Suria Crisis

The crisis over a planned U.S. attack on Syria for its use of chemical weapons is really ratcheting up.  Check out these links:  I give the whole thing a Sphincter Factor of about 9.9

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323893004579057271019210230.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStorie

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/504187/20130906/iran-supreme-leader-obama-syria-tehran-assad.htm

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/05/obama-to-engage-putin-on-syria-strike-at-g-20-summit/

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/DA8KT3I00

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/world/middleeast/pentagon-is-ordered-to-expand-potential-targets-in-syria-with-a-focus-on-forces.html?_r=0

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-US-strike-on-Syria-to-be-significantly-larger-than-expected-325389

Miss the Cold War?

Let's take stock of what's happening in the world right now.  Syria is a disaster, and rapidly turning into a proxy war between the West and Iran/Russia/Hezbollah.  The U.S. is establishing a military presence in Jordan to train Syrian rebels, and leaving a squadron of F-16s there to establish a partial no-fly zone. 

Meantime, Russian President Putin takes every opportunity to tweak the U.S.  Besides supplying Syria with missiles, he's keeping a stolen Super Bowl ring, and won't release NSA leaker Edward Snowden to U.S. authorities. 

The Chinese are pissed too, because the White House went after Snowden in Hong Kong. 

And let's not forget Iran, all this stalling on nuclear talks has given them more than enough time to build a bomb or two, and Pakistan (already nuclear armed) is about to fall into the abyss of anarchy.

And what does President Obama want to do - he talks to Putin about nuclear disarmament.  Mutual Assured Distruction (Or MAD as its called) has been the only thing to keep the peace for the last 60 years or so - can you imagine how many times we would have fought the Russians or Chinese if the bomb wasn't around?  Nuclear weapons are the only thing keeping the U.S. and Russia from going to war right now.  So what if Iran or some other tin-horn republics get the bomb, we have enough to flatten them all so using them against us would be suicide.

My advice, don't eliminate nuclear weapons unless you want another world war.  I would rather the Cold War return.

Heating Up

I give this whole Middle-East thing a 9.8 on my sphincter scale - U.S. keeping planes, missiles and troops in Jordan to establish a Syrian rebel training base - the Russians sending more missiles to aid Syria - and more troops from Hezbollah and Iran joining the fight?  Somebody better put the brakes on, and fast.

Assad Warns Against Arming Rebels, Denies Chemical Weapons Use

By Patrick Donahue on June 17, 2013

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-17/assad-warns-against-arming-rebels-denies-chemical-weapons-use

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned that Europe will “pay the price” for arming rebels trying to topple him and rejected accusations that he’s deployed chemical weapons against them as baseless.

In an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in Damascus, Assad warned that European nations seeking to send weapons to rebels will only export “terrorists” back to Europe. He also said the U.S., U.K. and France hadn’t substantiated their chemical weapons allegations.

“If Paris, London and Washington had a single piece of evidence for their claims, they would have produced it for the world public,” Assad told FAZ. An image on the Syrian president’s Facebook page showed an

FAZ cover and a photo of Assad sitting with a reporter from the newspaper.

Backed by Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah and aid from Iran and Russia, Assad’s forces have shifted the momentum in Syria’s civil war with an offensive against the rebels. He granted the interview after President

Barack Obama, accusing Assad of crossing a “red line” by using chemical weapons, last week ratcheted up U.S. support for the rebels with a decision to send them light arms.

Assad said using chemical weapons would be “illogical” if conventional weapons could be deployed -- and added that Syria has never confirmed or denied possessing chemical arms.

Instead, he accused rebel militia of using such weapons and said France and the U.K. had blocked a United Nations measure to investigate such a deployment in Aleppo.

Lies

“Everything that’s been said about the use of chemical weapons is a continuation of lies against Syria,” Assad told FAZ. “It’s the attempt to justify more military intervention.”

The Syrian leader also singled out the French and British governments, which spearheaded an end to the European Union’s weapons embargo last month, for wanting to ship weapons that he said will ultimately end up in the hands of “terrorists.”

“Terrorism means chaos here; chaos leads to poverty and poverty means that Europe will lose a significant market,” Assad said. “The second consequence would be the direct export of terrorism to Europe” as refugees leave the country.

Group of Eight leaders meeting today in Northern Ireland take up the Syria issue, as Obama sounds out Western allies on how far to go to intervene in Syria’s conflict.

While British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande support Western action in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin is backing Assad.

Russian Weapons

“Russia supplies arms to the legitimate government of Syria according to international law,” Putin said yesterday in London after meeting with Cameron. “We breach nothing. And we call on our partners to act the same way.”

