WAR 08-13-2016-to-08-19-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(228) 07-23-2016-to-07-29-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...29-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(229) 07-30-2016-to-08-05-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...05-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(230) 08-06-2016-to-08-12-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...12-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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Main Russia/Ukraine invasion thread - 8/11/16 Ukraine Military On "Combat" Alert
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ne-Military-On-quot-Combat-quot-Alert/page446

Military Coup Underway In Turkey, Troops At Bridges, Airports and State TV
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...roops-At-Bridges-Airports-and-State-TV/page44

The threat from CHINA: Xi warns Obama against threatening China’s sovereignty
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...against-threatening-China’s-sovereignty/page8

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Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.voanews.com/a/us-backed-forces-take-control-of-is-stronghold-in-syria/3462764.html

Middle East

US-backed Forces Take Control of IS Stronghold in Syria

August 12, 2016
Jeff Seldin

PENTAGON — Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized full control Friday of the Islamic State stronghold of Manbij, near the Turkish border, a spokesman for the group said.

SDF told Reuters its forces were sweeping the city after the last Islamic State (IS) militants in the city fled.

The U.S.-backed forces had also freed more than 2,000 civilian hostages whom IS had been using as human shields, Sharfan Darwish of the SDF-allied Manbij Military Council said.

"The city is now fully under our control but we are undertaking sweeping operations," Darwish told Reuters.

Earlier Friday, Gordon Trowbridge, Pentagon deputy press secretary, told reporters in Washignton, “ISIL is clearly on the ropes” and called the imminent fall of Manbij "the latest significant milestone in the coalition’s efforts to cut off and eliminate a hub of ISIL activity.”

Key hub

U.S. and coalition officials have long seen Manbij as a key hub for the terror group.

They said the city served as both a processing center for incoming foreign fighter and a pivotal cog in the group’s external operations from which fighters would be sent to plot and carry out attacks on the West.

“It is also the latest significant milestone in the coalition’s efforts to cut off and eliminate a hub of ISIL activity," Trowbridge said. The fall of Manbij will do “real damage” to IS capabilities in both areas, he added.

Yet even with Syrian Democratic Forces in control, it will likely take some time before the city is fully secured.

Coalition officials and troops on the ground have voiced concern about the possibility of IS sleeper cells, poised to attack coalition-backed troops when the opportunity arises — a tactic IS used previously in Fallujah and Ramadi.

Booby-trapped city

The city has also been laced with booby traps and explosives.

U.S. defense officials said IS fighters planted IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in hundreds of buildings, including what Trowbridge described as “key pieces of civic infrastructure,” before they left.

Syrian Democratic Forces began operations to liberate Manbij, backed by U.S. and coalition airstrikes on May 21, 2016.

Since then, U.S. officials said they have liberated 1,000 square kilometers of Syrian territory from IS control, while destroying more than 50 IS heavy weapons, 600 fortified fighting positions and more than 150 IS battle vehicles.

In that same time, U.S. officials said coalition jets carried out 650 “precision strikes” on IS targets.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-human-shields-2016-8

ISIS has kidnapped 2,000 civilians to use as 'human shields'

David Choi
8h
Comments 2

A report verified on Friday by US-backed forces and a separate human rights organization claimed that Islamic State militants in the city of Manbij, Syria had kidnapped around 2,000 civilians to use as “human shields.”

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described that during ISIS’ retreat from Manbij to Jarabulus, a city on the Turkish border, the militants took ahold of their hostages in hopes to slow the SDF’s advances on what was once a major ISIS-held city.

In order to accomplish taking such a large number of hostages, a report by the AFP suggests that ISIS took the residents’ cars and forced civilians into them as they made their retreat — preventing the SDF from targeting them.

After SDF forces began their offensive on May 31, they’ve so far liberated about 90% of Manbij and even rescued 2,500 captive civilians; however, dozens of ISIS fighters still remain and have put up a noticeable resistance.

This wouldn’t be the first time that ISIS has taken hostages during a retreat. More than 400 civilians, including women and children, were taken from eastern Syria in January. Although 270 of them were eventually released, the jihadists had also used hostages for booby-trapped cars and suicide bombings.

Manbij has been a critical Syrian city for ISIS’ supply routes to their main stronghold in Raqqa. After being assaulted not only by the SDF but US-led coalition forces, the militants here have been making numerous blunders during their operations — including having 83 oil tankers out in the open for an easy airstrike.

However, liberating the city has taken a heavy toll as well. The UN has claimed that more than 78,000 people have been displaced since the assault began; and the Observatory suggested that at least 437 civilians, 105 of them children, were killed.


SEE ALSO: US-led forces executed the largest single airstrike of the year against ISIS' oil business »

NOW WATCH: The US Army is sending Apache attack helicopters to fight ISIS in Iraq

 

[Housecarl]

This added to the SCS and the LockMart deal for F-16 production start adding up into real Great Game stuff....And recall this level of involvement was discussed during the end of the last Bush Admin....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/charles...n-afghanistan-proxy-war-that-is/#499637932b0b

Aug 13, 2016 @ 01:16 PM 29,784 views The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets

A Proxy War Between India And Pakistan Is Under Way In Afghanistan

Charles Tiefer, Contributor
I cover government contracting, the Pentagon and Congress. Full Bio …I
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Important but overlooked news this week: the U.S. command in Afghanistan has asked India to step up military aid to Afghan forces. India provided four attack helicopters to the Afghan military in Dec. 2015; the U.S. and the Afghans want more, as well as spare parts for Russian-made military equipment, to be used in part against the Islamist network built up by Pakistan called the Haqqanis.

Every aspect of this cries: ¡§Proxy War.¡¨ To New Delhi came General John Nicholson, a four-star general serving as the commander in charge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. When I was in Afghanistan in 2011 while serving on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, I met Nicholson¡¦s predecessor, and saw his immense scope of military and diplomatic responsibility. Who met with Nicholson: India¡¦s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, and Defense Secretary G. Mohan Kumar. This is a joint war command for deciding India¡¦s course in the proxy war.

Second, a very ingenious opening wartime mode of supply has been arranged. The Afghan Air Force still uses MI-25 Russian attack copters (among others), because many of their air and ground crews trained on copters inherited in the 1980s from the puppet Russian regime, for which parts are scarce. As General Nicholson said: ¡§The Afghans have asked for more of these helicopters. There is an immediate need for more. When these aircraft come in, they immediately get into the fight.¡¨ Note twice the term ¡§immediate.¡¨ When the U.S. military commander in charge, the four-star general, says ¡§immediate¡¨ twice, he is telling his troops that their butts will be in a sling unless it gets done yesterday, if not earlier.

General Nicholson went on: ¡§We are building the Afghan Air Forces as a critical component of security. That [the Afghan air force] is built on several airframes. Some are older Russian models integrating newer ones. We need more aircraft, and we are looking at how we can meet that need.¡¨

Nicholson also said that military training by India to thousands of Afghan security personnel had helped that country in significantly enhancing its military capability, which is in tune with the objective of NATO and the U.S. I saw the problem, going to Kandahar in 2011 to review training there being done by the U.S.-paid contractor Dyncorp. A large part of the Afghan recruits are, bluntly, illiterate. Training has to be elementary and complete. Do not get me wrong, the Afghan trainees are brave, great armed police and soldiers. Often they have excellent fighting spirit, they know guns like we know cars, and frequently they lost close relatives in fighting that has gone on nonstop since the Soviets took over in the 1970s. But they need an enormous amount of training. It looks like India is shouldering some of that key part of the proxy war.

It went almost unnoticed that this followed Prime Minister Modi and President Obama agreeing not so long ago that the two nations should move against terrorist groups, especially the ones based or helped by the Pakistani ISI (the powerful intelligence command). Sure enough, just as Modi and Obama had said at the top civilian level, this new announcement by Nicholson and the top Indian defense officials was expressly directed not only at the Haqqani network, and Islamic State, but also at Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for 2008 terrorist slaughter in Mumbai, and Jaish-I-Mohammed. Nicholson noted these all had sanctuaries in Pakistan.

As I wrote recently, the U.S. cut off $300 million in aid for the Pakistani military due to its support of the Haqqani network, which has spilled so much American blood.

The enemy is stepping up its attacks, awhile ago taking (briefly) Kunduz, now menacing Lashkah Gar, capital of the key Helmand Province on Pakistan¡¦s border.

The war is on. The proxy war, that is.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/north-kore...=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous/news&yptr=yahoo

North Korea threatens nuclear strike amid claims that US is attempting to invade

North Korea officials have warned that their armed forces are ready to 'deal a merciless blow to the enemy'.

By Priyanka Mogul August 13, 2016 11:40 BST

North Korea has accused the United States of attempting to invade the country and threatened to launch a nuclear strike against them at the sign of any military aggression. The warning came on 13 August, three days after Washington said they had deployed B-2 stealth bombers to Guam.

According to Yonhap News Agency, Washington has insisted that the deployment of bombers was a response to heightening provocations from North Korea, including recent missile launches. However, Pyongyang hit out at the deployment of the nuclear-capable US bombers, adding that it only showed that the US wanted to invade the country.

In a statement made on the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea said: "The US attempt to invade the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is getting ever-more reckless. The US ever-more undisguised reinforcement of the nuclear force goes to clearly prove that it is trying to make a preemptive nuclear strike at the DPRK."

It went on to threaten the US, stating: "The right to make a preemptive nuclear strike is not the monopoly of the US. The DPRK's revolutionary armed forces… are fully ready to deal a merciless and annihilating blow to the enemy if they make even the slightest provocation."

It went on to lash out at the US for their stance on nuclear weapons, adding that their actions went against their calls for "denuclearisation" and a "world without nuclear weapons". They noted that North Korea would continue "bolstering up its nuclear weapons" in order to fight against the US threat.

On 11 August, the US State Department updated their travel warning for North Korea, urging its citizens not to travel to the communist country. It noted that there was a "serious risk of arrest and long-term detention", due to the fact that North Korea said it would be treating US detainees in accordance with "wartime law of the DPRK".

Tensions have been rapidly increasing between the US and North Korea in recent months since the US blacklisted the North's dictator Kim Jong Un for human rights violations. One day before the North delivered its warning to the US over nuclear strikes, a spokesperson for the DPRK Foreign Ministry lashed out at the US for their report slamming religious freedom in North Korea, referring to the country as "the sworn enemy of the Korean people".

North Korea's Foreign Ministry stated: "Finding it hard to bring down the DPRK by force of arms, the US is now making last-ditch efforts to tarnish its international image and stir up the atmosphere of putting international pressure on it by kicking up the anti-DPRK 'human rights' racket. Under this situation, the DPRK will bolster up in every way its self-defensive military capabilities with nuclear deterrence in order to safeguard its power and revolution."

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.dw.com/en/usa-wants-more-modern-nuclear-bombs-in-germany-report/a-19472138

Nuclear Proliferation

USA wants more modern nuclear bombs in Germany: report

US President Barack Obama intended to make nuclear disarmament one of his government's goals. But now the US intends to modernize its nuclear weapons stationed in Germany, according to media reports.

Date 13.08.2016
Author Timothy Jones (dpa)

Germany's air force is preparing to adapt some of its Tornado warplanes to carry more up-to-date US atom bombs in light of plans by Washington to modernize its nuclear arsenal in Germany, media reported on Saturday.

The German newsmagazine "Spiegel" reported that US President Barack Obama had approved the last phase of development for the atom-bomb model B61-12, which is to go into full-scale production from 2020.

Washington then intended to station some of the modernized weapons at the Büchel air base (pictured) in Germany's western Eifel region, according to the report.

Cold War legacy

Experts estimate that 10 to 20 nuclear warheads from the Cold War period are currently stored in Büchel, with German Tornado warplanes standing by to carry them if it is deemed necessary. The area is under strict protection, with some US soldiers also stationed there.

Although the German parliament said in 2010 that it was in favor of having the weapons withdrawn, the government at the time, which consisted of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU-CSU bloc and the liberal FDP, stated that this would not happen without the agreement of Germany's NATO allies.

"Spiegel" reported that the US armed forces intended to modernize other elements of their nuclear arsenal as well. The magazine reported that they had called on the arms industry to come up with proposals for a new generation of nuclear long-range missiles and cruise missiles by 2017.

Threat from Russia?

The plans come as Poland and Baltic states urge NATO to up its nuclear and other military deterrents in the face of what they see as Russia's territorial aggression.

The plans for modernization would seem to contradict US President Barack Obama's stated goal of nuclear disarmament, an objective he pledged to pursue at the start of his first term in office in 2009.

Germany itself has pledged not to create nuclear weapons under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.


DW recommends

NATO sends signals to Russia at Warsaw summit

NATO is not only planning to boost its forces in the east: The alliance wants to focus on counterterrorism and immigration on its southern flank. Bernd Riegert reports from the NATO summit in Warsaw. (09.07.2016)


US to deploy 1,000 troops as NATO steps up military stance towards Russia

As part of NATO's strengthened defenses in eastern Europe, the US has announced that it will deploy soldiers and a separate brigade headquarters to Poland. The Alliance is currently meeting in Warsaw. (08.07.2016)


Easter Marches decry US nuclear weapons in Germany

More than 20,000 people gathered to participate in Germany's "Easter marches" over the holiday weekend. The annual events protest militarization and the presence of German troops in foreign countries. (28.03.2016)


Reports: US nuclear 'upgrades' in Europe

Upgrades of six US air bases set to stock modernized B61 nuclear bombs are continuing in Turkey and Europe, according to US and German researchers. They claim Turkey's Incirlik base stocks at least 50 such US weapons. (23.09.2015)


The last nukes in Germany

Their location is top secret - but it's an open secret where the last US nuclear weapons are stored in Germany. There are thought to be around 20 warheads at the German Büchel military base. (05.08.2015)


Trinity: when the nuclear weapons age began

The first atomic bomb was detonated in the New Mexico desert 70 years ago. Since then, nuclear weapons have had disastrous consequences for humankind and nature. Yet nuclear weapons programs continue to the present day. (16.07.2015)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/how-russia-is-bolstering-missile-defense-in-its-far-east/

How Russia Is Bolstering Missile Defense in its Far East

Russia is moving S-400 SAM systems and Su-35S fighter aircraft to its Far East.

By Guy Plopsky
August 02, 2016

Ongoing Russian deployments of air and missile defenses in the Baltic region and Crimea have received extensive attention from Western analysts and officials. In January 2016, for example, the head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa, General Frank Gorenc, called the build-up of Russian surface-to-air (SAM) systems in Kaliningrad a “very serious” concern for NATO. Yet the bolstering of Russia’s air and missile defenses isn’t limited to Eastern Europe alone. The Kremlin has been actively deploying sophisticated new SAM systems to other parts of the country over the past year as well, most notably to the Russian Far East.

In mid-2015, a Russian Navy SAM regiment stationed in the Kamchatka Peninsula was equipped with formidable long-range S-400 Triumf SAM systems for the purpose of defending key Pacific Fleet facilities in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Yelizovo, and Vilyuchinsk (the latter includes the Pacific Fleet’s ballistic missile submarine base). The regiment, comprised of three S-400 battalions, more than doubled the number of S-400 systems deployed in Russia’s Eastern Military District; previously, the Triumf was operated only by the district’s 589th SAM Regiment stationed near the port city of Nakhodka in Russia’s Primorsky Krai (two of this regiment’s battalions received the S-400 in 2012). In November 2015, two additional battalions, belonging to the Aerospace Forces’ 1533rd SAM Regiment stationed near the city of Vladivostok, were equipped with S-400 systems as well. Commenting on the latter, the Pacific Fleet’s press service stated that the deployment of the new SAMs is intended to “more effectively solve the tasks of covering the skies over the Pacific Fleet’s HQ.”

