Eruption
I Can’t Stand the Rain

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

Did he just say the troop surge in Iraq was designed to show Iran the US was not overcommitted? So it has nothing to do with helping the Iraqis? It has to do with beating the war drum for Iran? Well thanks for letting us know that Mr. Gates!

Increased US military activity in the Gulf is aimed at Iran’s “very negative” behaviour, the Bush administration said today.
The defence secretary, Robert Gates, told reporters that the decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf in conjunction with a “surge” of troops in Iraq was designed to show Iran that the US was not “overcommitted” in Iraq.

Speaking in Brussels after meeting Nato officials, Mr Gates said: “We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future.”

Read more at The Guardian

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

U.S. Navy nuclear submarines maintaining vigil off the coast of Iran indicate that the Pentagon’s military plans include not only control over navigation in the Persian Gulf but also strikes against Iranian targets, a former commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Eduard Baltin has told the Interfax news agency.

“The presence of U.S. nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf region means that the Pentagon has not abandoned plans for surprise strikes against nuclear targets in Iran. With this aim a group of multi-purpose submarines ready to accomplish the task is located in the area,” Admiral Baltin said.

He made the comments after reports that a U.S. submarine collided with a Japanese tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

“American patience is not unlimited,” he said. “The submarine commanders go up to the periscope depth and forget about navigation rules and safety measures,” the admiral said.

Currently there is a group of up to four submarines in the Persian Gulf area, he said. So far they only control navigation in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and in the Arabian Sea, he said. They might receive different orders in future: to block off the Gulf of Oman, that is the Iranian coast, and, if need be, launch missile strikes against
ground targets in Iran, he said.

Source

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

From the article: Israel focused its efforts on more behind-the’scenes international diplomacy, making its intelligence information available to world powers in order to convince them that Iran is becoming a growing threat to the entire region
Isn’t that nice…..they want to share their intelligence with us so we can fight their war for them! I’m so sick of this anti’semitic speak I could vomit.

Washington - Retired general Wesley Clark drew harsh criticism this week after reportedly saying that “New York money people” are pushing America into a war against Iran.

By Tuesday, Clark, a past and likely future Democratic candidate for president, was working to assure Jewish groups that he was in no way attempting to advance an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But the controversy still had Jewish organizations bracing for a new wave of claims that they are the driving force behind any future military strikes against Tehran.

The flap comes as Israeli politicians in the government, as well as the opposition, have been lobbying more publicly for an international hard line against Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Until the middle of last year, Israel focused its efforts on more behind-the’scenes international diplomacy, making its intelligence information available to world powers in order to convince them that Iran is becoming a growing threat to the entire region. Lately, Israel decided to take the Iranian issue to the public arena, as well, making it the leading issue on the agenda in public speeches and press briefings.

Several Israeli sources have stressed that Jerusalem is still urging the international community to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran in order to force it to give up its nuclear ambitions.

Read more at the Jewish Daily Forward

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

Pretty much says it all. Bush Sheneman Cartoon Still In The Drivers Seat

Source: ComicsPage.com

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

“If America and the Arabs aren’t able to stop Sunnis and Shiites from killing each other indiscriminately, then what use will it be to send in our forces?” asked one Kurd in an online forum (considering the idea of using Kurdish troops to quell violence in both Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad.)

Haven’t we been stating this very same thing of our American troops all along???

(H/T QuestionGirl, for the article)

Plan would add Kurds to civil war mix

Many fear deploying northern troops to the capital would expand the conflict between Shiite and Sunni Arabs.

BAGHDAD - Already a dangerous battleground for an array of forces, Baghdad soon could be flooded with another volatile element: thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq.

As part of President Bush’s new strategy for Iraq, 8,000 to 10,000 Iraqi troops will deploy to Baghdad in the coming weeks, American and Iraqi officials said, and as many as 3,600 could be Kurds. It would be the first time such a large number of Kurdish forces have been sent to the capital.

The impending deployment has raised fears among Kurds, most of whom live in a protected autonomous enclave, that they are being dragged more directly into Iraq’s bloody and complex civil war.