The Syrian army is mounting an offensive to retake Aleppo, the nation’s commercial center and largest city.

The Syrian rebels’ Supreme Military Command, headed by Major General Salim Idris, has pleaded for heavy arms that go beyond the light weapons such as machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades that the
U.S. is preparing to furnish.

Assad told the German newspaper he has no doubt that rebels “will be completely eliminated from our territory,” though said he was still open for political talks.

In Saudi Arabia, the Cabinet called on Islamic nations today to stand against supplying Syria’s “illegitimate regime” with weapons, ammunition and individuals “so that it would not be able to continue its aggression,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net

Coming to America

You know what's happening in Boston, who doesn't.  It is the first successful attempt by Muslim extremists planting an Improvised Explosive Device on U.S. soil.

The I.E.D. threat first surfaced in Iraq after the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a weapon of choice for the insurgency.  Extremists from Pakistan and Afghanistan even trained with the Iraqi Sunni insurgency and took what they learned to other hotspots - I.E.D's soon showed up in Afghanistan and Pakistan as popular weapons to kill U.S. troops and those supporting U.S. goals in the region.

We should not be surprised that the strategy is moving in our direction.  There have been several attempts, the most recent in New York's Times Square to set off an I.E.D. - but the Boston Marathon bombing was the first successful such attack on U.S. soil.

Don't be surprised that it encourages other Islamic extremists in the U.S. to be more bold when it comes to setting I.E.D.'s anywhere in the country. 

Our game of "Whack a Mole" against Americanized Islamic extremists just got a lot more serious.

Thoughts on Boston Marathon Bombing

We're still in the early phases of the investigation, and the FBI/Terrorism Team isn't saying much (Maybe because they don't have a suspect yet, and don't want to tip him off). 

But they have said a little.  The bombs were made from small pressure cookers, and both were carried to their detonation locations inside a heavy dark colored nylon bag or backpack. 

Bombs made from pressure cookers are familiar to anyone working counter-terrorism.  The New York Times bomber used one as one of three devices in the back of his SUV.  There have also been pressure cooker devices successfully used in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

Before being chased off by drone raids, the la-Qaeda arm in Yemen published a magazine called "Inspire" - and in one of its editions it described how to make a pressure cooker bomb.  It also said that Jihadists should target American Sporting events.

Of course, these same instructions were reprinted in magazines read by white supremacists and other extremists groups in the U.S.  There is no indication, yet, that this is a Islamic terrorist plot.

However, the evidence is clearly starting to lean that way.  A lack of any claims of responsibility also lean Islamic terrorism at this time.  After all, there has been no arrest.  A foreign sponsored group may be trying right now to get their man out of the U.S.

My money is on a domestic Islamic extremists who has no record, who may or may not have received training overseas, and is now looking for a way out of the country.

But if you've read this blog, you know I've been wrong before.  Only time will tell.

North Korea Clears Nuke Strike on U.S.

Those crazy North Koreans!  Latest from AP:

By Jung Ha-Won (AFP)

SEOUL (AP) — North Korea dramatically escalated its warlike rhetoric on Thursday, warning that it had authorised plans for nuclear strikes on targets in the United States.

"The moment of explosion is approaching fast," the North Korean military said, warning that war could break out "today or tomorrow".

Pyongyang's latest pronouncement came as Washington scrambled to reinforce its Pacific missile defences, preparing to send ground-based interceptors to Guam and dispatching two Aegis class destroyers to the region.

Tension was also high on the North's heavily fortified border with South Korea, after Kim Jong-Un's isolated regime barred South Koreans from entering a Seoul-funded joint industrial park on its side of the frontier.

In a statement published by the state KCNA news agency, the Korean People's Army general staff warned Washington that US threats would be "smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means".

"The merciless operation of our revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified," the statement said.

Last month, North Korea threatened a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike against the United States, and last week its supreme army command ordered strategic rocket units to combat status.

But, while Pyongyang has successfully carried out test nuclear detonations, most experts think it is not yet capable of mounting a device on a ballistic missile capable of striking US bases or territory.

Mounting tension in the region could however trigger incidents on the tense and heavily militarised border between North and South Korea.

The White House was swift to react to Pyongyang's latest "unhelpful and unconstructive threats".
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said: "It is yet another offering in a long line of provocative statements that only serve to further isolate North Korea from the rest of the international community and undermine its goal of economic development.

"North Korea should stop its provocative threats and instead concentrate on abiding by its international obligations."
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel earlier said Pyongyang represented a "real and clear danger" to the United States and to its allies South Korea and Japan.

