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POLITICS: U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was ForgedBy Gareth Porter*WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (IPS) - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" - a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials - as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear programme targets if diplomacy fails.
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The Yemenis are crafty folk. In the Cold War they were adept at getting free money and weapons from the USSR, USA, Saudi Arabia, and East Germany. They hired the French, Taiwanese and Italians to do odd jobs for them using other peoples' money.
Salih is particularly good at that. He delights in "screwing" the big guys by playing on their fears.
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A different perspective tells much more, though.
The Manoeuverist seeks to exploit opportunities while the Attritionist creates opportunities.
That's of course a huge challenge. It's very difficult to train for excellence in both approaches and to unite both mind sets and keep them in the right balance (timing!).
Modern army training involves neither much firing nor much manoeuvering in comparison to wartime efforts. There's not enough effort being invested into maximising quickness, for example.
A warship's crew has several drills per day to minimise their reaction times in regard to certain hazards or even mere alarms. How often do brigades and battalions train to break contact rapidly, to relocate and execute a hasty attack (seriously 'hasty', as in less than an hour!!)? Some training is done, yet not till the achievement of real minimum lags.
Recent reports from Afghanistan tell about opportunities for defeating enemies being missed because about a dozen permissions were necessary and not all were available in time. That's attritionist bureaucracy at work.
(2) Remember the Checkpoint Charlie face-off between U.S. and Soviet tanks in October '61 (or a history book text about it)? That face-off served demonstrated who was at power in Berlin; the occupying powers, not the German governments (especially not the Eastern German one).
gun (medium machine gun, MMG); the MG34 or MG42 or another machine gun if the unit was poorly equipped with an old or captured machine gun. The other guns were mostly bolt action rifles, K98 - with a practical rate of fire of about 15 rpm under training conditions. Submachine guns were quite rare until mid-war and didn't influence the infantry doctrine very much. The result was that the machine gun made up about 80% of the squad's firepower. Squad fire tactics had to ensure a maximum exploitation of its potential.
The German army (Heer) doesn't place nearly as much emphasis on flanking fires with frontal parapet (although both elements are in some use) because it sticked in theory to "Wirkung vor Deckung!".
Wikileaks proves its worth again and published an incomplete version of the investigative committee report on the Kunduz air strike affair plus additional material yesterday (100% German):
He defined protectivism asa policy in which resort to armed force is rejected as an active instrument of policy but accepted as a means of protecting a country's existing territory and territorial waters against armed force.
There was a war going on, and this guerrilla war was probably going on because the Albanians knew that there was a threshold for NATO intervention that they needed to achieve in order to "win". They basically provoked atrocities in order to gain decisive NATO support. The prospect of intervention actually increased the probability of atrocities.
This set of assumptions would mean that there's a trade-off between the risk of declassifying still secret info (due to the variance) and enjoying the advantages of open info.
Comical. I came here from the ID blogsite and all I can say is that this is pure fantasy, conjecture, hubris and silliness rolled into one.
“pure fantasy” and your later quote “I have no problem with your facts or figures” - does that fit together?
The thought that a person from a country that DEPENDS on exports is attempting to deride US consumerism is laughable. The thought that a person who's nation is failing to live up to its international commitments militarily, yet attempts to chastise a nation that is not only pulling its own weight but the weight of that charity case of a nation is shameful.
Oh, I criticised the excessive trade of my own country as well. The key fact is that this is mostly intra-EU trade – U.S.-Germany trade is rather small; 7% of export and 4% of import in 2008. The U.S.'s trade imbalance is more a U.S.-East Asia affair while Germany's trade imbalance is mostly an intra-European affair – and thus pretty much irrelevant to the topic.
Besides; it's less of a failure to be creditor than to be debtor.
I have no problem with your facts or figures but for you to fail to realize that these trade imbalances helped to fuel the entire globe is shortsighted and an attempt to cherry pick facts.
I understand that the “consumer demand drives the economy” myth is very powerful in the U.S., but it's really just the kindergarten version of economic theory. Years of economic studies on a university have taught me enough to not fall prey to it.
There's nothing good to be found in running into debt again and again. I don't feel compelled to thank Americans for lending East Asian money to buy East Asian industrial products; that was as much an economic model as Madoff had a business model. The U.S. made at most the PRC bigger, which doesn't seem to have been in the U.S.' best interest.
Germany is a socialist nation that is not even meeting the defense budget mandated by the EU.
“socialist”, uh? Many Americans call almost everything “socialist”, so I'm not impressed. “Social democratic” would fit better, and I bet you don't know that the basic major social reforms in Germany were the product of a royalist-conservative chancellor and the "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (social market economy) is a highly successful model developed by the conservatives (CDU/CSU) during the 50's and 60's.
Feel free to prove that there's a "defense budget mandated by the EU". It's impossible to prove that something doesn't exist (WMD anyone?), so the burden of proof is yours.
Next time you take a look at the US defense budget I recommend that you take a serious look at the personnel costs. Single mothers, 18 year olds with 5 family members etc and the associated costs are whats inflating our defense budget.
