the Northeast. Big deal. As the IAF modernizes, since the Flanker is to be a big part of the force, the Northeast is going to get Flanker squadrons regardless of the present crisis. And the Chinese are supposed to be quivering in their felt booties because of a single Flanker squadron? Anyone in GOI have the least clue about what's happening with the PLAAF?
Now there is the business of GOI saying it is stationing a Flanker squadron at Barielly in Central Command, and the media linking this to the tension in Ladakh. Barielly has been a major IAF base for decades. Flankers going there is again just part of modernization and of no significance whatsoever.
This whole thing about stationing aircraft to counter China is complete hogwash. The air force is a flexible instrument. It can concentrate as required by operational conditions. Tomorrow if there is a crisis, all six (or however many Flanker squadrons there currently are) will deploy to the north regardless of where are their home bases.

0230 GMT September 19, 2009

Al-Shabab attack on AU Somalia force kills 17 peacekeepers including the major-general who was deputy commander of the mission. Instead of the sanctioned 8,000 troops the mission has only 5,000. The AU has called for more heavy weapons for government forces and appears to have also suggested greater freedom for the AU force to attack insurgents. UN has imposed an arms embargo on Somalia, but the US, at least, has been giving arms to the government, and neighboring countries have been doing their best to interdict Eritrean arms supplies to the insurgents.
India activates new airfield on China border in Ladakh, at 4000-meters, 23-kilometers from the Line of Control. This is at a place called Nyoma, with which we are unfamiliar. If any reader has a clue as to where it is, please let us know.
This is jolly brave of the Indians, having reopened three abandoned airfields and built this new one. Might we be so bold as to point out that while the Indians are building airfields that can take a 5-ton cargo payload aircraft, the Chinese are building 8-ton roads? A convoy moving at a sedate 20-km/hour with vehicles spaced at 100-meters can deliver a theoretical 1600-tons an hour whereas these airfields can handle - what? 10-15 sorties a day?
India needs to stop futzing about and put a second division into the Demchok-Chushul sector (south) , a reinforced infantry brigade into the central sector and an independent brigade into the north sectors. Plus a full complement of corps artillery and at least two armor battlegroups. Anything else is complete nonsense.
From Art Mosel on Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Your comment about the Cuban Missile Crisis actually resulting in a favorable situation for the US by giving up obsolete systems to get Russian ones out has a serious flaw. Within six months, Russia was using Cuba to base missile submarines on their patrols off the US coast, so we did not remove the missile threat posed by Cuba. Additionally, we promised and more or less have continued to honor the promise of not allowing attacks on Cuba to be backed by the US government, thereby allowing Castro to live without fear of either invasion or US backed insurrection ever since. I still feel that the crisis was resolved in Russia's favor. She still based missiles in Cuba (abet on floating platforms which were even harder to neutralize) and she secured Castro, not bad for an exchange that you think that she lost.
Celtic Woman - The Nightmare Journey Note to self by Editor: take double-doze of sleep medicine tonight. In the gym Editor was watching Celtic Woman - The Greatest Journey on the TV (sound off as he cant otherwise focus on the exercise). All illusions about delicate Rose of Tralee and The Last Rose of summer and so on destroyed by the Celtic Ladies. The width of their bare shoulders exceeded that of American football players wearing padding. Their beams were so wide these ladies would make stable platforms for sea-based Aegis. Every time they leapt about like gazelles you were concerned they'd fall through the earth and next thing we know the ladies would be having tea with the Ozzie Kangas. This has all happened since Erie joined the EU. It's the additives in the food. The horror, the horror. Note to self: take triple regular dose of sleep medicine.

0230 GMT September 18, 2009

US Scraps Central Europe ABM Shield...

...or at least that's what the media and administration critics would have us believe. We too believed this was a Great Step Backward until we read the fine print. Along with some information from other non-media sources, this is what is actually happening.
First, the Central Europe ABM barrier apparently had a new kind of missile, not the type deployed in Alaska. We don't know what the characteristics of this missiles were, but that doesn't mean some sharp-eyed weapons groupie somewhere hasn't sussed out details. All that we can infer is that this boy accelerated faster - that's just an inference from what people have said to us.
Second, Secretary Gates was Not Happy with this interceptor as well as a whole bunch of other aspects of the Central Europe barrier. What things? Well, here's the funny thing. Everyone and his thrice married aunt has their opinions on the decision to scrap this barrier, but no one has been told what were the other unhappy making aspects of the project. So unless one knows sufficient technical details about the Unhappiness, we aren't really in a position to judge. We do know both the Alaska field and the Central European installation had/have a great deal information that is hidden from "experts".
Third, a new kind of barrier will replace the original proposal. This will be built around a more advanced Standard 3 which currently arms several US and Japanese Navy Aegis cruisers and destroyers. These missiles could be land-based as well as the usual sea-based. Another system, land-based, will be integrated with Standard 3. Before you jump to this conclusion that this has to be THAAD, we believe the US has a classified land-based interceptor in the works. We'd put our money on this new interceptor. This is the reason, we suspect, that IOC has been pushed out to 2015 from 2012, suggesting the new interceptor is still in development.
Fourth, and this is where you can stomp all over us and we wont be able to defend ourselves, we believe the US has a completely blacked out long-range interceptor under development. This boy will go to Central Europe and wherever else needed, in the last part of the next decade.
So does this mean we've suddenly become fans of Secretary Gates? Not really. We still believe like all US military officials, he is pushing for the future best in preference to the present OK-sort-of-stuff. We'd rather the US keep improving the Alaska interceptors incrementally and adding at least one more field of 40. (By the way, Secretary Gates is so disenamored of the Alaska interceptor he doesn't want to fund the full 40, leave alone expansion.)
But this begs the question: what do we think about US pulling back from the Central Europe barrier? Very little, truthfully. See, that was a political rather than a military decision - again, we can't say who told us. If Secretary Gates and crew have decided the political objectives can be traded off against political gains from scrapping the 2012 barrier, that's fine with us.
People might want to remember that US traded Thor and Jupiter missiles based in Europe for Soviet missiles in Cuba. Tons of Americans seem to believe that was some very clever move the Soviets made and which seriously dents the aura of an American success in the Cuban missile crisis.
Tut tut. Oh ye of little faith. US was already phasing out land-based Thor and Jupiter, replacing them with the seaborne Polaris. Thor and Jupiter took considerable time to ready for launch, lacked accuracies possible with Polaris, and more to the point, were fat, sitting ducks for a Soviet missile first strike. So if a trade really took place, it was the US "giving" up an obsolete system in the process of withdrawal, against actual Soviet missiles 150-km from Florida.