"They have nuclear capacity now, they have missile delivery capacity now," Hagel said after a strategy speech at the National Defense University. "We take those threats seriously, we have to take those threats seriously.

"We are doing everything we can, working with the Chinese and others, to defuse that situation on the peninsula."

The Pentagon said it would send ground-based THAAD missile-interceptor batteries to protect military bases on the island of Guam, a US territory some 3,380 kilometres (2,100 miles) southeast of North Korea and home to 6,000 American military personnel, submarines and bombers.

They would complement two Aegis anti-missile destroyers already dispatched to the region.

The THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) is a truck-mounted system that can pinpoint an enemy missile, track the projectile and launch an interceptor to bring it down.

The new defensive measures came as Pyongyang stopped South Korean staff members from entering the Kaesong complex, a shared industrial zone funded by Seoul but 10 kilometres inside the North.

Pyongyang said the 861 South Koreans already in the zone could leave.

The move cut the last practical cooperation between the rival powers and was seen as a dramatic escalation in the crisis.

South Korea's defence ministry said it had contingency plans that included "military action" if the safety of its citizens in Kaesong was threatened.

China, the North's sole major ally, appealed for "calm" from all sides, and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said he was worried the situation could spiral out of control.

Describing the Kaesong ban as "very regrettable", South Korea's Unification Ministry urged the North to normalise access immediately.

Around 53,000 North Koreans work at 120 South Korean plants at the complex, which was still operating normally Wednesday.

Tensions have soared on the Korean peninsula since December, when the North test launched a long-range rocket. In February, it upped the ante once again by conducting its third nuclear test.

Washington has deployed nuclear-capable US B-52s, B-2 stealth bombers and two US destroyers to South Korean air and sea space.

This week, the North warned it would reopen its mothballed Yongbyon reactor -- its source of weapons-grade plutonium. It was closed in July 2007 under a six-nation aid-for-disarmament accord.

The US-Korea Institute at John Hopkins University said Wednesday that a satellite photograph seen on March 27 appeared to show construction work along a road and near the back of the reactor was already under way.

Experts said it would take at least six months to get the reactor back up and running, after which it will be able to produce one bomb's worth of weapons-grade plutonium per year.

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Korean Showdown Looms

(CNN) -- The United States will not accept North Korea as a "nuclear state," Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Tuesday, just hours after Pyongyang announced plans to restart a nuclear reactor it shut down five years ago.

North Korea's decision comes as tensions on the Korean peninsula escalate over Kim Jong Un's threats to wage war against the United States and South Korea.

"The bottom line is simply that what Kim Jong Un is choosing to do is provocative. It is dangerous, reckless. 

The United States will not accept the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) as a nuclear state," Kerry said during a joint briefing in Washington with South Korea Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

"And I reiterate again the United States will do what is necessary to defend ourselves and defend our allies, Korea and Japan. We are fully prepared and capable of doing so, and I think the DPRK understands that."

North Korea's declaration that it would reopen the reactor demonstrates Kim's commitment to the country's nuclear weapons program that the international community has tried without success to persuade it to abandon.

The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the reclusive state's atomic energy department intends to "readjust and restart all the nuclear facilities" at its main nuclear complex, in Yongbyon.

Those facilities include a uranium enrichment facility and a reactor that was "mothballed and disabled" under an agreement reached in October 2007 during talks among North Korea, the United States and four other nations, KCNA said.

The announcement was followed by a plea for calm from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is South Korean.

"The current crisis has already gone too far," he said in a statement from Andorra. "Nuclear threats are not a game. Aggressive rhetoric and military posturing only result in counter-actions, and fuel fear and instability.

"Things must begin to calm down, as this situation, made worse by the lack of communication, could lead down a path that nobody should want to follow."

Ban said dialogue and negotiations are "the only way to resolve the current crisis."

The tensions on the Korean Peninsula have led Pyongyang to sever a key military hotline with Seoul and declare void the 1953 armistice that stopped the Korean War.

The United States has made a show of its military strength amid annual training exercises with South Korea, flying B-2 stealth bombers capable of carrying conventional or nuclear weapons, Cold War-era B-52s and F-22 Raptor stealth fighters over South Korea.

On Monday, Seoul warned that any provocative moves from North Korea would trigger a strong response "without any political considerations."

U.S. moves warship, sea-based radar to watch North Korea

Murky motivation

The motivation behind the North's announcement Tuesday on the nuclear facilities was unclear, Thakur said, suggesting that it was unlikely to make a big difference militarily for the country, which is already believed to have four to 10 nuclear weapons.

