Just Do Something!

Our Hamlet in the White House in a jam. Only a year ago he banged his fist on the Bully Pulpit telling the bad boy of the Levant, Bashar Assad, that he’d better behave and not cross that red line if he knew what was good for him. Great theater gentle reader, with one tiny niggle, Obama was going to be called out on that little bit chest beating. Having called the tune, the president is now being asked to pay the bill. Barry has looked over the eye-watering cost of his blather and does not like the shape and size of the numbers. 

But he asked for this. He ran for the job and is being reminded what the full job entails. The pressure to just Do Something, anything to make those bad images on the TV and web just go away is reaching critical mass. A funny thing about things reaching critical mass, they almost run away from you in really bad ways, in melt downs of policy or worse, explosions of war.

The awful thing about Syria is that all our options there are plain awful. We could do what we are doing, which is nothing. The hope here is that Assad is able to crush all comers and reassert “stability” in Syria. That would be a rather nasty blood bath as the Baathist regime clears account with all the people who “betrayed” the “rightful rule” of the Assads. 

But poor Barack Obama, the other option is allowing the resistance to sweep all before it. And that gentle reader is another horror. It would result in the establishment of a fragmented failed state in the region. If you liked the Taliban crashing about in the bad lands of the Hindu Kush you’re just going to love the radical Salafi state that Syria will be in the Levant. 

The last option, the one that no one in DC wants, would be a full on occupation in Syria by NATO. That would be a commitment with no end point and counter productive results. In other words it would be Iraq on steroids. Still, that is just the results we might get. The minute our efforts get “kinetic” that is once the bombs and bullets start flying we are staring at a second Libya at best and a worse than Iraq endgame as the the bookends of our efforts. 

Yet the bobble heads of the Conventional Wisdom insist we, that is the US must Do Something. They will trot out cruise missile attacks or other “limited” options, forgetful of how much death and destruction just one Tomahawk can dish out. Or if they are really clueless, the bobble heads will yammer about a No Fly Zone. Well, that’s a great idea for your armchair general, but the reality is a hell of lot messier. No Fly means a total degradation of Syrian Air Power. It means blowing up a lot of stuff, missile defense systems, radar facilities, air fields, command and control facilities, and, by the way, innocent civilians. No Fly Zone are neither easy nor neat and clean. A lot of uninvolved, innocent civilians are going to get hurt, maimed and killed so we can all feel better about ourselves.

Gentle reader we did have a window of opportunity here, and we let blow past us. Instead of the foolishness of our efforts in Libya we should have instead focused on the main arena. The minute Assad started using his Air Force and Artillery against his own people we should have rounded up our NATO allies and intervened. We knew the capabilities of the Assad regime. We knew the history. We understood the larger history of despots, that they never, ever go gently into that good night. If you really believe in force as a solution, you go with the full Powell Doctrine. You go in fast, you go in hard, and you go in meaning business. No half measures need apply. You crush Assad like the cockroach that he is. 

But that means if you are Obama et al you fully explain the rational, and the need. You don’t just give a pretty speech and then bask in the applause. You gird the nation to do what must be done. You do this because the National Interest of the US and its reputation is on the line. If you make a case for intervention based on humanitarian reasons you better be consistent. You link Libya and Syria together because it really is one and the same thing. You can not play favorites, or try to split hairs. The logic is inescapable. You will be called out if you try to fudge. 

Yet Obama will fudge, and dawdle, and temporize. What else can he do? There are no good options, there are no half measures, there is no way to “calibrate” this mess. The big lie is that we can have some kind of limited response. There is no limit to this, one act will lead to another and we will blunder into a death by a thousands cuts the minute we reach for a military option. Syria is a black hole of chaos, get too close and the nation gets sucked into the vortex. 

We never had a dog in this fight. We do not have one now. We can only add to the tragedy. Will our reputation be damaged by doing nothing now? Yes it will. But it we will suffer worse if we rush in like fools were angles dare not tread. 

Droning On

Something miraculous happened last week, the Moron Media and the rest of the Dim-bulb Elite suddenly noticed we have a Drone problem. Amazing, it took almost four year for our “betters” to suddenly notice that the Executive has seized powers that make the whole notion of Limited Government a farce.

Let’s not mince words, our drone policy is an abomination. With these automated killers in the air, our President has taken on the power to eliminated, with extreme prejudice, any man, woman and child who takes a dislike to. Obama has wrapped himself in the cloak of the Red Queen from Alice In Wonderland.

And boy has our Red Queen been busy. Over two hundred Drone strikes have occurred in the last four years. This is a significant increase over the Bush Years where the dry drunk president only managed to get around authorizing just over fifty. Obama has taken the Bush policy on drones and put it on steroids.