While the buildup of Russian air and missile defenses in the Baltic region and Crimea is aimed specifically at the United States and her NATO allies, the deployment of sophisticated SAM systems in the Russian Far East is intended to address perceived threats from several different parties. First and foremost, it too is aimed at the United States, given that the U.S. military’s global reach will not necessarily confine a hypothetical armed confrontation between the U.S. and Russia to the battlefields of Europe. Russian officials have expressed particular concern regarding U.S. advancements in hypersonic weapon systems, which they perceive as possessing great counterforce potential. From a Russian perspective, positioning sophisticated S-400 SAM systems to cover the Pacific Fleet’s HQ in Vladivostok and the aforementioned ballistic missile submarine base in Vilyuchinsk against these (and other) weapon systems is therefore both a logical and essential step.

The deployment of S-400 systems is also designed to address Russia’s concerns regarding North Korean ballistic missile tests. In August 2009, then-Chief of the General Staff Gen. Nikolay Makarov notified journalists that an S-400 battalion had been deployed near Nakhodka “in order to guarantee protection from failed launches of [DPRK] missiles and ensure that the fragments of these missiles never fall on Russian territory.” Since then, Moscow has been keeping a close eye on Pyongyang’s missile tests. In late April 2016, for example, a Russian Ministry of Defense source told Interfax-AVN that Russia’s missile early-warning system had “certainly noted” the test launch of a North Korean KN-11 submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM). A subsequent test involving the failed launch of a land-based Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on May 31 even drew condemnation from Moscow, with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov calling it a “violation of the existing resolutions of the [United Nations] Security Council.”

It is important to note that this condemnation stemmed not only from concerns about fragments from North Korean missiles falling within Russia’s borders, but also from fears that Pyongyang’s provocative tests would encourage further U.S. military deployments to the region. A recent agreement between the United States and South Korea to deploy the U.S. Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to the Korean Peninsula confirmed these fears and prompted the Russian foreign ministry to decry it as a move that will “undermine stability in the region.” While the THAAD system in itself does not threaten Russia’s strategic retaliatory capacity, Russian concerns with the long-term implications of its deployment has prompted a number of Russian experts to call for the strengthening of Russia’s own missile defense capabilities in the form of a joint Russia-China missile defense system that would cover the entirety of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Less than two months earlier, in late May 2016, the two countries conducted their first joint computer-enabled missile defense exercise known as “Aerospace Defense Security 2016” at the Central Research Institute of the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces. Reflecting on the exercise, deputy director of the Common Wealth of Independent States (CIS) Institute Vladimir Evseev noted that “[t]his was the first step in a plan to create a joint missile defense system,” adding that the next step “could be to gather real-world experience on the interception of ballistic targets, for example, at the Ashuluk range [in the Astrakhan Region].”

Yet the prospects of a joint Russia-China – yet alone SCO – ballistic missile defense (BMD) system are extremely bleak. For starters, there are technical and financial limitations to the establishment of such a system. The S-300-series and S-400 SAM systems fielded by the Russian military, as well as the S-300-series and HQ-9 systems operated by the Chinese military, are not capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) warheads. Russia’s new S-500 Triumfator-M system promises to offer greater capability against ballistic missiles over its predecessors; however, it too is unsuitable for defending against an ICBM strike. Consequently, for a joint Russia-China BMD system to have the desired effect on the United States (which does not operate medium or intermediate-range ballistic missiles), substantial investments into strategic BMD capabilities would have to be made. It must be noted that both Moscow and Beijing are developing such capabilities; however, the cost of deploying large numbers of strategic-capable interceptors and associated systems could prove prohibitively expensive, particularly for Russia.

A more financially viable and less technically demanding option would therefore be to settle for a joint air and missile defense capability against cruise missiles and emerging hypersonic weapon systems (which the aforementioned SAM systems are capable of engaging). However, this capability is unlikely to materialize either. As deputy director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis Alexander Khramchikhin points out, “[f]or 20 years now, prominent Sinologists [in Russia] have been talking about how good and beneficial it would be to cooperate with the PRC in the field of defense. But these arguments have nothing in common with political reality.” Indeed, no formal military alliance exists between Moscow and Beijing. “This,” Franz-Stefan Gady explains in The Diplomat, “handicaps deeper military cooperation between the two countries and makes exercises that practice complex integrated military operations difficult if not impossible to conduct.”

Despite the unlikelihood of a joint missile defense system with China, Russia’s own air and missile defense capabilities in the Far East can certainly be expected to grow, albeit slowly. In March 2015, final tests of the new exoatmospheric 40N6 missile, which is reported to have a maximum operational range of 400 km and a maximum operational altitude of 180 km, were said to be completed. It remains unclear whether deliveries of the new missile to the armed forces had already taken place; nevertheless, once fully-operational, the 40N6 will greatly enhance the capabilities of the S-400 system, particularly against hypersonic weapon systems.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the aforementioned S-500 system, which will reportedly utilize both a modified variant of the 40N6 and more capable missiles, will also be deployed to the Eastern Military District in the future. This, however, is unlikely to happen any time soon given that only a fraction of the 38 Triumfator-M battalions ordered under the “State Armaments Program 2020” are expected to be completed by the end of the decade; the bulk, if not all, of these initial systems will be stationed around Moscow and the Central Industrial Region.

Russia also plans to equip its new Project 23560 Leader-class destroyers with a naval variant of the S-500 system. According to the vice president of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation, Igor Ponomarev, a preliminary design of the Leader-class destroyers is currently under consideration at the Russian Ministry of Defense. Once complete, the warships, designed by the Severnoye Design Bureau, will displace up to 17,500 tons and will probably be nuclear powered. A total of 12 Leader-class ships are planned to be built (six for the Northern Fleet and six for the Pacific Fleet), with the first ship expected to be completed no sooner than 2023-2025. As with numerous other ambitious Russian defense projects, however, delays in testing and production can be expected.

It is important to add that in addition to long-range SAMs, Russia has been stationing large numbers of short-range air defense systems in the Eastern Military District as well. Most notable, perhaps, is the deployment of new short-range Tor-M2U SAM systems to the South Kuril Islands. According to the District’s press service, air defense units of the Russian Ground Forces equipped with the Tor-M2U systems were put on combat duty there in late September 2015. This marked the end of a six month long familiarization process during which Russian troops became accustomed to operating the new systems. The deployment of the Tor-M2U, which can engage aerial targets at ranges of up to 12 km and altitudes of up to 6 km, is part of a larger Russian military buildup on the South Kuril Islands that is clearly designed to signal Tokyo (with whom Moscow has yet to settle a long-standing territorial dispute), that Russia does not intend to concede its sovereignty over the islands in the foreseeable future.

Also noteworthy is the Kremlin’s deployment of new fighter aircraft to the Eastern Military District, namely the 4++ generation Su-35S Flanker-E multirole fighter. In late December 2015, Su-35S fighters of the 23rd Fighter Aviation Regiment based out of Dzemgi Airbase in Khabarovsk Krai were put on combat duty over Russian airspace for the very first time. The 23rd regiment received its first Su-35S fighters in 2014 and currently operates 24 such aircraft, four of which were deployed to Syria in early 2016. A further 11 Su-35s are operated by the 22nd Fighter Aviation Regiment based out of Tsentralnaya Uglovaya Airbase near Vladivostok. The relatively large unrefueled combat radius of the Su-35S makes the fighter particularly suitable for operations over the Sea of Japan and for defending the vast airspace of the Russian Far East, many parts of which lack SAM coverage.

Unsurprisingly, the deployment of new aircraft, SAMs, and other systems to the Eastern Military District has been accompanied by large-scale military exercises. July 2016 witnessed two major exercises involving air defense forces. The first, aimed at increasing the combat readiness of ground force air defense units, took place in mid-July and involved some 3,000 troops and 500 pieces of military equipment. This was followed by a second, even larger exercise at the end of the month in which the district’s “air defense forces repelled massed air attacks by simulated enemies over 10 times.” According to the district’s press service, some 8,000 troops and 1,000 pieces of military hardware participated in this exercise, including Su-35s, Su-30s, S-300s, and S-400s, as well as Pantsir-S1 short-range SAM systems. More such exercises, intended not only to enhance the combat effectiveness of Russian air defense forces, but also to serve as a show of strength, can be expected to follow as Moscow’s economic interests in the region grow and as Russia’s strive to become a Pacific power continues.

Guy Plopsky holds an MA in International Affairs and Strategic Studies from Tamkang University, Taiwan. He specializes in air power and Russian military affairs.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...ries_pokemon_go__chinas_cyber_war_109701.html

August 13, 2016

Weekly Recon - Mercenaries, Pokemon Go & China's Cyber War

By Blake Baiers

Good Saturday morning and welcome to Weekly Recon. On this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine to enjoy a ticker tape parade in New York City. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, California, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon.

Private Intelligence Contractors in Syria—or not? - On July 27th around 5pm, just as on any other business day, the Pentagon released that day’s contracts that totaled more than $7 million. In that announcement was a major Easter egg for DoD observers who await this email each day: a contract awarded to Six3 Intelligence Solutions, a private intelligence company, to send contractors to, “Germany, Italy, and Syria.” Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations immediately took to Twitter to point out the astonishing revelation. This would mark the first public statement admitting contractors were being deployed into Syria, assumedly to accompany the 300 special operations forces there.

Earlier this week, Kate Brennan, writing for the Daily Beast, brought the revelation to the masses in a well-researched article. In it she interviewed Sean McFate, a Georgetown professor and former gun-for-hire, who is a leading expert in the field of private military contractors. He noted that contractors are already occupying the battle space in Iraq, and that Syria is an obvious extension since the U.S. is so heavily reliant on contractors. Their use comes with an inherent danger, McFate warns, noting, “Contractors encourage ‘mission creep’ because they allow the Administration to put more people on the ground than they report to the American people.”

It seemed like the end of the story—a new page in the expanding chapter on America’s latest war and the latest example of military and intelligence work being increasingly outsourced to the private sector—the American way of war. Then came August 10th’s DoD contract press release. Tucked away at the bottom was a correction regarding the July 27th Six3 Intelligence Solutions contract, stating:

“CORRECTION: Modification P00001 to contract W564KV-16-C-0058, awarded to Six3 Intelligence Solutions Inc., McLean, Virginia, on July 27, 2016, incorrectly announced where work will be performed. The announcement should have read that work will be performed in Germany, Italy, and Kosovo. All other information in the announcement was accurate.”

Syria is an impressive typographical error when attempting to type out Kosovo. This begs the question, was the July 27th contract an error of fact, or an error of inappropriate dissemination of classified information? Whatever the case may be, it is odd that it took so long to be corrected.

Pokémon Go – Or Don’t Go for DoD - The late 90s was a crazy time. The dot-com bubble hadn’t yet burst, Y2K was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, kids traded odd Japanese playing cards of monster-like creatures called Pokémon, and a toy for children, the Furby, was banished from some government buildings over fears that its ability to hear, remember, and repeat human speech would be used to compromise top secret information. Well—what is old is new again, and now an updated version of Pokémon has reportedly gotten the boot from all Department of Defense facilities over security concerns. But fear not, Pokémon Hunters, Pokémon Go won't be getting the Furby treatment..

New policies regarding the game are much more permissible than originally reported. DoD personnel won’t be allowed to download the Pokémon Go app onto your government issued mobile devices, but will be allowed to continue swiping away on DoD property using their personal devices, so long as they don’t stray into any restricted areas.

Chinese Hacking Group Threatens to Launch “Cyber War” - As covered a couple weeks back at Weekly Recon, Chinese hacking groups have unleashed a bevy of cyber assaults throughout the Asia-Pacific region, with a large number of attacks directed at Vietnam. The same spyware used to override computers in Vietnamese airports was also used in recent attacks on other official websites in Vietnam. The group that originally claimed responsibility for July’s attacks, China’s 1937cn, has since rescinded any claims to having been the perpetrators. The head of the group, Liu Yongfa, was quoted in state-run media outlet Global Times as saying neither confirming, nor denying the allegations. Liu also gave this warning:

"At a time when the definition of a cyber crime remains vague in China, our team will start a cyber war to defend the country and the people when their sovereignty and rights are violated by foreign countries."

Given China’s stance on territorial claims in the South China Sea, it is no wonder 1937cn would be drawn to attacks on Vietnam. The group will likely view Vietnam as a bigger target now after news broke Wednesday night that the Vietnamese People’s Navy had moved high-precision rocket systems onto islands it claims in the South China Sea. The rockets have been moved into place over the past several months, and were expected to be operational by this weekend. This news came on the heels of an article in the New York Times covering new imagery out of CSIS that shows how China has been fortifying its own claims in the South China Sea. This includes coastal defense weapons, as well as fortified hangars for aircraft ranging in size from fighter jets up to H-6 bombers, and even refueling aircraft.

China has also increased its presence around Scarborough Shoal, which the Philippines holds claim to. Japan is currently in talks with the Philippines to transfer two large, new coast guard ships. This addition would greatly increase the Philippines’ ability to defend its territorial waters.

It is unclear what could trigger a “cyber war” from Mr. Liu’s 1937cn, but given recent developments in the region it is likely that the group will be ramping up its activity.


SEND RCD YOUR INPUT: Please send your tips, suggestions and feedback to bbaiers@realcleardefense.com or on Twitter at @BlakeBaiers. Make sure to follow us on Twitter at @RCDefense.

 

[Housecarl]

7 People (1 Child) Burned, Stabbed By Attacker on Swiss Train.
Started by Vegas321‎, Yesterday 10:05 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ld)-Burned-Stabbed-By-Attacker-on-Swiss-Train.


For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/salez-train-attack-st-gallen-police-say-victim-has-died-n630326

News

Aug 14 2016, 10:10 am ET

Salez Train Attack: St. Gallen Police Say Suspect, Victim Have Died From Wounds

by The Associated Press

BERLIN — The man who attacked passengers on a crowded Swiss train with a knife and burning liquid died of his wounds Sunday, as did one of his victims, a 34-year-old woman, Swiss police said. Three others remain hospitalized with serious wounds.

Police are still searching for a motive but said there's no indication the suspect, identified only as a 27-year-old Swiss man from a neighboring region, had ties to extremist groups.

A 43-year-old woman, a 6-year-old girl and 17-year-old girl remained hospitalized Sunday with serious injuries, St. Gallen state police spokesman Hans-Peter Kruesi told The Associated Press. A 17-year-old youth and 50-year-old man wounded in the attack have been treated and released, he added.

Kruesi said all the victims lived in the St. Gallen area.

Swiss police searched the suspect's home after the Saturday afternoon attack on the train as it neared the station in Salez, close to the Liechtenstein border. Kruesi would not comment on what evidence was seized at the home, but said "so far there are no indications this was a terrorist or politically motivated crime."

Police were not able to question the suspect before he died, Kruesi said, adding that the man had no criminal record and was not previously known to police.

According to a video of the attack evaluated by police, the assailant acted alone, attacking passengers on the train between Buchs and Sennwald with a knife and then burning liquid, which is now being analyzed by a police forensics team.

