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Monday, October 25, 2004

380 Tons of High Explosive

I was just reading the news about the fact that 380 tons of big time go-bang is among the missing in Iraq. That is 760,000 pounds. It only took one pound of Semtex, which uses HDX and RDX (the types of explosives missing) as ingredients, to bring PanAm 107 crashing down on Lockerbie. If only one part in a thousand of the missing material is targeted at airlines and one in a hundred of those is successful, it will mean an end to air travel as we know it. Should the same part-in-a thousand be targeted at commuter trains alá Madrid, it is easy to imagine a U.S. with 40% unemployment and bread lines in 5 years.

When coalition forces destroyed the public safety infrastructure we were treated to the televised spectacle of rioting mobs looting everything that could be looted down to incubators from the neonate ICU in a hospital. Some of the more determined nuts took over stockpiles of left-behind weaponry and immediately set themselves to bloody murder along religious lines and towards coalition forces.

Prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq, Al-Zarqawi was a nut case squatting in an isolated camp in Kurd controlled Iraq situated so that he could scamper across the Iranian border in case the gendarmes appeared.

A PITA dictator was indeed overthrown and now sits safely in a jail cell while the country he once ruled with an iron fist has become the training ground and armory for a foe many times more dangerous than he or Osama bin Laden ever thought of being.

The situation is clearly out of control. Someone in Washington needs to wake up and look down the road a few years. Massive effort is needed now to remove the threat posed.

Can the Republicans get past their own spin control to suck it up and do what’s needed? Doubtful. The Minister of Information has spoken, telling us all is rosy and democracy shall soon be restored. How about them Dems? Can they do it? Not very damned likely considering Kerry’s post facto bias against a similar effort in ‘Nam.

We really are winning the war on terrorism, aren’t we? Tell me, tell me.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Bad Guys

The facts are now in. There was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam’s Iraq — which of course is no longer true as there is a considerable presence of Al Qaeda operating with seeming impunity in that benighted country these days — and there were no stockpiles of WMD — merely some obsolete remnants of former programs.

There has been no provable reason for our invasion. The Pres will, of course, pin it on the CIA. It is interesting to note that Donald Rumsfeld recently had a slip of the lip and said there was no Al Qaeda link before he was reined in and told to get back in the party line, and Paul Bremmer admitted there were no WMD before he was told to shut the F*** up and soldier.

Was Saddam a bad guy? I hope to smile. He is right up there in the annals of anal orifices with Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-Il, Ratko Mladic, Tammerlane, Caligula, Uncle Joe Stalin, and a host of other murderous despots. Was it worth $151 Billion borrowed dollars along with thousands of deaths to get rid of him ? Nope. We had other fish to fry. Namely destroying Al Qaeda root and branch.

We’re bogged down in Iraq, have been for two years, and will remain that way for decades. Meanwhile Al Qaeda is free to rebuild and Iran and North Korea are able to thumb their noses at international protocols because we are stuck just like Brer Rabbit was with the Tar Baby. The difference being that Iraq is looking like a tar pit rather than a tar baby.

There is a way out of this, but our idiots in Washington will never suck it up and do what has to be done. Too bad. Maybe by the time we have 58,000 body bags filled up, someone will figure out the score and get us back to being the Superpower worthy of respect rather than the inept bully we have become under Dubya’s regime.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Mullahs’ Missiles

Iran has announced a missile with a strike radius of 1,250 miles. I have a neat little app on my home computer; MS Encarta Virtual Globe. I put it to use to see who falls under threat.

Moscow, Ankara, Kiev, Athens, Cairo, Riyadh, New Delhi, and Jerusalem (to mention the most obvious) are under the gun.

One must keep in mind that such weapons are usually coupled with highly destructive warheads. I mean, IRBMs are an extraordinarily costly means of delivering flowers.

While we are up to the tops of our waders in the cess pool called Iraq, North Korea and Iran — nations run by men not in touch with reality — are developing offensive weapons with capabilities far beyond any anticipated legitimate need.

Bad news scenarios: The Mullahs weigh in on the side of their brother Muslims in Chechnya and nuke Moscow. Or how about the nut running N Korea? Let’s say he vaporizes Tokyo. The fat would well and truly be in the fire in either case — or two dozen others, for that matter.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the cessation of the Cold War, it was beginning to look like the world was headed for all that peace and prosperity we all hoped for. It wasn’t to be.

Of course, the United States under the present administration has contributed mightily to the international unease.

What a mess.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Creating The Mirage

Italy announced today that it would more than likely pull its troops out of Iraq after the elections scheduled for January. The rationale is that with democracy restored there will be no further need to garrison the country. What I find irksome is why didn’t Dubya think of that first. I mean it fits right in with “Mission Accomplished.”

Mission Accomplished, indeed. Never mind that hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died in the growing insurgency turning most of Iraq’s cities into no-man land.

We are a cool 151 Billion dollars out of pocket for this adventure and all we have to show for it (besides a lot of aluminum caskets filled with the remains of our dead) is a 65 year-old blithering idiot in a cell in Baghdad.

Oh, yes, Saddam (remember him?) is still in the slam and the case building effort against him has been derailed by internal Iraqi bickering. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if he emerged the winner of the January elections?

Fitting end to this idiocy. I’m sure Hollywood is thinking on it.

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