Not once has Obama been called to task on this. Not once has he been challenged. Not once has he justified these killing in anything other than boilerplate. Even after blowing up an American citizen, no challenge has been uttered. Anwar al-Aulaqi’s  name has not been mentioned to the general public, not even as a Final Jeopardy question. 

But now our fearless Congresscritters an Media Mavens are on the job and solutions will be offered. What kind of solution? The usual solutions: White Wash and Rubber Stamps. 

The bright idea of our elites is to set up a FISA Court for drone killings. How will that work? It will work exactly as FISA Court did; not at all. As pointed out by other commentators, the FISA Court has not exactly been a high bar to prevent Governmental snooping. It has not been the stout protector of our Forth Amendment rights. Of the 20,000 requests for warrants only six have been denied. 

If we had truly serious Representatives, they would be demanding a full trial in absentia of any Terrorist bad guy the President wanted to blow up. A full trail would be fully public, with a full and robust defense. No conviction would mean the neither killer drones nor Seal Team Six deploying.

But Congress is anything but serious these days, it’s a food fight put on by mental midgets. Democrats refuse to curb their guy because, well, he’s their guy. Because he is Obama, and he is a Democrat we, as a nation can trust him not to abuse the power he claimed for himself and the office. Republicans are not crying foul either because they want the opportunity to go all Dick Cheney when they finally grab the White House.

 Having given up on the duty to declare war sometime after Pearl Harbor, Congrescritters are now gladly handing over the judiciary power to the Executive as well. For the most part they are quite happy to have the President be judge, jury and executioner without all that pesky rule of law stuff getting in the way. 

It’s not really surprising, Congress has steadily withered as an coequal branch of government. Why bother with all that hard effort of upholding the Constitution when you can fob the responsibility off to the executive? That leaves much more time to dial for dollars, raising the funds for ever more expensive reelection bids. It also is a grand way to evade the responsibility of a foreign policy, or any other policy that explodes in unforeseen ways. It’s the “look ma, no hands” mode of governing. 

Still this utterly irresponsible Congress is only a reflection of an utterly irresponsible electorate. Mention Drones to most voters and they might vaguely recall the Droids in “The Phantom Menace.” They might give a passing thumbs up to the whole business as them drones are killing all them evil mooslim terrorist doing evil terrorist things in evil terrorist lands. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort them out” done on auto-pilot is the notion.

We won’t get better policy results until the general public, or at least the voting public start to understand why our Constitutional guarantees are more than one more side-show in the great game of Blue vs Red. Letting the president blow up whoever he wants to is a very bad idea, even if he does it in foreign lands. No man should be able to exercise that kind of power, not Bush, not Cheney, not Obama, no one. Fanboi politics is no way to run a nation.

Blind Man’s Bluff.

Or how to have people forget about Osama Bin Laden in one easy step.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17930131

Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng says he gave up his refuge in the US embassy in Beijing after Chinese authorities made threats to family members.

He initially appeared to accept assurances of a safe future with his family, but later said he feared for them and now wanted to leave China.

The US said it had no knowledge of Chinese threats and that Mr Chen had at no point asked for asylum.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Beijing for high-level talks.

[Break]

Well, Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are neck deep in it now. Leave it to the Middle Kingdom to utterly screw up your day.

It all began less than a week ago when Chen Guangcheng managed to escape from house arrest in China. How does a legally blind man manage to evade the security state that is modern day China? Well gentle reader, that is the question now racking great minds in both Beijing and Washington. There have been some very odd and extremely murky goings on in the People’s Republic of late.

Take for instance the precipitous fall of Bo Xilai in Chongqing. (Older individuals may remember this city as Chungking, the WWII capital of China) God knows the leaders of China would love you to take Mr Bo far, far, far away and perhaps bury him with Jimmy Hoffa. The tangled tale of Bo Xilai, his wife, the murder of a British business man, and some high level phone tapping reads like the bastard child of a  Charley Chan movie and a John le Carré novel.

{Break}

( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17752064 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17673505 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17690925 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17390723 )

{Return}

This has much to do about the ten year refresh the CPC is about to undergo. Being China, and China still being a Communist State, there are many guesses about who is doing what to whom plus where the “real” power lays. Somewhere in Foggy Bottom, some poor, benighted souls are trying to unravel that mystery on way too much coffee and far too little sleep.

Enter our blind protagonist escaping under the watchful gaze of Chinese State security. He had help from friends of course; but still, somewhere in the corridors of power in China, heads are rolling.