The train driver was being credited with quick thinking, continuing into the Salez station before stopping, a move that allowed police and rescue crews to get on board more easily.

Five passengers on the train were wounded in the attack and a sixth person on the train platform, the 50-year-old man, was wounded as he pulled the burning suspect off the train, police said. The 50-year-old was treated for smoke inhalation and burns, Kruesi said.

The Swiss train attack again illustrates how difficult it is for authorities to protect the continent's labyrinthine transport system, particularly against individuals wielding unsophisticated weapons.

Last month in neighboring Germany, a 17-year-old refugee from Afghanistan used an ax and a knife to wound four tourists on a train, and stabbed a woman as he fled. The attacker was shot and killed by police. All his victims survived.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......


For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/is...akistan-iran-forge-uneasy-partnership-n623351

News
ISIS Terror
Aug 14 2016, 6:09 am ET

ISIS Forces Pakistan and Iran to Forge Uneasy Partnership

by Wajahat S. Khan, Fazul Rahim and F. Brinley Bruton

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — ISIS fighters exporting their deadly ideology have forced rivals Iran and Pakistan into a tentative terror-fighting partnership.

The national security czars of both Iran and Pakistan met in Tehran on July 24 to discuss "the need to fight against the common threat posed by … ISIS" and announced they would come together to police their 600-mile border.

The shared regional threat was underscored Tuesday when dozens were killed in a suicide bombing at a hospital in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta. ISIS was one of two groups to issue competing claims of responsibility.

Since surging into the international spotlight by capturing swathes of Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014, ISIS has sprouted several regional branches outside of their initial heartland.

One branch — dubbed the province of Khorasan — has killed hundreds in Afghanistan, including a July 23 attack in Kabul that killed 81 and injured 237.

The Pentagon said Friday that a U.S. drone strike had killed the leader of ISIS's branch in Afghanistan, though he's been reported dead before.

It comes amid mounting fears that ISIS is expanding its operational reach.

While all countries in the region are vulnerable, ISIS poses a particular threat to Iran, according to Dina Esfandiary, a MacArthur fellow and researcher at King's College London.

"Iran is the country in the region that feels the ISIS threat most acutely," she said.

One reason for that is because Iran is largely Shiite and ISIS is a Sunni fundamentalist organization whose goal is to eradicate Shiite Islam altogether, according to Esfandiary.

That's why Iran — which is fighting ISIS on its western border in Iraq as well as in Syria, where it is supporting the embattled government of President Bashar Assad — is "throwing everything it can at the problem," she explained.

Iran-Pakistan: New friends or old Frenemies?

The rare meeting between Pakistan's national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Nasser Khan Janjua, and Secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, indicates the countries are now willing to work together after years of mistrust.

Both countries have been accused of sheltering or supporting militants fighting proxy wars in the other. India and Iran's close relationship angers Pakistan — Delhi is Islamabad's arch rival. Meanwhile, Pakistan's strong bond with Saudi Arabia makes Iran suspicious given its struggle with the Kingdom for regional dominance.

Iran has gone after al Qaeda members — but also been accused of housing the group's leaders and members of Osama bin Laden's family members following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S.

Pakistan also has a complex relationship with al Qaeda, though is widely believed to have sheltered members of that group, plus Afghan Taliban fighters and commanders.

Then there's Afghanistan — which lies between the two and where both have meddled for decades.

While any plans between Iran and Pakistan to confront ISIS are vague, their cooperation on the issue is much needed and long overdue, said Hussain Haroon, Pakistan's former envoy to the United Nations.

Video - Where does ISIS get its money?

"This one statement is a ray of sunshine after a very long time in Pakistan's foreign policy," he told NBC News. "A lot of our international play has been curtailed due to us looking at Saudi Arabia, and what has that given us?"

"It was inevitable. Now that the Taliban is kind of cornered in Afghanistan, and Pakistan stands isolated regarding its support for the Taliban, and then ISIS is emerging, we need to work with the Iranians," he added.

Not everyone, though, is impressed by the promise of cooperation — certainly not an Afghan commander of a brigade in western Afghanistan near Iran who has been fighting insurgents for 12 years.

"I don't think they are being sincere in what they say," he said speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press. "Both countries provide arms and sanctuaries for terror groups and now they are saying they want to fight ISIS."

Maj. Najibullah, the commander of a police unit in northeastern Afghanistan's Kapisa Province, agreed.

"We can never trust Pakistan or Iran," said Najibullah, who like many Afghans goes by only one name. "They have been saying that they are fighting terrorism for the past 15 years but we see it every day that they are supplying these groups and every other few months they create a new group for us."

Afghan officials would not comment on the Iran-Pakistan agreement.

Esfandiary also advised caution around the new Pakistan-Iran pact.

Pakistan and Iran "met to discuss terrorism broadly and made some general statements about it," she said. "When you look into the statement that they made the only thing they agreed to concretely is boost border security — it is very limited in terms of actual steps to to work together."

Related: 300 ISIS Fighters Killed in U.S.-Afghan Operation: NATO

"It looks good, it is signaling [but] making statements and actually tackling the threat are two different things," she added.

That doesn't mean there isn't optimism in Pakistan about the move towards cooperating with Iran — and hopes that it'll extend beyond fighting terrorists.

Air Vice Marshal Shahid Latif, a security analyst and a lecturer at Pakistan's National Defense University in Islamabad, said it's high time his country started working with Iran.

"Trade, energy and lot of other causes are bringing Iran and Pakistan potentially together," he said. "Forget who did what to whom in the past. If Pakistan and Iran can coordinate, we could even involve Afghanistan and fight this menace together."

 

[Housecarl]

Hummmm.... IMHO all this is going to do is backfire on Beijing when it is all said and done.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ss-using-trade-to-hurt-south-korea-over-thaad

China to Assess Using Trade to Hurt South Korea Over Thaad

Bloomberg News
August 11, 2016 — 10:52 PM PDT
Updated on August 12, 2016 — 3:47 AM PDT

- Beijing to consider limiting imports from South Korea

- Move shows the potential fallout of missile defense deployment

China is considering steps such as limiting imports of South Korean goods and services as it seeks to apply pressure on Seoul not to deploy a U.S. missile shield system, according to people familiar with the matter.

Authorities are also considering the suspension of some investments and acquisitions in South Korea, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. China is also assessing the impact of steps already taken on visas and in the entertainment and tourism sectors, they said.

The Chinese government has yet to decide what, or whether, additional measures should be taken, the people said. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The foreign ministry said in a faxed statement last week that it strongly urges South Korea and the U.S. to reverse their decision on the deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, known as Thaad.


The nations have been at odds ever since South Korea agreed to deploy the missile defense system on its soil. Relations that only recently were hailed by both countries as the best in history -- China is by far South Korea’s biggest trading partner -- have soured, with China’s planned review of trade and investment ties highlighting the potential economic fallout from Thaad deployment.

Battery Makers

Another step Chinese authorities are considering is the exclusion of South Korean makers of batteries for electric vehicles from a list of suppliers that meet China’s technical standards, according to the people. Samsung SDI Co. and LG Chem Ltd. are among foreign battery makers not currently on that list.

Chinese automakers such as Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co. have stopped producing cars that use Samsung batteries over concerns they may be stuck with unsold stock if those models are disqualified from government subsidies because their battery suppliers don’t qualify. Samsung SDI dropped as much as 2 percent Friday, its biggest intraday drop in two weeks.

China’s foreign ministry said last week that Thaad’s powerful radars threaten its national security, warning about taking “necessary measures to safeguard” its interests. This view has been compounded by South Korea showing willingness to share information collected from Thaad with Japan.

Diplomatic Spats

Against the backdrop of the tensions, North Asian buyout firm MBK Partners has delayed by a week the final bid deadline in its sale of ING Life Insurance Korea Ltd., according to people with knowledge of the matter. Some Chinese suitors needed more time to work on the terms of their offers, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. Binding bids for MBK’s controlling stake in the business, which could fetch about $3 billion, had been due Friday, the people said.

A spokesman for MBK didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment.

Shares of some South Korean companies that rely on Chinese demand have fluctuated amid strained diplomatic relations between the two nations. The Korea International Trade Association, an influential business lobby group, has identified 26 measures already imposed by China that hurt its members.

This isn’t the first instance in which Chinese trade policies have been intertwined with diplomatic disputes. In 2010, the nation limited exports of rare-earth metals to Japan amid a territorial dispute. Exports of bananas and other fruit from the Philippines to China were disrupted in 2012 as the two countries became embroiled in a dispute over territorial claims in the South China Sea.

— With assistance by Jonathan Browning, and Steven Yang

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-missile-as-tensions-with-china-mount-reports

Japan to develop missile as tensions with China mount – reports

The countries are locked in a long-running dispute over uninhabited islands called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China

Agence France-Presse
Sunday 14 August 2016 01.52 EDT

Japan will develop a new land-to-sea missile as part of plans to beef up its defence of remote southern islands, as tensions with China increase over the disputed territory, a report said Sunday.

The two countries are locked in a long-running dispute over the uninhabited islets known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

The report comes after repeated protests by Japanese foreign ministry officials over what Tokyo calls “intrusions” by Chinese ships in the territorial and contiguous waters of the rocky islands.


The rising power of China will create new political fissures in the west
Gideon Rachman


Tokyo plans to deploy the weapon, which reportedly will have a range of 300km (190 miles) on islands such as Miyako in Okinawa prefecture, the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said, without citing sources.

The range will cover the disputed island chain, the Yomiuri said, adding that the deployment is expected by 2023.

Officials at the Defence Ministry could not be reached for comment.

“In light of China’s repeated acts of provocation around the Senkaku islands, Japan aims to increase deterrence with improved long-range strike capability,” the newspaper stated.

The missile will be developed by Japan and will use solid fuel, the Yomiuri said, referring to the technology that allows for weapon’s long-term storage and capacity to be launched at short notice.

Japan also protested in June after it said a Chinese navy frigate sailed close to territorial waters near the islands for the first time.

Tensions over the islands have been a frequent irritant and strained bilateral relations, though tensions had markedly relaxed over the past two years as the countries held talks.

 

[Housecarl]

You add a second stage to that and the PRC gets "covered" as well....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2016/08/116_211872.html

Posted : 2016-08-14 17:16
Updated : 2016-08-14 19:23

More missiles to target NK bases

By Jun Ji-hye

http://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/newsV2/images/K2016081400102-450.jpg
A Hyunmoo 2A missile

The military plans to increase the number of Hyunmoo surface-to-surface ballistic and cruise missiles that can simultaneously strike missile bases all across North Korea in a time of war, sources said Sunday.

This is part of Seoul's plan to establish the "Kill Chain" preemptive strike and Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) systems by the 2020s.

South Korea is currently operating Hyunmoo 2A and 2B short-range ballistic missiles with maximum ranges of 300 and 500 kilometers, respectively, and Hyunmoo 3 cruise missiles with a range of 1,000 kilometers. The military refused to disclose how many Hyunmoo missiles are currently in place, and how many will be added.

"The military will increase operational deployment and combat reserves of Hyunmoo missiles," a source said on condition of anonymity.

The plan has been drawn based on awareness that the North may launch its missiles all at once against the South if it starts another war and of the need for the Seoul to conduct preemptive strikes if intelligence agencies detect an imminent threat, the source explained.

Pyongyang is known to have some 1,000 missiles.

Last month, Defense Minister Han Min-koo also said during a session of the National Assembly that Seoul has developed the concept of the three-pillar systems composed of the Kill Chain, the KAMD and Hyunmoo ballistic missiles.

"Relevant plans have been considerably developed and brought into shape," he told lawmakers.

According to the 2014 Defense White Paper, the isolated state operationally deployed four kinds of ballistic missiles ¯ Scud-B, which has a range of up to 300 kilometers; Scud-C, which has a range of 500 kilometers; Nodong, which has a range of 1,300 kilometers; and Musudan, with a range of over 3,000 kilometers.

Scuds are capable of striking the entire Korean Peninsula, while the Nodong can hit a target on the Japanese mainland and Okinawa. The Musudan can reach Guam.

The North is also believed to be developing its abilities to build a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on its KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) to hit the U.S. mainland.

Hyunmoo missiles were jointly developed by the state-run Agency for Defense Development and local defense company LIG Nex1.

jjh@ktimes.com

 

[Housecarl]

Anti Trump Muslim Shot & Killed Trying to Escape, Planted Explosives on Trail Cameras!
Started by hope4mil, Today 06:47 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...to-Escape-Planted-Explosives-on-Trail-Cameras!

Milwaukee Rioting?
Started by eXe, Yesterday 07:41 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?497618-Milwaukee-Rioting/page4

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-security-blast-police-idUSKCN10P078

World News | Sun Aug 14, 2016 5:52am EDT

Thai police find more unexploded bombs following coordinated blasts

By Wirat Buranakanokthanasan and Pairat Temphairojana | BANGKOK

Thai police over the weekend found and defused five explosive devices that had failed to detonate when an as yet unidentified group carried out a series of deadly bomb attacks on popular tourist spots late last week.

Police said they had arrested one suspect following the bomb and arson attacks on Thursday and Friday that killed four people and wounded dozens more in some of Thailand's best-known southern resorts and islands.

The attacks came just days after Thais voted to accept a military-backed constitution that the ruling junta, which seized power in 2014, has said will lead to an election by the end next year.

"These acts were undertaken by a group in many areas simultaneously, following orders from one individual," Pongsapat Pongcharoen, a deputy national police chief, told reporters on Sunday, without elaborating.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Analysts say suspicion would inevitably fall on enemies of the ruling junta aggrieved by the referendum results, or insurgents from Muslim-majority provinces in the south of the mostly Buddhist country.

Two incendiary devices in mobile telephone power packs were found in a market in the upscale resort of Hua Hin on Sunday, the interior ministry said in a statement. A bomb disposal team defused both, and local police said the devices had been there since Wednesday.

The resort was the scene of the most devastating of the wave of bombs when a blast ripped through an alley in a bar area on Thursday evening. There were two more blasts in the town less than 12 hours later.

Another fire bomb was found on the island of Phuket on Sunday and defused, local police said. It had been set to detonate at 3 a.m. on Friday (1600 ET on Thursday), local police said.

In Phang Nga, two devices were found on Saturday near a market that was torched in an attack early on Friday.

"One worked and the other two didn't," Phakaphong Tavipatana, the governor of Phang Nga, told Reuters, adding that police hoped to find fingerprints on the defused devices.

Phuket and Phang Nga were both hit in the attacks on Thursday and Friday, as was Surat Thani, a city that is the gateway to the popular islands in the Gulf of Thailand.

Attackers struck targets in seven southern Thai provinces, using bombs as well as incendiary devices that set shops and markets ablaze.

A man has been arrested and was being questioned in connection to an arson attack on a supermarket in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat, Pongsapat said. Police believe more than one individual was involved in that attack, he said.

The movements of other suspects were being monitored, he added.


NO SCAPEGOATS

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army chief who led the coup two years ago, has instructed the police to be thorough and cautious in their investigation, said Pongsapat, adding that police were "not catching scapegoats."

No evidence has been found yet to connect southern insurgents to the attacks, Pongsapat said, but DNA samples collected at the blast sites were being compared with databases in the southern Muslim provinces.

Fears that followers of former prime ministers Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra could be blamed prompted a senior figure in their Puea Thai Party to issue a sharp denial on Saturday.

