Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.
The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country...
...But what is disconcerting is that some are speculating that Bush has decided to heat up military engagement with Iran and Syria -- taking possible action within their borders, not just within Iraq.
Some are suggesting that the Consulate raid may have been designed to try and prompt a military response from Iran -- to generate a casus belli for further American action.
If this is the case, the debate about adding four brigades to Iraq is pathetic. The situation will get even hotter than it now is, worsening the American position and exposing the fact that to fight Iran both within the borders of Iraq and into Iranian territory, there are not enough troops in the theatre.
Bush may really have pushed the escalation pedal more than any of us realize.
#4
You gotta love an article that that is proceeded by a headline punctuated with a ?. Cmon give it a try you too can be a journalist! Just fill in the blanks.
"______ abuzz today with speculation that ______ may have started a new secret ______ some are speculating that ______ taking possible action ______ Some are suggesting that ______ may have been ______ If this is the case ______ may really have pushed ______ "
#5
Reagan never declared war: he went into Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, etc unannounced. Somalia was entered with UN sanction, and exited in light of UN sandbags.
The military-diplomatic term for sudden war is: fait accompli. Do it; talk about it later.
#7
My big question is will he withdraw from the Oval Office when his term is up or will he declare martial law and cancel further elections? He's the most power hungry son of a bitch in US history.
Hahahahahaha!!!
I knew it! I just knew these bastards couldn't resist rumormongering to something like this. I said, what, 3 or 4 days ago, that they'd be saying just this sort of thing any time now.
#10
Dammit Steve! That's what I stopped in to say!
Posted by: Mike N. ||
01/13/2007 18:36 Comments ||
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#11
Holy Christ. Did anyone else see the comment about Cambodia and Laos falling into "madness and genocide" becuse Nixon invaded them?
Posted by: Mike N. ||
01/13/2007 19:12 Comments ||
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#12
Bush may really have pushed the escalation pedal more than any of us realize.
Sorry, folks...but I've come to the conclusion that Bush has neither the brains nor the balls to do something like this. I hate, hate, HATE to agree with anything spewed out of the MSM's rectal passage concerning GWOT policy - but when they blather and whine about the GWOT lasting longer than our involvement in WWII, they unintentionally make a hell of a point. Would FDR have forced Eisenhower to operate under rules of engagement that placed the Waffen-SS off limits? Would he have left the military at the same strength it had during Hoover's administration? Would he have placed the Messerschmitt factories on a restricted-target list because the bombs MIGHT hit a Gothic cathedral?
The writer (and Israeli army vet) Mark Helprin said it best, as far back as the fall of 2003: "Had the United States delivered a coup de main soon after September 11 and, on an appropriate scale, had the president asked Congress on the 12th for a declaration of war and all he needed to wage war, and had this country risen to the occasion as it has done so often, the war on terrorism would now be largely over."
But it's nowhere close to being over. And because Bush lacked the fortitude, brains and leadership ability to drive the war effort forward, it's liable to still be going on when our generation's grandkids are grown.
Posted by: RIcky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
01/13/2007 23:33 Comments ||
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Six to eight men wearing body armor and carrying automatic weapons crossed the border and four of them approached an observation point manned by four Tennessee guardsmen. The gunmen, in military dress, split in two to surround the post, with one coming within 20 yards. The guardsmen, armed with loaded M-16s, slowly backed away to avoid a confrontation.
They then got into their Humvee and drove about 200 yards away while alerting the Border Patrol, which arrived within minutes. By that time, the gunmen had fled back across the border. Neither group pointed their weapons at each other. No shots were fired.
On any given day, there are up to 2,400 guard troops on Arizona's border, there to play a support role to the Border Patrol until new agents can be trained and put into place.
Major Paul Aguirre, a spokesman for the Arizona Guard, told me the guardsmen acted appropriately and would have been authorized to shoot, had they felt threatened. "We don't apprehend, we don't arrest, we don't detain," he said. "We're in support of the Border Patrol. Our primary job at these EIT (Entry Identification Team) sites is to call the Border Patrol and they respond."
Aguirre told me it's not unusual for armed men to cross the border. "That happens on a daily basis," he said. What is unusual, according to both Aguirre and Mario Martinez, spokesman for the Border Patrol, is for them to come so close to our guys. "If their purpose is to run, then let's re-evaluate and ask ourselves why they're even there," said [AZ state Rep. Warde] Nichols, who has asked the commander of the Arizona Guard to appear before his Homeland Security and Property Rights Committee.
Jeanine L'Ecuyer, spokeswoman for Gov. Janet Napolitano, dismisses Nichols' comments as politics. She said Nichols et al have long known the Guard was there in a backup role. They're not trained to enforce immigration laws, she said, and can't legally act as law enforcement agents.
"This sudden 'Oh my God' on the part of legislators is pretty disingenuous," she said.
I don't know. I have a bit of an 'Oh my God' reaction as well. I understand that the Guard is not there to enforce the law, given the mission agreed to by the feds and border governors. I understand concerns about militarizing the border.
As Aguirre said, "We are not at war with Mexico. They're our friends."
That's true. But it seems some of our friends are armed with automatic weapons and coming into Arizona, apparently on a daily basis.
Does it seem odd that we would send in the National Guard with orders not to stop them?