So where else would this epic mess finally end up than the confines of the U.S. Consulate? You just knew that once Chen Guangcheng had flown the coop, he would end up in the lap of Barack Obama. Extra bonus for this happen right during some very critical, and very dicy negotiations, by Team Obama with Team Middle Kingdom. Nothing quite like a very large box of agitated, extremely poisonous, scorpions and pit vipers dumped in one’s lap in the middle of tense negotiations to queer the “No Drama Obama” presidential meme is there?

Neither Obama nor Clinton have exactly covered themselves with glory in this exercise. At day six it clearly looks like Obama and his SoS tried a quick and dirty solution that then exploded in their faces like a trick cigar.

We now have Chen Guangcheng making some serious allegations about how the deal was done, and State playing defense on those charges. Obama does not need this one day after his Afghanistan announcement. As Mitt Romney would say “I’m trying to get reelected here, for Pete’s sake!”

Did Team Obama sell out the Chinese dissident so they could then move on to “the real business at hand” ? The answer depends how you feel about Obama. My bias toward Obama makes me say “yes, it is entirely possible Obama shafted / pressured Chen Guangcheng.”  It’s not like Obama is some great Civil Libertarian. It is not like Obama is going to stand on principle. No Drama Obama is going to find a compromise that gets the negotiations back on track with China; business is business,  there are “big” issues of trade, and security arrangements, that need to be resolved.

I am being cynical here? Of course I am. My opinion about Obama, ever since his FISA cave all the way back in 2008, is that he is just another soulless, hack politician. My opinion is that Obama is a empty suite with no real agenda other than his political aggrandizement. Obama won’t even protect the human rights of his own citizens, why the hell would he give a tinker’s damn about some blind dissident in China?

Thanks to that attitude Obama is up against it now. His cynical treatment of Chen Guangcheng has just boomeranged badly. If Obama folds on the Chinese dissident now, he raises the old canard of Democrats being “weak” on National Security. One year and a day after OBL became fish bait; Obama has managed to look feckless and weak with the Chinese; Mission Accomplished?

Obama now has to find a way to get Chen Guangcheng and family out of China; this is the only way this incident goes away. This is no longer about Human Rights, nor any other high minded considerations. No gentle reader, this about Obama getting reelected. Chen and company come to the U.S.A. or Obama and family go back to Chicago; no middle ground. Tawdry stuff I know, but politics is always about tawdry considerations.

Tossed Under The Bus

LOS ANGELES — Bill Lee Jr., who had stepped aside as police chief during the investigation of the shooting of unarmed African American teenager Trayvon Martin, has officially resigned as the top cop of Sanford, Fla., a city commissioner said Monday.

Commissioner Patty Mahany said the chief submitted his resignation over the weekend; Lee temporarily left his post last month amid complaints about how his department handled the investigation of the Feb. 26 shooting. The city commission is scheduled to hold a special meeting late Monday afternoon to discuss Lee's severance package, Mahany said.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/23/146410/sanford-police-chief-quits-is.html

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/23/146410/sanford-police-chief-quits-is.html#storylink=http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/23/146410/sanford-police-chief-quits-is.http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/23/146410/sanford-police-chief-quits-is.html

Just Another Day At The TSA

Omer Petti and Madge Woodward expected the alarms to go off at the airport security's metal detector when they were flying home to Detroit after visiting family recently near San Diego.

After all, Petti, who is 95 years old, has two artificial knees and Woodward, at 85, has had her hip replaced. But they sure didn't expect to be subjected to accusations, extreme pat-downs, and most importantly, to be missing $300 in cash.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120418/OPINION03/204180345

[Break]

Exactly how many 95 year old terrorists do you think are out there in the world? For that matter how many 85 year old women are terrorist threats? Someone please tell me why this elderly couple needed to be scanned in the first place, then tell me why TSA was not able to return all the items they had the couple place in their bins. Oh, and if a "security tape" can't keep track of $300.00 worth of bills, how is suposed to spot a small explosive device. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Indian Ocean Hots Up

India has returned to the elite club of countries with a nuclear-powered submarine when by inducting a new
vessel leased from Russia.

AK Antony, the Indian defence minister, formally commissioned the INS Chakra II on Wednesday at its base in Visakhapatnam, a naval shipyard on the country's southeast coast in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

India is particularly keen to strengthen its maritime capabilities, given China's pursuit of a powerful "blue water" navy which Delhi sees as a threat to key shipping routes in the Indian Ocean and Indian energy assets in the South China Sea.

"This will be a big boost for the Indian navy," Antony told reporters. "The INS Chakra will ensure security and sovereignty of the country," he said in televised remarks.