Thaksin's government was toppled by the military in 2006, while Yingluck's was ovethrown two years ago.

The anti-government United Front For Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), known as the "red shirt" group and sympathetic to the Shinawatras, condemned the attacks in a statement on Sunday.


(Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat, Juarawee Kittisilpa and Aukkaraporn Niyomyat; Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Richard Pullin and Simon Cameron-Moore)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-mosul-idUSKCN10P070

World News | Sun Aug 14, 2016 8:36am EDT

Kurdish forces in fresh push to capture Mosul from Islamic State

By Saif Hameed | WARDAK, Iraq

Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched a fresh attack on Islamic State (IS) forces early on Sunday as part of a campaign to capture Mosul, the militants' de facto capital in Iraq, Kurdish officials said.

The advance began after heavy shelling and air strikes by a United States-led coalition against IS forces, a Reuters correspondent reported from Wardak, 30 km (19 miles) southeast of Mosul.

The militants fought back, firing mortars at the advancing troops and detonating at least two car bombs.

Clouds of black smoke rose from the area and dozens of civilians fled in the direction of the Peshmerga lines, brandishing white flags.

A Peshmerga commander said 11 villages had been taken from the ultra-hardline Sunni militants as the troops headed to Gwer, the target of the operation, 40 km (25 miles)southeast of Mosul.

Repairing the bridge that the militants destroyed in Gwer would allow the Peshmerga to open a new front around Mosul. The bridge crosses the Grand Zab river that flows into the Tigris.

The Iraqi army and the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdish self-rule region are gradually taking up positions around Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad.

It was from Mosul's Grand Mosque in 2014 that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a "caliphate" spanning regions of Iraq and Syria.

Mosul is the largest urban center under the militants' control, and had a pre-war population of nearly 2 million.

Its fall would mark the effective defeat of Islamic State in Iraq, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has said he aims to retake the city this year.

The Iraqi army is trying to advance from the south. In July it captured the Qayyara airfield, 60 km (35 miles) south of Mosul, which will serve as the main staging post for the expected offensive.

The Peshmerga operation on Sunday "is one of many shaping operations that will also increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul," said the Kurdistan Regional Security Council in a statement, using another acronym to refer to IS.

The preparation for the offensive on Mosul "is approaching the final phase," Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting the militant group, said in Baghdad on Thursday.

He said the planning included humanitarian considerations.

Once the fighting intensifies around Mosul, up to one million people could be driven from their homes in northern Iraq, posing "a massive humanitarian problem", the International Committee of the Red Cross said last month.More than 3.4 million people have already been forced by conflict to leave their homes across Iraq, taking refuge in areas under control of the government or in the Kurdish region.


(Reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...ran-donald-trump-obama-bashar-assad-moderates

Obama’s Iraq Policy Did Not Create ISIS

by Andrew C. McCarthy August 13, 2016 4:00 AM @AndrewCMcCarthy
Comments 35

Our challenge in the Middle East is that sharia supremacism fills all vacuums.

The early Cold War wisdom that “we must stop politics at the water’s edge” has never been entirely true. In endeavors as human as politics, no such altruistic aspiration ever will be. But Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s adage does reflect a principle critical to effective national security: The United States is imperiled when partisan politics distorts our understanding of the world and the threats it presents.

We’ve been imperiled for a long time now. The most salient reason for that has been the bipartisan, politically correct refusal to acknowledge and confront the Islamic roots of the threat to the West. It has prevented us from grasping not only why jihadists attack us but also that jihadists are merely the militant front line of the broader civilizational challenge posed by sharia supremacism.

Inevitably, when there is a profound threat and an overarching strategic failure to apprehend it, disasters abound; and rather than becoming occasions for reassessment of the flawed bipartisan strategy, those disasters become grist for partisan attacks. From 2004 through 2008, the specious claim was that President Bush’s ouster of Saddam Hussein created terrorism in Iraq. Now it is that President Obama is the “founder of ISIS,” as Donald Trump put it this week.

The point here is not to bash Trump. He is hardly the first to posit some variation of the storyline that Obama’s premature withdrawal of American forces from Iraq led to the “vacuum” in which, we are to believe, the Islamic State spontaneously generated. Indeed, this narrative is repeated on Fox News every ten minutes or so.

The point is to try to understand what we are actually dealing with, how we got to this place, and what the security implications are. There is no denying that American missteps have exacerbated a dangerous threat environment in the Middle East to some degree. It is spurious, though, to suggest that any of these errors, or all of them collectively, caused the catastrophe that has unfolded.

The problem for the United States in this region is Islam — specifically, the revolutionary sharia-supremacist version to which the major players adhere. There is no vacuum. There never has been a vacuum. What we have is a bubbling cauldron of aggressive political Islam with its always attendant jihadist legions.

The question is always: How to contain the innate aggression? The fantasy answers are: (a) let’s convert them to Western democracy, and (b) let’s support the secular democrats. In reality, the region does not want Western democracy — it wants sharia (Islamic law), even if there is disagreement about how much sharia and how quickly it should be imposed. And while there are some secular democrats, there are far, far too few of them to compete with either the sharia-supremacist factions or the dictatorial regimes — they can only fight the latter by aligning with the former. At best, the secularists provide hope for an eventual evolution away from totalitarian sharia culture; for now, however, it is absurd for Beltway Republicans to contend that ISIS emerged because Obama failed to back these “moderates” in Iraq and Syria.

The fact that top Republicans use the term “moderate” rather than “secular democrat” should tell us all we need to know. They realize there are not enough secularists to fight either Bashar Assad or ISIS, much less both of them. For all their justifiable ridiculing of Obama’s lexicon, Republicans invoke “moderates” for the same reason Obama uses terms like “workplace violence” — to obscure unpleasant truths about radical Islam. In this instance, the truth is that the “moderates” they claim Obama should have backed include the Muslim Brotherhood and other anti-Western Islamist factions, including al-Qaeda. Of course, if they told you that, there wouldn’t be much bite in their critique of Obama’s infatuation with the Muslim Brotherhood . . . and you might even start remembering that, during the Bush years, the GOP couldn’t do enough “outreach” to “moderate Islamists.”

The Middle East is aflame because of sharia supremacism and the jihadism that ideology always produces. That was the problem long before there was an ISIS. The Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria, like other Middle Eastern dictatorships, kept sharia supremacism in check by alternatively persecuting Islamist insurgents, turning them against each other, or using them to harass Israel and the West. In Iran, to the contrary, the shah was overthrown by a revolutionary Shiite jihadist movement that he failed to keep in check.

Bush, with what started out as bipartisan support, ousted the Iraqi regime without any discernible plan for dealing with Iran, Syria, and the wider war — delusionally calculating that Iran might actually be helpful because of its supposedly keen interest in Iraqi stability. Iran, of course, went about the business of fueling the terrorist insurgency against American troops. Saddam’s fall unleashed the competing Islamist forces that continue to tear Iraq apart. The thought that we could democratize the culture was fantasy; far from taming sharia supremacism, the government we birthed in Baghdad was converted by the Iran-backed Shiite parties into a mechanism for abusing Sunnis. Naturally, the Sunnis turned to their own sharia supremacists for their defense.

It is fair enough to argue that Obama should not have pulled U.S. forces out of Iraq just as the security situation was badly deteriorating in 2011. But a big part of the reason that Democrats thrashed Republicans in the 2006 midterms, and that Obama was elected in 2008, was mounting American opposition to maintaining our troops there. Critics, moreover, conveniently omit to mention that (a) the agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw our troops on a timeline unrelated to conditions on the ground was made by Bush, not Obama, and that (b) Bush reluctantly made that agreement precisely because Iraqis were demanding that Americans get out of their country.

The war became unpopular in the United States because it seemed unconnected to U.S. security interests: so much sacrifice on behalf of ingrates, while Iran exploited the mayhem to muscle in. There was no public appetite for a long-range U.S. military presence. What would be the point, when Bush had given the increasingly hostile Iraqi government the power to veto U.S. military operations to which it objected, and had agreed that our forces would not use Iraqi territory as a base of operations against Iran, Syria, or any other country? (See 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, articles 4 and 27.) This was not post-war Europe or Japan, where the enemy had been vanquished. Most Americans did not see the point of further risking American lives in order to stop anti-American Shiites and anti-American Sunnis from having at each other, as they’ve been doing to great lethal effect for 14 centuries.

ISIS (now, the Islamic State) got its start as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the primary culprit (along with Iran) in the Iraqi civil war. ISIS thus long predates Obama’s presidency. Furthermore, the oft-repeated GOP talking-point that al-Qaeda in Iraq was defeated by the Bush troop surge is a gross exaggeration. Our jihadist enemies could not be defeated in Iraq, because Iraq was never their sole base of operations. Since we’ve never had a strategy to defeat them globally, we were never going to do more than temporarily tamp them down in Iraq. They were always going to wait us out. They were always going to reemerge, in Iraq and elsewhere.

One of the places in which they regrouped was Syria. That made perfect sense, because Syria — the client of al-Qaeda’s long-time supporter, Iran — was always a waystation for jihadists seeking to fight American and Western forces in Iraq. Meanwhile, there was an internal Syrian uprising against the Assad regime. To be sure, the revolt had some secular components; but it was thoroughly coopted by the Muslim Brotherhood (as analyst Hassan Hassan comprehensively outlined in Foreign Affairs in early 2013).

Notwithstanding the Republicans’ ISIS myopia, it was not the only jihadist presence in Syria — not even close. Al-Qaeda still had a franchise there (al-Nusrah), along with several other tentacles. Importantly, in its rivalry with breakaway ISIS, al-Qaeda has adopted the Muslim Brotherhood approach of ground-up revolution — the antithesis of the Islamic State’s top-down strategy of forcibly expanding its declared caliphate and implementing sharia full-scale.

As Tom Joscelyn perceptively explained in 2015 congressional testimony, al-Qaeda is attempting to spark jihadist uprisings in Muslim-majority countries while appealing to local populations with fundamentalist education initiatives. Like the Brotherhood, al-Qaeda leaders now preach a gradualist implementation of sharia, which is more appealing to most Middle Eastern Muslims than ISIS’s inflexibility and emphasis on sharia’s barbaric hudud penalties (mutilation, stoning, scourging, etc.). Understand: Al-Qaeda is just as anti-American as it has ever been. In Syria, however, its shrewd approach has enabled the network to insinuate itself deeply into the forces that oppose both Assad and ISIS. So has the Brotherhood.

These forces are the “moderates” that Republicans, apparently including Trump, claim Obama failed to support, creating the purported “vacuum” out of which ISIS emerged. The charge is doubly specious because Obama actually did provide these “moderates” with plenty of support. The GOP rap on Obama is that he failed to jump with both feet into the Syria civil war and take the side of “moderates.” But jumping in with both feet, at the urging of Beltway Republicans, is exactly what Obama did on behalf of the “moderates” in Libya. How’d that work out?

Our challenge in the Middle East is that sharia supremacism fills all vacuums. It was this ideology that created ISIS long before President Obama came along. And if ISIS were to disappear tomorrow, sharia supremacism would still be our challenge. It is critical to be an effective political opposition to the Obama Left. But being effective means not letting the political part warp our judgment, especially where national security is concerned.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is as senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

 

[vestige]

Japan to develop missile as tensions with China mount – reports

I'll bet it will be a good one too.

bump

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/08/15/nuclear_weapons_and_first_use_109704.html

August 15, 2016

Nuclear Weapons and First Use

By Rod Lyon

Recent media reports suggesting that President Obama’s considering embracing a no-first-use pledge in US nuclear declaratory policy have certainly rekindled the debate over the wisdom of such a move. The debate’s not new, and resonances of its earlier rounds abound. Over at Arms Control Wonk, Michael Krepon has penned a couple of thoughtful pieces (here and here), essentially supporting the notion of a no-first-use policy—just not yet. On the other side of the debate, Elbridge Colby’s argued that a no-first-use declaration would be a deep strategic error. Andrew Shearer’s argued a similar line over at War on the Rocks.

In arms control terms, no-first-use pledges have a superficial attractiveness. For one thing—if they could be taken at face value—they would imply an important raising of the nuclear threshold. If all nine current nuclear weapon states were to embrace them, none would ever use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. And the essential role of nuclear weapons would be limited to deterring, and responding to, an adversary’s use of nuclear weapons in violation of that pledge.

But can they be taken at face value? One of the central problems with a no-first-use pledge is that it’s inherently incredible. Such a pledge says that a nuclear weapon state is content to lose a war at the conventional level without resorting to nuclear weapons. Perhaps that’s the case with some limited conventional conflicts fought over peripheral rather than core interests. But it’s not true in relation to all conventional conflicts. All of the nuclear weapon states have some interests the loss of which they would regard as intolerable. Such prospect of loss would excite resort to nuclear weapons. If it didn’t, why would they have built them in the first place?

The second problem is one of strategic utility. If nuclear weapons are useful in deterring major war, why are we so anxious to ensure they deter only nuclear use? NATO strategists in the days of the Cold War used to argue plausibly that theatre- and tactical-range nuclear weapons helped offset the possibility of Soviet conventional aggression by making it more difficult for the Warsaw Pact to concentrate its tank armies. Any such massing of forward-deployed armour would be a potential target for a NATO nuclear weapon. In short, NATO’s option of crossing the threshold first helped to lengthen the odds that it would ever need to do so. NATO’s logic then remains just as compelling today for any nuclear weapon state which feels itself conventionally outgunned.

Even those nuclear weapon states confident about their own conventional strength might well see a role for nuclear weapons in constraining an adversary’s options. The US found itself in exactly that position in the early 1990s, leading the multinational force engaged in expelling Saddam’s forces from Kuwait. Veiled US threats then that Washington would regard any Iraqi use of weapons of mass destruction—essentially chemical weapons—as opening the door to possible US nuclear weapon use, were designed to constrain Iraqi options and leverage the multinational force’s conventional advantage.

Then there’s a third problem—assurance. A US no-first-use pledge would play merry havoc with its extended nuclear assurances to its allies. Allies would worry about both of the first two problems: that a US which was serious about its no-first-use pledge might be more inclined to see their interests as peripheral rather than vital; and that they’re more exposed to shifts in regional conventional force balances than is the US itself. That’s broadly true for all US allies around the Eurasian rimlands, but the rapid growth of Chinese conventional power in Asia makes this factor particularly telling in Australia’s own region.

For all those reasons, a sudden step towards a no-first-use pledge by an American president in the last six months of his office would be a worrying development. True, the 2010 US Nuclear Posture Review pointed to a future in which the US would ‘seek to reduce the role and numbers of nuclear weapons’. But Washington balked at making a ‘sole purpose’ declaration—essentially a declaration that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons was to deter any use of nuclear weapons by an adversary—during that Review. And it’s hard to argue that nuclear weapons have become more irrelevant in the years since. There’s strategic value in the current policy. That, by the way, isn’t a pledge to use nuclear weapons first; it’s merely a refusal to pledge not to do so. That position retains the possibility of first use—which is probably unappetising for some, but fulfils the tests of credibility, deterrence and assurance. If we have to live through the nuclear age, let’s at least make sure the weapons make a positive contribution to international security.


This article originally appeared at The Strategist (ASPI).