That's irrelevant. A business doesn't run better because its owner complains about the personnel structure. It will still go broke if its investments become too small and its debt too great. Your remark would have been slightly interesting if you had data to back it up and not phrased it as an argument (which it isn't).
But lastly I look forward to our efforts to reduce the budget that you so hate. EADS won't win the tanker .... the A400 will ultimately be canceled.... the Leopard MBT will finally be put to pasture and no more sales will be made....the Boxer will no longer be produced....the Eurofighter will end...
EADS tanker – so what ... A400M; I hope you're right, but I doubt your clairvoyance...Leopard MBT – long out of service, Leopard 2 MBT – dispersed in Europe, had unlike M1 Abrams real export success (not only politically enforced export sales) and is in no worse shape than the M1 Abrams … Boxer – same as A400M … Eurofighter – planned production almost complete. That's fine, just as it's fine that the F-22 production run is complete.
I wonder what that has to do with my text, though.
I do also wonder what the mentioned programs (except the tanker) have to do with U.S. military spending.
You sound like someone who has become angry that his country got criticized and who wants to hit back with nation bashing. That's neither an impressive nor a persuasive kind of critique.
Once all that happens, then and only then do I want you to take a look at what defense spending means to even a socialist country like your own.
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When Iran finally gets a missile and threatens not only Europe but Israel then talk.
Iran has “a missile”. I guess you meant “a nuclear warhead”. In that case Iran would be deterred by French and British nukes as well as by the vastly superior military power of its direct NATO neighbour Turkey – just as the Soviet Union was deterred. Iran is merely a small, regional power - it offers no reason for increases in any military budget.
I wonder why you seem to think that I would bother more (or as much) about a fictional threat to Israel than/as about a fictional threat to Europe. I do also wonder about it because Berlin is more than twice as far away from Tehran as is Tel Aviv while you sound as if the latter was less easily in Iranian range.
You did not read my blog much, of course. One of my recurring points is that I'm not easily scared. The Iranians don't scare me a bit, for example. I'm confident that a Franco-Anglo strike would flatten Tehran and Isfahan if an Iranian nuke hits an EU or European NATO country.
It's furthermore doubtful how Iran could be linked to a German defence budget and how the latter could be reasonably linked to the problem of the factual unsustainability of U.S. military spending.
I would prefer a policy that was protectionist, isolationist and left Europe, Africa and Asia to there own devices. We can take care of ourselves and don't need Euro-policy wonks interfering.
“their”, not “there”.
I would prefer a more introvert U.S. as well, so there's actual agreement. I actually don't feel defended by the U.S. - it's more like the aggressive troublemaker in a clique who always provokes others and gets into a fight with the result that the whole clique is associated with trouble making. To observe UN rules in regard to inter-state conflicts is actually a North Atlantic treaty obligation of the U.S. - one that was violated severely.
His kind of response isn't exactly uncommon. The style is very distinctly U.S. American. I disagree with Germans, Brits, Italians, Frenchmen and Canadians often - but almost none of them ever behaves like this. I assume that it's a political-culture matter.
Especially remarkable is the fear. Extreme fear. Fear of their own fictions. Seriously, I've never encountered a single non-U.S. American who came close to the top 50 fear-driven Americans I've been in contact with. The closest one was an Israeli. What's up about this fear of everything?
I didn't notice this rule of fear before 9/11, but history tells us that it's not such a new phenomenon. Red scare, yellow scare, communist subversion scare, missile gap, domino theory - apparently even ceding control of the Panama Canal raised the fear factor.
Most scares were completely off, and some were badly exaggerated. A rational being would become skeptic about present and future fear fashions given that track record of past fear fashions.
Seriously, what's up with this fear of outlandish scenarios? I don't get it.
Spending more money on "defense" seems to make a country more fearful of external threats, not less (the empirical basis for this suspicion has only anecdotal value, of course).
Fear makes you spend more on "defense", which in turn makes you more sensitive to fears, which increases your fear, which leads to more "defense" spending ... is that how it works?
Massively multiplayer online games typically allow individuals to spontaneously form, join, or leave a formal group called a guild. The design of the game encourages players to form such groups (...). Millions of people worldwide log on to the world’s largest online game (...). Indeed, online games are one of the largest collective human activities on the planet and hence of interest from the perspectives of global commerce, security, and even epidemiology. A seemingly unrelated social phenomenon that is also of great concern is urban gangs. Urban gangs have been gaining in popularity among young people both nationally and internationally. There are obvious differences in the settings and history of online guilds and offline gangs, however, the empirical data sets that we have compiled enable us to perform a unique comparative study of their respective grouping dynamics.
Specifically, we used detailed empirical data sets to show that the observed dynamics in two very distinct forms of human activity—one offline activity which is widely considered as a public threat and one online activity which is by contrast considered as relatively harmless—can be reproduced using the same, simple model of individuals seeking groups with complementary attributes; i.e., they want to form a team as opposed to seeking groups with similar attributes (homophilic kinship). Just as different ethnicities may have different types of gangs in the same city in terms of their number, size, and stability, the same holds for the different computer servers on which online players play a given game.