The 8,140-tonne submarine, capable of firing a range of torpedoes, as well as nuclear-tipped Granat cruise missiles, was offered to India by Moscow on a 10-year lease - a deal greeted with alarm and anger by arch rival Pakistan.

India is currently completing the development of its own Arihant-class nuclear-powered submarine and the INSChakra II is expected to help crews train for the domestic boat's introduction into service later this year.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/04/201244143536357132.html

I see US Navy Destroyers spending a lot more time in the I.O. And I see out shared base in Diego Garcia becoming much more important. Would not be surprised to see a USN fast attack submarine showing up in Diego Garcia's lagoon fairly soon.

The Helmand Incident

Ah, the U.S. Marines, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children; you dress them up in really cool dress uniforms, but you really can’t take them anywhere. If you have been hiding under a rock, or have been attempting to forget this little bit of idiocy, let me fill you in on the particulars. It seems a U.S. Marine sniper team decided to participate in a little cinema verite’ in Helmand Province. Whoever came up with the brilliant idea of documenting a war crime is definitely regretting his decision now. The video got on the wild wonderful web, and the rest as they say, is history .

A three star general is now been tasked to find out the who, what, when, where and why of the incident. And well, if you know how the military works, that means that sniper team is about to have the entire chain of command land on top of them like a ton of bricks. By the time the military justice system is done with them, they will be ground down to a fine powder. The military is going to strip them of everything they have, including their birthdays.

I am not too worried about those five junior servicemembers, their doom is sealed. What I am worried about is how that incident happened in the first place. The Helmand incident did not happen in a vacuum. There has been a serious breakdown in what the military calls “good order and discipline.”

We are in four wars of choice gentle reader and the military is starting to seriously crack under the pressure. Iraq is still an area of concern, ditto Libya, Afghanistan is on a rolling boil and our efforts in Pakistan are careering about like a New Years drunk on a icy patch of road.

Our effort in Afghanistan, where the incident happened, has now passed a decade. Afghanistan is the longest military effort ever attempted by the U.S. Servicemembers are now on fifth and sixth tours, plus more, in the badlands of the Hindu Kush. It has been a long, hard, haul; with not much to show for it. Forget all the happy talk coming from the brass hats and high level politicians, out in the field the reality is not so rosy. Ask any trooper what is really going on when s/he is not being minded by mid-level officer and s/he will unload a long diatribe about how ineffective the whole nation building effort is.

We saw this in Vietnam, when the brass hats and high level politico were issuing all manner of happy talk that had no relation to the grim realities in the field.  Fortunately the All-Volunteer Military is still a much better outfit than the conscript armies of Vietnam.

But lets not fool ourselves, the fault does not lie in the present military as much as it does in the nation. Our leadership is rotten to the core. Not a one of them has any notion of what national service is. Not a one has any true understanding of what sacrifice to the nation really means. Look at the very heights of the political class. Neither Barack Hussein Obama, nor Willard Romney has spent one minute in the military. I doubt either one of their very deep staff has one person who has served in an active duty capacity. Only Vice President Joe Biden can claim a family member in the military, and that is as a reservist and a JAG officer; still not a trigger-puller to be found. The separation between the military and the political elites could not be more profound.

Still, it should be no surprise that our elites do not serve because most of us do not serve. The military and military family members make not even one percent of the population. Military service is concentrated in the working class and the lower middle class. Some of the middle class do serve, but almost none of the upper middle class serve and the wealthy have not been in the fray in any  meaningful way since World War 2.

This is why a clueless Dana Loesch can treat the Helmand incident like no big deal. This is why she can treat the whole notion of armed conflict like a Chuck Norris movie, or the latest installment of the Call Of Duty video game series. Dana Loesch has never had to hump a sixty pound ruck, nor get into full battle rattle, nor fire a weapon in her life. She never had to ride a slab of steel in broiling sun of the Persian Gulf, nor get tossed about in that same vessel in the brutal cold of an Alaskan winter. She has never had to stand a post, do a watch, work ridiculous hours, be separated from loved ones, nor had to deal with the countless incidents of “ hurry up and wait” every soldier, sailor, Coastguard man, Marine, or Airman plus their family members have to on a regular basis.  War for people like Loesch is a lark, an outsized team sport with guns, you root for the home team and abuse the opponents. Not for these arm chair generals the finer points of the Geneva Conventions. Not for these sunshine patriots the discipline of core values.