#2
This is an excellent opportunity for a major incident where hopefully, a bunch of heavily armed Mexican army uniformed men would be shot to death, then numerous pictures taken and posted all over the Internet. Pictures clearly indicating they died well within the United States.
At this point, I even doubt that the federal government would respond to an incursion resulting in the deaths of dozens of US citizens, calling it "a local law-enforcement matter."
However, dead Mexican soldiers on US soil are another thing.
#3
Good thing I wasn't there. I would have felt very threatened. I would have been on full auto. Would have chewed thru 6 clips in less time than it takes to powder your nose.
#4
We are not at war with Mexico. They're our friends
Self delusion there boy. While many Mexicans may be friends, the 40 or so family cabals that own and operate Mexico are no friends of the United States or the Gringo. Just read their xenophobic Constitution and you'll understand you are nothing more than, as the communist phrased it, a useful idiot. The Mexican ruling class is dumping their problem on the US so they can avoid real reform and the resultant dissipation of their power. They will not reform. If that means destabilizing the US, they don't care one chili's worth of beans. That ruling class is the enemy of the US as amply demonstrated by their hostility to respecting the sovereignty of the United States.
#5
I am currently writing and researching a novel set in the Texas Hill Country during the 19th Century, so I have been reading up... and I was just purely amazed at how long this sort of thing has been going on; border incursions back and forth, armed parties and banditry, smuggling and refugees taking cover across the boarder from wars on both sides; Santa Anna, Cortina's War and Pancho Villa and all.
It's been a war zone more often than not, for the past 150+ years: this is just more of the same.
#6
SO35, Armed Mexicans in body armor and they let them get within 20 meeters??? WTF?? Oh ya, and they let them flank them on two sides????? What were they doing, sleeping? Who was in charge, Gomer Pile? Just what is the ROE for the guard there? We are going to have a few NG troops shot up or taken hostage before someone grows the balls to sign off on and support an ROE that protects them! Jesus! Six to eight men in body armor and carrying weapons flank me like that in Kentucky, I would be justified in shooting them. This is starting to remind me of the reports from Somalia. Not good. (rant off)
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/13/2007 17:34 Comments ||
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#7
Sgt. Mom you got any of them sorry-ass Johnsons in your book?
by "The Anchoress." I'm just giving you the first part here:
The day before the presidents speech, I got email from some people asking me why Im such an idiot, how I can reconcile Christianity with war, how I could reconcile the present engagement with the Just War musings of Aquinas, etc.
The day after the speech, I had a friend urge me to perform an exercise of reassessment regarding my views.
I found myself writing essentially the same response to several of those folk - the ones worth answering (heres a hint, if you want me to respond to an email of yours, dont call me names or wish my kids dead.)
The response is this: When did Jesus say there should be no war? Jesus recognised that some things simply were what they were. He was, in some ways, the ultimate pragmatist; render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar and to God what is Gods (Matthew 22:21) and A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. (Matthew 10:24) Scripture says To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven/A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant./A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. (Eccl 3;1-3)
No sane person likes war. But war sometimes comes. And the Just War theology is very clear that war may be Just when it is waged to ultimately spare more lives than it takes, to stop an inexorable advancement of evil.
There is some indication, given the behavior of the Islamofascists since the 1970s that their advancement is inexorable. And to my way of thinking, when that advancement is indiscriminate about who it kills or maims, when it oppresses women, hangs gays and talks about exterminating Jews - or any sort of genocide - well Ill call it evil and answer to God as to whether I got that call right. . . .
. . . We we have to figure out what happens if we surrender, and what happens if we win. Because all of this does not go away in two years when Bush leaves office. Islamofascist terrorism was already business-as-usual before Bush came into office. It will be there when he leaves, and for a very, very long time after, unless we hold fast now, and see this thing through.
Here I stand; I can do no other. . . .
Now hit the link and read the rest of it.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/13/2007 07:13 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Like the man said, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
The situation in Iran seems to be rapidly spiraling out of control. On top of everything that's taken place there since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ascended to power in 2005, consider the following events from just the past month:
* Ahmadinejad hosted a conference dedicated to denying the Holocaust that attracted the likes of David Duke and Robert Faurisson but barred a prominent Israeli Arab scholar who dissented from their orthodoxy.
* The Tehran tyrant's top aide claimed that Hitler himself was Jewish and that his ambivalent feelings about his Judaism informed his "treatment" of the Jews (but there was no Holocaust, of course).
* Israeli military sources apparently leaked a plan to the Times of London that, if diplomacy fails, the IDF is prepared to drop tactical nuclear (bunker-busting) bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz and Bushehr.
* Ahmadinejad is planning a victory tour through the Latin American countries whose leaders, including the newly elected Hugo "Smell of Sulfur" Chavez, have "defied" the United States.
#1
Who's going to bell the cat? Even supposing such a trial were allowed to go forward, who is going to arrest President Ahmadenijad and bring him to the dock? Is Mr. Rosen advocating an Eichmann-style kidnapping? If so, again by whom?
A man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, 'tis said, and here's the proof.
#2
Normally they do this sort of thing after the corpses have been stacked.
Not that they actually do it, except for the lower rungs of the ladder of horror. The big cheeses just get put on Carla's calendar while they live out their days in Gay Paree.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/13/2007 8:49 Comments ||
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#3
A man with a hammer...
Indeed. And a man with a UN might as well jump off a bridge.
#5
And according to the Convention, "any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations ...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
