Sic Semper Tyrannis

The Washington Post should be registered under FARA

"...it is becoming evident that Mr. Erdogan's commitment to democratic principles and Western values is far from complete. As Turkey's prospects of joining the European Union have dimmed, the government's foreign policy has taken a nasty turn: Shrill denunciations of Israel have been accompanied by increasing coziness with the criminal rulers of Iran, Syria and Sudan."  Washpost editorial

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It should be well established here now that I do not favor any US alliances with political Islamists.  They always seek to disguise their ultimate goals which are:

1- Establish a sharia law state.

2- Retain power at all costs

For Islamists all else is mere tactical maneuver.

Having said that, it is nevertheless clear that today's lead Washington Post editorial is a clumsy expression of neocon and Likudnik displeasure with Turkey's rather minimal show of independence of Israeli influence.

"Shrill denunciations of Israel have been accompanied by increasing coziness with the criminal rulers of Iran, Syria and Sudan"

The first underlined phrase reveals the true nature of the Post editorial page's displeasure.

The inclusion of the present Syrian government in this list of "bad boys" is particularly revealing.  Bashar Assad may be a lot of things, but "criminal" is a charge unproven.  In fact, he has consistently tried to follow a course leading to peace with Israel.  That attempt has been obstructed by both the US and Israeli governments.  A description of Bashar Assad as a "criminal" is an unproven act of libel by what has become an editorial page devoted to foreign interests.  pl

December, 2011. Remember that?

I keep receiving mail in which the premise is the notion that there will be 30 to 50 thousand American and other foreign troops in Iraq indefinitely.

That is nonsensical.  The signed agreement with the Iraqi government specifies the terms of coalition withdrawal.  It contains a firm time line.  The US is a party to that agreement.  It is an obligation binding under international law.

President Obama stated publicly and for the record that by the end of 2011 he intends to have all US troops out of Iraq.  There was very little "flex" in the way he stated this matter.  The word "intend" had to be in his declaration because he was not, in fact, born in a stable and laid to rest in a manger.  He does not know the future.  I presume that if the overly large embassy in Baghdad were besieged by mobs, there might be some sympathy for keeping enough troops in the country to secure it until the crisis passes?

On "Meet the Press" the week after Obama's declaration, Secretary Gates was asked if the agreement with Iraq could be modified before the end of 2011.  His reply was clear.  The agreement can only be modified by joint agreement of the parties.  In other words, the agreement is unlikely to be modified unless the Iraqi government wants some specific change in it.  What might that be?  They may want us to keep enough logistical soldiers in the country to keep their forces supplied, maintained, etc.  Similar requests are possible.  Incidentally, there are no non-combat troops except chaplains, their assistants, non-SF medics and the like.  What the media people mean by "combat troops" are soldiers who are serving in units that have no function other than fighting, infantry, armor, etc.

Some people want to think that we may not withdraw fully because the generals might not like it.  People who think that do not understand the political system in America.  Bush and Co. were foolish enough to hide behind rhetoric that said that the generals were in charge of policy about Iraq.  That was nonsense then and it would be nonsense now if the Obama Administration were foolish enough to say something that implied a concession of policy decision making to the "generals."  Every flag officer in the armed forces knows that the first time he/she resists a fully formed presidential decision will be the last.

No.  We are out in 2012.  pl

Let's Talk Talking Heads

I am inspired by listening to Thaddeus (Christopher) Matthews (a member of the Philadelphia "troika" of Smerconish, Shields and Matthews) to invite a general discussion of the personalities and views of the talking heads seen on our present media.  pl

Richard Cohen is a propagandist.

"Conventional wisdom says that when Israel went into Lebanon in 2006, it lost that war. Hezbollah stood up to the mighty Israeli army; Israel could not muzzle Hezbollah's rockets. That may not be the way Hezbollah sees things, however. After the war, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said he had miscalculated. He was not prepared for the fury of the Israeli attack. He apologized. Now, Hezbollah takes no role in the current war. It will be back, but it still has wounds to lick. "  Richard Cohen

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What a crock!  Revionist history of the worst kind!