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...77372e89d78_story.html?utm_term=.0a85caff08b1

Opinions

U.S. allies unite to block Obama's nuclear 'legacy'

By Josh Rogin August 14 at 7:29 PM
Comments 587

President Obama’s last-minute drive for a foreign-policy legacy is making U.S. allies nervous about their own security. Several allied governments have lobbied the administration not to change U.S. nuclear-weapons policy by promising never to be the first to use them in a conflict.

The governments of Japan, South Korea, France and Britain have all privately communicated their concerns about a potential declaration by President Obama of a “no first use” nuclear-weapons policy for the United States. U.S. allies have various reasons for objecting to what would be a landmark change in America’s nuclear posture, but they are all against it, according to U.S. officials, foreign diplomats and nuclear experts.

Japan, in particular, believes that if Obama declares a “no first use” policy, deterrence against countries such as North Korea will suffer and the risks of conflict will rise. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe personally conveyed that message recently to Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the head of U.S. Pacific Command, according to two government officials.

U.S. allies in Europe have a separate, additional concern. They don’t want any daylight between their nuclear policies and those of the United States, especially since Britain, France and the United States all are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. In the case of an emergency, those differences could cause real coordination problems.

“It’s my understanding that the defense ministries of many of our allied nations have lobbied the White House against changing this doctrine, and there’s been particularly strong opposition from the U.K., France, Japan and South Korea,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund , an anti-proliferation advocacy group that supports the policy change. “We have an interest in creating an international norm that no one should use nuclear weapons first. The allies lobbying against it are nervous nellies.”

The White House is considering declaring a “no first use” nuclear-weapons policy as one of several ways Obama can advance his non-proliferation agenda in his final months in office. Several options are under debate, and no final decisions have been made on “no first use.”

The president wants to roll out announcements on nuclear policy in September to coincide with his final appearance at the U.N. General Assembly, officials said. One administration official told me that, in part because of allied concerns, the internal push on “no first use” was not gaining traction.

National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told me that the administration is “always looking for additional ways to achieve progress” on Obama’s Prague agenda — named for the disarmament aspirations the president set out in his April 2009 speech in the Czech capital — “while maintaining a credible deterrent for the United States, our allies and partners.”

Foreign officials from multiple allied countries said that their governments were upset about a lack of consultation on the possible declaration of a “no first use” policy, which would affect all allies who live under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Many said that allied governments first learned about the policy debates in The Post.

“While the goal of a ‘no first use’ policy is correct — to never be the first country to launch a cataclysmic nuclear strike — doing so unilaterally could run the risk of weakening our allies’ confidence in our security guarantees. This would not be in our interest,” said Joel Rubin, a former Obama administration State Department official.

Diplomats from allied countries argued that if the United States takes a nuclear first strike off the table, the risk of a conventional conflict with countries such as North Korea, China and Russia could increase. Regimes that might refrain from a conventional attack in fear of nuclear retaliation would calculate the risks of such an attack differently.

Moreover, allied governments don’t believe that a unilateral “no first use” declaration would necessarily help to establish an international norm, because there’s no guarantee that other countries would follow suit. They also believe that nuclear weapons play a role in deterring chemical and biological attacks.

Republicans in Congress also strongly oppose the change and are already upset that the Obama administration plans to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on all states to refrain from nuclear testing. They don’t believe such moves are appropriate this close to the arrival of a new administration and without legislative advice and consent.

The Obama administration first expressed its desire to move the United States to “no first use” in a 2010 policy document that stated that conditions for such a move were not ripe but pledged that the America would “work to establish conditions under which such a policy could be safely adopted.” Since 2010, the world has only grown less stable. Nevertheless, proponents of the new policy say concerns about the change are unfounded.

“North Korea understands that any conventional attack will be met with a devastating response, but it doesn’t have to be a nuclear response,” said Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball. “If we don’t need to use nuclear weapons to retaliate against North Korea, why should we?”

The same question could be asked the other way. If all U.S. allies believe a “no first use” policy weakens deterrence and increases the risk of armed conflict without producing any benefits, why should we do it? Advancing Obama’s personal legacy isn’t a good enough reason.


Read more on this topic:

Josh Rogin: Obama plans major nuclear policy changes in his final months

Barack Obama: How we can make our vision of a world without nuclear weapons a reality

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Obama’s Hiroshima visit can’t undo the past. But it can change the future.

Sam Nunn: On nuclear weapons, nations must cooperate to avoid catastrophe

William J. Perry and Andy Weber: Mr. President, kill the new cruise missile

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://news.usni.org/2016/08/15/report-south-korea-wants-bmd-capability-guided-missile-destroyers

Report: South Korea Wants BMD Capability for Guided Missile Destroyers

By: Sam LaGrone
August 15, 2016 4:30 AM • Updated: August 14, 2016 10:05 PM

Seoul is considering adding Raytheon SM-3 missiles to its fleet of Aegis guided missile destroyers to give the ships a ballistic missile defense capability, according to local press reports.

An unidentified South Korean military official told the Yonhap news service last week that Washington and Seoul are set to start discussing for a missile purchase soon as an additional hedge against North Korean ballistic missiles.

The ROK Navy currently fields three Sejong the Great-class guided missile destroyers (DDG-991) with the same radar and launch system as the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class BMD guided missile destroyers. The Koreans are planning three additional ships in the class.

However, it’s unclear how much additional software and computer hardware upgrades the Koreans will need to target the BMD weapons.

The U.S. State Department office that coordinates foreign military sales would not confirm any movement to green light a sale that would equip Republic of Korea Navy destroyers with SM-3s.
“We would refer you to the Republic of Korea to speak to their defense procurement plan,” a State Department spokesman told USNI News on Friday.

News of the SM-3s comes in tandem with a deployment of U.S. Army Terminal High Altitude Aerial Defense systems to mainland South Korea. Pentagon officials announced the deployment of the THAAD systems in February.

Since then, the mobile BMD system has drawn the ire of both China and North Korea.

“It is unmistakably a strategic misjudgment for Seoul to violate the core interests of its two strong neighbors, at the cost of its own security, and only in the interests of American hegemony,” read an editorial published in Chinese state media last week.

As to the SM-3s on Korean destroyers, adding the capability is a sound move, Eric Wertheim author of U.S. Naval Institute’s Combat Fleets of the World told USNI News on Friday
“In light of recent North Korean efforts to bolster offensive missile capabilities, it now makes a lot of sense for the South Koreans to consider the potential acquisition of defensive SM-3s to arm their Aegis warships and to boost ballistic missile defense capabilities,” he said.

A set of 60 SM-3 missiles could cost as much as $763 million, an unnamed South Korean military official told The Korea Herald newspaper in late May.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...diness-challenge-no-myth/130719/?oref=d-river

The Army’s Coming Readiness Challenge is No Myth

By Carter Ham
August 12, 2016
Comments

Today's Army is already too small to meet its national security objectives without risks, and there are serious hurdles to making things better.

“America’s fighting forces remain ready for battle,” retired Gen. David Petraeus and Mr. Michael O’Hanlon wrote in their Aug. 9 Wall Street Journal commentary, “The Myth of a U.S. Military ‘Readiness’ Crisis.” That is largely true today with respect to the current fight against ISIL and other terrorist organizations, but it may not be true tomorrow.

Fifteen years of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Syria, Libya and elsewhere, compounded by years of budget uncertainty, have left America’s military forces less well-prepared for operations to counter the increasing capabilities of near-peer and emerging competitors. America’s armed forces must possess the capability to prevail in an ever-expanding set of scenarios, ranging from rendering humanitarian assistance to countering terrorism to fighting a full-spectrum war against a foe like North Korea. There are already capability gaps, which are only growing as we delay investment in the military’s future.

As president of the Association of the U.S. Army and an old soldier, let me offer some comments. The future of the United States Army is challenged by the combination of ongoing operations, emerging strategic threats, and a convoluted budget process that has weakened the nation’s foundational force.

Potential adversaries have already seized the initiative in key technological areas while the United States military and its budgets shrink. Emerging rivals are modernizing their forces and tactics, and establishing long-range plans that could directly threaten our national interests. These developments are ominous warnings of a future where only a robust, technologically superior, and well-prepared Army can ensure the security of the United States, our allies and our partners.

Though we cannot and should not face these challenges alone, the U.S. will undoubtedly lead the effort to deter continued aggression in places like Eastern Europe and prevent coercive actions in regions such as the South China Sea. We cannot rely solely on our allies to provide the security necessary to preserve peace. We must continue to be at the forefront of this effort. To do so requires a strong Army capable of fighting and winning when called upon.

Today’s Army is too small to meet its national security objectives without risks, and you cannot disguise serious hurdles in trying to make things better. I recently chaired the congressionally-mandated National Commission on the Future of the Army. We concluded that a Total Army (active, Army National Guard and Army Reserve) of 980,000 would be “minimally sufficient.” Is that what we want? A minimally sufficient Army? I sure hope not.

While the Army is not in crisis today, its ability to fulfill its missions on behalf of the nation will remain challenged without sustained, predictable funding at levels that support the all-volunteer force and allow for adequate modernization to meet the increasing challenges presented by near-peer competitors.

What does this mean? In the short term, the Army can win in any foreseeable conflict, but our casualties will be greater and the cost in money and time will be higher because we’ve boxed America’s foundational military force into the corner of minimally sufficient people, equipment and resources.

Within the next five years, our Army will find it difficult to improve combat readiness because priority for training and supplies has to be given to deployed or deploying units on the front lines of today’s trouble spots. About 190,000 soldiers are away from home today in support of global requirements. That is down from deployment levels at the height of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Army’s support for worldwide operations requires large chunks of the Army’s budget.

Underfunding and overworking today’s force has long-term implications. Given the cloudy forecast for military budgets, it is hard to see when the Army might achieve overall readiness levels at acceptable risk. Unless readiness reaches sufficient levels, the Army won’t be able to address another looming crisis involving the need to modernize its weapons, communications, vehicles and aircraft to stay ahead of competitors and potential adversaries.

What Does the Army Need?

The Army needs a Total Force of about 1 million soldiers, all trained, equipped and ready. The first step is to stop cutting troops. However, maintaining or even increasing the size of the Regular Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve cannot come at the expense of training and modern equipment.

The Army doesn’t need extra soldiers if the added costs aren’t fully covered. Unfunded personnel increases would make today’s situation even worse.

The Army needs training, spare parts, maintenance and operating budgets to be funded at a level so overall readiness will improve month by month, year by year.

Most importantly, the Army and her sister services don’t need that extra funding to come as part of a partial-year funding bill that would make an already chaotic budget process even more unstable.

The Army needs to return to a robustly funded modernization program that can produce some of the much-needed advances in aircraft, ammunition, missiles, wheeled and tracked vehicles, and other items.

And the Army needs to reform its structure, programs and policies where and when it makes sense to do so. Reform for reform’s sake, “salami-slice” reductions and irresponsible calls to “do more with less” are simply unhelpful.

Constant talk of the need to trim pay and benefits, reduce personnel costs by further reducing military and civilian headquarters staffs, and cut facility costs by deferring more maintenance and upkeep are morale-sapping efforts, especially when the belt-tightening happens year after year with no end in sight.

Gen. Petraeus and Mr. O’Hanlon’s op-ed notwithstanding, these issues of military preparedness are getting insufficient attention in the current political discourse. It is past time for serious discussion from those currently serving in policy-making positions as well as by those aspiring to such national-level positions in our government.


Carter Ham, a retired U.S. Army general, is president and CEO of the Association of the U.S. Army.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...power-of-china-new-political-fissures-in-west

China
Opinion

The rising power of China will create new political fissures in the west

Gideon Rachman

The increasingly assertive superpower is forcing the west to make tricky strategic and political choices

Saturday 13 August 2016 19.05 EDT
Comments 394

Whether he wins or loses the US presidency next November, Donald Trump has already come up with one of the defining slogans of 2016 – “Make America great again”.

Trump’s vision of an America in precipitous decline is all-encompassing. At home, he points to falling living standards for many Americans and the disappearance of well-paid manufacturing jobs. Overseas, he claims the world is laughing at the US and laments that “we don’t win any more”.

Many in Europe are tempted to see Trump as an “only in America” aberration. Yet the fear of economic and geopolitical decline that Trump is capitalising upon is widely visible across the west. The coalition of frustrated working-class voters and nostalgic nationalists that the Republican has put together is uncomfortably reminiscent of the alliance that voted for Brexit in the UK. Trump’s “make America great again” mantra has an echo of the Brexit campaign’s winning slogan – “Take back control”. Nor is this is just an Anglo-American phenomenon. Across the EU, including in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland, protectionists and nationalists are gaining ground.

As Trump might put it: “Something’s going on.” That something is a historic shift in economic and geopolitical power that is bringing to an end a 500-year period in which western nations have dominated global affairs. This erosion of the west’s privileged position in world affairs is creating new economic, geopolitical and even psychological pressures in both the US and the EU.

The driving force of this change is the extraordinary economic development of Asia over the past 50 years. In 2014, the IMF reported that, measured in purchasing power, China is now the world’s largest economy. The US had held this title since 1871, when it displaced the UK; now China is number one. The rise of China is just part of a broader shift of economic power towards Asia. The IMF reports that three of the world’s four largest economies are now in Asia. China is first, the US is second, India third and Japan fourth.

It is true that if you measure economies at current exchange rates the US is still the world’s largest economy – and European nations also rise up the pecking order. But growing Chinese and Asian economic weight is demonstrable in many other ways. China is now the world’s largest manufacturer and the largest exporter. It is also the world’s largest market for vehicles, smartphones and oil – and the biggest single market for many western companies such as Daimler and KFC. But it is not just Mercedes and fried chicken that are being consumed in Asia. In 2012, for the first time in over a century, Asian countries spent more money on armaments and troops than European nations. The world’s two largest arms importers are now India and Saudi Arabia.

Conventional economic theory holds that the growing wealth of Asia should be a boon to the economies of the west, since it offers new markets and sources of investment. But it is also clear that particular communities in Europe and the US, especially manufacturing workers and the less educated, have had their living standards badly hit by competition from Asia. Economists call this the “China shock” and the effects have been profound. By the end of 2008, the US had lost one third of its manufacturing jobs from peak and most of those had gone in the previous decade. Italy, whose industrial heartlands have suffered particularly badly from competition with Asia, has lost 25% of its industrial capacity since 2008. Researchers at Bocconi University in Italy have shown that across Europe it is the areas that have been hit hardest by Chinese competition that are most likely to move towards political parties advocating “identity-based nationalism”.

China’s increasing economic weight is also leading to tricky strategic and political choices for western nations. Britain’s current dilemma over the proposed nuclear power station at Hinkley Point is illustrative. With Brexit looming, investment from China looks ever more crucial to the UK. But China is not just an enormous economy. It is also a rising power with strategic aims that have led to a rise in tensions with its neighbours and with the US, Britain’s most important military ally and the bedrock of the Nato alliance. Given the rising tensions between the west and China, it was all but inevitable that the May government would have to consider whether it is sensible to hand over the management of such a strategic chunk of the UK economy to Chinese companies.

The trade-off between security and economics when dealing with China is likely to be a recurring dilemma for the UK – and it is not just a problem for Britain. A few months ago, Australia faced its own Hinkley Point moment when it blocked a Chinese consortium from buying a company that owns more than 1% of Australia’s landmass. Since then, tensions between the Aussies and the Chinese have risen. A few days ago, the Global Times, a subsidiary of China’s People’s Daily, suggested that if the Australian navy joined the US in patrolling waters claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea, Australia would be “an ideal target to warn and strike”.