The North Koreans may be hoping to use the move as a bargaining chip in any future talks, he said, or it could be an attempt by the country's young leader to shore up support domestically.

"It's just a very murky situation," Ramesh Thakur, director of the Center for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament at Australian National University in Canberra.

"The danger is that we can misread one another and end up with a conflict that no one wants."

China, a key North Korean ally, expressed regret over Pyongyang's announcement about the reactor.

"China has consistently advocated denuclearization on the peninsula and maintaining peace and stability in the region," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei said Tuesday at a regular news briefing.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the move would need to be dealt with in a serious manner, noting that it breached the North's previous commitments.

On Tuesday, Kerry refused to speculate about North Korea's intentions or what its strategy may be with regard to its plans to reopen its reactor.

"We've heard an extraordinary amount of unacceptable rhetoric from the North Korean government in the last days. So let me be perfectly clear here today: the United States will defend and protect ourselves, and our treaty ally, the Republic of Korea," he said.

Kerry reiterated the U.S. policy with regard to North Korea, saying the United States believes there is "a very simple way" for Pyongyang to end the sanctions by ending its nuclear ambitions.

South Korea warns North of 'strong response' to any attack

A torrent of threats

The North's latest declaration comes after a stream of verbal attacks against South Korea and the United States in recent weeks, including the threat of a nuclear strike.

Pyongyang's angry words appear to have been fueled by recent joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea in the region, as well as tougher U.N. sanctions in response to North Korea's latest nuclear test in February.

Much of the bellicose rhetoric, analysts say, isn't matched by the country's military capabilities.

Nuclear weapons: Who has what?

Still, the U.S. Navy was moving a warship and a sea-based radar platform closer to the North Korean coast in order to monitor that country's military moves, including possible new missile launches, a Defense Department official said Monday.

The North's announcement Tuesday follows a new strategic line "on simultaneously pushing forward economic construction and the building of the nuclear armed force." It was announced Sunday during a meeting of a key committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea headed by Kim Jong Un.

The work of adapting and restarting the nuclear facilities "will be put into practice without delay," KCNA said.

The measures would help solve "the acute shortage of electricity," as well as improving the "quality and quantity" of the country's nuclear arsenal, it said.

Threats of annihilation normal for South Koreans

Yongbyon's backstory

In June 2008, the usually secretive North Korean government made a public show of destroying the cooling tower of the Yongbyon reactor to demonstrate its compliance with a deal to disable its nuclear facilities.

But two months later, as its then-leader, Kim Jong Il, balked at U.S. demands for close inspections of its nuclear facilities, the North started to express second thoughts.

It said it was suspending the disabling of its nuclear facilities and considering steps to restore the facilities at 

Yongbyon "to their original state."

In November 2009, it announced it was reprocessing nuclear fuel rods as part of measures to resume activities at Yongbyon. It noted success in turning the plutonium it had extracted into weapons-grade material.

Asteroid Star Wars

Good story - a new job for NASA - hunting and destroying earth bound asteroids of the city-size killer that just hit Siberia...again.

From The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21572203-something-useful-americas-underemployed-space-agency-do-real-star-war

GEOGRAPHY matters. In 1908 a rock the size of a city block hit the Earth’s atmosphere at 15km (9 miles) a second. The explosion flattened an area the size of London. But the land in question was in Siberia, so few people noticed and those who did had little influence. Suppose, though, it had devastated a city in Europe or North America. The history of the 20th century would have been different, as the best scientific and engineering brains were brought to bear on the question of how to stop it happening again.

Well, it has happened again, albeit less spectacularly. By chance, Siberia bore the brunt once more, when a meteor crashed in the Urals on February 15th, injuring more than 1,000 people. It could just as easily have hit Germany or Guangdong. Moreover, on the same day another, larger rock called 2012 DA14 passed within 27,000km of Earth. By astronomical standards, that is a hair’s breadth. It is time to think seriously about stopping such incidents by building a system that can detect space rocks with sufficient warning, and then either blast them or push them out of the way. It would be costly, of course, and would require the development of new technology. But, as luck would have it, there is a tool lying around that has both the money and the nous to do it, and which is currently underemployed and in need of a new mission.

NASA, America’s space agency, has become a curious hybrid. Part of it is one of the world’s leading scientific research organisations. This NASA sends robot probes to the planets, runs space telescopes and has already sponsored projects devoted to looking for large asteroids—the ones that would blow humanity to kingdom come if their orbits ever intersected that of the Earth. If such a large, “planet-killing” asteroid were discovered, though, the chances are that earthlings would have decades, or centuries, to act; a small nudge, judiciously applied by rocket motor or nuclear explosion (see article), would be enough to send it off course.