Nasrallah apologized to the LEBANESE people for having given Israel the excuse to unleash a country wide stategic bombing campaign.  That campaign attempted to destroy the national will of the Lebanese to resist the intimidation that is the continuing policy of the Israelis.  That policy was the keynote of the Bush Administration's effort to advance the interests of factions in Lebanon and Syria that would meekly bow to Jerusalem and Washington and accept a peace, not of equals and potential friends, but rather a peace imposed upon an "inferior race."

Cohen thinks that the IDF was not defeated in Lebanon?  No?

- They caused the complete integration of Hizbullah into the Lebanese govenment as the dominant factor.

- They were unable to "move" the Hizbullah village defense battalions on the battlefield. (They never met the main forces of Hizbullah)  The IDF's soldiers fought poorly against Hizbulah.

- The psychological effect of strategic failure and tactical stalemate on Israel's ability to maintain itself amongst a sea of enemies was devastating.  The Israelis know that the logic of ths development weighs heavily on their future as a state.  This operation in Gaza is as much about instilling fear of israel among the Muslims as anything else.

As I have written before, the main issue in the Middle East hangs in the balance in Gaza.  Israel and its propagandists like Cohen know that.  If Israel can not restore its image and self-image by dominating the outcome, then Israel's future will be permanently affected for good or ill.

Perhaps that would lead to a new beginning.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/05/AR2009010502343.html

Intellectual Garbage at the New York Times

After travel, I am catching up on my NY Times reading and discovered that someone left the editorial keyboard unguarded at the NY Times and a miscreant wrote a budget cutting list for the U.S. military. (Editorial, December 20).

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21sun1.html?pagewanted=2&hp

I find myself irritated when pseudo knowledge is mixed with decent thinking. The vision in this editorial is to bolster our land forces by shifting funds out of sexy and/or unneeded Air Force and Navy programs. There is a kernel of good in this tome, as it points out the serious imbalance in our land forces investment. Alas, much of the list of cuts (and why these cuts) comes from some ideological cloud formation that isn’t in the METARS training I received in private pilot school. The correct information is available with a little journalistic work and subscriptions to Aviation Week and Jane’s. To have the Times slip to this level of sloppiness is simply disgusting.

For the sake of brevity, one tawdry example, on the production of the F-22 Raptor.

The Times writes:

End production of the Air Force’s F-22. The F-22 was designed to ensure victory in air-to-air dogfights with the kind of futuristic fighters that the Soviet Union did not last long enough to build. The Air Force should instead rely on its version of the new high-performance F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which comes into production in 2012 and like the F-22 uses stealth technology to elude enemy radar.
Until then, it can use upgraded versions of the F-16, which can outperform anything now flown by any potential foe. The F-35 will provide a still larger margin of superiority. The net annual savings: about $3 billion.

I am heartily tired of said unwashed repeating that a system was designed for the Cold War and that this simple mantra is proof that a system is gold plated, overly complicated and complete overkill for our needs. Let’s deal with some ugly facts.

The F-22 is expensive but has superior stealth to the F-35. Its major flaw is that it took a decade of development to get it into the war fighter’s hands. What was a leap forward avionics package is now only a middling improvement, compared to the F-35. The processor speeds on the F-35 are miles ahead, and its AESA radar performance will be as well. The F-22 already verges on obsolescence in that phase. And I shudder to think of the cost of updating the avionics in the Raptor and how long that might take. The fact is, ultimately, it just doesn’t carry enough ordnance. It will have to be mixed into packages of other missile carrying aircraft, stealthy or not, who can rely on it to front the strike package and use linkage to identify and target. But it has range, more than planned for the F-35. It is a force multiplier. The continuing production decision is complicated but sure as hell not worthy of being decided by the vapidness fronted by this editorial.