0230 GMT September 17, 2009

Sorry: got home very late due to Back-To-School Night and became confused on the update. The times and dates are correct now.

Indian Prime Minister says country is losing war against Maoists We haven't written about this subject because we have, like, zero knowledge of the situation. But since the Prime Minister went public with the dimensions of the problems some months ago, editor has been trying to get educated.
Today is not the day we're going to discuss this problem; nonetheless, since we talk often of the Taliban in Pakistan - currently we're in a self-imposed one-month quiet phase since we are sick and tired of writing about the subject - we thought its time to mention India has its own issues with revolutionaries.
Apparently one third of India's districts (counties) are infested with Maoists to greater or lesser degree.
The Prime Minister has says this is the most serious problem India faces, but has firmly said that the Maoists must be dealt with as gently as possible. This is, he says, because the Maoists and the villagers they influence have genuine grievances against the Indian state
Earthlike planet discovered in the constellation Unicorn, 500 light-years from earth. Lots of extra-solar planets have been discovered in recent years, but they have been formed of gas. This planet, named Corot 7B, is the first rocky planet found.
Of course, as Times London says, there's no chance of life as we know it. The planet orbits its star at just 2.5-million km; its day face is 2000 C and night face is -200 C.
We don't follow why scientists didn't name it Dante's Inferno, given they have been using the metaphor to describe surface conditions.
President Karzai says EU is interfering in poll and that he is the winner. EU says a third of the vote for Karzai may be fraudulent. Mr. Karzai claims 3.1-million votes; if the EU estimate is correct, 1.2-million votes will have to be invalidated, forcing Mr, Karzai below the 50% needed for a runoff.
EU also says 300,000 of the main opponent's votes may also be invalid, but that doesnt change anything as at 27% of the total vote he is miles away from the 59% figure anyway.
Another twist to Arctic Sea mystery We'd mentioned the other day that this freighter, allegedly hijacked in the Atlantic, was alleged to have been carrying an illegal cargo of S-300 SAMs to Iran, allegedly without Moscow's knowledge. Israel is supposed to have gotten wind of the plot and informed Moscow, which sent a rescue team and saved the day.
But now read http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6837581.ece First, though the Russians said the ship was sailed back to Russia, it is lurking around the Canary Islands. I.e., it has not gone back home. Second, the Russians now say their navy had the ship under surveillance all the time. If so, this makes the story of it being hijacked and then rescued looks a bit odd.

0230 GMT September 16, 2009

Afghan poll: 2500 stations may have to be counted says UN Afghanistan election complaint body. It's hard to keep all these people straight, but this appears to be a different body from the one we mentioned in yesterday's news.
2500 stations is about 10% of the total, and could push Mr. Karzai below the 50% mark forcing a runoff.

0230 GMT September 15, 2009

Read about US Special Forces strike against Al Qaeda in Somalia

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/09/senior_al_qaeda_lead_7.php

Split in UN body overseeing Afghan elections The body is headed by a Norwegian official who is willing only to order a recount in 1000 of 6500 polling stations. His reasoning is that right or wrong, the results have to be accepted because Afghanistan cannot afford - politically as well as economically and security-wise - to have a run-off or another election, however tainted this one.
An American diplomat who works with the Norwegian official, however, wants 1000 poll station results thrown out and a recount to look for anomalies in 5,000 others. His argument is that a fraudulent election is no good, and if a second election or runoff has to be staged, so be it.
The Norwegian official ordered the American official out of Afghanistan. The latter has left; several senior officials showed solidarity with him as he was packed off.
You've guessed the next step: with the American official no longer on board, he is free to lobby the UN, world government, and the US Congress. Since he has the inside information, he will make a heck of a case for his viewpoint and those advocating accepting Mr. Hamid Karazai as winner will come under increasing pressure.
US orders 10-12 Mother Of All Bombs says reader Chris Raggio. These are the 15-ton monsters capable of blowing up the deepest concrete installations.
Mr. Raggio wonders if the US might not be adding an option for a much smaller strike than is usually assumed.
Personally, we have never accepted the Israeli-US thesis that hundreds of targets have to be struck. Twelve bombs will be plenty to cripple both Iran and DPRK's program; we're assuming, of course, that other key targets numbering a dozen or so will be struck with bombs in the inventory.
The issue really is, what happens after the key elements of the Iran/DPRK program is attacked. Does DPRK go nuts and attack the South? Does Iran go bonks and closes Hormuz?
This is just our personal view: when small states are faced with the threat of complete destruction by an overwhelmingly larger state, they do not go bananas. Living to fight another day is more important than displaying impotent rage. We believe Iran and DPRK are actually quite rational and they have pushed the US because that's the rational thing to do. We do not believe these two states will lose it if the US attacks their N-programs, regardless of what they publicly say.
But if you assume that they could lose it, then you have to go for broke. In Iran's case it means offing all bases and installations that present a threat to oil traffic in the Gulf; and in DPRK's case it means knocking off the SSM and long-range artillery sites. Then you're talking about hundreds if not thousands of targets.

