THERE WAS GOING TO BE A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY, BUT THEN SOMEBODY...

Via. Max Boot adds:

...So are shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles such as the

• American FIM-92 Stinger,

• British Starstreak,

• French Mistral,

• Chinese Qianwei-2,

• Russian SA-7 Grail,

• Russian SA-14 Gremlin,

• Russian SA-16 Gimlet,

• Russian SA-18 Grouse.

There are at least 100,000 such systems in the arsenals of over 100 states and at least 13 non-state groups such as Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the Tamil Tigers. The best models have a range of 23,000 feet.

IS YOUR HOG ON METH? HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? HOW COULD YOU TELL?

Well, yes. You see, your hog is definately on meth. Look for these here warning signs. Euphoria leading to paranoia, stealitazation of your thangs, and jibberish style oinkery what make no sense at' all. Warn your hog about the dangers of meth before it's too damn late.

"YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US" -- GEORGE BUSH, NOVEMBER 6, 2001

November 6, 2001 Posted: 10:13 p.m. EST (0313 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Tuesday that there was no room for neutrality in the war against terrorism.

"Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity," he said. "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." (Full story)

AND THE ANSWER IS?

Muharram is the first month of the Islamic Hijri calendar

The Day of Ashura (عاشوراء translit: ‘Āshūrā’, also Aashoora and other spellings) is on the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar and marks the climax of the Remembrance of Muharram but not the Islamic month. For Shi'a Muslims, it commemorates the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala in the year 61 AH (AD 680), and is a day for mourning.

This day is of particular significance to Shi'a Muslims, who consider Husayn the third Imam and a rightful successor of Muhammad. Many Shi'a make pilgrimages on Ashura to the Mashhad al-Husayn, the shrine in Karbala, Iraq that is traditionally held to be Husayn's tomb. Shi'as also express mourning by thumping their chests and crying after listening to Speeches on How Hussain and his family were Martyred. This is intended to connect them with Husayn's suffering and death. Husayn's martyrdom is widely interpreted by Shi'a as a symbol of the struggle against injustice, tyranny, and oppression.

It isn't ordinary time in Iraq for the Shiites, it is ritual time, sacred time. It is a time of deep mourning, of grief and the beating of chests and even flagellation with chains. It is the season for commemorating the martyrdom, the cosmically wrongful killing of al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who led the people of Kufa in what is now Iraq against the tyrannical empire of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid. His generals cut the plucky scion of the House of the Prophet down without mercy, along with his relatives and followers. They are said to have carried Husayn's head aloft on a stave and to have deposited it before the caliph in his palace in Damascus. The death of Husayn is the "passion" of Shiite Islam, their Good Friday. His shrine is in the Iraqi city of Karbala, where guerrillas dressed as American troops killed 5 American soldiers on Sunday. Emotions run high already. A sense of the meaning of the commemoration for Shiites can be gained from this British Shiite web site.

US says 'thousands' of missiles missing

Updated: 2005-02-25 08:46

WASHINGTON - It has been known for years that thousands of light and lethal shoulder-fired missiles are in black-market circulation. What is not known is exactly who has them and whether many have fallen into the hands of terrorists or criminals...

WHAT'S BEHIND CHINA'S ASAT TEST?

In August of 2006, President George W. Bush asserted the U. S. right to "freedom of action in space...the right to "deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

It now seems that the Bush Administration will have to determine the exact boundary of those "national interests" as regards China. The magnitude of interest payments to Chinese bondholders, and the quantity of U.S. currency held by Chinese banks may become a factor in these deliberations.

What's in it for China? Politically, what does the Chinese ASAT test mean?

• Perhaps it is a signal urging restraint on U.S. expansionism (e.g., war with Iran), a warning deemed useful after November 7th.

• Perhaps it is a self-promotional signal to the international community, to elevate the esteem for China by those who shudder under the shadow of U.S. power.

• Perhaps it is a signal from an anxious major investor to a reckless corporate adventurer, to moderate actions that might jeopardize principal -- it would not do for prized American war bonds to collapse.

• Perhaps it is a Chinese vote of confidence in a new space demilitarization regime. Perhaps, though this is very unlikely, it is an assertion of Chinese aggressiveness in a "space war."