This is not to excuse the actions of the Marine sniper team, but I am not in the least surprised by their actions. If you have ever served with Marines, or have been around them for any amount of time you will understand that the ground pounders are not blessed with high levels of intellectual wherewithal. In other word the grunts can be rather foolish. They tend to do foolish things, not thinking of the consequences. Even in peacetime junior Devil Dogs find, um, interesting ways of getting into trouble. Now add to that tendency to act before thinking the stresses of a fire fight. Add to those stresses a mission that is ill-defined and going exactly nowhere. Add to that long, repeated deployments with no end in sight. Add to that the feeling that their own country is oblivious of the sacrifices they make day in, day out.  Add all those things together plus a lowering of standards for inductees and you have all sorts of kindling lying around for just the right match.

Those five Marines will be held accountable for their actions. Brother, are they going to be held accountable. But they are only  the tip of an ice burg. Our endless war against terrorism is corrupting and corroding our military. From the black site prisons run by the Air Force, to the farce that is Guantanamo Bay, run by the Navy, and beyond to the shadow drone war fought in too may places to enumerate, we are tasking our military with ever more dirty deeds. Is it any surprise that when the mission boils down to “act like Visigoths on the rampage” that our military acts like, well, Visigoths on the rampage?

The incident in Helmand is the result of an interventionist foreign policy gone off the rails. It is a reflection of a deeply dysfunctional government unable to set priorities; unable to discern the true National Interest from chaff.

This is your nation, the victory junkie. It got its first good hit during Gulf War One and has been looking for its next high ever since. Time for an intervention gentle reader, time to take away the crack pipe of military action before this addiction gets any worse. Time to seek a twelve step program and clean up our act. We cannot afford this drug anymore. We are going economically and morally bankrupt chasing this high of military victory, of world hegemony.

Drug-sniffing dogs in traffic stops often wrong

Chicago Tribune

January 06, 2011|By Dan Hinkel and Joe Mahr, Tribune reporters

Drug-sniffing dogs can give police probable cause to root through cars by the roadside, but state data show the dogs have been wrong more often than they have been right about whether vehicles contain drugs or paraphernalia.

The dogs are trained to dig or sit when they smell drugs, which triggers automobile searches. But a Tribune analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia.

For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent.

Snip

pandagon.net 

" I'm saying that drug dogs should be permanently banned. Even if they worked, they're basically a cheap attempt by law enforcement to skirt constitutional protections, but since they don't even work, they're nothing but a magic trick used to distract from what's really going on: cops conducting illegal searches based on their own prejudices."

Snip

Confirmation bias in  the form of the "Clever Hans" phenomena, plus more than little racial bigotry equals an all out assault on the Forth Amendment.  This is you government on drugs.

Ex-Assistant Sues Lady Gaga for $379,000

Courthouse News Service

MANHATTAN (CN) - Lady Gaga's former personal assistant claims the pop diva's touring company owes her $379,000 for overtime during the more than a year when the assistant was "figuratively, if not literally, always at her side."

Jennifer O'Neill sued Mermaid Touring Inc. in Federal Court. The head of Mermaid Touring is Joseph Germanotta, the father of Lady Gaga (Stephanie Germanotta), according to corporationwiki.com.

Iran reels from twin blows

Asia Times

TEHRAN - Deadly explosions at a military base about 60 kilometers southwest of Tehran, coinciding with the suspicious death of the son of a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have triggered speculation in Iran on whether or not these are connected to recent United States threats to resort to extrajudicial executions of IRGC leaders.

General Hasan Moghaddam, a key figure in Iran's missile program, was killed alongside 16 IRGC members on Saturday at a military site. The Guards said the accident occurred while military personnel were transporting munitions.

US removes Afghanistan commander Peter Fuller for criticising Karzai | World news | guardian.co.uk

US removes Afghanistan commander Peter Fuller for criticising Karzai | World news | guardian.co.uk:

Major General Peter Fuller, a top US commander in Afghanistan, has been relieved of his duties after criticising the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

General John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), relieved Fuller as deputy commander of the effort to train Afghan security forces after Fuller told Politico that Afghan leaders were "isolated from reality", a US defence official said.

Pentagon spokesman George Little had said on Friday that defence secretary Leon Panetta was aware of the remarks and Fuller had been speaking for himself, not the US defence department.

Snip

Not only is Afghanistan the graveyard of Empires; it is fast becoming the graveyard of loose-lipped generals. First General  McChrystal, now Major General Fuller have died from foot-in-mouth disease.  There is something very wrong with this mission to make two flag officers go off the deep end. When a brass hat has problems waving the Pom-Poms for our effort in Afghanistan, one wonders how the folks lower on the food chain think of the job.

Sidebar: This was a very nasty dirty deed done dirt cheep; real graveyard stuff. It popped up on the google machine around 21:30 Pacific Daylight Time on a Friday, which means it was not released until around midnight in DC. Talk about an attempt to burry the lead. Nothing to see here, move along, try not to trip over the prone brass hat in midnight gloom, keep moving citizen!