0230 GMT September 14, 2009

Taliban control 97% of Afghanistan? No they don't Longwarjournal.com reports an international organization says the Taliban control 97% of Afghanistan, and challenges the methodology. For example, one incident a week in an entire province even if it did not result in fatalities, is said to mean a permanent presence.
Now, an Afghan province is a big geographical unit, like a US state. One incident a week qualifies, as far as we are concerned to a minor Taliban presence in the district (county) where the incident happened. For example, Los Angeles city averaged 5 gang murders a week between 2000 and 2006 (LAPD statistic quoted in http://www.streetgangs.com/homicides/lachomichart.html.) That doesn't mean California, leave alone Los Angeles, is under gang control.
Longwarjournal suggests there are better ways of defining Taliban presence, such as do they collect taxes and administer justice in a district.
Our last figure received from Afghanistan was 80% under Taliban control counting districts where during the day the Taliban lay low and emerged at night, principally to control road traffic. Because the Coalition/Afghan government control the big cities and towns, in terms of population less than 80% would be under Taliban control.
No one disputes the situation in Afghanistan is far worse than was the common knowledge even a few months ago; we too have joined the ranks of the doubters concerning the viability and purposes of the mission. But that doesn't mean we can play fast and loose with the data.
Afghan commissions finds 30 civilians died in the September 4 airstrike on two fuel tankers, reports The Nation (Pakistan). But even the Afghan government says 69 Taliban were also killed. As far as we are concerned, the case is closed and no blame is to be attached to anyone for the air strike.
Sure, if information had been available that by the time the air strike was conducted that civilians were mixed up with the Taliban for whatever reason, the strike should have been cancelled. We are 100% sure, based on new Coalition guidelines, that this would have happened. Something civilians may not understand is that inevitably time elapses between arrival of information, its assessment, decision to act, and action. This is not a movie in which a continuous 3D picture with 10-centimeter resolution is available to the decision-makers. The tankers, just a few kilometers from the German base, were a clear threat and had to be dealt with.
Israeli astronaut's pilot son killed The first Israeli astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon, died in the Shuttle Columbia disaster of 2003. His son, who graduated to an operational IsAF squadron this June, was killed yesterday when his F-16 crashed in Gaza. He had been engaged in mock dogfights with a veteran pilot when his plane went down.
US scientists discover cause of antibiotic resistance says BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8248020.stm Nothing to do with the GWOT, but something that reminds us of the fascinating times in which we live.
Apparently cells produce nitrous oxide when attacked. They do it to protect themselves from bad guys, but since they can't tell the antibiotic is a good guy, they attack the antibiotic. Not good overall, but in the process they are also saving healthy cells.
Now that scientists understand one key cause of antibiotic resistance, particularly to the last ditch antibiotics, which if they don't work on you, you may as well get ready to buy a farm, they can work on reducing nitrous oxide production. This will have the effect of substantially reducing dosages - and of the harm done to the good cells.

0230 GMT September 13, 2009

We did not update September 12, 2009

India has different take on Afghanistan election Indian sources tell us that the US, fed up with the ineffectiveness and corruption of the Karzai regime. backed Abdullah Abdullah for the presidency. This gentleman is ex-Northern Alliance, where his education and polished manners made him too value to permit sending him to the front. Instead he was the official face of the NA.
Hamid Karzai, however, outfoxed the Americans by making alliances with the old warlords, who were marginalized by the Americans on his behalf when the US took over Afghanistan. The warlords delivered the votes. And Mr. Karzai's brother, Master Fixer of Afghanistan who does the dirty deals so that the president can pretend to have clean hands, was let loose to intimidate voters and stuff ballot boxes, a job he did rather well.
The Indians say the Mr. Karzai is completely cognizant of his brother's illegal activities, shields his brother, and gains financially and otherwise from the latter's deal.
The Indians point out they are not trashing Mr. Karzai, with whom Delhi has an excellent relationship, and Delhi intends to keep it that way. They are equally comfortable working with Abdullah Abdullah, whom they know from the Northern Alliance days when India covertly supported this anti-Taliban grouping. They expect Abdullah Abdullah will be equally corrupt, because that is the way of a feudal society emerging from the Middle Ages.
As to weather he will be more efficient than Mr. Karzai, the Indians point out that Mr. Karzai is as efficient a leader as can be found in a new democracy. when the Americans say his regime is inefficient, they have it backward. Because of Afghanistan's feudal power structure, positions have to be given on the basis of loyalty, class, tribe and so on, and each senior leader is as busy making money as the Karzai brothers. Efficiency is the last thing on anyone's mind when money for roads and bridges and schools and hospitals is being ripped off wholesale.
Indians note that because they came to independence under a large number of enlightened and moral leaders, political corruption was low till the 1960s, when Mrs. Gandhi came to power. The civil services were manned by highly trained and efficient officers whose corruption, again till Mrs. Gandhi's time, was low-grade. During the regimes of Mrs. Gandhi, her son, and successors till the advent of Mr. Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, corruption got steadily worse as state governments and government servants took their clue from the center.
But with the rise of an independent media starting around 1990, and particularly when Mr. Manmohan Singh took over, the people have become increasing vigilant of their rights. While corruption is still massive, the people backed by the media, the court, and efficient politicians is pushing back. It will be decades before India gets to the American level: the ordinary citizen gets what he needs in a corruption-free manner, the corruption is at the top political levels and is all-pervasive and massive. But as long as a citizen gets medical treatment, his drivers license, his taxes paid without being asked for a bribe, he is willing to tolerate the Den of Iniquity that is the US Congress. And the US civil administration is corruption free to the top; if an official is caught, punishment is swift.
But Afghanistan, say the Indians is like Zimbabwe under Mugabe: patronage, patronage, and patronage all the way. Afghanistan is a long way to getting where India was in the period 1967-2004, where if the government stole a dollar, at least it spent a dollar on the people.
We asked about the problems with the Afghanistan Police, without which there can be no local security or stability. The answer was loud guffaws of laughter and much snorting. If the Americans were basing their strategy on an efficient, clean police force, they had (a) best leave now; or (b) get ready for a 100 year stay. Again, no one was trashing the Afghan police, but just look at the Indian police, which has just started to come into the age of policing as opposed to riot control, after 60 years, and where efforts to prevent corruption have at least begun, though admittedly have had no success. After more laughter, the Indians told us to look at how long it took the American police to function efficiently and reasonably free of corruption. They opined it was 200 years, depending on how you wanted to look at it.
Pakistan Navy's first F22P frigate arrives from China. This will be the third PNS Zulfiqar in service. The first was a River class frigate, obtained and modernized from the UK, under US MAP if we recall right. The second ship of the name was a UK Leander.
We do not know the names of the remaining three (last delivery 2013), but among the traditional PN names available are: Alamgir, Jehangir, Taimur, Tughril, and Shamsher, and Shahjehan. There are also six names formerly borne by Brooke and Garcia frigates returned to the US when their lease was not extended after the Pakistan N-tests (two Brooke names were given to the Amazon ships purchased from UK). But we suspect they have lower priority because they have been used only once, whereas the six names above have been used twice.