The shrill tone of such Chinese pronouncements underlines the fact that the shift in global economic power has not just altered attitudes in the west, it has also produced an increasingly assertive nationalism in Xi Jinping’s China. Over the past year, Beijing has asserted its claims in the South China Sea by building artificial islands across the ocean. In response, the US navy has sent patrols through waters claimed by China.

Both a Trump and a Clinton presidency would probably lead to increased tensions with China, but by very different routes. Hillary Clinton is regarded in Beijing as a dangerous hawk who would be likely to be more determined in pushing back against China’s maritime claims. President Xi is a tough-minded nationalist, so a Clinton presidency would increase the chances of a clash in the Pacific between the US and China.

Trump, by contrast, seems relatively uninterested in America’s strategic role in the Pacific, but his vociferous protectionism has led him to propose swingeing tariffs on Chinese goods. Any such policy would be regarded as an act of economic warfare by Beijing.

Either way, the era when globalisation seemed like a process that could create only common interests between China and the west is over. It is now giving way to an epoch that looks altogether darker and more dangerous.

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-politics-column-idUSKCN10P0FY

Commentary | Mon Aug 15, 2016 3:55am EDT

Column: Who do you hate the least? The dilemma for French voters

By Noah Barkin | PEYPIN, France

In Michel Houellebecq's bleak satirical novel "Submission", the French political order is turned on its head after the soul-crushing re-election in 2017 of Francois Hollande, the most unpopular president the country has ever seen.

"A strange, oppressive mood settled over France, a kind of suffocating despair, all-encompassing, but shot through with glints of insurrection," writes Houellebecq in his 2015 bestseller.

Nine months before real French voters go to the polls, this gloomy vision - or some variation of it - no longer seems quite so outlandish.

Hollande, 62, may be a long-shot to win re-election. But the chances of him emerging as the Socialist candidate for president remain high despite his abysmal approval ratings, now hovering in the mid-teens.

Also high, following a string of horrific attacks in France that have made security the top issue in the campaign, are the chances that his main challenger could be Nicolas Sarkozy, 61, the man who was France's most unpopular modern leader before Hollande beat him in 2012 and claimed the mantle for himself.

So the next French election could well boil down to a choice between two failed presidents who are viewed with disdain by a majority of French voters, and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front.

"It would be election by elimination," says Thomas Guenole, a political scientist and co-founder of consulting firm Vox Politica. "The choice facing French voters would be: who do you hate the least?"

A survey by Ifop last month asked French voters who they would not want to see elected next year under any circumstances. Hollande came out on top at 73 percent. Sarkozy and Le Pen were not far behind, at 66 and 63 percent, respectively.


ALIENATION

Perhaps the only certainty in such a race, is that Le Pen, whose party is comfortably ahead of Hollande's Socialists and Sarkozy's Republicans in the polls, would make it into the second round.

The expectation is that Hollande, if he did run, would not. But if he is up against Sarkozy in the first round and if Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist Democratic Movement, joins the fray, he perhaps has a glimmer of hope.

Le Pen's chances of winning a second-round run-off are seen as extremely slim. But the antipathy towards both Hollande and Sarkozy makes it difficult to completely rule out a Le Pen victory.

Unlike in 2002, when Socialist voters held their noses and backed center candidate Jacques Chirac in the second round to stop Le Pen's father Jean-Marie, the appetite for crossing party lines to back Hollande or Sarkozy would be far more limited - in part because Marine Le Pen has spent years softening the image of the National Front.

"If elections were taking place today she would have no chance," said Dominique Moisi, senior adviser at the French Institute for International Affairs (IFRI). "But if they are taking place in a context of new terrorist attacks you cannot exclude this scenario."

Regardless of who emerges victorious, the choice between three deeply unpopular candidates could deepen the sense of alienation in France, fuelling a despondency akin to what Houellebecq describes in his book.

France is not the only country whose voters face poor choices.

The U.S. election campaign is playing out in similar fashion, with Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump both intensely disliked by large portions of the U.S. voting population.

In Germany, which will hold an election in the autumn of 2017, voters may feel they have little choice but to give Angela Merkel a fourth term, despite deep misgivings over her handling of Europe's refugee crisis. There are simply no attractive alternatives.

But the situation in France stands out because the country has such a desperate need for new ideas and leadership to pull it out of its economic malaise and spiraling crisis of confidence.

JUPPE AND MACRON

On the right, the alternative to Sarkozy is Alain Juppe, the 70-year-old former prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister.

Polls suggest Juppe would have an easier ride to the presidency. And although there is nothing "new" about him, he enjoys broader support than his conservative rival, with 58 percent of French saying they could accept him as president, according to the Ifop poll.

But the recent attacks - a mass killing on the promenade in Nice and the throat-slitting of a Catholic priest in a church near Rouen - have shifted the focus of the campaign to security, immigration and national identity, themes that play to Sarkozy's strengths as a hardline former interior minister.

Sarkozy is climbing in the polls and Juppe, seen for months as the frontrunner, is falling as a November primary to decide the center candidate for president approaches. Whoever wins that primary will be the favorites to become France's next president.

The attacks are also undermining the appeal of Emmanuel Macron, the 38-year-old economy minister and former investment banker who has been positioning himself as an alternative to Hollande on the left by preaching economic renewal.

A political sensation a few months ago, French media are now questioning whether Macron's new political movement "En Marche" (forward) shouldn't be renamed "En Panne" (broken down).

"In the current environment people want an experienced commander in chief and that is not Macron," says Jerome Fourquet of Ifop.

That means French voters may well be confronted with a choice next year that satisfies few.

In Houellebecq's fictional world, the disillusionment resulting from Hollande's re-election leads to the rise of a Muslim candidate who defeats Marine Le Pen in 2022 and introduces Sharia law and polygamy in France.

That won't come to pass. But if the 2017 vote does play out as it now looks like it might, it would not be good for France or for Europe, where leaders are already struggling to inspire their citizens.


About the Author

Reporting by Noah Barkin; editing by Ralph Boulton

The views expressed in this article are not those of Reuters News.


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[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-mosul-idUSKCN10Q1KB

World News | Mon Aug 15, 2016 12:03pm EDT

Kurdish forces open new front on Islamic State capital Mosul

By Maher Chmaytelli and Saif Hameed | BAGHDAD

Kurdish Peshmerga forces on Monday said they had secured a river crossing point enabling them to open a new front against Islamic State and further tighten their grip on the militants' capital Mosul.

Backed by air strikes from the U.S.-led coalition, Kurdish fighters reached Kanhash, the western side of the Gwer bridge, the target of an offensive that started on Sunday.

The militants damaged the bridge, across the Grand Zab river and to the southeast of Mosul, two years ago as they swept through northern and western Iraq. Repairing the bridge would allow Peshmerga and other anti-IS forces to move toward Mosul from a new front.

"Control over Kanhash Heights give the Peshmerga strategic advantage over nearby enemy positions and the main road linking Mosul," tweeted Masrour Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Region Security Council.

"This successful operation will tighten the grip around ISIL's stronghold Mosul," he added, using another acronym of IS.

About 150 square kms (58 square miles) were taken from the militants along the Grand Zab which flows into the Tigris, Kurdish officials said.

The Iraqi army and the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdish self-rule region are gradually taking up positions around Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of the capital Baghdad.

It was from Mosul's Grand Mosque in 2014 that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a "caliphate" spanning regions of Iraq and Syria.

With a pre-war population of nearly 2 million, it is the largest urban center under the militants' control and its fall would mark the effective defeat of Islamic State in Iraq, according to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has said he aims to retake it this year.

The Iraqi army is trying to close in from the south. In July it captured the Qayyara airfield, 60 km (35 miles) south of Mosul, which is to serve as the main staging post for the anticipated offensive.

"Noose tightening around #ISIL terrorists: #Peshmerga advancing east of #Mosul, #ISF shoring up south near #Qayyara,"

tweeted Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting the militant group in a comment on the Kurdish offensive.

The militants were using suicide car bombs and mortar rounds to try to slow the Kurds' advance, said Saif Hameed, a Reuters correspondent who covered the offensive on Sunday.

"At the sixth village we entered, we received the usual incoming fire and the gunner was firing back ... mortars started to land on our right every three minutes," said Hameed, who was moving in a Peshmerga armored truck with a group of journalists.

"Suddenly one of the men who was anxiously watching through the narrow, shattered bulletproof glass shouted and all eyes turned to the left," Hameed said. "It was a car bomb and it was speeding toward us."

"The gunner opened fire from the turret and it vanished. We didn't know where it went. As we retreated from the village, we were told it exploded elsewhere."

IS said in a statement on its Amaq news service that two car bombs driven by suicide fighters were detonated in one of the villages to block advancing Kurdish forces, causing casualties among the Peshmerga.

Authorities in autonomous Kurdistan gave no toll for the fighting, other than confirming on Sunday the death of a Kurdish TV cameraman and the injury of another journalist.Preparations for the offensive on Mosul were nearing the final phase, McGurk told reporters during a visit to Baghdad on Thursday. He said the planning included considerations for humanitarian aid to uprooted civilians.

Up to one million people could be driven from their homes in northern Iraq, once fighting intensifies around Mosul, posing "a massive humanitarian problem", the International Committee of the Red Cross forecast last month.

More than 3.4 million people have already been forced by conflict to leave their homes across Iraq, taking refuge in areas under control of the government or in the Kurdish region.


(Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/08/13/is-south-korea-still-interested-in-unification/

Is South Korea still interested in unification?

13 August 2016
Author: Emma Campbell, ANU
Comments 4

It is not easy being a young person in globalised South Korea. The intense competition that defines South Korea’s education system and the irregular employment market that awaits graduates has led to rising inequality, falling birth rates, insecure employment and high numbers of youth suicide.Beyond South Korea’s domestic wellbeing, globalisation and its accompanying economic insecurity also have implications for foreign affairs, particularly attitudes towards North Korea.

The national identity of South Korean youth is being transformed by globalisation. The traditional assertion that ethnicity forms the basis for the Korean nation and nationalism is being challenged head on. Young South Koreans are still proud of their South Korean nation and identity, but the importance of ethnicity to their national identity is diminishing — and that has implications for North Korea and Korean unification.

Survey data in South Korea consistently shows increased levels of antipathy and antagonism towards North Korea and unification. Young people who support unification do so with provisos that demand a net political and economic benefit for the South. They show little interest in the North. And growing numbers of young people actively and openly oppose unification.

The uncertainties surrounding unification compound the challenges and fears faced by young South Koreans in an already insecure economic and social environment. In this context, it is not unreasonable for South Korea’s youth to reject the North and unification in an attempt to mitigate what is certainly the greatest risk facing South Korea’s future generations. Instead, they embrace their proud South Korean national identity.

And it is a proud South Korean identity. For all its problems, South Korea is a success. Young South Koreans are sophisticated, well-travelled, highly educated, multilingual, tech-savvy and global. Their life stories have little in common with their North Korean or Korean-Chinese brethren. As one young person told me, ‘to be honest, South and North are almost different countries. Americans or Europeans are more similar to us in their way of thinking than North Koreans’.

The implications of this are already evident in South Korea. Many young South Koreans see North Koreans and Korean-Chinese as different, untrustworthy, frightening or pitiful — not part of uri nara (‘our nation’). Yet it is possible for some foreigners — who are sophisticated, educated and willing to adopt South Korean language and its (globalised and modern) norms — to be imagined as part of the South Korean national community. That, of course, doesn’t mean all foreigners are accepted or all new ethnic Korean arrivals are rejected. But there is an interesting cross-over between economic success, middle-class norms and acceptance into the South Korean national community.

None of this precludes unification. But as new generations of South Koreans become more antagonistic to unification, and further estranged from ideas of ethnic homogeneity and the history of a unified Korea, the South Korean identity will become more distinct and assertive. The implications for North and South Korea of this transformation will be profound indeed.

Emma Campbell is a Visiting Fellow at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University and was previously the ANU Korea Institute Postdoctoral Fellow.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/15/world/africa/ap-af-south-sudan-hotel-rampage.html?_r=0

Africa

Rampaging South Sudan Troops Raped Foreigners, Killed Local

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUG. 15, 2016, 7:12 A.M. E.D.T.

NAIROBI, Kenya — The soldier pointed his AK-47 at the female aid worker and gave her a choice.

"Either you have sex with me, or we make every man here rape you and then we shoot you in the head," she remembers him saying.

She didn't really have a choice. By the end of the evening, she had been raped by 15 South Sudanese soldiers.

On July 11, South Sudanese troops, fresh from winning a battle in the capital, Juba, over opposition forces, went on a nearly four-hour rampage through a residential compound popular with foreigners, in one of the worst targeted attacks on aid workers in South Sudan's three-year civil war. They shot dead a local journalist while forcing the foreigners to watch, raped several foreign women, singled out Americans, beat and robbed people and carried out mock executions, several witnesses told The Associated Press.

For hours throughout the assault, the U.N. peacekeeping force stationed less than a mile away refused to respond to desperate calls for help. Neither did embassies, including the U.S. Embassy.

The Associated Press interviewed by phone eight survivors, both male and female, including three who said they were raped. The other five said they were beaten; one was shot. Most insisted on anonymity for their safety or to protect their organizations still operating in South Sudan.

The accounts highlight, in raw detail, the failure of the U.N. peacekeeping force to uphold its core mandate of protecting civilians, notably those just a few minutes' drive away. The Associated Press previously reported that U.N. peacekeepers in Juba did not stop the rapes of local women by soldiers outside the U.N.'s main camp last month.

The attack on the Terrain hotel complex shows the hostility toward foreigners and aid workers by troops under the command of South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, who has been fighting supporters of rebel leader Riek Machar since civil war erupted in December 2013. Both sides have been accused of abuses. The U.N. recently passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution to send more peacekeeping troops to protect civilians.

Army spokesman Lul Ruai did not deny the attack at the Terrain but said it was premature to conclude the army was responsible. "Everyone is armed, and everyone has access to uniforms and we have people from other organized forces, but it was definitely done by people of South Sudan and by armed people of Juba," he said.

A report on the incident compiled by the Terrain's owner at Ruai's request, seen by the AP, alleges the rapes of at least five women, torture, mock executions, beatings and looting. An unknown number of South Sudanese women were also assaulted.

The attack came just as people in Juba were thinking the worst was over.

Three days earlier, gunfire had erupted outside the presidential compound between armed supporters of the two sides in South Sudan's civil war, at the time pushed together under an uneasy peace deal. The violence quickly spread across the city.

Throughout the weekend, bullets whizzed through the Terrain compound, a sprawling complex with a pool, squash court and a bar patronized by expats and South Sudanese elites. It is also in the shadow of the U.N.'s largest camp in Juba.

By Monday, the government had nearly defeated the forces under Machar, who fled the city. As both sides prepared to call for a cease-fire, some residents of the Terrain started to relax.

"Monday was relatively chill," one survivor said.

What was thought to be celebratory gunfire was heard. And then the soldiers arrived. A Terrain staffer from Uganda said he saw between 80 and 100 men pour into the compound after breaking open the gate with gunshots and tire irons. The Terrain's security guards were armed only with shotguns and were vastly outnumbered. The soldiers then went to door to door, taking money, phones, laptops and car keys.

"They were very excited, very drunk, under the influence of something, almost a mad state, walking around shooting off rounds inside the rooms," one American said.