• (perhaps) instead a clear yet subdued statement on the protection of Chinese "national interests" as regards access to the Earth's resources.

• it points to an easy "WMD" that might be developed by others, and deployed against U.S. and international space assets...the development of an ASAT capability rests on the integration of easily acquired technologies: aerospace electronics, computers and missiles.

• it would not be beyond the reach of small nations, well-funded national groups, and corporations. The pejorative terms "rogue states" and "terrorist groups" have been applied to such entities (the specific mapping of pejorative to entity depending on bias)

ZAWAHIRI TO BUSH: IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?

The tape is Zawahiri's response to Bush's announce
ment of the deploy
ment of 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq. Zawahiri scoffs at the American plan, stating: “Why send 20,000 only? Why not send 50 or 100 thousand? Aren't you aware that the dogs of Iraq are pining for your troops' dead bodies?" Zawahiri invites the president to deploy the entire American army to Iraq, claiming that the mujihideen are capable of destroying ten armies.

Zawahiri also exhorts al Qaeda followers to take up arms and fight jihad wherever Muslims are oppressed, listing Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Palestine, and Algeria.

That why I call on all the Arab nationalists and leftists to come back to Islam, the religion of honor, dignity and freedom because it is the real safeguard against humiliation, repression and invasion. It is the revealed religion of Arab the religion of truth and justice which prohibits submission to created beings and fear of them, it is the religion of submission to God alone and seeking his pleasure and his alone. And that’s why you will only find honor in Islam.

Nationalists split the Muslim Ummah into Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Turks, Afghans and others then split the Arabs into Egyptians, Moroccans, Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Saudis, Yemenis and others and thus provided the best possible service to the crusade invading the Islamic world and instead of the Ummah uniting to confront the colonialist campaign, as it previously united to face the crusade and Mongol invasions, the Ummah fell apart and fought itself, hasn’t the time also come for us to reject and disbelieve in the international law which imposed on us the Sykes Picot borders and the existence of Israel in one of the holiest places of Islam, imposed on us the crusader presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and south Lebanon and even imposed on us the pulling back of the real borders of Lebanon to 30 kilometers inside Lebanon

CONFIRMED: SHOULDER FIRED MISSILE --- NOW IT'S A DIFFERENT KIND OF PARTY

U.S. helicopter crash caused by hostile fire: report

Mon Jan 22, 9:14 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military helicopter that crashed outside Baghdad, killing all 12 on board, was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile, CNN reported on Monday.

The Black Hawk was most likely brought down on Saturday by hostile fire, according to unidentified U.S. officials cited by CNN. The crash was still under investigation but debris recovered on the ground indicate a missile was involved, CNN said.

Twenty U.S. troops were killed on Saturday in one of the deadliest days for the American military in
Iraq.

HILLARY FOR PREZ AS MAGGIE

HILLARY CLINTON is to be presented as America’s Margaret Thatcher as she tries to become the first woman to win the White House. As she entered the 2008 presidential race yesterday, a senior adviser said that her campaign would emphasise security, defence and personal strengths reminiscent of the Iron Lady.

“Their policies are totally different but they are both perceived as very tough,” said Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman. “She is strong on foreign policy. People have got to know you are going to keep them safe.”

Clinton, 59, used her website to announce...

Seyid Hassan Nasrallah in Wide Ranging Interview

By NIR ROSEN, AMER MOHSEN Posted 6 hr. 54 min. ago

So it was no surprise that Seyid Hassan’s long interview dealt with Iraq and what American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has called the New Middle East. “In short, the ‘New Middle East’ signifies a collection of statelets that are divided along religious, sectarian and racial lines,” Seyid Hassan explained, “from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Iran to Turkey to Afghanistan to Pakistan; all the way to Saudi Arabia and Yemen and the rest of the Gulf States, reaching North Africa. And here...I would like to warn everyone in the Arab and Islamic World, whichever sect or religion they identify with, whether they be Muslim or Christian, Shia or Sunni or Druze, whichever race they belong to, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, etc... Whoever believes that the ‘New Middle East’ will grant him his own independent state, that may be the case, but they should not ignore that a founding pillar of the ‘New Middle East’ is continuous conflict between these statelets.” Seyid Hassan added: “What that means is that no sect or religion or ethnicity in the region will be given a secure state with secure borders, or an internally stable country, instead, we will witness the erection of statelets that remain in a condition of constant infighting and conflict.”

