Northman's Fury

The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

McInerney said the U.S. has "a new massive ordnance penetrator that's 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates ... Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can't penetrate."

He also said the new Russian bomb was not a "penetrator."

On the bright side, at least this arms race isn't with nukes. Of course, threatening Iran seems to be his whole point, and the stepped up rhetoric and possible war preparations against that nation deserve their own post, but the following deserves some highlighting:

"Forty-eight hours duration, hitting 2500 aimed points to take out their [Iranian] nuclear facilities, their air defense facilities, their air force, their navy, their Shahab-3 retaliatory missiles, and finally their command and control. And then let the Iranian people take their country back," the general said describing the campaign, adding it would be "easy."

Any time your plan depends on the people you're attacking to rise up and support you, you're probably screwed. Easy is the one thing a campaign against Iran won't be.

You may want to pay more attention to them if you're really serious about this whole "War on Terror" thing.

The killing fields that are stocked with Saudi jihadists now include not only Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, but Somalia, Malaysia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sudan, the Philippines, Yemen, and, of course, Saudi Arabia itself.

The main funding source for every radical Islamist movement in the world today, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas, has Saudi origins, and their funders include the country's billionaire businessmen and its royal family.

ABC's "World News Tonight," anchored by Charles Gibson, got it right on the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks with an impressive segment documenting how Islamist terror begins — and ends — with Saudi Arabia, its people, and its government.

Not that the NY Sun has ever been the most reliable source of information out there, but its been pretty clear to anyone paying attention, that since 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, that that country may not be quite the "moderate" ally Bush and his supporters continually try to portray it as.

It also makes a grand lie out of the, "you're with us or against us" rhetoric. The reasons for the American refusal to confront the Saudis over their role in international terror financing and indoctrination through Salafist mosque funding are many, but mostly all stem from their dependancy on oil and the Saudis role as a source for it. Do you think a USA that was energy-independant would allow this kind of behaviour from the country otherwise?

So a bad energy policy leads to a bad terrorism strategy, where the US battles a many-headed hydra on multiple fronts, creating more enemies as they go, but ignores the body from which most of those heads are springing.

I said I’d be keeping an eye on the Sharbot Lake issue when possible. Today, another piece of the puzzle far away from the lake fell into place. Canada is voting against the declaration of native rights at the UN.

A previous story gives some context about why this may be important to the Sharbot Lake issue.

The Conservatives say the declaration is flawed, vague and open to broad interpretation. Provisions on lands and resources could be used "to support claims to broad ownership rights over traditional territories, even where rights … were lawfully ceded through treaty," says a synopsis of Canada's position on the Indian Affairs website.

. . .

In fact, documents released to Amnesty International under the Access to Information Act show that the government fought the declaration despite advice from its own officials in Foreign Affairs, Indian Affairs and National Defence, all of them urging its support.

. . .

Canada has over the last year aligned itself with such countries as Russia and Colombia in its bid to derail the declaration.

"We are working with like-minded countries to make positive changes to the document and we will determine our position on voting at a later date depending on the outcome of our talks," Yeomans said.

Lovely that the Conservatives think countries like Columbia and Russia are “like-minded” isn’t it? Even those lions of human rights seem to have managed to sign the declaration. It is very odd that the only four nations opposed to the declaration are normally known for their defence of human rights in the world at large. It can't be because this particular declaration would force them to acknowledge some of the less attractive portions of their own histories, do you think?

Given Canada’s history at the UN, it is a considerable departure to oppose a human rights declaration, one that the previous Liberal government had supported, but what does this have to do with Sharbot Lake?

Ole Simel, of Kenya, suspects the real root of opposition can be traced to the lucrative timber, minerals and other deposits that are on or beneath disputed lands.

The feds have been very quiet about the giving away of mineral rights on the disputed lands. Supporting this resolution might have made that silence a lot harder to justify.

But Strahl said the government is moving ahead on "making an actual difference" in improving the daily lives of aboriginal Canadians, instead of offering "empty promises and rhetoric."

Hmm, in my opinion, the refusal to honour the Kelowna Accord, the fight to derail this UN declaration on native rights, and the total inaction while a mining company tries to move in on disputed lands speak a lot louder as to where their priorities lie.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf -- a key U.S. ally -- is less popular in his own country than al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to a poll of Pakistanis conducted last month by an anti-terrorism organization.