0001 GMT September 11, 2009

No news worth reporting or commenting on

India RAPID divisions: correction We jumped the gun a bit when we said India is working on its seventh RAPID division (1 armored brigade, 2-3 infantry brigades). It is working on its sixth the seventh is planned. All RAPID divisions were/are conversions from standard infantry divisions. The requirement to provide an armored punch to the infantry divisions was originated 25 years ago, and the program has proceeded with glacial slowness. Because of the new strategy where India has dispensed with offensive corps and defensive corps, all corps being offensive, there is a new urgency to the program. The one thing you can be sure of is that the Indians will again be asleep at the switch. Like the British, until they are thrashed they like to ad hoc along, then they wake up and do what needs to be done. Since Pakistan cannot thrash India, you can be assured the mechanization program will be nowhere done before we all die of old age.
The idea of spreading armor all over the place - in armored divisions, independent armored brigades, RAPID divisions, and independent tank regiments attached to infantry divisions - defeats the whole idea of concentrating armor for rapid, decisive offensives. Each of the three strike corps has a single armored division, so it is isn't going to be striking anywhere much.
Japanese launch 6-ton space freighter The first vehicle, carrying 4.5-tons for the International Space Station, launched successfully. An average of one flight a year is planned to 2015. There are plans to convert the freighter to carry crew.
Meanwhile, the US space program continues to shoot itself in the head. The shuttles will fly only to the end of 2010, after which, new vehicles were supposed to take over by 2014. You can tell how advanced we are in the US, because we couldn't figure out that 2014 minus 2010 means four years where we will not have our own manned capability.
Right now US is busy destroying even the planned capability; it certainly is not going to be four years - try five or six, maybe longer if the current program is scrapped.
Good old USA: clueless on earth, clueless in space. But we're still the best in everything, right? How? Because we say so.
Kind of strange, isn't it: more than 40 years ago we had rockets to take men to the moon. Forty years later we have nothing. Its called reverse evolution. For our next act, ladies and gentlemen, we Americans will grow gills and tails and gently walk backward into the ocean.

0230 GMT September 10, 2009

Read about the Taliban in Balochistan

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/09/chaman_border_crossi.php

UN watchdog starts rejecting tainted Afghan votes For the Afghan election, there are two bodies. One is the so-called Independent Election Commission, actually a government tool, which has said President Karzai has won. The other is a complaints body set up by the UN. This is the organization that ism throwing out tainted votes.
If enough are rejected, Mr. Karazi will not have the 50% majority needed to avoid a run-off. Its too early to say what will happen now: will Mr. Karzai yield and permit a runoff?
Latest PLA missiles on display October 1 Read about the missiles at http://defensenews.com/story.php?i=4266694&c=ASI&s=LAN
US exports 2/3rds of global arms purchases in 2009 says Defense News. The amount was about $38-billion. Good to know there is one manufacturing area left where the US cannot.
Theatre of the absurd: Winnie The Pooh in Russia The house of an extremist was raided by authorities and among the recovered items was a Winnie The Pooh decorated with a Swastika.
The prosecutor asked Winnie be banned from Russia as extremist material.
Russian Justice Ministry maintains a list of banned extremist material.
Winnie is now on the list and cannot visit Russia to see his cousins, the Russian Browns and Polars.
We suggest the Justice Ministry sit in a commode and flush itself down the drain. The world would be a better place.