Most of the fighting in Iraq is between Shiite and Sunni Arabs, but Kurds, most of whom are Sunni Muslims, fear that could change if they are seen as players in the country’s main struggle.

“I don’t think it’s wise,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker in Baghdad. “This is a Sunni-Shiite conflict.”

Most Kurdish troops are not acquainted with Baghdad, many speak neither Arabic nor English, and their participation could create an even deeper conflict between Kurds and Arabs, he said.

Large numbers of Kurds mix with Arabs in the Kirkuk and Mosul areas of northern Iraq, and a small number live in the capital, but Arab politicians also question the wisdom of bringing Kurdish soldiers into the conflict.

“I advise the Kurdish people to apply pressure on their leaders to prevent this step,” said Mohammed Daini, a lawmaker with a major Sunni bloc. Kurdish forces, he said, “will face firm resistance from both the Sunnis and the Shiites.”

Sheik Abdul Razzaq Naddawi, an aide to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, agreed that Kurdish troops would not be welcome.

“The Kurds, frankly speaking, consider themselves superior to other Iraqis,” he said. “Would they allow troops from the middle or the south to arrive in Kurdistan?” he asked. “Their borders are closed, and they are practically independent.”

The idea of using Kurdish troops to quell violence in both Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad originated in backroom talks among the country’s main power brokers. With a chance to live their dream of autonomy, Kurdish lawmakers were extremely reluctant to take part in the plan. But Iraqi officials as well as U.S. military and political officials argued that if they failed to participate, it would show their lack of commitment to the nation.

Word of the planned deployment took Kurds by surprise. In their small but prospering northern enclave, they shook their heads over the prospect of getting involved in a conflict that has bedeviled the most powerful army on Earth.

“If America and the Arabs aren’t able to stop Sunnis and Shiites from killing each other indiscriminately, then what use will it be to send in our forces?” asked one Kurd in an online forum.

“We do not need to have our young men getting killed in a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites,” read another posting. “They are both our enemies.”

Read more »

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

So let’s see…..we have Iran courting the countries of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolvia, Nicaragua, and now Ecuador. This is where we’ve ended up in Latin America with Bush at the helm. Diplomacy? We don’t need no stinkin diplomacy!

Monday, January 15, 2007 - Updated: 09:38 AM EST

QUITO, Ecuador - Leftist Rafael Correa is promising to battle Ecuador’s widely discredited political establishment after taking office Monday in a ceremony that is drawing some of Washington’s fiercest critics.

U.S. foes including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Iran’s hardline leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were gathering to welcome the U.S.-educated economist into Latin America’s club of left-leaning leaders.

Correa, 43, won a November election runoff as a charismatic outsider who pledged to lead a “citizens- revolution” to make the country’s democracy responsive to its poor majority.

Correa says his first act as president will be to call a national referendum on a special assembly to rewrite the constitution _ a move he says is vital to limiting the power of the traditional parties that he blames for the country’s problems.

That could quickly put him on a collision course with Congress, which is dominated by those same parties. Lawmakers have dismissed the last three elected presidents, violating impeachment proceedings, after huge street protests demanding their ousters.

During his campaign, Correa attacked Congress as a “sewer” of corruption and ran no candidates for the legislature. And he said last week that the newly installed congressmen “do not represent anyone other than their own interests and the bosses of their political parties and that is not democracy.”

Read more here

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

What will Bush’s “New Way Forward” do about this? As this writer states,
Also, because hundreds and thousands of ghosts exist at all echelons, many military and police units in the field do not have nearly as many men at arms as they seem to have on paper. Thus the units are often assigned tasks for which they do not have necessary manpower.

FORT BENNING, Georgia: The level of corruption in the Iraq Security Forces is staggering. The Iraq Study Group found that $5 billion to $7 billion is lost annually to different types of corruption, and yet “there are still no examples of senior officials who have been brought before a court and convicted of corruption charges.” The result: “Economic development is hobbled by insecurity, corruption, lack of investment, dilapidated infrastructure and uncertainty.”

