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Will this be Obama's big War?


Mr. T

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US and Russian warships line up in dispute over Georgia

 

US and Russian warships took up positions in the Black Sea today in a risky war of nerves on opposing sides of the Georgia conflict.

 

With the Russians effectively controlling Georgia's main naval base of Poti, Moscow also dispatched the Moskva missile cruiser and two smaller craft on "peacekeeping" duties at the port of Sukhumi on the coast of Abkhazia, the breakaway region that the Kremlin recognised as independent yesterday.

 

The Americans, wary of escalating an already fraught situation, cancelled the scheduled docking in Poti of the US Coast Guard vessel, the Dallas, and instead sent it to the southern Georgian-controlled port of Batumi, 200km (124 miles) from the Russian ships, where it delivered humanitarian aid.

 

"Let's hope we don't see any direct confrontation," said Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, as the Russians challenged the US policy of using military aircraft and ships to deliver relief supplies.

 

"The decision to deliver aid using Nato battleships is something that hardly can be explained," said Peskov. "It's not a common practice."

 

He said Russian naval forces were taking "some measures of precaution" around the Black Sea as the worsening dispute caused by Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia independence brought strong criticism from the key European countries most reluctant to sever relations with Russia.

 

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, spoke to President Dmitri Medvedev today, the first western leader to talk to the Kremlin since Medvedev announced the recognition of the two secessionist regions of Georgia. She made it plain she had voiced her strong disapproval to the Russian leader.

 

"I made clear above all that I would have expected that we would talk about these questions in [international] organisations before unilateral recognition happened," she said. "There are several UN Security Council resolutions in which the territorial integrity of Georgia was stressed, which Russia also worked on."

 

The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said Russia had broken international law and, along with other senior European officials, worried that Russia's decision to redraw Georgia's borders would encourage Moscow to act similarly with other former parts of the Soviet Union such as Ukraine.

 

"We cannot accept these violations of international law ... of a territory by the army of a neighboring country," he said.

 

Germany and France, who opposed the US and Britain in April in blocking Georgian negotiations to join Nato, have been the most reluctant to punish Russia for the Georgian conflict of the past three weeks and are desperate to try to revive the Russia-Georgia peace plan mediated by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, a fortnight ago.

 

Paris and Berlin agree the unilateral recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Russia left the peace plan ineffectual. A summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Monday is to ponder Europe's options.

 

With mounting warnings of western economic or trade sanctions against Russia, an EU official admitted that threats to block Russian membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) were meaningless. The push for Russian admission being driven not by Moscow but by western business interests keen to tap the large Russian market, he said.

 

Peskov warned that trade sanctions against Moscow would hurt the west as much as Russia.

 

He admitted that South Ossetia, a mountainous region of 70,000 people, would struggle to establish itself as an independent state, but stressed that Russia's constitution made it possible for Russia to expand.

 

"My country will extend the arm of cooperation and friendship to ease the transition period [for South Ossetia]," he said.

 

EU officials complained that Moscow was seeking to control the distribution of international relief. EU aid officials were demanding entry to the Russian controlled regions, but were being barred unless they handed over the aid to the Russian authorities for distribution

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/27/georgia.russia1

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I wonder if N. Korea ratcheting up the conflict there, is a diversion

 

from what the Soviets plan on doing - taking over the Ukraine... again,

 

as Stalin did.

 

The Soviets desperately need to own the "breadbasket", the Ukraine,

 

again.

 

But the Czech's are safe... for a while....

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I wonder if N. Korea ratcheting up the conflict there, is a diversion

 

from what the Soviets plan on doing - taking over the Ukraine... again,

 

as Stalin did.

 

The Soviets desperately need to own the "breadbasket", the Ukraine,

 

again.

 

But the Czech's are safe... for a while....

 

 

I have often wondered how the world would be today had Patton been allowed to roll on to Moscow as he wanted and MacArthur been allowed to roll over China as he wanted near the end of WWII?? We couldn't have been stopped.

 

Quite different I suspect.

 

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I have often wondered how the world would be today had Patton been allowed to roll on to Moscow as he wanted and MacArthur been allowed to roll over China as he wanted near the end of WWII?? We couldn't have been stopped.

 

Quite different I suspect.

Surely different. We could have had 60 years of what we're seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan...

 

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This explains the build up introops in Afghanistan, remember Russia is aligned with Iran in case of an invasion there by Israel or the US. Not to mention all of the conflicts going on in Georgia.

 

 

I see this as a real pressure cooker, whith the yop getting ready to explode.

 

And dont forget the midgets in N korea

 

Korea at DEFCON 1?

 

May 21, 2009

 

Based upon this article in Yahoo! and an article earlier today from Joonang Ilbo, I estimate that as a minimum US Forces, Korea has gone to DEFCON 1 and I suspect that Pacific Command is at DEFCON 2 as a minimum. I base this on my year of service in Korea from October 1975 to October, 1976 which time included the "Tree War". At that time I was an F-4 Weapons Systems Officer and squadron additional duty plans officer with the 80th Tactical Fighter Squadron (Juvats) at Kunsan Air Base.