Air Power And The End Of Gaddafi

The Obama administration got a break this weekend as it big gamble on regime change in Libya payed out. While there are many ways to look at this accomplishment let’s us look at it through the very limited lens of military action. From the NATO perspective this was a two part air war; one, a short battle of Strategy and then, two,  a longer battle of tactics.

Overarching both battles was the attempt by NATO to negate Gaddafi’s advantage in running a military dictatorship backed by big-ticket arms. Striped of his army, the theory went, Gaddafi would not survive the assault by the rebels and the general populace.

If the assault on the Libyan regime proved anything it is that Tin Pot Military dictatorships end up with a regime that cannot stand up to a real military. Gaddafi’s forces were competent enough in the work of slaughtering the unarmed citizens of the Libyan nation but were no match for NATO’s high-flying hardware and the efforts of the Rebel fighters.

NATO, mostly via the efforts of the UK and France, slowly ground the Libyan military to the bite-sized chunks the Rebels could slowly devour. The first part of this task was the ill-named “no fly zone” set up by NATO. More properly understood, NATO established absolute air superiority in Libya. From time the time Libyan air units were able to work the seams of NATO’s blanket superiority, but it was a loosing game from the first day. 

In that first day NATO gouged out the eyes of the Libyan air defenses.  This is standard doctrine for any military worth its salt, take away the opponents ability to see the battle-field. The very first bits of the Libyan military infrastructure to get reduced to rubble were the radar facilities. The Libyans were hopelessly out-classed by NATO’s air-sea assault. From day one NATO flew with impunity in Libyan air space.

With NATO able to fly where the wanted and when they wanted, the next phase of the air war began: tactical air support of the rebels. This was the slow, unglamorous, brutal, chewing up of the Libyan military by attack air craft. 

In the US inventory the attack airframe nec plus ultra has to be the A-10 “Warthog.” It is stuff of tank commanders nightmares. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II ) The business end of the A-10 is the GAU 8/A Avenger 30mm gatling gun, a weapon specifically designed to chew up Soviet era tanks. While exact numbers of these planes deployed overseas is classified, it is more than likely the US had a few hanging around that were pressed into service. Also pressed into service for ground-pounding service was “Spooky” the AC-130, and its main armament of the 25mm GAU-12U gatling gun. As the AC-130 Specter is part of the Air Forces Special Command component and works best at night, it is likely that it was part of the overall special forces component of NATO’s efforts.

With the attack aircraft in place, NATO was able to slowly degrade the Libyan military’s ability to fight. Not only were the beans and bullets logistics getting eliminated, so too were the troops on the ground. The big guns of the Libyan army and its mercenaries, became live fire training for NATO pilots. The NATO pilots got better at chewing up the tanks and artillery, and the Rebels became better at guiding the planes from the ground.  

With NATO breaking the back of Gaddafi’s military, the rebels had a fighting chance to defeat the regime; and fight the rebels did. NATO did not have to put boots on the ground because the Libyans manned up and provided the fighters for the job. With the battle becoming more and more a small arms vs. small arms struggle, the superior moral of the rebel fighters starting tipping the war in their favor. 

It is the last consideration that must be illuminated. While NATO air power made the rebels victory possible, it did not make it inevitable. The NATO effort at regime change was successful because it had a willing, actually an enthusiastic, ally in the Libyan people. Air power opened the door, but it was the people of Libya who tossed Gaddafi out that open door. The final push for Tripoli, Operation Mermaid Dawn, could never have happened with out the support of Libyan fighters. 

Both pro and anti NATO commentators seem to miss that important fact. Leftist commentators like Pepe Escobar disparage the Libyan rebels as mere stage craft by the evil colonialist, capitalist, cabal. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH24Ak01.html) Meanwhile, triumphalism by the usual suspects also ignores the contribution by the flesh and blood fighters to better fetishize the gleaming hardware used by NATO. It is weird when the far left and status quo both manage to agree that NATO air power was the sole reason for the toppling of Gaddafi, if for different reasons.

Reality on the ground is another story. The rebels were not bit players in the machinations of greater powers. The people of Libya were not the pawns of NATO hegemony; they were not the dupes of disaster capitalism writ large. Far too many forget that Gaddafi had threatened the genocidal slaughter of his own citizens. Western “Neo-Imperialism” did not dream up those threats, they did not make Gaddafi say such things. The world community reacted to the threat of mass slaughter because it was believable. Gaddafi was a big enough SOB for the threat to be realistic.