One man wore a blue police uniform, but the rest wore camouflage, the American said. Many had shoulder patches with the face of a tiger, the insignia worn by the president's personal guard.

For about an hour, soldiers beat the American with belts and the butts of their guns and accused him of hiding rebels. They fired bullets at his feet and close to his head. Eventually, one soldier who appeared to be in charge told him to leave the compound. Soldiers at the gate looked at his U.S. passport and handed it back, with instructions.

"You tell your embassy how we treated you," they said. He made his way to the nearby U.N. compound and appealed for help.

Meanwhile, soldiers were breaking into a two-story apartment block in the Terrain which had been deemed a safe house because of a heavy metal door guarding the apartments upstairs. Warned by a Kenyan staffer, more than 20 people inside, most of them foreigners, tried to hide. About 10 squeezed into a single bathroom.

The building shook as soldiers shot at the metal door and pried metal bars off windows for more than an hour, said residents. Once inside, the soldiers started ransacking the rooms and assaulting people they found.

Some of the soldiers were violent as they sexually assaulted women, said the woman who said she was raped by 15 men. Others, who looked to be just 15 or 16 years old, looked scared and were coerced into the act.

"One in particular, he was calling you, 'Sweetie, we should run away and get married.' It was like he was on a first date," the woman said. "He didn't see that what he was doing was a bad thing."

After about an hour and a half, the soldiers broke into the bathroom. They shot through the door, said Jesse Bunch, an American contractor who was hit in the leg.

"We kill you! We kill you!" the soldiers shouted, according to a Western woman in the bathroom. "They would shoot up at the ceiling and say, 'Do you want to die?' and we had to answer 'No!'"

The soldiers then pulled people out one by one. One woman said she was sexually assaulted by multiple men. Another Western woman said soldiers beat her with fists and threatened her with their guns when she tried to resist. She said five men raped her.

During the attack on the Terrain, several survivors told the AP that soldiers specifically asked if they were American. "One of them, as soon as he said he was American, he was hit with a rifle butt," said a woman.

When the soldiers came across John Gatluak, they knew he was local. The South Sudanese journalist worked for Internews, a media development organization funded by USAID. He had taken refuge at the Terrain after being briefly detained a few days earlier. The tribal scars on his forehead made it obvious he was Nuer, the same as opposition leader, Riek Machar.

Upon seeing him, the soldiers pushed him to the floor and beat him, according to the same woman who saw the American beaten.

Later in the attack, and after Kiir's side declared a ceasefire at 6 p.m., the soldiers forced the foreigners to stand in a semi-circle, said Gian Libot, a Philippines citizen who spent much of the attack under a bed until he was discovered.

One soldier ranted against foreigners. "He definitely had pronounced hatred against America," Libot said, recalling the soldier's words: "You messed up this country. You're helping the rebels. The people in the U.N., they're helping the rebels."

During the tirade, a soldier hit a man suspected of being American with a rifle butt. At one point, the soldier threatened to kill all the foreigners assembled. "We're gonna show the world an example," Libot remembered him saying.

Then Gatluak was hauled in front of the group. One soldier shouted "Nuer," and another soldier shot him twice in the head. He shot the dying Gatluak four more times while he lay on the ground.

"All it took was a declaration that he was different, and they shot him mercilessly," Libot said.

The shooting seemed to be a turning point for those assembled outside, Libot said. Looting and threats continued, but beatings started to draw to a close. Other soldiers continued to assault men and women inside the apartment block.

From the start of the attack, those inside the Terrain compound sent messages pleading for help by text and Facebook messages and emails.

"All of us were contacting whoever we could contact. The U.N., the U.S. embassy, contacting the specific battalions in the U.N., contacting specific departments," said the woman raped by 15 men.

A member of the U.N.'s Joint Operations Center in Juba first received word of the attack at 3:37 p.m., minutes after the breach of the compound, according to an internal timeline compiled by a member of the operations center and seen by AP.

Eight minutes later another message was sent to a different member of the operations center from a person inside Terrain saying that people were hiding there. At 4:22 p.m., that member received another message urging help.

Five minutes after that, the U.N. mission's Department of Safety and Security and its military command wing were alerted. At 4:33 p.m., a Quick Reaction Force, meant to intervene in emergencies, was informed. One minute later, the timeline notes the last contact on Monday from someone trapped inside Terrain.

For the next hour and a half the timeline is blank. At 6:52, shortly before sunset, the timeline states that "DSS would not send a team."

About 20 minutes later, a Quick Reaction Force of Ethiopians from the multinational U.N. mission was tasked to intervene, coordinating with South Sudan's army chief of staff, Paul Malong, who was also sending soldiers. But the Ethiopian battalion stood down, according to the timeline. Malong's troops eventually abandoned their intervention too because it took too long for the Quick Reaction Force to act.

The American who was released early in the assault and made it to the U.N. base said he also alerted U.N. staff. At around dusk, a U.N. worker he knew requested three different battalions to send a Quick Reaction Force.

"Everyone refused to go. Ethiopia, China, and Nepal. All refused to go," he said.

Eventually, South Sudanese security forces entered the Terrain and rescued all but three Western women and around 16 Terrain staff.

No one else was sent that night to find them. The U.N. timeline said a patrol would go in the morning, but this "was cancelled due to priority." A private security firm rescued the three Western women the staffers the next morning.

When asked why the U.N. peacekeeping mission didn't respond to the repeated requests for help, acting spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane said the circumstances are under investigation.

"The peacekeepers did not venture out of the bases to protect civilians under imminent threat," Human Rights Watch said Monday in a report on abuses throughout Juba.

The U.S. Embassy, which also received requests for help during the attack, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The assault at the Terrain pierced a feeling of security among some foreigners who had assumed that they would be protected by their governments or the hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers almost next door.

One of the women gang-raped said security advisers from an aid organization living in the compound told residents repeatedly that they were safe because foreigners would not be targeted. She said: "This sentence, 'We are not targeted,' I heard half an hour before they assaulted us."

 

[Housecarl]

Russia Building New Underground Nuclear Command Posts/Dozens for top leadership
Started by Medical Mavený, Today 08:14 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...clear-Command-Posts-Dozens-for-top-leadership

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Turkey's Incirlik Air Base: Post-Coup Power Cut Remains at U.S. Site - US nukes in danger
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...emains-at-U.S.-Site-US-nukes-in-danger/page15

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ISIS claims it has assassinated US military commander in Kabul bomb attack
Started by geoffsý, Today 07:40 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ed-US-military-commander-in-Kabul-bomb-attack

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/08/taliban-presses-offensive-in-multiple-provinces.php

Taliban presses offensive in multiple provinces

By Bill Roggio | August 15th, 2016 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

The Taliban is sustaining offensive operations throughout Afghanistan as Afghan security forces, backed by US airpower and special forces, continue to struggle with containing the jihadist group.

As the Taliban continues to press Afghan forces in the southern province of Helmand and has effectively laid siege to its capital, Lashkar Gah, the group is assaulting districts in the Afghan north. One district in Baghlan has fell under Taliban control, and another in Nuristan has changed hands several several times

The Taliban claimed yesterday that Dahana-i-Ghuri district in Baghlan province fell “after a three-day long siege,” according to a statement released on Voice of Jihad. “Mujahideen have seized a large number of the combat posts and 4 bases, leaving dozens of the enemy soldiers dead and wounded over the last three days. Similarly, 33 puppets including soldiers of ANA [Afghan National Army], Arbakis [local militias] and police have been taken prisoner through this period of time.”

In the same statement, the Taliban also claimed to seize “control of the district of Want Waygal and 11 combat posts” in Nuristan province.

A member of the provincial capital of Baghlan confirmed that Dahana-i-Ghuri is under Taliban control, Khaama Press reported. Afghan officials claimed to have repelled the Taliban attack, which was supported by “Arabs, and other foreign insurgents,” Pajhwok Afghan News reported. The “Arabs” and “other foreign insurgents” is likely a reference to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Pakistan. The Haqqani Network, which is closely allied to al Qaeda, operates in Jani Khel and Paktia.

In addition to the fighting in the north, the district of Jani Khel in Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan is “on the verge of collapse,” TOLONews reported. “The clashes are still ongoing two kilometers from the center of Janikhel. If supporting troops are not sent into Janikhel as soon as possible, the district will fall into the hands of the Taliban,” the district governor told the Afghan news agency on Aug. 10.

In western Afghanistan, the Taliban laid siege to Pusht Rod district in Farah province, according to reports from Afghanistan.

To the south in Helmand, the Taliban took control of large areas of Nawa-I-Barakzayi district, which borders the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, over the past week and assaulted the district center. Heavy fighting has also been reported in Garmsir district to the south. The Taliban briefly took control of the bazaar in Garmsir but were later repelled by Afghan forces, according to TOLONews.

The Taliban currently controls or contests at least 84 of Afghanistan’s 400 plus districts, according to a study by The Long War Journal: with 40 estimated to be Taliban controlled and 44 contested. The number of controlled and contested districts is likely to be higher as reports from some districts known to be Taliban strongholds are unavailable. The Long War Journal only tallies districts that can be confirmed with independent reporting.

As the Taliban presses its nationwide offensive, it continues to reconcile with wayward groups that broke away after the controversy surrounding the death of Mullah Omar. Last week, leaders from the Mullah Dadullah Front as well as Mullah Baz Mohammad have returned to the Taliban fold, further strengthening the group and its ability to sustain its offensive.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal.

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archi...ll-control-4-neighborhoods-in-sirte-libya.php

Islamic State claims to still control 4 neighborhoods in Sirte, Libya

By Thomas Joscelyn | August 15th, 2016 | tjoscelyn@gmail.com | @thomasjoscelyn

Multiple reports over the past week have indicated that the Islamic State continues to lose ground in Sirte, which is the so-called caliphate’s stronghold in Libya. For example, Al Bunyan Al Marsoos (“Solid Structure”) operations room recently advertised its capture of key locations in the heart of Sirte. Al Bunyan Al Marsoos includes Islamist fighters from the city of Misrata and is backed by US Special Operations forces. [See LWJ report, Opposition to Islamic State claims more ground in Sirte, Libya.]

In an attempt to counter these reports, Amaq News Agency posted the infographic seen above on Aug. 14. Amaq is part of the Islamic State’s propaganda machine.

Amaq claims the jihadists still control four neighborhoods in Sirte, after killing more than 823 fighters belonging to the UN-backed Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) and shooting down two fighter jets.

Amaq also alleges that special forces from four Western nations — the US, UK, France and Italy — are involved in the offensive against the Islamic State in the city. Citing official government statements and press reporting, The Long War Journal noted last week that all four of these countries are in fact operating inside Libya. The US is directly backing Al Bunyan Al Marsoos in Sirte and the Italian press says Italy’s special forces are as well. Of course, given that America’s Western allies are not keen to broadcast their involvement, it is not clear what specific roles, if any, they are playing in Sirte.

It is difficult to assess the status of the fighting inside the city. However, even Amaq’s infographic shows that the Islamic State’s forces are likely surrounded. As the fighting has continued, the Islamic State’s Libya arm has dispatched more of its “martyrs.” Earlier today, for instance, Amaq reported: “2 martyrdom operations hit a gathering of National Accord Government [GNA] fighters during clashes in the city of Sirte.”

Amaq’s infographic includes a tally of 29 US airstrikes, but this figure is out of date. From Aug. 1 to Aug. 14, according to US Africa Command, the US has carried out 46 airstrikes in support of “Operation Odyssey Lightning,” which aims to liberate Sirte from Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s loyalists.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.libyanexpress.com/the-west-fears-is-militants-might-escape-and-regroup-in-southern-libya/

The West fears IS militants might escape and regroup in southern Libya

Libyan Express |Monday 15 August 2016

IS fighters fleeing their Libyan stronghold of Sirte are seeking to cross the border into neighboring countries or possibly regroup in southern towns to fight again, Western and local officials say.

The extremists have headed to the long, porous border that Libya shares with Algeria and Niger. The countries bordering Libya have been on high alert, officials say, as part of efforts to block foreign fighters who may be looking to return home to other parts of Africa. But the vast desert expanse of the Sahel region offers a refuge to militant fighters that has long vexed U.S. counterterrorism forces.

“These borders are so huge and they require a degree of professionalism that these countries do not have in order to monitor them,” said a Western official who is monitoring the offensive in Sirte.

The Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera” revealed, on Saturday, that the intelligence bodies of the Government of National Accord (GNA), during a raid on a stronghold of ISIS in Sirte area – Ouagadougou Conference Halls Complex – found documents containing names of their fighters in the Italian city of Milan, in addition to terrorist plans to target the country, and Information on the role of ISIS leaders.The newspaper pointed out, that the Libyan authorities have expressed their willingness to hand over the names to the Italian authorities.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-10000-kidnapped-boys-of-boko-haram

The 10,000 Kidnapped Boys of Boko Haram

by The Wall Street Journal
SWJ Blog Post | August 13, 2016 - 1:58am

The 10,000 Kidnapped Boys of Boko Haram by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson, photographs by Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, Wall Street Journal

… While the world focused on Boko Haram’s mass kidnappings of women and girls, the Islamist group was stealing an even greater number of boys. Over the past three years, Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 10,000 boys and trained them in boot camps in abandoned villages and forest hide-outs, according to government officials in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, and to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group.

Child soldiering was a big problem in various collapsing states in the 1990s, including some in Africa. What is happening here in northeastern Nigeria is part of a disturbing rise in child jihadism. Young boys and at times girls are being indoctrinated into violent fundamentalism and used as fighters, suicide bombers and spies.

Something similar is happening in other countries battling Islamist insurrections. Commanders of al Qaeda’s branches in Yemen, Somalia and Mali have deployed youngsters. Islamic State has used children in combat, suicide bombings and in execution videos in Iraq and Syria.

Interviews with 16 young Nigerians who escaped from Boko Haram captivity and with other witnesses, soldiers, researchers, officials and diplomats in Nigeria and Cameroon provide a picture of the harrowing life endured by the children who wage jihad…

Read on. (behind pay wall...HC)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/whos-next-to-borrow-from-americas-drone-strike-playbook/

Obama at War

Who’s Next To Borrow from America’s Drone Strike “Playbook”?

Comments
August 11, 2016 / by Priyanka Boghani

Fifteen years ago, the United States was the only country to have ever carried out a drone strike.

Today, that’s no longer the case. Great Britain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria and Pakistan have used drones in combat. In all, 19 countries either have armed drones or are trying to acquire them, according to research by the New America Foundation.

Non-state actors are getting in on the game too. Hamas and Hezbollah already possess armed drones. ISIS has also been working to secure some.

The growing number of nations and groups acquiring armed drones lends new urgency to the question: Who decides what justifies the legal use of a technology that’s been blamed for hundreds of civilian deaths? Until now, the U.S. has established its own case for what is and is not considered a legal drone strike. But as the weapons proliferate, it’s unclear what if anything would prevent other nations, or even future U.S. administrations, from developing their own — perhaps more liberal — interpretation.

“The accessibility of drone technology is obviously increasing at a swift pace,” says Alyssa Sims, a research assistant at the New America Foundation’s International Security Program. “And the countries that haven’t used armed drones, it’s only a matter of time before they do.”

The American “Playbook”

The U.S. quite literally wrote the rules on drone strikes. Last week, after years of secrecy, the Obama administration finally declassified what has often been referred to as the drone strike “playbook.”