The real problem is “city-killers”—things too small for existing surveys to see, but large enough to do serious damage. And it is here that the other NASA might be brought into play. The non-scientific bit of the agency, the bit that brought you the Apollo project, has been looking for a proper job since 1972, when Apollo was cancelled. It thought it had found it in the Space Shuttle, but building a cheap, reliable orbital truck proved impossible. It thought it had found it in the International Space Station, but that has turned into a scientifically useless tin can in the sky. The latest wheeze is to build a rocket that might one day, many administrations hence, go to Mars.

In a well-ordered world, this bit of NASA would have been closed down years ago. That it has not been is due, in large measure, to the lobbying power of aerospace companies which see the agency as a way to divert money from taxpayers’ pockets into those of their shareholders. This pocket-picking would be less irksome if something useful came of it. Why not, therefore, change this part of NASA’s remit to protecting the planet from external attack, not by evil aliens but by an uncaring universe?

Two things would be needed. One is a bigger system of telescopes, either on the ground or in orbit, to give notice of a threat. The other is a way to counter the threat. That might be done with lasers, or with controlled explosions that would shift the incoming object’s orbit sufficiently to make it miss altogether, or (if that is not possible) hit an unpopulated area.

Developing all this would be a technological challenge worthy of NASA’s engineers. It would keep the agency’s bureaucrats in their jobs. It would keep the money flowing to the aerospace companies. It would probably cost no more than the space station (about $100 billion). And, if it worked, it would provide something that benefited not just America, but the world—precisely the sort of thing a rich country which often claims the moral high ground ought to be doing.

When Apollo 11 took off from the Moon on July 21st 1969, its crew left behind a plaque that read, “They came in peace, for all mankind”. What an opportunity both America and NASA now have to prove that they meant it.

Decisions 2013

Despite the current debates over spending and gun control, I believe foreign policy will dominate President Obama's second term.

Most analysts today are saying there is at least a 50/50 chance that the United States will be involved in a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities alongside our Israeli allies.

But I am not so sure.  One only has to look at the current crisis in Africa.  The French have sent soldiers and aircraft to aide the democratically elected government in Mali fight insurgents let by Islamic Extremists and Al Qaeda.  And from all reports coming out of Washington, the administration is furious at the French for stepping in.  During the President's first term, Obama has done all he can to repair relations with the Muslim world.  He removed U.S. troops from Iraq and is in the process of an early retreat from Afghanistan despite a deteriorating security situation there.  Obama's State Department was doing its best to find an African solution to the crisis in Mali.  It wanted the African Union to step in and stop the slaughter.  But the French could wait no longer, and decided to act to protect its former African colony, possibly saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the process.  But the French put a big dent in U.S. desires NOT to make any crisis look like an East versus West confrontation.

You won't hear this from me very often, but good for the French.  They put lives and the threat from Islamic Extremists before politics, something this White House doesn't do very often.

That's why I doubt the White House will allow U.S. participation in any strike by Israel against Iran.  The U.S. will provide intelligence support that the Israelis probably don't need anyway, and may get drawn into the fight if Iran retaliates with strikes against U.S. 5th Fleet forces in the Gulf, or bases in Oman, Qatar or Bahrain.

And here's the real problem.  If Israel goes it alone, they will suffer casualties that could be avoided by U.S. participation.  Israel has a wonderfully trained and motivated Air Force.  But it will not survive a strike on Iran unscathed.  Iran has sophisticated surface to air defenses to protect its nuclear facilities, and a large Air Force.  While Israel will no doubt prevail, it will suffer casualties.

However, if U.S. naval and air forces were to take part in the initial raid, there would only be Iranian casualties.  The U.S. has the capability to strike Iranian facilities and air defenses without ever presenting a target.  Standoff and stealth technologies within the U.S. inventory makes any attack by Israel look foolhardy.   American B-2 Bombers, FA-22 Raptors and F-117 aircraft can deliver weapons without ever coming within range of Iranian forces.  It's air force could be wiped out while still on the ground.  An operation that could take days if carried out only by Israel could be completed in hours if carried out by the United Stares.

But does president Obama want another East versus West confrontation?  I doubt it.  He's more willing to accept a nuclear armed Iran, or a strike by Israel that doesn't involve U.S. help.  Too bad we can't come to the aid of one of our most valued allies in the world.