0230 GMT September 9, 2009

Karzai at 54% of vote, West wakes up With the Afghan authorities declaring President Hamid Karzai winner in Afghanistan, the west has come out of its coma and is saying the polling fraud is simply too blatant t to ignore. The UN commission in charge of the election says a partial recount is needed.
Mr. Karazi claims approximately 2.9-million votes. If several hundred thousand fake ballots and stuffed ballots are thrown out - it could be higher than 1-million, then while he would still be ahead of his main rival with 28% of the vote, he wouldn't have the 50% required to avoid a runoff.
The New York Times says Afghan authorities circumvented the triggers built into the polling software intended to exclude invalid or suspicious votes. So since the authorities are clearly determined to give the election to Mr. Karzai, we'd like to know how precisely the West proposes to beat Afghanis with a stick to force compliance with its wishes.
We believe the West actually has far less leverage with the Afghan government than it thinks. We sincerely hope we are wrong and that the West can force a runoff.
Germany in Afghanistan: Theatre of the absurd So this is how the Euros fight wars in the 21st Century:
Two NATO fuel tankers are hijacked. They are located after midnight about 7-km from a German base, stuck and unable to move. The German commander, fearing that the trucks could be used against his base, orders an air search, which is conducted by the US. The reconnaissance footage shows scores of people around the trucks; US cannot make put of the people are insurgents, civilians, or both.
But an Afghan informer working from the Germans says the men are armed insurgents. The German commanders orders an air strike, the US pilot(s) suggest 2000-lb bombs - as a tanker is a soft target, we can only assume the pilots wanted to see a bigger Boom-Boom, which we completely understand. What's the point of being a ground attack pilot if you don't get to make spectacular Boom-Booms?
The German commander says no, 500-pounders are adequate. So the air strike goes in; the Germans don't get around to checking the site till the next morning, by which time - you've guessed it - the locals have buried the bodies and are weeping and wailing about (a) the dead were mostly civilians; and (b) the Taliban had started hammering on people's doors in the wee hours, telling them to come out and get the tankers out of the muck in which they were stuck, and they had no choice but to come out.
The local authorities, who are generally very fast on the draw to blame the Westerners, say the majority of the people were Taliban.
In the morning the new American commanding general for Afghanistan heaves over the horizon, and in a dramatic departure from past practice, he lets a media person listen in as he, the general, grills the German commander.
The German commander says it was a mistake not to get to the site right away.
Okay. As far we at Orbat.com are concerned, the Germans were dead to rights: you don't want two laden fuel tankers to crash your perimeter.
The local intel says its Taliban, the local authorities say it's mainly Taliban. Incidentally, some long time elapsed between the intel and the request for a strike: this could account for the civilian discrepancy. For example, there could be scores of Taliban but they cant get the trucks unstuck, so they round up villagers.
But back in Germany, the Germans go bananas. To begin with, an incredible two-thirds of Germans are against the war. Their previous Chancellor, a lefty of all things, persuaded Parliament to send a contingent to German and promised it would be used solely to protect the civilian reconstruction teams. A deadly quiet sector (Kunduz, at that time very quiet) was specially chosen to minimize the chances that the German troops would get into a fight and actually harm the poor little Talibs. But in the past couple of year, Kunduz has become a hot sector. The German people did not realize this, and we haveta be frank: we at Orbat.com didn't much realize it till recently, either. NATO/US have not exactly been truthful about what's been going on in Afghanistan.
So the German people, boosted by the International Brigade of Weepers, Moaners, and Mea Culpas, otherwise known as the EU, have been hollering and screaming, saying the awful horrible fascist government has soiled their hands (the hands of the International Brigade) by illegally acting on their behalf.
The German Chancellor, to give full credit, has been hanging very tough. She faces a parliamentary election on September 27, but she is shouting everyone down, saying she will allow no rush to judgment and everyone should just shut up till the investigation is done.
Meanwhile - and this is what struck us as absurd - some German prosecutor who didn't take his medications with breakfast and been screaming he will launch a homicide investigation. Naturally this investigation will show the Americans as the Chief Perps, they being the ones who executed the poor Afghans in cold blood, and the Government of Germany as co-conspirators.
We'd just like to point out one thing. At 2 AM or 4 AM or whatever hour of darkness it was, 7 km from the German base, the Taliban are surely not planning to bring the tankers to Kunduz market to sell the fuel, nor are they planning to benefit the villagers by letting them have free fuel. For one thing we doubt the villagers have stables of vehicles that need diesel, the villagers in Afghanistan tend to be poorer than church mice.
The German commander's concern for the safety of his men is completely justified. What if the tankers had been used? Then any number of German casualties would have resulted and the commander would have been standing court martial.
There is no situation in Afghanistan where you will not get civilians mixed in with Taliban. You cannot fight a zero-civilian-death war. All you can ask, and all we were asking when we criticized the previous US bombing policy which has now completely changes, is that the US be more careful about bombing. We believe both the Germans and the Americans were careful. It's sad civilians got killed, particularly if their story of being forced to help unstick the trucks is true. Neither the US or Germans had reason to believe civilians were around.
By all means investigate, apologize, pay compensation to the families that deserve it, and get on with the job.

0230 GMT September 8, 2009

More Afghan election fraud President Karzai now has 49% of the vote, just one percent away from winning. But what is the point of this when now we learn that 15% of polling stations were never permitted to open yet returned hundreds of thousands of votes for the President - and on top of this, the President's supporters set up 800 fake polling stations, channeling more hundreds of thousands of fake votes to him.
The West has its pink panties in a twist over this mockery of an election. It is divided about how to react and is expected to take several months to sort out the mess, if ever it does get sorted out.
We appreciate that Afghanistan is a sovereign country and the rigging has been done by Afghans. The west has tried its best to see the election was fair. But without the west there would have been no election in the first place. Westerns hold major positions on the Afghan Election Commission, So like it or not, the west is responsible.
If President Karzai is permitted to continue governing, the west is going to (a)have to shut up about Iran's election; (b) accept Hugo Chavez's elections; and (c), basically, cease to comment on the fairness of any election anywhere in the world.
Way to go, west. And then our government wonders why increasingly Americans are turning against their involvement in Afghanistan. When will the talking butts - sorry, talking heads - realize their esoteric and convoluted arguments for staying in Afghanistan have zero credibility because of this election nonsense, which comes on top of 8 years of complete non-performance and corruption by the Afghanistan government.
Israeli settlement freeze? Dream on Anyone who thinks there can be a freeze on expansion of Israeli settlements should read this article http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1112932.html It is only a snapshot in time, but please be assured that the frames that came before and will come after will be identical.
When Washington embarks on a policy that is hopeless from the start, no one, least of all Washington, should be surprised when the policy crashes and burns on takeoff. Whoever came up with the idea that Israel cam be talked into a freeze should be fired for showing naiveté dangerous to US security.
Restore town stocks and rotten tomatoes We need to start public humiliations of stupid policymakers of any political stripe and any branch of government, media, academia etc.
The notion that Iran could be talked out its N-weapon program was stupid.
We must make very clear we are NOT saying this because we are neo-cons or right-wingers or cynics or whatever. We've been saying this for a long-time because we're realists and we can see Iran's position just as clearly as America's. It makes zero sense for Iran to give up its N-program, the ultimate guarantee of its security against a hostile United States and Middle East, no matter how badly we squeeze Teheran.
Is this very complicated? We don't think so.
If anyone needs further proof, read latest developments in http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6825132.ece Its deja vu all over again.
Our choices are (a) accept Iran as a N-power in coming years; (b) build defenses against Iran's N-delivery systems; and (c) blow Iran's N-program into the next dimension. We have repeatedly made clear our preference for the third option. In the long run, it is the cheapest and easiest to implement. Yes, it requires preparations such as stockpiling oil and destroying Iran's ability to interdict Hormuz even as its N-facilities are destroyed.
If the Giant Geniuses who stopped the B-2 program at 20 aircraft instead of the 100 planned had understood its the very nature of military contingencies that you cannot accurate foretell them, the US would have the ability to simultaneously drop 1000 bunker busters in a single sortie. Boy, would that capability come in hand right now.

