| |
|
2. april 2006
|
|
The New York Times, aiming at Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, writes an editorial essentially condemning Iraq as a country of thugs, unworthy of US support.
Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy. The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror.
The Bush administration will not acknowledge the desperate situation. But it is, at least, pushing in the right direction, trying to mobilize all possible leverage in a frantic effort to persuade the leading Shiite parties to embrace more inclusive policies and support a broad-based national government.
One vital goal is to persuade the Shiites to abort their disastrous nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Jaafari is unable to form a broadly inclusive government and has made no serious effort to rein in police death squads. Even some Shiite leaders are now calling on him to step aside. If his nomination stands and is confirmed by Parliament, civil war will become much harder to head off. And from the American perspective, the Iraqi government will have become something that no parent should be asked to risk a soldier son or daughter to protect.
The objective of this editorial is to attack Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and here, the NYT agrees with the Bush administration. It is, however, not easy for the US to demand al-Jaafari out and at the same time argue that Iraq is an independent, democratic nation.
11:39:25 PM 
|
|
WaPo's Dana Priest is stating the rather obvious:
As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.
Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said.
U.S. officials would not discuss what evidence they have indicating Iran would undertake terrorist action, but the matter "is consuming a lot of time" throughout the U.S. intelligence apparatus, one senior official said. "It's a huge issue," another said.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph writes that the British government are in talks with US counterparts, preparing for airstrikes against Iran.
A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.
It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme. [...]
The United States government is hopeful that the military operation will be a multinational mission, but defence chiefs believe that the Bush administration is prepared to launch the attack on its own or with the assistance of Israel, if there is little international support. British military chiefs believe an attack would be limited to a series of air strikes against nuclear plants - a land assault is not being considered at the moment.
But confirmation that Britain has started contingency planning will undermine the claim last month by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that a military attack against Iran was "inconceivable".
It's not exactly a thing you'd want to telegraph to the world.
On the other side, they are preparing as well, by test-firing a missile intended for targeting civilian targets in - obviously - Israel:
The Fajr-3, which means "victory" in Farsi, can reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East, Iranian state media indicated. The announcement of the test-firing is likely to stoke regional tensions and feed suspicion about Tehran's military intentions and nuclear ambitions.
"I think it demonstrates that Iran has a very active and aggressive military program under way," State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said in Washington. "I think Iran's military posture, military development effort, is of concern to the international community."
And Iran's second showcase weapon should cause no less concern, unless it is a bluff, that is.
Iran earlier in the war games said it tested a radar-evading missile and Sunday's announcement is likely to add to Western worries. Iran has a commanding position over the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf, a shipping route through which passes some two-fifths of all the oil traded in the world.
"This missile evades sonar technology under the water and even if the enemy sonar system could detect its movement under the water, no warship could escape from it because of its high velocity," Revolutionary Guards Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said.
"The Islamic Republic is now among the only two countries who hold this kind of missile. Under the water the maximum speed that a missile could (usually) move is 25 meters per second, but now we possess a missile which goes as fast as 100 meters per second," he told state television.
The commander used the word "missile" in Farsi, rather than "torpedo."
"The boats that can launch this missile have a technology that makes them stealthy and nobody could recognize them or act against them," he added.
The coalition naval forces in the Gulf take note, I bet.
Is it conceivable that Iran has technological capabilities for such an advanced weapon?
Link: Iran: Tides of War (I)
Update: The British MoD denies the meeting reported in the Telegraph article linked above.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said there was no truth whatsoever in the claims, made in the Sunday Telegraph.
11:27:14 PM
|
|
On April 2, 1982, the Argentine junta executed their plan to capture the Falkland Islands from the United Kingdom by force. The pivotal war that followed would become the beginning of the end of the dictatures who had been running the Latin America for decades, and also have profound impact on the cold war.
Argentina was hardly a banana republic, it had significant armed forces with modern equipment, especially a French-supplied air force. Britain had always prided itself on its all-volunteer force with every soldier, pilot and sailor trained to perfection, in effect a military consisting exclsuively on elite forces. Margaret Thatcher believed this; she believed, against the concerns of many of her own military commanders, that the UK could send an expeditionary force to the other side of the planet, meet the enemy while outnumbered six to one, and yet prevail. She was right.
The Argentine junta didn't survive the humiliating defeat, and arguably, the downfall of General Leopoldo Galtieri's junta would cause a domino effect freeing most of Latin America from similar inept cleptocracies.
In the crumbling (we now know) Soviet Union, other generals eyed the war with interest, and alarm. Modern tactics, weapons and training had again created a situation of bows-and-arrows against rifles, where third world armies were seriously outgunned, and there were good reasons to question whether Russia's ill-equipped and morale-burdened conscript army was able to prevail on a late 20th century battlefield.
In the European theatre of operations, which luckily never existed outside war game rooms, the prevailing question was how long NATO would be able to hold the Soviet onslaught back. The lessons from the Falklands made western commanders ask the question: but when do we counter-attack? Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were, against cold war prevailing wisdom, becoming convinced that the communist bloc could be more than contained. It could be rolled back, and it could crumble.
The grueling lessons learned in the Falklands War also vastly improved the US and British armed forces, further developing the network-centric warfare models ('plug and play') that were showcased to the world so spectacularly in Gulf war I.
10:37:41 PM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2006; 13:03:11.
|
|
|