The limited response of NATO, essentially the minimum military pressure needed to effect regime change, was a success. Whether regime change was a good idea in the first place is yet to be determined. It would be wise to remember how specific, how one off, the situation in Libya was. Regime change became almost required because Gaddafi seemed more than willing to perform prodigious works of slaughter. Because of that, ordinary citizens of Libya were more than willing to take up arms against the state. NATO worked in tandem with local, and enthusiastic, forces. It would be wise to remember that fact, that air power alone can not do the job alone. It would be wise to remember that air power is no substitute for support from the masses. I fear that the chattering elites in DC will quickly forget the people who made this possible and only remember the shiny and expensive military toys that helped those people to throw off a hated dictator.

Ain't Capitalism Grand?

Lobbyists push use of deadly asbestos in developing nations | McClatchy: "WASHINGTON — A global network of lobby groups has spent nearly $100 million since the mid-1980s to preserve the international market for asbestos, a known carcinogen that's taken millions of lives and is banned or restricted in 52 countries, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found in a nine-month investigation.

Backed by public and private money and aided by scientists and friendly governments, the groups helped facilitate the sale of 2.2 million tons of asbestos last year, mostly in developing nations. Anchored by the Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute, the network stretches from New Delhi to Mexico City to the city of Asbest in Russia's Ural Mountains. Its message is that asbestos can be used safely under 'controlled' conditions.

As a result, asbestos use is growing rapidly in countries such as China and India, prompting health experts to warn of future epidemics of lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma, an aggressive malignancy that usually attacks the lining of the lungs"

We're Ruled By Lying Cowards

Slobber And Spittle:

"Caption: The White House confronts mendacious conservatives the only way it knows how.

We're ruled by lying cowards. I can't see any other possible conclusion from the events of this day regarding Shirley Sherrod, who was, until this morning, the head of the USDA's Rural Development Georgia office."

No one in his right mind would believe that the White House wasn't responsible for this. A cabinet secretary took it upon himself to respond to a possibly fake news item by firing someone running an office he might not have even heard of until today? Even if it's true, the better thing to do would have been for the White House to say it regretted the misunderstanding, and wished Shirley Sherrod well, or just say absolutely nothing. But, as in the past, the White House just couldn't help itself.

To make this episode even more lovely, two supposed journalists couldn't help but print an anonymously sourced bit of character assassination from an Administration official.

We're not only ruled by lying cowards, but it's becoming increasingly clear that they're not terribly bright, either. And thanks to what passes for journalism in DC, they don't have to be.

Quick Thoughts on the UK Election

It is all over except for the shouting. David Cameron has jumped into  bed with Nick Clegg and anyone with a weak stomach had best turn their heads whilst the two politicians consummate their political marriage.

There is a sordid logic to these goings on. As the party with the most MPs the Tories had the easier path to Governance. The maths never did work for a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Still the election was not a rousing mandate for any of the parties involved. For the Tories to miss an absolute majority in a election  that had Gordon Brown front and center as main point of contention is amazing. The man was a super-toxic, shambolic mess of candidacy begging the public to please,  please, please put it out of its misery. After fourteen years of Labour governance the Party was running on fumes, totally devoid of new ideas. Despite this, Cameron failed to seal the deal. He found ways to put off the voters in odd ways.

The Liberal Democrats did not exactly cover themselves in glory. With the two-party duopoly laying eggs, Nick Clegg had a golden opportunity to emerge as a true third force in UK politics. Instead of gains his party managed to loose two seats. Talk about systemic problems for the Lib-Dems, they managed to face-plant even after Clegg had a barn-burner of a performance in the first televised UK debates.

Basically all three major parties in the UK managed to loose.  Not the best of all possible outcomes.  Lurking in the background is the economy and the brutal business of righting the UK's ship of state. The government in power must now raise taxes and cut services to return the UK to fiscal sanity. Lots of pain for an electorate already in a foul mood.

The present coalition is a patchwork affair, a thing made of strips of rags, bits of string, fragments of wood, sealing wax, bubble gum and bailing wire. It is not going to survive the pressures of hard choices that need to be made.  Nine months or so from now the voters in the UK will go to the polls again. Labour, with a new leader, may come roaring back.

It is anybody's guess how this will all play out. One thing for sure UK politics is going to be very interesting for the next year or so; very interesting indeed.