0230 GMT September 7, 2009

There is Pakistan and Afghanistan news at www.longwarjournal.org

Pakistan cannot mount further major operations against the Taliban because it needs several months to replenish its ammunition stocks, so lavish has been the use in the last few months. This information is from Ted Hooton's The General's Spyglass, a monthly subscription newsletter.
We need not comment on the propriety of using so much firepower against your own people that you run out of ammunition. We'd heard Pakistan was very low on 20mm rounds for its AH-1s, but explained that away as the US not having supplied all that much to begin with.
Of course, with Pakistan you can never tell if they are truly short of ammunition or are using this as an excuse to get more American money and buy more time before launching the South Waziristan operation.
Russia may scrap 90% of its tanks This is also from The General's Spyglass and makes much sense. Most of Russia's vast equipment stocks are in junk status, and it shift to 24+ brigades with top-of-line equipment, a move it is rapidly implementing implies that only the T-90s are needed.
Another real life thriller, if you like 'em We'd been following the mysterious disappearance of a small Russian freighter, the Arctic Sea. The ship was carrying a $2-million cargo of timber from Finland to Algeria. It put into the Russian Baltic port of Kaliningrad for repairs, and then vanished off the coast of France on August 1. Well, the Russians tracked down and rescued their ship, and 8 hijackers are to go on trial. End of the story, just another routine piracy thing. Not so, says London Times.
The Arctic Sea was loaded illegally with S-300 missiles for Iran; local officials are involved. Mossad told Moscow what was happening, and the embarrassed Russians, who have been promising they will not deliver S-300s to Iran until there is some resolution of its N-weapons program, went after the ship.
A nice story, but still a bit bleeh, if you know what we mean.
The twist in this story is that London Times say the Israelis recruited a criminal gang to hijack the ship, and the gang had no clue arms were aboard. So naturally you will ask: "What? Why?" and so on. For answers you will have to read the story yourself at

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6823300.ece

It is all too confusing for the Editor to figure out, he admits frankly. In his day, it was all very simple. There were the good guys and the bad guys, and your job as a good guy was to stop the bad guys. The sole complication was that the bad guys thought they were the good guys, and that you were the bad guy they had to stop. It was quite easy to find out who was working for the Russians and who for the Chinese and who for the Americans, and so on, and none of it mattered, because your boss simply tossed everything you delivered into the trash. That was because Playing the Game was the object of the Game, and actually trying to get a resolution was considered Very Bad Form. Totally louche, as the Brits say. Or so gator, as the Americans say. Or totally declasse, as the French say. The Russians and Chinese in those days had no class, obviously so, because Communism does not believe in classes, so there is no need to find out what they would say.
The sole complication was that quite often the bad guys had more decency and honor than your own side, and you had more in common with them than with your colleagues and bosses. But even this was not so complicated thanks to the guideline laid down by the 20th Century English novelist E.M. Forster. He once said that faced with the choice of betraying his friend or betraying his country, he hoped he would have the courage to betray his country.
If spies actually did their work instead of Playing The Spy Game, you could usefully retire 99% of the world's spies and increase the quality of your information by at least one order of magnitude. Try convincing your government of that.

0230 GMT September 6, 2009

Fighting again in Mogadishu says New York Times. But this time there is a difference. The fighting began when Government forces took over a locality controlled by Shabab. Government troops lost their gains, but that they staged an attack is news in itself, Government says it will extend its authority. We have no idea what is the basis for the government's new found confidence; likely it has to do with US weapons deliveries and perhaps training. Nonetheless, readers need to remember Government unequivocally controls just a few blocks of the capital.
An American citizen of Somali origin or descent was reported to be among the Shabab dead.
Russian Caucasus again in trouble It seemed that the Russians had crushed terrorists in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, but terrorism has again flared with almost 500 killed so far this year. For details on the situation, read http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/world/europe/30chechnya.html?ref=europe
Afghan vote count still favors Karzai With 60% of the votes counted he has 47% of the vote against 32% for his main challenger. President Karzai must get 50% to avoid a runoff. This all assumes that the allegations of fraud will be peacefully settled. Right now that is big assumption, because the main challenger and his supporters say they will not accept the results of a rigged election.

0230 GMT September 5, 2009

Somalia pirates fire on US Navy helicopter says Military.com. The helicopter, off the Aegis cruiser USS Chancellorsville, was conducting a flyover over a pirated ship anchored off Somalia when the pirates opened fire with a heavy weapon at 3,000-meters. The helicopter evaded without responding.
Doubtless the helicopter had excellent reasons for not returning fire. The simplest of which may be the rules of engagement did not permit it, for reasons of hostage safety.
Nonetheless, it cannot be a coincidence that while the world's response to Somalia piracy has seen a big increase in the number of warships deployed to stop the piracy, the incidence of piracy has almost doubled so far in 2009 compared to 2008.
The only plausible explanation is that the pirates have figured they will get away their crimes because (a) of the international community's limp-wristed, excessively legalistic reaction to the pirates actions, and (b) that even if arrested, the pirates chances of punishment are small.
Refusing to fire back, whatever the good reason, serves only to convince the pirates they can act with impunity.
It is only when the pirates understand if caught in the act or subsequently the probability is 100% they will die, will this nonsense stop.
Washington, Israeli settlements, and Pixie Dust We're not sure if Pixie Dust is on US federal prohibited substances list, but regardless, the US government manages to find and inhale vast quantities of the stuff.
Take the Israeli settlements question. Media says Washington is mad as heck that the Israelis have not kept their promise to freeze settlements in occupied territories while US tries to get people back to the negotiating table.
How sweet and touching of Washington to think Israel will really agree to a freeze. And how sweet and touching of Washington to believe Israel will agree to any permanent settlement that doesn't give it 95% of what it wants, leaving 5% for everyone else.
Nations, like people, compromise only when their backs are to the wall and no alternative exists. Israel is under no pressure whatsoever to compromise with the Palestinians. Israelis hold the whip hand, and even more so after the December 2008 war where Palestine militants in the form of Hamas showed their sole strategy is to get killed along with large numbers of civilians and so horrify the world that it steps in to beat up Israel.
The world was horrified all right. And what did the world do? It condemned. Anyone notice after 61 years that condemning Israel has as much effect as condemning a lamp-post? Less, actually. Our hypothetical lamp-post would have been uprooted by the continual exposure to hot gas and be well on its way to Jupiter orbit, so voluminous is the gas of condemnation. Israel, meanwhile, has neither been uprooted nor has it floated away anywhere.
There are four intractable problems with getting Israel to act.
First, read the Bible and you'll learn the Israelis are just about the most self-righteous and bloody-minded people anywhere. Sticks and stones may break their bones, but the harsher the words, the more they are convinced they are right and you are wrong.
Second, the champions of the Palestinians, the Arab regimes are the most unsavory scumbags you can find this side of the Pleiades. And the Palestinian leaders are second to none in venality and cowardice.
Third, having been victims for 2000 years, the Israelis are the experts on playing the victim. They have managed to take their Holocaust, a truly horrible event that nonetheless was just one of equally or more horrible events of a demented century, and put it at center stage, effectively excluding other, equally valid mass exterminations.
The entire West grovels in guilt for not doing anything to save the European Jews when they were being slaughtered. And grovel the West should, because it was guilty of turning a blind eye to a great crime. Equally, the west turned a blind eye to the horrific Japanese occupation of China, Stalin's purges, Germany's treatment of Soviet prisoners, and the Great Leap. It does not wallow in guilt for these because unlike the Israelis, who are here to remind us every day of what the world by its silence did to them, the others lack the skills to get the world's attention.
Fourth, each time the Israelis and the Arabs have gone toe-to-toe, with the single, very limited exception of Lebanon Part 2, the Israelis have whaled the stuffing out of the Arabs. The sad and sorry truth is that while no one likes Israel, the world likes losers even less, particularly losers who are so bombastic as the Arabs.
In Washington DC, however, the extra-large Pixie Dust blunts are all the rage these days. Inhale deeply enough, and Washington will fix the economy, health care, crime, the education short-fall, the battle against the terrorists, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea (to name a few) etc. etc. Few seem to notice we are becoming more and more like the Arabs: gassy, bombastic, ineffectual, and irrelevant.

