Posts Tagged ‘War’
2009
“Published reports today say the Pentagon is rattling swords in the direction of North Korea and Iran by speeding the development a 20-foot, 30,000lb bomb known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) meant to annihilate underground bunkers and other hardened (re: long range missile) sites.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency which has overseen the development of this monster since 2007, says it is designed to be carried aboard B-2 and B-52 bombers and deployed at high altitudes where it would strike the ground at speeds well beyond 2X the speed of sound to penetrate the below ground target.
The Boeing-built MOP won’t be the heaviest conventional bomb ever made. The US military built the T-12, which weighed about 44,000lbs, in the 1940s. Meanwhile the 21,700-lb Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, better known as the ‘Mother Of All Bombs’ is still in the US arsenal. The MOAB was developed to replace the 15,000lb ‘Daisy Cutters’ from the Vietnam Ware era. The Soviets claimed a “Father of all Bombs” in 2007 but some experts think the bomb was a hoax or stunt and questioned its true power…”
source: networkworld.com
“As the CEO of MeetUp, Scott Heiferman usually spends his days meeting with staff and brainstorming product strategy. But today the 37-year-old New Yorker, wearing a combat helmet and armored vest over a black business suit, is crammed into a battered C-130 transport plane headed for Iraq. Military and diplomatic personnel aboard are warily eyeing him and the others in his party, all similarly attired, as the C-130 begins its steep, corkscrew descent into the Baghdad airport. And Heiferman is thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’
It’s only been a few weeks since he got an email from a State Department policy planner named Jared Cohen inviting him to join the first tech delegation to post-invasion Iraq. Now he’s strapped in with eight other Silicon Valley executives, mostly in their thirties, from Google, Twitter, YouTube, Blue State Digital, WordPress, Howcast, and AT&T. When Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey got his invitation, ‘I just said yes,’ he recalls. YouTube’s director of product management, Hunter Walk, had to go down to his basement to find a suit to wear, because Cohen insisted that the group dress like diplomats to show respect for their hosts. Others worked their spouses for approval, repeating Cohen’s assurances that the security situation in Baghdad was much improved. Howcast CEO Jason Liebman’s mother thinks he’s on a trip to LA…”
source: wired.com
“Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, ‘all the way until that day of September 11.’
These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies. As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.”
source: infowars.com
“An investigation into the kidnapping of five British men in Iraq has uncovered evidence of possible collusion by Iraqi government officials in their abduction, and a possible motive – to keep secret the whereabouts of billions of dollars in embezzled funds. A former high-level Iraqi intelligence operative and a current senior government minister, who has been negotiating directly with the hostage takers, have told the Guardian that the kidnapping of IT specialist Peter Moore and his four bodyguards in 2007 was not a simple snatch by a band of militants but a sophisticated operation, almost certainly with inside help. Only Moore is thought still to be alive.
Witnesses to the extraordinary operation which led to the abductions have also told us that they have been warned by superiors to keep quiet. ‘This operation was on a state level, not al-Qaida. Only the state has the capability to carry this out,’ one of the sources said.
The Guardian can also reveal that there was a sixth westerner who was working with Moore at the time of the kidnap. The man – whose identity is known to the Guardian – managed to narrowly avoid being captured by hiding in a toilet at the Iraqi ministry of finance, where the abductions took place. Over the past 10 months the Guardian has interviewed senior Iraqi figures and eyewitnesses as well as the former British military officer who investigated the kidnap for the men’s employers. Their accounts allege that the hostage takers had contacts in the Iraqi government, and also that officials in the ministry of defence warned off witnesses to the kidnap.”
source: guardian.co.uk
“Britain may need to send more troops to Afghanistan despite the success of Operation Panther’s Claw, military chiefs admit.
The scale of the challenge was revealed yesterday as it emerged that British soldiers have faced nearly 1,000 roadside bombs in the past three months. Although 3,000 troops managed to drive out about 500 Taleban during the five-week offensive, they will be fully deployed holding an area in Helmand province about the size of the Isle of Wight, their commanding officer admitted.
Brigadier Tim Radford, commander of Task Force Helmand, said that the existing troops could not be expected to mount further significant operations without reinforcements. Gordon Brown hailed the offensive as an ‘heroic’ military success, saying it had made Britain safer and ‘pushed back the Taleban’. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, however, called for renewed efforts to engage the Taleban politically…”
source timesonline.co.uk
“Russia and China will hold their joint military exercise on July 22-27 on the territories of the two countries. About 3,000 military men, 300 units of military hardware, over 40 planes and helicopters will take part in Peace Mission-2009 drills.