To some degree, this isn't a huge surprise. The US, Pakistan, and others spent a good deal of money and time back in the eighties portraying bin Laden and his mujahideen buddies as heroic freedom fighters. Musharraf, on the other hand, is considered a sell-out and a tyrant, and has both the Islamists and the secular liberals opposed to his rule. I would be curious to see the distribution of the support for bin Laden, though. I'm betting it is far higher and growing in areas where there has been military action.

"We have conducted 23 polls all over the Muslim world, and this is the most disturbing one we have conducted," said Ken Ballen, the group's head. "Pakistan is the one Muslim nation that has nuclear weapons, and the people who want to use them against us -- like the Taliban and al Qaeda -- are more popular there than our allies like Musharraf."

Not entirely comforting, but entirely consistent with the way the US chooses its allies. Musharraf is running a military dictatorship, which has little in common with the so-called "freedom" agenda, but the US sees the military strongman as a bulwark against the Islamists, so he continues to recieve their support.

It is important to note that Benazir Bhutto has a far higher approval rating than either man, which indicates Pakistan is hardly a fundamentalist stronghold at the moment. Musharraf's recent battles with the judiciary also indicate that there is still a powerful secular establishment in place to organize and take over from his dictatorial rule.

All too often, it seems, the dictators in the Middle East use the West’s fear of Islamists as an excuse to stay in power and crack down on all of their opponents.  Since they can’t shut down the mosques as easily as they can other opposition focus points, the result is that the Islamists wind up being the only organized opposition force standing.  That apparently hasn’t happened in Pakistan yet, but prop up Musharraf long enough while he crushes his secular opposition and you can be sure it will.

The part of the poll that’s truly concerning is that only 4 percent of Pakistanis believe the US has good motivations behind the “War on Terror”.  That level of distrust can’t help but make people look upon the US’s foes more favourably, and makes supporting the war highly problematic for any Pakistani leader.

It is rather incredible now that after only six years, the events of 9/11/01 seem so distant. The images from that day are still there in the back of my mind, but subsequent events have made the term itself more of a bludgeon to use as justification for US Presidential policy than as a memorial to its victims.

That twisting, that politicization, that branding of the term, and the excessive and continuing use of it to support domestic programs like warrantless wiretapping, and a whole host of international policies like the War in Iraq, Ethiopia’s invasion (and continuing occupation) of Somalia, and belligerence (and possible war) against Iran, means that 9/11 is now linked to these highly contentious policies and not to the victims of the event itself.

It’s like a song or movie idea that starts doing well and then gets milked for all its worth and ultimately beaten to death by overexposure. The shock, horror, and grief of that day have transmuted into apathy and complacency. Hopefully, Americans will one day be able to turn the focus back to those who were victimized on that day, and not everything it’s been used as justification for. (Something like this is a great idea.)

As for a Canadian memorial, we had a rather large terror bombing carried out in this country that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of our citizens. I think we should try to properly memorialize those victims before we go about trying to honour victims of a foreign attack.

Go here for the question.

Three articles, all saying much the same thing, but all worth noting. First from the Guardian:

Cynosure though he will be today, Petraeus in fact has only a limited role to play in seeing to it that the US continue its mad engagement. The stars of that dispiriting drama will be the phalanx of foreign policy experts based in Washington, who will, in the wake of the general's testimony, fan out across the cable channels and op-ed pages, arguing that giving the surge one more chance is the only "serious" option.

These, you see, are the "serious" foreign policy people. It's good work if you can get it. You may be thinking that you become a serious foreign policy person by often being right about foreign policy. But this just shows how little you know about how these things work.

No - you become a serious foreign-policy person in Washington by dint of meeting two criteria. First, you should adopt the most hawkish position you can plausibly adopt, so that you come across as appropriately "tough-minded". Second, you must note what all the other serious foreign policy people are saying and take care to ensure that your position is sufficiently indistinguishable from theirs for you to be lumped in with them when the time comes for the Washington Post to write a group profile of Washington's serious tough-minded foreign policy people.

From Kevin Drum:

In the beginning were the War Hawks, and much did they counsel the powerful to do battle against the evildoer Saddam. Then came the war, and the looting, and the Heritage Foundation hordes, and the hawks lamented exceeding loud and many soon repented of their ways. Yea, verily, they presently transformed themselves into Pottery Barn Hawks, eager to fix the disaster they had helped create and thus redeem themselves in the eyes of the faithful. In the fullness of time, though, the disaster ripened and flowered and became impossible of resolution, and the hawks despaired. Success had become unachievable, yea unto their own generation and the generation to come after them. In short, life sucked.