0230 GMT September 4, 2009

Tension on Sino-India border One reason Editor avoids writing about Indian military policy is his blood-pressure shoots through the roof and his doctors have warned him he cannot let anything aggravate him.
Suffice to say, India's government, when it comes to national security, is stacked from top to bottom with fools, poltroons, knaves, and IQ challenged people. Has been from Day 1 when India gained independence, and likely still will be when Editor goes to his just reward in the Downstairs Place - you know, the one that's very hot and this gent in a red clown suit keep prodding your butt with a pitchfork every time you try and sit down.
India's military has a very long-standing policy of completely staying out of both the political and civil services camps that dominate Indian security policy. If the military has any comment to make, it is usually a delicate sniff followed by a frown as if its nose is assailed by stinky wafts of Eau-de-Stoopid, the favored parfum of India's security policy establishment. We wont go into how this essence is distilled, let's just say the process is so gross that even a schoolboy who lives in Potty Humor Land will be revolted.
This attitude is probably for the best, and is one reason India's democracy has never been threatened by the military, a unique situation for a post-World War II ex-colonial state.
But as a consequence, the politicians and civil service get to mess up, and to keep messing up, Indian security policy year after year and decade after decade.
So - watching the old blood pressure - Editor will have to lightly skip over the developments in the 1990s that led to India unilaterally demilitarizing the Sino-Indian border. The Indians said they were demilitarizing as part of agreements with China, but the reality is, China conceded nothing and India conceded everything.
Instead of peace, India got more than 10 years of escalating confrontation with a China that concluded - correctly - that if the Indians could be intimidated into demilitarizing without a shot being fired, they weren't going to react China's non-stop provocations - which include brazenly building roads through Indian border territory.
We mentioned a while ago that in the North West India has reactivated three airfields it had abandoned during the 1962 war. This is a tiny, tiny step in the right direction. India also made long-term plans to induct another infantry division into Ladakh. Currently there are two, but one is for the Pakistan border. It also made long-term plans to restore its defenses in Himachal Pradesh. The border there once had an entire division assigned; now a days it is a single scout battalion and a heavy mortar battery.
We'd also mentioned India would activate a new division in the Northeast.
Well, New York Times tells us it will be two divisions - quoting an ex-Army Chief of Staff who is governor of Arunachal state. (Indian governors are representatives of the Central Government to the states - they do not govern anything.)
The ex-army Chief, who presumably knows of what he speaks, says the process will take several years.
At this point Editor's blood-pressure begins to rise, dangerously. He would like to remind the Indian Army that it has the capability of raising 12 divisions a year, with each division taking two years to become fully operational.
While Editor is waiting for more information, he can reasonably say this idea of taking several years is not that of the Eau-De-Stoopid Brigade but of the Army itself. India is hardly short of defense money: it barely spends 2% of GDP on defense and the MOD routinely returns billions of dollars a year to the Exchequer because the civil/politicos can never get their weapon-purchase act together. A mountain division requires just a few hundred million dollars of equipment, almost all of which is domestically produced. There is no reason at all why India cannot raise the minimum four divisions it needs to restore the border balance with China within two years.
One reason the Army may be talking of years and not two years is because it wants the latest equipment available on the global market, and it wants hundreds of new helicopters. Given that India has not - for example - been able to procure more than 400 155mm howitzers over the last 25 years as opposed to then requirement of 1600, it is completely unrealistic to wait for the flood-gates of new equipment to open. (The new requirement is 4000 155mm guns/howitzers. India has the money. It does not have the will power to spend the money.)
It is imperative to get the four divisions raised and deployed ASAP, using whatever equipment is available indigenously. When it comes to training, the Indian Army is the most meticulous in the world (Sorry US Army, you are very good at most things, but even you don't train soldiers as thoroughly as the Indians do). On top of the two years, the Army needs three more to ensure a high level of battle efficacy for the divisions. The theatre is brutally difficult in geographic terms and India's communications infrastructure is worse than pathetic. No need to mention the great strides the Chinese are making on their side of the border when it comes to railroads, roads, and airfields. That is why India must not waste any more time.