About 1,500 servicemen, T-80 tanks, BMP-1 and BTR-70 armored vehicles, 22 aircraft, including two Il-76 cargo planes, five Su-24, five Su-25, five Su-27 fighters and five Mi-8 helicopters will represent Russia in the drills.
The event will start in Russia’s Khabarovsk with political consultations between the military chiefs of the two countries. The maneuvers will begin on July 23 in China. “
source: pravda.ru
“The Brits have fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Americans in Afghanistan since 2001. But now there seems to be a real shift in the way the war is being perceived — and presented by the media — in Britain. So far, politicians from both main parties have stayed committed to keeping British troops in Afghanistan for as long as it takes. But this is an election year. And a recent Guardian/ICM poll found that support for the war was running at 46%, opposition at 47%; a full 56% want to see troops withdrawn by the end of the year. What’s driving the debate in the U.K.? And why is Afghanistan seen so differently here? Five issues are at the core…”
via wired.com
“These files include formally highly classified US government communications about the Dasht-e-Leili massacre in Afghanistan. The massacre killed thousands of Taliban prisoners of war. The files were released earlier on two websites maintained by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) but are of significant historical importance.
PHR has asked that WikiLeaks house the documents to assure the widest journalistic and public access to the documents. WikiLeaks reaches an audience different than PHR’s and having the documents on WikiLeaks’ servers helps to ensure that the documents’ availability does not depend solely on PHR’s web infrastructure.
On July 10 there was a front page New York Times story detailing new allegations that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal investigations into the Dasht-e-Leili massacre. President Obama has responded to the news on a nationally aired CNN interview with Anderson Cooper. There continue to be new developments in the story to which the FOIA documents continue to add relevant context and information…”
via wikileaks.org
“Just a few years ago, the Army was so down on the Land Warrior high-tech soldier get-up that it officially canceled the project. Now, Land Warrior is back from the dead — and considered so valuable that even the Army’s commando elite want the wearable electronics suites.
According to InsideDefense.com, an Army Special Forces battalion will start training with an upgraded version of Land Warrior in 2010, before it deploys to Iraq later in the year.”
via wired.com
“Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh raised eyebrows back in March when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that Dick Cheney ran a secret hit squad that he kept hidden from Congressional oversight.
‘Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on,’ Hersh said at the time. He added: ‘Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.’”
via truthout.org
“Kabul, Afghanistan – A roadside bomb killed four American soldiers in eastern Afghanistan today, adding to the toll in what has already been the conflict’s deadliest month for Western forces. The latest deaths push the number of coalition troops killed in July to at least 55 – 30 of them American.
U.S. military officials have forecast a bloody summer in Afghanistan, in part because thousands of newly arrived American troops are pushing into areas previously controlled by the Taliban.
A major U.S.- and British-spearheaded military offensive is under way in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province. But the eastern region bordering Pakistan’s volatile tribal areas has also been one of the country’s most dangerous areas in recent weeks. In addition to being the scene of Monday’s U.S. troop deaths, it is the sector from which a U.S. soldier was captured by insurgents on June 30…”via truthout.org
“In a hare-brained nightmare scenario dreamed up by the Center for Strategic and International Studies — home-base for neocon crackpots such as Michael Ledeen and war criminals of Madeleine Albright’s caliber — Iran manages to produce a nuclear weapon and drops it on Israel, ultimately killing 800,000 people. ‘Retaliatory Israeli nuclear strikes, with higher-yield bombs and accurate rocket delivery systems, would be far more destructive,’ writes Peter Goodspeed for the National Post. ‘A full-fledged Israeli nuclear response, using some, but not all, of its 200 nuclear weapons, would target most major Iranian cities and major military bases. It would kill 16 million to 28 million people within three weeks.’
It is estimated Israel has around 400 nuclear weapons. As Israeli arms technician Mordecai Vanunu revealed in 1986, the Israelis have produced 100 to 200 advanced fission bombs and have mastered a thermonuclear design. In 1986, it appeared to have a number of thermonuclear bombs ready for use. According to the Institute for Defense Analyses, Israel’s facilities at Soreq and Dimona have the same mission as the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories in the United States. More than twenty years ago, Israel was developing the computer ‘codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs.’
Meanwhile, Iran is not up to speed, never mind the scary science fiction story weaved by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iran did manage to enrich a small amount of uranium using a cascade of 164 centrifuges that spin uranium hexafluoride gas at supersonic speed. The enriched uranium that Iran produced cannot be used in a nuclear weapon because it contains just 3.5% U-235, whereas a nuclear weapon typically requires highly-enriched uranium that contains more than 90% U-235…”
via infowars.com
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