The newly released 18-page document lays out when and how the U.S. can target individuals to be captured or killed outside of war zones as part of its counterterrorism efforts. The guidelines say lethal force should only be used when there is no option to capture “a terrorist suspect,” and only when the suspect poses a “continuing, imminent threat” to the U.S. Before a drone strike is launched, the U.S. must determine with “near certainty” that the target is present, that non-combatants won’t be injured or killed, and that the government of the sovereign country is unable or unwilling to address the threat. The full document reveals that the president’s approval is needed when U.S. intelligence and military agencies disagree on a strike or when the target is an American citizen.

The document was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU’s deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told The New York Times that while the document might reassure people that drone strikes are considered and authorized by senior members of government, it also “drives home how bureaucratized, and therefore normalized, this practice of killing people away from conventional battlefields has become.” He also said that it was a reminder of the powers that the next president would inherit.

America’s first successful use of an armed drone came in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. Under the Obama administration, drone strikes targeting members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS and their affiliates have skyrocketed. To date, there have been 10 times as many drone strikes under Obama as there were under President George W. Bush.

Last month, the administration released the cumulative death toll from counterterrorism strikes carried out mostly by drones outside of war zones under President Obama — primarily in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. The official numbers say between 64 and 116 civilians were killed, along with around 2,500 members of terrorist groups. Figures compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism put the civilian death toll from drone strikes at 380 — a difference the administration attributed to different methodologies, sources or what it called deliberate misinformation spread in local media.

How the U.S. Justifies Drone Strikes

There is no international law that governs drone strikes specifically, but most international law experts point to the United Nations Charter, which defines international parameters for the use of force, as a starting point to understanding how drones can be used in combat.

In its interpretation of those parameters, the Obama administration has maintained that it “is committed by word and deed to conducting ourselves in accordance with all applicable law.”

In making its case, the Obama administration has argued that in a post 9/11 world, counterterrorism drone strikes carried out outside of war zones are legal because of its right to self-defense and because the U.S. is in combat with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated forces” — which has now stretched to include ISIS (once an affiliate of Al Qaeda).

“The idea is that the person you have in your sights is about to engage in an armed attack against you, and that triggers your right of national self-defense under the U.N. charter,” says Ashley Deeks, a former assistant legal adviser for political-military affairs at the State Department. “The other scenario would be to say we’ve been in armed conflict with Al Qaeda since September 11 — they attacked us, we responded, and we’ve been in this ongoing conflict with this non-state actor,” she says, offering a second legal theory for targeting individuals with drone strikes outside war zones.

President Obama has also argued that drones lead to less conflict and put fewer lives put in danger. “Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and are likely to cause more civilian casualties and more local outrage,” he said in May 2013. “… By narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”

In recent months, the Obama administration has relented in releasing information about its controversial drone program, and has said it will continue publishing information about the number of strikes and casualties, both combatants and civilians. But many have pointed out that the next president is not bound by these precedents or orders, and would be free to set their own policy for drone strikes.

The International Law Critique of America’s Case

The administration’s legal rationale hasn’t been sufficient for some experts, who say that strikes conducted outside of active war zones go well beyond what international law allows.

“The [U.N.] charter says that states may not use military force against each other except in very narrow circumstances of self-defense, or with Security Council authorization,” says Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law and international dispute resolution at the University of Notre Dame.

She points to America’s use of drone strikes for counterterrorism purposes in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and Syria. “In all those places, the United States is not at war. We have not engaged in military force and self-defense, we are making lethal attacks when we have no legal basis in the U.N. charter for doing so.”

James Gatthi, a professor of international law at Loyola University, echoed that argument, calling U.S. policy a “huge over-extension” of use-of-force guidelines.

“The extent to which the United States has made extremely broad, open-ended claims about the legality of its striking anywhere in the world at any point to target its enemies — that is certainly, in my view, not consistent with any known rule of international law that I’m aware of,” says Gatthi. The Obama administration’s interpretation, Gatthi says, seems to extend use of force to a situation where there’s no active armed conflict, and non-state actors are identified through secret surveillance, without any scrutiny from third parties.

Others argue that the evolving nature of the threat posed by non-state actors like ISIS requires a new framework. Writing recently in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Michael Scharf, a former attorney-advisor for U.N. affairs at the State Department, called ISIS’s emergence in Syria a turning point in the interpretation of self-defense. The ISIS threat, wrote Scharf, means “any State can now lawfully use force against non-state actors” when they’re present in a country that is unable or unwilling to address the threat.

Where the U.S. Goes, Will Others Follow?

The debate around drones is not the first time world leaders have been forced to grapple with the legal ramifications of a new weapon of war. O’Connell points to how governments justified the use of airplanes in combat, beginning in the First World War, despite planes not being able to discriminate between civilians and combatants. “We’re seeing a very similar trend with the drone,” she says.

The question now is, with more countries acquiring armed drones, who will follow the U.S. example?

In August 2015, British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged that his government used an unmanned aerial vehicle — a drone — to kill Britons fighting for ISIS in Syria. Taking a page from the U.S. playbook, Cameron invoked the United Kingdom’s “inherent right to self-protection,” saying it was the first time a British military asset had been used in a country where the U.K. wasn’t at war. An inquiry by the British parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights called on the government to clarify its interpretation of international law, including what constitutes an “armed attack” and “imminent” threat. The inquiry cautioned that too flexible an interpretation could lead to something resembling a targeted killing policy, and clarified that unlike the U.S., the U.K. doesn’t believe it’s in a “global war” against ISIS.

“That is an extraordinary change,” O’Connell says, “because the British have been more consistently in support of international law.”

Deeks, who now works as an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia, says the U.S. was “very attuned to precedential concerns” in the use of drone strikes, and so has been careful about laying out the legal case for them. “The government should be quite clear about the parameters of its legal justification so that it makes it slightly harder for other states to abuse that in translating it into their own actions, but I don’t think it’s a failsafe,” she says.

Still, she says, there’s not much to prevent a country like Russia, which according to the New America database is working to acquire armed drones, from using them against targets in a sovereign country. Offering a hypothetical scenario, Deek says: “If Russia has armed drones or armed aircraft, and thinks that there are a group of Chechen rebels about to attack a Russian embassy in Moldova, it could use force against that group if the attack on the embassy were deemed an armed attack, and Moldova either consents or Russia determines that Moldova is unable or unwilling to suppress the people heading toward its embassy.”

“I believe that states will decide that there’s a lower threshold for violence with drone warfare,” says Sims, the New America Foundation researcher. “And we’ll see more nations and militant groups carrying out unilateral foreign policy objectives around the world. There’s no need to build any kind of coalition with the international community if you can strike with impunity in any nation that you feel.”

Noting parallels to how nations have used aircrafts or developed nuclear weapons, O’Connell says, “It’s so much harder when the proliferation has occurred, when legal norms have been softened in order to make way for those who have the hubris to think they’re going to keep control of this technology forever. They’re just not.”

 

[Possible Impact]

Conflict News ‏@Conflicts 11m
BREAKING: Russian defense ministry sends requests
to Iraq, Iran for cruise missile flights: source - Interfax

 

[Possible Impact]

Gregor Peter ‏@L0gg0l 5m
Breaking Russia deploys strategic TU-22M3 bombers to Iran,
asks airspace clearance for cruise missile flights

 

[Housecarl]

Merde...

 

[Housecarl]

More on Possible Impact's find.....(Same photos in article...)

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.almasdarnews.com/articl...ian-airbase-combat-insurgents-syria-pictures/

Russia deploys jets at Iranian Airbase to combat insurgents in Syria (Pictures)

By Chris Tomson - 15/08/2016
Comments 4

Al-Masdar News has obtained exclusive photos of Russian warplanes being deployed to the Hamedan Air Base in western Iran.

Currently, the strategic TU-22M3 bombers take flight from southern Russia at Modzok airfield; however, this newly signed military agreement with Iran will allow Russia to reduce flight time by 60%, saving the Kremlin both money and improving airstrike effectiveness.

The distance of these flights equal roughly 2,150km to reach a target near Palmyra. In comparison, the Hamedan Air Base in Iran is roughly 900km from Palmyra.

The Khmeimim Airbase in Latakia province – which Russia was granted access to in late 2015 – is not suitable for the massive TU-22M3, one of the largest bomber jets in the world.

The Russian military is yet to announce how many TU-22M3 will be operating from the Iranian airbase.

This developement indicates significantly improved political relations between Iran and Russia, two priceless allies for Damascus.

Moments ago, Russia also requested Iraq and Iran airspace allowance to transport cruise missiles into Syria.

 

[Housecarl]

From earlier....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://tass.ru/en/politics/894437

Moscow, Tehran stress need for uncompromising struggle against terrorists in Syria

Russian Politics & Diplomacy
August 15, 17:25 UTC+3
¤j
MOSCOW, August 15 /TASS/. Moscow and Tehran stand for maintaining truce in Syria and uncompromising struggle against the Islamic State (IS) and Jebhat al-Nusra terrorist groups (which are banned in Russia -TASS), the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday after talks between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian president¡¯s envoy for the Middle East and Africa, and Iran¡¯s senior Foreign Ministry officials held in Tehran.

Bogdanov held a regular round of consultations with Iran¡¯s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab-African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari and was received by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

"It was stated that there was no forcible solution to the prolonged and destructive crisis in Syria which can be settled only by political means via an inclusive inter-Syrian dialogue based on the Geneva Communique adopted on June 30, 2012 and the decisions of the International Syria Support Group," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"In this connection, the sides said it was necessary for UN Special Envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura to put in energetic efforts to arrange sustainable inter-Syrian talks in Geneva without preliminary conditions as soon as possible," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"Moscow and Tehran confirmed their stances in favor of preserving and strengthening the regime of cessation of hostilities in Syria through uncompromising struggle against the Islamic State, Jabhat Fath al-Sham (formerly Jebhat al-Nusra) and other terrorist groups, which are not covered by the ceasefire regime," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Bogdanov and Iran¡¯s Foreign Ministry officials discussed the situations in Yemen, Iraq, the Persian Gulf as well as the Palestinian problem.

"The consultations revealed great mutual interest in deepening cooperation between the Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministries on the Middle East agenda," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Russia-Iran-Turkey talks

Bogdanov has also discussed a possibility to hold consultations on regional problems in the Russia-Iran-Turkey format.

"The option was discussed to hold trilateral meetings of Russia, Iran and Turkey at a certain stage if our Turkish partners show interest," Bogdanov, told Tass.

"Exactly the way we held in due time meetings in a trilateral format of Russia, Iran and Syria, we had such a format," said Bogdnaov.


Read also

Lavrov insists Syrian opposition break from IS, Al-Nusra terror groups

Russian air base in Syria useful for long-range attacks on terrorists - minister

Six Russian Tu-22M3 backfire long-range bombers deliver strikes on IS facilities in Syria

Turkey set to cooperate with Russia on Syria ¡ª defense minister

 

[Nowski]

I do believe, that the defenders of liberty and freedom now,
the new Russia, is getting to put their boot up ISIS's arse,
the Washington DC neocon/private central bankers
proxy army in Syria.

It would appear, that after the entire Middle East, has now gone up in flames,
from the so called "Arab Springs", started by the HNIC and the Hildebeest,
that their attempts, at forcing the failed Saudi/Qatari/Washington DC neocon gas pipeline
through the now ravaged Syria, have been an abysmal failure.

The new Russia, is going to put out the neocon fire in Syria, which should allow the lawfully
elected Syrian government, to regain control, and then attempt to rebuild.

Millions of people have died, and numerous nations have been destroyed,
all because of the out of the pits of hell American hegemony,
and the out of the pits of hell USA petro-dollar.
The sooner both are utterly destroyed, the better not only for the FUSA,
but for the entire world.

There needs to be, Nuremberg type of trials for the neocons, and all of their enablers.

Prayers for the new Russia and her brave military.

Regards to all,
Nowski

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-attacks-belgium-idUSKCN10Q1UI

World News | Mon Aug 15, 2016 3:07pm EDT

Man shot by police after opening fire in Belgian city Ghent: media

An unidentified man opened fire in the center of the Belgian city of Ghent on Monday before being shot by police, local media reported.

Ghent public prosecutors confirmed there had been a shooting in the city center at around 6:30 p.m. (1630 GMT), but declined to say how many people were involved, whether the gunman was being held or whether the incident was related to terrorism.

The man was shot three times in the leg and abdomen, according to broadcaster VTM. Belgium has been on a high security alert since Islamist suicide bombers killed 32 people at Brussels airport and a metro station in March.


(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Julia Fioretti; editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

[Be Well]

It appears that media in the EU now refuses to even say the name/nationality/etc of jihadis. If the event is such they cannot totally hide or ignore it, they will say nothing about the perp, as any info will give away the truth.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/08/15/the-costs-of-an-american-no-first-use-nuclear-doctrine/

Washington Wire | Think Tank

The Costs of an American ‘No First Use’ Nuclear Doctrine

By Stephen Sestanovich
Aug 15, 2016 5:17 pm ET
0 COMMENTS

Stephen Sestanovich, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama.” He is on Twitter: @ssestanovich.

The desire to leave an enduring legacy can inspire presidents to do great things — also foolish ones.

That Barack Obama is considering a change in strategic doctrine, declaring that the U.S. would never use nuclear weapons first, is the subject of op-eds in the New York Times and Washington Post, of a great video explainer in The Wall Street Journal, of countless news articles, and of cabinet-level controversy. (Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter are reportedly against the move.)

The president is said to see this step as a way of advancing his admirable goal of a nuclear weapons-free world. Still, inasmuch as most people (Mr. Obama is surely one of them) consider that goal unattainable in the foreseeable future, it makes sense to consider the costs of no-first-use. Five—maybe six—come to mind:

1. Deterrence. No-first-use advocates generally dismiss the idea that their policy might make war more likely by pointing to the conventional military power of the U.S. But this power is stretched thin in some dangerous places. (The U.S. has just 28,000 troops in South Korea.) A perverse by-product of no-first-use might be to make a conventional build-up more urgent. Is the president going to propose that?

2. Alliances. The Post reports that some governments most affected by the no-first-use discussion learned of it from the newspapers. After months in which sensible people have been berating Donald Trump for proposals that undermine American alliances, why would the administration make such a big decision on its own?

3. Proliferation. Allies who are alarmed by the policy change Obama has in mind will surely ask whether they too need nuclear weapons once Washington narrows its own doctrine. If that’s the likely result, is it really possible to claim that no-first-use contributes to a nuclear-free world?

4. Global Norms. Defenders of no-first-use say their goal is to make nuclear weapons “morally illegitimate,” a worthy aim. But let’s be honest: that includes making second use illegitimate too, and that means even retaliation against a nuclear aggressor could become less certain. If you put retaliation in doubt, aren’t you making it easier for bad guys to think they could use nukes first and survive?

5. Arms Reductions. Some no-first-use advocates want to eliminate small (“tactical”) nuclear weapons deployed with American forces in Europe . But Obama is said to hope his successor can revive arms talks with Russia, and to include “tac nukes” on the agenda, another excellent idea. But if you want the Russians to negotiate seriously, don’t you have to keep those nukes in place?

It’s tempting to add “The Election” as a final reason to leave current policy alone. In the summer of 2016, there’s one national politician who has a reputation for saying and doing whatever he wants no matter what anyone thinks. Let’s keep the number at one.

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