I would say that the Americans did not come to establish a democracy in Iraq, or even to establish a democratic central state, the Americans came to divide Iraq and the entire region.

...some have tried to introduce the happenings in Iraq into the Lebanese scene. It is bizarre here that some politicians in Lebanon who are intimately tied to the US, and who are known to coordinate closely with the Americans, these politicians are agitating Sunnis against Shias under the pretext that Shias are American collaborators. This is a bizarre, surreal contradiction. What I say is that we should keep the tensions of the Iraqi scene in Iraq and besiege their effects, and go there together to solve them.”

Why China's Missile Test Is Troubling

• destroyed an aging weather satellite orbiting 500 miles above the earth

• left a several-hundred- meter-wide cloud of scrap metal floating around in space. Some of the debris could pose a threat to spacecraft passing through the region, scientists say, and will remain a problem for hundreds of years to come.

• "It shows that the Peoples Liberation Army has considerable leeway — a great deal of influence if not autonomy

• major step forward in China's ability to nullify the huge technological advantage of the U.S. in any clash over Taiwan.

• Now, the Chinese have mastered the tomato can. And by doing so at a distance from Earth greater than the one at which most critical U.S. satellites orbit

• Beijing has demonstrated a capability, however limited, of punching out Washington's technological eyes.

• it was reported last September that China had "painted" a U.S. satellite using a ground-based laser.

• could use them to blind key U.S. spy satellites as the first punch in a massive war.

• only one of a series of steps China is taking aimed at leveling out the playing field in case of a clash with the U.S.

• Other examples include the training of units designed to hack into military computers

• the development of massive shore-to-ship missile batteries that would make it very difficult for U.S. carrier groups to approach China's coast.

• in recent joint exercises held with the Indian Air Force, less technologically advanced Russian Sukhoi jets defeated American F-15s when the latter were deprived of support from satellite and AWACs systems.

• The satellite was orbiting 500 miles above the earth, the same approximate orbit as US spy satellites

A poisonous mix of inequality and sluggish wages threatens globalisation

Since 2001 the pay of the typical worker in the United States has been stuck, with real wages growing less than half as fast as productivity. By contrast, the executive types gathering for the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland next week have enjoyed a Beckhamesque bonanza. If you look back 20 years, the total pay of the typical top American manager has increased from roughly 40 times the average—the level for four decades—to 110 times the average now.

the top hundredth—or even the top thousandth—of the population are seizing the lion's share of globalisation's gains.

If globalisation depends upon voters who, as workers, no longer think they gain from it, how long before democracies start to put up barriers to trade?

For economists, the debate about whether technology or globalisation is responsible for capital's rewards outpacing those of labour is crucial, complicated and unresolved.

BRAZILLIAN CARLOS LATUFF ON OAXACA

Gallery at Salon Chingon

Brazilian Cartoonist Latuff Pummels Bush, Sharon, Olmert

To call political cartoonist Carlos Latuff outspoken would be an understatement. This Rio-based Brazilian, who has penned thousands of cartoons and videotaped several political messages and clever videos, which he has posted on Youtube, has stirred debate on some of the world's most protracted conflicts. Most recently he has been pummeling the Bush Administration with his "Tales of Iraq War" series, which are cartoons that cut right to the central questions of the war in Iraq and America's role as what he sees as an occupying force.

Sunnis Raise Ante--With SAMs?

From: Iraqslogger

Despite accounts from Iraqi authorities and Iraqi eyewitnesses that the helicopter was shot down, the U.S. military has yet to reveal the results of its investigation into the crash. Twenty-four is the highest number of U.S. military deaths in a single day in two years.

From: Adored by Hordes

One of my pet hobbies on this blog has been to warn almost incessantly that the Saudis and the Iranians, if Iraqi Sunnis or Shi'ite groups were squeezed hard enough, would both start to supply surface-to-air missiles to their favored cousins, and that these missiles would drastically drive up US troop losses to an entirely new level. It appears to be happening, and the Sunnis aren't getting shoulder-fired SAMs from our the islamo-fascists in Iran. They're getting them from our islamo-friends in Saudi Arabia.