Of Course They Did

Chinese hackers used Microsoft browser to launch Google strike

Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer browser was the weak link used by hackers to attack Google's systems in China.The world's biggest software company today issued a security advisory and warned of a loophole that was used by Chinese hackers to attack dozens of US companies - the same attack that led Google on Tuesday to announce its plan to drop the censorship of its search engine in China.
"In a specially-crafted attack... Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution," said Microsoft in its security alert.
The company added that it had not yet fixed the vulnerability in the world's most popular web browser, which is used by around two thirds of internet users.
The attacks, which apparently attempted to steal personal information on Chinese dissidents and the code that runs some of Google's critical services, also hit a number of other companies, said to include Yahoo and US defence contractor Northrop Grumman.
Microsoft confirmed the existence of the loophole after an investigation by internet security firm McAfee and information from Google and Adobe.

Snip

There is a reason why the M.S. product is also known as Internet Exploder.

Sweet Jesus Christ, So to Speak, What a Schmuk!

Snip

Creepy, foul, a-historical, racist and wrong.

Who Knew That Progessive Democrats Have A Branch Office In Gaza?

Palestinian political leaders have expressed acute disappointment in the Obama administration, saying their hopes that it could bring peace to the Middle East have "evaporated" and accusing the White House of giving in to Israeli pressure.

The unusually frank comments come in an internal memo from the Fatah party, led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, but reflect a broader frustration among Palestinian politicians that Washington's very public push for peace in the Middle East has yet to produce even a restarting of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

"All hopes placed in the new US administration and President Obama have evaporated," said the document, which was leaked to the Associated Press news agency.

Snip

The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is not exactly in peroxisms of joy with Obama's Domestic or Foreign Polices.

Asia Just got a little more "Interesting"

S Korea satellite 'burnt and lost'

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/08/2009825233939179441.html

The rocket launched successfully but failed to push the satellite into orbit [AFP]

A satellite launched by South Korea's first space rocket has fallen to Earth and burnt up after missing its designated orbit, officials say.

"The satellite fell to earth and was burnt and lost," South Korea's science and technology ministry said on Wednesday, adding the government would form a team to analyse findings of a South Korea-Russian investigation and prepare for a re-launch.

The problem was caused by one of the two fairings which covered the satellite at the rocket's tip, the ministry said.

Because one of them did not fall away from the rocket after opening, the rocket could not achieve enough speed to overcome gravity and to place the satellite in its intended orbit.

'Half success'

After years of delays, South Korea successfully launched its two-stage Korea Satellite Launch Vehicle 1 (KSLV-1) from the Naro space centre in the south of the country on Tuesday, but Lee Myung-bak, the president, called the exercise only a "half success".

Snip.

Not to be a wet blanket but one does have to look at the Geopolitics of this launch.

This "satellite launch" had a less benign implications. Specifically it was a response to Soul's less than friendly neighbor to the north the DPRK. Pyongyang has been tossing up a large number of malfunctioning Taepodong for the last few years. While many of these devices only managed to belly-flop into the Sea of Japan the implicit threat of these missiles has unnerved both South Korea and Japan. It doesn't help that Kim Jong Il's proletarian paradise has been busily tinkering away at nuclear device for the last decade. Fortunately the Stalinist state has been rather incompetent in its effort to make something that goes Ka-boom in the night. They still have not got that implosion thing sorted out--yet.

Thus the launch was a lot more successful than one would think. The South Koreans can down-grade this satellite launcher into a very credible weapons system. North Korea and its Chinese enabler has been put on notice.

H/T to  Cujo 359

The New Jersey Mindset In A Nutshell

By Kathleen Brady Shea

Inquirer Staff Writer

The wife of a 69-year-old former Main Line lawyer now holds the keys to his jail cell.

Dorothy "Dot" Mirarchi enjoyed a lavish lifestyle - including a nearly $2 million beach house, high-roller status at the Borgata casino in Atlantic City, and a Lexus - courtesy of her husband's thievery, authorities said.

In April 2008, she reportedly agreed to an unusual plea bargain to help repay part of the $1.32 million her husband, Ralph E. Mirarchi, admitted stealing from two clients, one of whom was left virtually penniless.

By agreeing to sell the couple's home in Berwyn and a four-bedroom home in Avalon, N.J., that was put in her name while the thefts were occurring, Dorothy Mirarchi could reduce her spouse's incarceration.

She apparently had a change of heart, and yesterday Chester County Court Judge Thomas G. Gavin sentenced Mirarchi to 41/4 to 81/2 years in prison.

snip

The couple, married for 40 years, netted $500,000 when their Berwyn home sold last fall, profits that Dorothy Mirarchi used to pay off her Lexus instead of the victims..

Snip

Husband bilks clients for hundreds of thousands of dollars, gets collared and wife decides she is going to welch on the plea bargan deal so she can keep the Lexus. As for her beloved husband of forty years, nuts to him-- let him rot in jail. She is a typical Garden State Lass looking out for number one.