0230 GMT September 3, 2009

India boosts Maldives naval defenses says defense News. India will provide maritime surveillance radar which will net with the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, and is also to give two helicopters for the Maldives Coast Guard. Though naturally the thought arises India is countering China in the Indian Ocean, at least one analyst says Pakistan is real concern. http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4245842&c=ASI&s=SEA
Turkey to double Afghan contingent to 1600, with the dispatch of 800 support troops. Yawn. This is such exciting news. Europe is such a military force in the world. Zzzzzz....
Meanwhile, France has sent the first 3 of a battery of 8 truck-mobile 155mm howitzers to Afghanistan. We feel faint...the excitement is too much...Zzzzz...And...Oooohhh!...France sent three attack helicopters to Afghanistan the other day! The war is as good as won. Zzzzz...
Question: What is more pathetic than the Euros thinking they have military might? Answer: nothing.
India to boost armored forces by ten tank and BMP battalions. Before anyone gets excited, the new tank regiments are simply to bring the tank force to its authorized strength - authorized as of 1993. Yes, people, for 16 years Indian armor has been short of several regiments. Who says the Indians can never get it together? So there, we are together, okay, so we're 16 years behind schedule, but what the hey.
Don't expect any new armored formations as such. The new raisings will go to bring the three armored divisions and a mechanized brigade to TOE strength, and also to convert a seventh infantry division to RAPIDs configuration.
RAPIDs are infantry division with 2-3 infantry and one armored brigade.
A special report on the real situation re Indian armored/mechanized forces and long-term plans is available for a special price of $3000 from Orbat.com, only by advance order and identification of the buyer to our satisfaction.

0230 GMT September 2, 2009

Afghan electoral fraud To understand the magnitude of the fraud, read this story in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/world/asia/02fraud.html?_r=1&ref=world
A South Afghan tribe decided to switch its loyalty to President Karazai's main rival because the government had done nothing for their district. On election day, all 45 poll stations shut so that no one could vote, but ballot boxes with 23,900 votes were sent for counting. 100% of the vote was for President Karzai even though not a single person voted.
More Indian troops leave Jammu & Kashmir say India media sources. 39 Mountain Division is returning to its home stations in adjoining Himachal Pradesh State after a 15-year deployment for CI ops in Jammu & Kashmir state. This is line with New Delhi's plan to withdraw troops sent as reinforcements when the insurgency, which began in 1987, began to get out of hand.
Pakistani modification of US Harpoon Frankly, we haven't understood what this uproar is about. Pakistan has apparently modified one or more of its Harpoon anti-ship missiles to hit land targets. US is upset, because...why? US gave Pakistan Harpoons which were clearly intended for use against India, so why does it matter if Pakistan keeps them for use against Indian Navy ships or if it modifies a few to hit Indian shore installations?
Besides, we can't imagine it took much to modify the missile; no great engineering feats are required.
Sound and fury signifying nothing. Focus on the billions of US aid Pakistan has not used to fight the Taliban, let's not worry about a few piddling million dollars worth of anti-ship missiles.

0230 GMT September 1, 2009

Afghan fraud fallout If the West lets President Karzai be declared winner, the government - and Afghanistan's western allies - will lack legitimacy, says Times London. But if the West forces a runoff, a process that will take months, Afghanistan will have to live with an unstable polity at a time lack of effective government is crippling the war against the Taliban.
London Times says that while the Taliban are being outfought, they are outgoverning the people. Meaning, the government is so bad at providing basic services, policing, and justice, people are tuning to the Taliban to do the job for them.
On top of these problems, people in the west are becoming tired of the war; the setbacks in Afghanistan are undermining the credibility of the governments with their own people.
So is the solution for the West to do more in the governing department? In our opinion no. You cannot go in. take over a country, and then run it for heaven knows how long. For one thing it will require a huge buildup of troops and administrators. This taking-over/running-the-place may have worked in places like Bosnia. but (a) Bosnia is tiny compared to Afghanistan; (b) the war ended, permitting NATO/EU to focus on running the place; and (c) Bosnia is an European country. not a very poor South Asian country stuck in the middle of the last millennium.
Intuitively it seems to us that the US/NATO are in a near hopeless situation, in large part because of the failure of the afghan government to perform in civilian and military terms. This is not to say the US/NATO are without blame: we have noted, for example, the allies have behaved as if time was eternal and they could take all the time they wanted just to make baby steps.
In this context, we must loudly protest the US plan for the Afghan Air Force. US began rebuilding of the AAF in 2007 - six years after the US invaded, a very long time. The planned buildup, which will involve a few helicopter and transport squadrons plus a couple of light attack squadrons, will go to 2015; an astonishingly long 8-year period. But the Afghans had a perfectly useful air force before the Taliban destroyed the country. Sure, the AAF was not organized or run to US standards. But so what? Whose country is it anyway? What's wrong with doing things the way the Afghans have done them, while leaving the AAF free to learn what it wants from the US?
Is the American public going to accept another six years of a large US presence in Afghanistan? Judging by the present mood, no. So its time to speed things up, and to act with urgency.
Health care and all that Occurs to us. when people are hungry. do we give them food stamps to eat gourmet meals? When they have no place to live, do we put them in 5-star lodgings? So for those that are health uninsured, why are we insisting they have access to the best quality of care? Provide them with basic care, and quite likely the costs will be much more modest and affordable. Revisit the issue when the country has the money.
The way the US is going with its deficits - $9-$11-trillion over the next years as predicted now, we aren't going to have a functioning US government in another ten years and then no one will have anything.
Every day its seems to Editor Americans are becoming more dysfunctional. What is so hard to understand about "we must live within our means"? Do you have to be an economics or accounting PhD to see that?
So either America accepts higher taxes, or it accepts lower services. And just raising taxes without giving the people reason to believe the money is well spent is no solution.
Geezers like the Editor and the following Boomers will do rather nicely the way things are arranged right now. But what about our kids and grandkids? Don't we owe them something? Would you feel comfortable feeding your kid macaroni and cheese (yes, Editor is aware a fifth of the country eats that as dinner, but he's trying to make a rhetorical point here) so that you can eat steak? That's what we're doing to our children's' future.

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