So what's a Pottery Barn hawk to do? The answer, lately, is: become a Chaos Hawk. First, admit that Iraq is hopeless, thus demonstrating that you're not completely out to lunch. After all, the surge has produced only tiny gains in a few highly localized areas and has no chance of replicating those successes on a wide scale. The Iraqi government is dysfunctional, the police forces are dysfunctional, the army is years away from competence, militias are engaged in a ruthless campaign of sectarian cleansing, infrastructure is declining, and refugees are fleeing the country at a rate of thousands per day.

Having admitted, however, that the odds of a military success in Iraq are almost impossibly long, Chaos Hawks nonetheless insist that the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because if we leave the entire Middle East will become a bloodbath. Sunni and Shiite will engage in mutual genocide, oil fields will go up in flames, fundamentalist parties will take over, and al-Qaeda will have a safe haven bigger than the entire continent of Europe.

And finally, Matt Yglesias:

such is the war in Iraq as seen through neocon lenses. Mistakes are always in the past. The current policy is always working. When the mistakes are being made, those who point out the mistakes are tarred as near-treasonous. Then, after another year or two of pointless, futile bloodshed, it's conceded that mistakes were made in the past. But now we're right on track. And the liberals, once again, just don't get it.

Such is the world of the Washington pundits, whose only job on the international stage appears to be finding new and impressive-sounding justifications for getting people killed to prove how tough they themselves are. Being wrong carries no penalty, and being right means you won't be taken seriously.

It's little wonder the US is having a hard time these days.

He does snark so very, very well.

A quick summary of the facts tells us that the Iraqi military is broken, the police force is even worse, we have ceded the south to the Shi’ites, Anbar province is under the control of the Ba’athists, our military is stretched to the breaking point, corruption is the norm, there is a cholera epidemic, high levels of violence against the civilian population, we can not provide basic services (like, for example, electricity or water), and the national government is squabbling (when not on vacation) and led incompetently by a man Bush thinks is under his tutelage (that alone should scare the hell out of you).

The sole force doing well in Iraq are the American contractors.

Personally, I blame the liberal media, and clearly it is time to bomb Iran.

With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months

.

Why is it every time I see a headline like the one above, I think, "Jellyfish". Probably because so far, comprimise from the Democrats has meant giving Bush whatever he's asking for.

Some Democrats have concluded that their decision earlier this summer to thwart votes on alternatives left them open to criticism that they were being intransigent.

And yet being totally intransigent is the one strength Bush and his supporters have left, and is the reason that Bush's historically low approval ratings are still higher than Congress'. (Why being intransigent on a policy that isn't working is considered a strength, I can't answer.)

Generally, being willing to compromise is a good thing, but it takes both sides. When Bush refuses to compromise and the Democrats compromise away their position, they just look like a bunch of weak-willed, spineless jellyfish. Agree with their position or not, it is really hard to respect people who prove unwilling to fight for what they supposedly believe in.

The US Air Force has launched an investigation after a B-52 bomber flew across the US last week mistakenly loaded with nuclear-armed missiles.

It follows reports in the Army Times that five missiles were unaccounted for during the three-hour flight from North Dakota to Louisiana.

Just the kind of thing you want to hear to inspire confidence.

Via Cernig at The Newshoggers:

On a recent run from Boston to Cape Cod, I test drove the 2008 Honda Accord, the latest version of this family favorite. The new Accord boasts an environmental first: a six-cylinder gasoline engine that's cleaner than many hybrid systems.

There's only one catch: You can't actually buy this ultra-green Accord, or the four-cylinder version that also produces near-zero pollution. That is, unless you live in California, New York or six other northeast states that follow California's tougher pollution rules. Only there can you buy this Accord, or the roughly two dozen other models that meet so-called Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle standards, PZEV for short.

Not only can't you buy one, but the government says it's currently illegal for automakers to sell these green cars outside of the special states. Under terms of the Clean Air Act—in the kind of delicious irony only our government can pull off—anyone (dealer, consumer, automaker) involved in an out-of-bounds PZEV sale could be subject to civil fines of up to $27,500. Volvo sent its dealers a memo alerting them to this fact, noting that its greenest S40 and V50 models were only for the special states.[Emp. added]

I'd like to do my best Don King impression with a hearty, "Only in America". A little research confirmed that whether or not they are widely available in Canada, they at least aren't illegal to sell. That fact just boggles my mind.