Our intrepid editors also confidently inform us that the early 70’s, non-stealthy F-16 is superior to any other airplane flown by our enemies and should be continued to be acquired. I suspect the miscreant/editors haven’t thought about the AESA radars being used by Russian or Chinese aircraft with very effective long range air to air missiles or the threat of double digit Russian SAMs that have 150 mile plus ranges. Or that said planes and missiles are cheerfully and assiduously exported. The list of friendly folks who have acquired advanced Sukhoi aircraft and SAMs include Venezuela and Indonesia. And, India's SU's, participating in Red Flag training, show some superior abilities to our F-15Cs.

The ultimate intellectual bankruptcy of the editor shows up in this final fact. The F-16 is used almost exclusively in air to ground roles and the F-22 is a pure air superiority fighter. Its fourth generation counterpart is the F-15. They couldn’t even get that right.

I want to believe that the amount of fact checking I have to do when reading the Times is somewhat nominal, so I can deal with the ideological differences when reading. I have been abused of that notion. Fool me once….

Michael Chevalier

Bill Kristol, General Odierno and media management.

On Fox News Sunday (FNS) today, Bill Kristol, the Jacobin publisher of the "Weekly Standard" said "I was invited to Fort Hood with a small group to talk to General Odierno who is taking over in Iraq..."

Several months ago it became a matter of passing media attention that Rumsfeld's Defense Department had for years been briefing a hand picked group of retired officers on a regular basis to prepare them for their roles as on and off screen commentators on the military aspects of Bush Administration foreign policy.  At  these briefing meetings(often held in the Secretary of Defense's own conference room) talking points on issues of the day were discussed and talking points were distributed or faxed and e-mailed to participants. 

I was invited to one of these meetings in the time frame of the Abu Ghraib crisis and sat in on a couple of conference calls.  I was disinvited after that.  Why? I really don't know.  Maybe someone did not like my questions?  I wrote about this phenomenon several years ago on this blog and that was repeated at "No Quarter."

In my opinion, Kristol is not shy in pushing for an attack on Iran.  He thinks that diplomacy is another word for weakness and merely a preparation of public opinion for military action to come.  This was much the same view that he expressed before the Iraq War.

Why was Kristol invited by the Defense department to Ft. Hood, Texas to talk to Odierno?  Who were the other member of the "small group" who were invited?  Why does Odierno want to talk to such a group privately?  Is Odierno involved in information operations in the United States?

I am surprised that Secretary Gates would countenance such shenanigans.  pl

Is "the press" really free?

"Three years into the Iraq war, Richard Engel was holding down the fort as NBC's Baghdad bureau chief when a top producer in New York, M.L. Flynn, told him there was "tremendous pressure" in the newsroom to lighten up his coverage."

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"It was all about getting good-news stories out there," Engel says. "There was a collective impression that all the journalists were getting it wrong. It quickly spread to the blogosphere and the world of punditry. It seemed orchestrated."

Despite the feedback, Engel says NBC executives never directly pressed him to change his approach to the violence in Iraq. But in recent weeks he has found himself under assault by the White House over the editing of an interview with President Bush-- the same president who had once invited him to the Oval Office to seek his advice about the interminable conflict."

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"Beyond the physical risks, he also had to defend himself in the media echo chamber. Engel says he and other correspondents once again came under attack in 2006 and 2007 from bloggers and radio hosts who wanted a more positive portrait of the war." Howard Kurtz

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I think Engel's experience was rather widespread.  "Concerted?"  I can't prove it yet but I would venture to say that the same kind of apparatus that sought to bend the media in many other ways also sought to intimidate journalists often through corporate media headquarters.

How?  A threat of denial of access to government officials, an implied or direct indication of regulatory favor or disfavor, the threat or actuality of granted or denied advertising dollars by sympathetic clients.  Fill in your own list.

Yes.  We have freedom of the news media in the United States.  Unfortunately, this freedom is tempered by the ability of the powerful and wealthy to bend the free media to their will.

This not something new.  Take a look at the way John Adams and the Federalists dealt with media they did not like, the way Wilson dealt with dissenters in wartime and how newspapers hostile to the Union cause were treated by the Lincoln Administrations.  pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR2008060902790.html