 

Many of the articles I have read over the past few days indicate that the driving force behind this current "temper tantrum" is the United Nations Security Council rebuke for the Taepodong-2 test that failed to stage and crashed into the sea. Many other articles have opined that the real problem is succession. Their theory is that Mr. Kim, knowing his time on this Earth is severely limited after his last medical problem, is pressing for the guaranteed survival of the DPRK so he can name his successor.

 

At this point I'm not sure that the reason makes any difference. I believe we are at a point where if Kim backs down, he incurs a catastrophic loss of face. Add to that the cessation of the behind the scenes support from South Korea that occurred under the Roh government. Mr. Kim has also ejected the World Food Program from the DPRK. Since all information on North Korean agriculture appears to be classified at the SECRET level, we don't have access to the LANDSAT photos that would allow us to know the condition of agriculture in the DPRK. We don't even know if the KPA participated in the Spring Planting. Considering that they were supposedly on war alert for the Taepodong-2 launch, their participation is in serious question. If the KPA did NOT participate in the Spring Planting, that would be a strong indicator that the DPRK was not depending on this fall's harvest for food.

 

There are in the Soviet system only two times when you go to war: Summer and Winter. Spring and Fall occupy the army fully with planting or harvest. Why? Because the army has all of the vehicles needed to accomplish either without emptying the cities and sending them to the collectives. Since there is so much we do not know about the state of North Korean agriculture, we must make educated estimates of same. We do know that over the last five or six years, a significant amount of newly terraced land on the western hills was planted and then washed into the Yellow Sea by typhoons. This land at almost at once became arable and useless. There are few other areas in the DPRK where land may be adapted to agriculture that is not already in use and over use.

 

There is good reason why the United States does not destroy the various facilities of the DPRK that are causing so much consternation. The first reason, and the most important, is that the DPRK holds Seoul hostage. The Korean People's Army has about 11,000 artillery pieces and rocket launchers carefully concealed along and shortly behind the DMZ that target the area between the DMZ and the Han River. It is physically impossible to destroy these systems before they turn the heart of South Korea into rubble laden with chemical and biological agents. At worst for the South, these systems will have 24 hours to do their missions before we can destroy them. Whatever we may believe about a solution to the Kim problem, the Republic of Korea risks its existence whatever we do. I believe the decision about war or peace belongs to them.

 

Here I believe that the Joong Ang Article about command relationships is telling. It has been US policy since the creation of North and South Korea not to sell or allow the ROK forces to have offensive weapons. It has always been the United States that has supplied the heavy artillery and air power to defend the ROK. That is also why the US forces have been moved in stages south of the Han and out of initial range of the DPRK initial bombardment and assault. If the South Koreans, after many years of discussion and political discourse, decided to unify all military units in South Korea under a joint and South Korean lead command structure suddently decide to cancel that plan is a serious loss of face for the ROK. Not something they would do unless they were really scared.

 

This situation reminds me a lot of the "Tree War". The DPRK created a major incident in the DMZ and then backed off when we applied significant force. At no point in this current run of events has the United States applied or even threatened significant force. When we went to chop down that offending tree, there were some 100 aircraft airborne including two cells of B-52s. I broke more peacetime flying rules in the following two weeks than ever before in my career. Live MigCAPS do get your attention.

 

That is exactly what bothers me about this current mess. There are sufficient imponderables here to keep all of us guessing. I do not see Mr. Kim backing down. I do not see USFK or the ROK backing down. I do see the imminent possibility of a black hole into which all disappear and only chaos reappears.

 

God help us all.

 

Richard E. Radcliffe

Captain, USAF (Retired)

 

Permission is granted to publish in its entirety.

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I remember the libs saying Obama was awesome and brilliant and he'll make all countries love us, and HE will use diplomacy

to make the world a better place, and I said they must think he has a magic twanger.

 

No Obama Magic Twanger. Just a stuffed shirt/talking head with leftist speeches on his teleprompter.

 

The newness has worn off.

 

Bout everyday I hear some Dem or Rep who voted for him sickenly regret it.

 

We are headed down a very bad road.

 

Look at the polls - the bark is falling off the ugly, failed policies of the ugly Obama admin.

 

 

 

 

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With the dollar loosing its glamour abroad, you have Russia and many others wanting to have the #1 traded global currency wouldn't you think we will do anything to stay as the global currency.

 

Not to mention another cold war or actual would be good for the economy, what has pulled us out of recessions/depressions in the past?

 

I dont want to be a fear monger here but history does repeat itself from time to time.

just like when we first elected Jimmy Carter, we know have Jimmy carter II

 

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Carter's liberal crap made a fool of him when he used it to deal with N. Korea.

 

Carter even admitted he was fooled.

 

Obama is street smart perhaps, but just as much a fool.

 

It's a sick arrogance they have, that's all they know.

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