Hot Spots - Jan 19th

Click for larger image

AEI WRITES THE WAR PLAN

Now, with the surge, “this is going to be completely different,” predicts General Keane. In the past, he says American and Iraqi forces could take only the first step of the three-stage strategy called “clear, hold, build”. They would clear insurgents out of parts of Baghdad. But the Americans lacked the numbers, and the Iraqis lacked the ability, to “hold” these areas, let alone rebuild them. With the promise of substantially more troops—five more American brigades in Baghdad to add to the four currently there, and the promise of 18 (smaller) Iraqi army and police brigades—General Keane says American forces will not only clear neighbourhoods of insurgents, but also stay behind and make sure that economic development follows immediately. Had these sensible tactics been followed in 2003, admits the general, the Americans would not be facing their current troubles. Still, he insists, it is not too late to change.

The man charged with implementing the new policy is General David Petraeus, who replaces General Casey. A former commander of the 101st Airborne Division that was deployed to Mosul, General Petraeus took charge of setting up the Iraqi army. He later led the training centre in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from where he co-authored the new American counter-insurgency field manual, published jointly by the army and marines last month.

The author of this plan and the man who trumps James Baker, Lee Hamilton, George H W Bush and every other realist and internationalist is Frederick Kagan from the American Enterprise Institute

COST OF WAR - $1.2 TRILLION

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot...

A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy

The “Four Problems” concept (Dave Kilcullen)

In essence, the model suggests that Iraq comprises four strategic problems:

* an underlying nation-building problem, resulting from the fact that Iraq is a weak and fragile state, and
* three overlapping security problems that sit “above” that underlying problem, and make it harder to get at it. The three problems are:
o Terrorism – that is, the presence of terrorist entities including (but not limited to) AQI who seek to exploit the situation in Iraq to further extremist or trans-national aims
o Insurgency – the (primarily Sunni) rebellion against the new post-Saddam order in Iraq, including rebellion against both the coalition presence and the new Iraqi government, and
o Communal Conflict – including sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shi’a elements, and ethnic conflict between Kurds, Arabs and other ethnic groups.

The Regional Dynamic

This whole “four-problem set” sits within a region that straddles a Sunni Arab world (Arabia and the Sunni parts of the Levant) and a Persian Shi’a world (primarily Iran, but also Iranian proxies and allies) with a long history of internal and intra-regional conflict and tension. As General Zinni remarked recently, in toppling Saddam we have created the first Shi’a Arab state in modern history, with profound implications for the long-standing regional dynamic, and the global relationship between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, that we are only just starting to appreciate.

HAMID KARZAI FINDS SOMEONE TO BITCH AT ABOUT WAZIRISTAN

On Friday, Clinton said she is hearing "increasingly troubling reports out of Afghanistan" and would be searching for "accurate information about the true state of affairs" militarily and politically on her trip.

If you want to know what Karzai told Clinton, the Fourth Rail is the place to go.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from behind the lines

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines, reveals how the Sunni insurgency has changed

Summary from Informed Comment

The Insurgency has turned into a battle not so much against US troops as against Shiite militias, which seem increasingly to be winning the battle for Baghdad.


*The disciplined anti-American insurgency among Sunni Arabs of 2004-2005 has deteriorated into youth street gangs mainly killing and robbing Shiites.

*Sunni guerrillas now need more weaponry than they can loot from old Baath munitions depots and are smuggling it from the weapons given by the US to the Iraqi goverment through graft.

*Sunni Arab guerrillas are blaming the strategy of attacking Shiites solely on "al-Qaeda." [This is not entirely honest. Baathists have attacked Shiites, too.]

*Militant Sunni Arabs of a fundamentalist cast still want to fight a two-pronged war against the Americans and the Shiites. Some dissent and think they should make up with the Americans so as to protect themselves from the Shiites.

*The guerrilla groups are increasingly based in neighborhoods rather than in city-wide cells.

* Contributions from businessmen, neighborhood levies by guerrilla groups, and looting and theft (especially from Shiites) are major sources of income for them.

WHEN YOURE LOST IN THE RAIN IN BAGHDAD AND ITS EASTER TIME TOO

AND THE WINNER IS....

Mohammed responds to those Norwegian cartoons. We all heard that the Norwegian cartoons were just funny, but apparently this cartoon isnt as amusing.