Yet of the study group’s 79 recommendations, only two are much relevant to this problem, and no anticorruption milestones to be achieved were set forth. Having served in Iraq, I find this very disappointing.

While I can’t of course speak officially for the Pentagon, I can describe what I saw and give my own thoughts on how to improve things.

The most prominent forms of corruption I saw were Iraqi commanders pocketing the paychecks of nonexistent troops in the Iraqi army and officers in the police forces, and customs officials abetting the smuggling of oil and precious rebuilding supplies across Iraq’s porous borders.

The greatest amount of corruption in the Iraq military and police forces occurs when payrolls are handed out at the unit level. Because the country doesn’t have a functioning banking system, military and security commanders receive large sums of cash every payroll period based on the number and rank of soldiers on their personnel rosters. The endemic problem is that commanders frequently put nonexistent soldiers and security personnel - “ghosts” - on their rosters and pocket their salaries.

It is difficult to overstate how deeply these ghosts hurt the war effort. Most obviously, we have no idea how much of this money is being siphoned off to support tribal and ethnic fighting, and even the insurgency itself.

Also, because hundreds and thousands of ghosts exist at all echelons, many military and police units in the field do not have nearly as many men at arms as they seem to have on paper. Thus the units are often assigned tasks for which they do not have necessary manpower.

Read more here

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

Never thought I’d see the day…….

NEW YORK, Jan 12 (OneWorld) - The Bush administration’s failure to address international human rights concerns has prompted an unusual call from one of the world’s leading human rights organizations.

With U.S. credibility undermined by the use of torture and detention without trial, the European Union must fill the global leadership void on human rights, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Thursday in releasing its World Report 2007.

“Since the U.S. can’t provide credible leadership on human rights, European countries must pick up the slack,” said the organization’s executive director Kenneth Roth, who observed that instead, “the European Union is punching well below its weight.”

The organization urged European countries to overcome bureaucratic obstacles that leave its leaders “mired in procedures,” effectively tying the hands of those seeking a tougher approach to serious rights abuses.

The call came on the day that marked five years since the United States started sending terrorism suspects to Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military base located in Cuba.

The authors of the 556-page report, which documents worldwide violations of human rights, said the U.S. abuses against detainees in Washington’s so-called “war on terror” remained a major concern, as the Bush administration continued to defend torture by referring to it as “an alternative set of [interrogation] procedures.”

Read more here

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

It’s that time of year…..the Koufax Awards. I’m asking that anyone who reads and/or comments at the Blue Herald, and thinks we’re worthy of being noted, take the time to go here and say so. Alot of hard work is put into our blog, and we’d really appreciate it if you’d let them know you like it. Even if you don’t comment here, and just read……..please, take a minute and go support us!

Thanks!!!

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

The first paragraph of this article says it all. He’s hoping Iran will tell us to put up or shut up.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Stepped up U.S. military activity in the Persian Gulf is to counter “very negative” behavior by Iran and undercut its belief that American forces are overcommitted in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

Gates said the time is not right for diplomatic talks with Iran, but left open that possibility for the future.

After meeting with senior officials at NATO headquarters, Gates was asked at a press conference what was behind the Bush administration’s decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region - moves announced in connection with a further buildup of ground troops in Iraq.

He noted that the United States has taken a leading role in Gulf security for many decades.

“We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future,” he said.

Gates, who as recently as 2004 publicly called for diplomatic engagement with Iran, said the situation has changed. In 2004 Iran was concerned by the presence of U.S. forces on its eastern and western borders, in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, the Iranian government has come to see it differently, he said.

Read more at YahooNews

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

Jim Webb vs. Condi Rice

I hope everybody in the room had their boots on because the bullshit shooting out of her mouth was thick.

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

It takes a Republican to bitchslap Joe Liebermann

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
From Martin Luther King’s I See the Promised Land Speech
April 3, 1968

No doubt, the man is turning in his grave over the current situation.

Leave a ReplyEmail Post Toggle Meta