Archive for February, 2007
The Dignified Rant: Loopy Links
28 February 2007Having switched to New Blogger, I can’t say I’ve noticed too much difference. Though I was locked out yesterday evening. And today links to individual posts aren’t working.
And as always, trying to get to a place where I can report a problem wore out my patience before I could find that elusive place. So the [...]
The Dignified Rant: Going Home With the One We Brung to the Dance
28 February 2007After World War II, some Japanese nationalists plotted a coup against the struggling democracy in Japan:
Declassified documents reveal that Japanese ultranationalists with ties to U.S. military intelligence plotted to overthrow the Japanese government and assassinate the prime minister in 1952.
The scheme — which was abandoned — was concocted by militarists and suspected war criminals who [...]
The Dignified Rant: Scary Talk
28 February 2007Too many people mistake Iran’s scary talk and make-believe wonder weapons as signs of real power.
The Iranian regime is a challenge in many ways, but let’s not get carried away in thinking they are stronger than us. Fouad Ajami asks us to simply look and analyze:
Iran is a radical player in the world of states, [...]
The Dignified Rant: Unusual Activity
28 February 2007The Chinese are unusually active lately in the realm of cyber-activity:
Has China created a spam monster? The use of spam (unsolicited email) has tripled in the last six months, and if the current growth continues, by the end of the year, over 90 percent of all email will be spam. …
Yes, there are Internet criminals [...]
The Dignified Rant: Announcement
28 February 2007E. J. Dionne is an insufferable partisan hack unable or unwilling to provide honest analysis of anything involving the war.
No, I’m not going to link to the particular piece that prompted this. Really, almost any piece he authors could be the objectionable link.
I’m sure with a little more effort, Dionne could reach Krugman levels of [...]
The Dignified Rant: Focused Surge
28 February 2007Like I’ve argued in the past, a surge of effort and not force is what is needed to narrowly target Sadr and associated Shia death squads.
We are moving in Sadr City:
The pre-dawn raids appeared to highlight a strategy of pinpoint strikes in Sadr City rather than the flood of soldiers sent into some Sunni districts.
At [...]
The Dignified Rant: Fear. On.
28 February 2007James Fearon (tip to Real Clear Politics) says we can’t win Iraq’s civil war. So we need to side more with the Sunnis to get the Shias to compromise.
Yet Fearon goes on to define civil war in an oddly broad fashion:
A civil war is a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that [...]
The Dignified Rant: The Death of Panzers
26 February 2007The Germans became the world’s leading practioners of armored warfare during World War II, and in the Cold War their tank divisions were heirs to that tradition which stood in Moscow’s path along the Elbe River.
The Germans are downsizing their heavy armor holdings (via Jane’s):
The German Army plans to retain 350 Leopard 2 tanks, including [...]
The Dignified Rant: He Really Doesn’t Want Plan B
26 February 2007The Iraqi Sunni Arabs show signs of continuing to be stupid as rocks:
The most prominent Sunni in Iraq’s fragmented government said Monday that the United States is going to have to come up with a “Plan B” if the current crackdown fails to stem the violence in the capital.
Tariq al-Hashemi, the Sunni vice president, also [...]
The Dignified Rant: Learning from the Russians
26 February 2007We are winning in Iraq, yet opponents of the war continue to blast our fight as inept, brutal, and hopeless. I sometimes despair over the nitpicking nature of the criticism. Wars are a series of errors–people are trying to kill you while you are doing everything–from moving to building things to cooking food. Only fools [...]
The Dignified Rant: Fools’ Paradise
26 February 2007Europeans are happy:
A pan-European opinion poll conducted for the European Commission and published on Monday showed that 87 percent of EU citizens considered themselves happy, with a record 97 percent in Denmark.
Yet full-throated drooling idiocy is not confirmed by these results:
But the Eurobarometer survey on “European social reality,” conducted between mid-November and mid-December, found far [...]
The Dignified Rant: The Dutch-Venezuelan Balance
25 February 2007I noted that I thought the Dutch could make Hugo pay a price for storming the Dutch islands off of Venezuela if the Dutch prepare a bit.
Strategypage looks at the balance. (What good timing! Thanks SP)
Basically, the Dutch have fine troops, good fighter planes, a good navy, and a long military tradition. But they are [...]
The Dignified Rant: Air Power Can Wage This War
24 February 2007War with Iran is in the air as Iran skips another UN deadline to halt their nuclear program.
This article notes:
A BBC report citing unnamed diplomatic sources, however, said U.S. contingency plans for any U.S. attack go beyond targeting atomic sites to include most of Iran’s military infrastructure. With the bulk of the U.S. military tied [...]
The Dignified Rant: Orange–Not Neo Red
24 February 2007A Ukrainian politician is coming to America to meet with our officials and warns of Russia’s desire to reclaim Ukraine:
Ukraine’s main opposition leader, on the eve of a trip to the U.S., warned Saturday that the former Soviet republic is at risk of sliding back under the influence of Russia.
Yulia Tymoshenko said she will reassure [...]
The Dignified Rant: The Infidel List Grows Longer
24 February 2007Sunni Arab worshippers were slaughtered at their mosque. This doesn’t fit into the theme of sectarian violence:
At least 35 people were killed and 62 injured, said Lt. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed in Habbaniyah, which lies between the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah — both hotbeds of the insurgency.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but [...]
The Dignified Rant: Fuelish
24 February 2007The Iranians believe our threats are empty:
“We do not see America in a position to impose another crisis on its tax payers inside America by starting another war in the region,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.
So explain to me again why Iran needs nuclear weapons to deter us?
Or are you seriously going to [...]
The Dignified Rant: This Can Be Fixed
24 February 2007The Greatest Generation is still doing its job of letting foreigners know that you shouldn’t mess with Americans:
A tour bus of U.S. senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said on Thursday.
One of the tourists [...]
The Dignified Rant: Determined to Die
24 February 2007The enemy in Ramadi is willing to die:
Commanders said a series of ongoing, coordinated operations between units throughout Ramadi would help to destabilize the enemy. At the same time however, Silverman said he and other commanders were not about to underestimate their foes.
“These guys have been involved since 2003,†Silverman said. “These guys are at [...]
The Dignified Rant: Cast a Giant Shadow
24 February 2007Although I have long recognized the need to neutralize Moqtada Sadr’s militias, I worried that Sadr had enough support to make taking him out directly by arrest or killing too dangerous to contemplate. For some time, I just couldn’t conclude from what I read whether Sadr was too popular to target. I recently concluded that [...]
The Dignified Rant: Wallet on a String
23 February 2007Austin Bay notes this good commentary on the North Korea agreement recently penned.
The bottom line is that this is significantly different than the 1994 agreement despite the cries of administration foes and even friends who belittle it as Clinton II and wonder why we didn’t make this agreement years ago or ask we would repeat [...]
The Dignified Rant: Hammer and Anvil?
23 February 2007American troop strength is rising in Afghanistan. That has been reported already.
And now British troop strength will rise in Afghanistan:
British media said 1,000 more soldiers would be sent to Afghanistan to join the more than 5,000 British troops already there.
Add to this that we have another carrier battlegroup heading to CENTCOM’s area and that nearly [...]
The Dignified Rant: An Inconvenient and Belated Truth
23 February 2007I post about global warming on occasion here because foreigners like to beat us about the head and shoulders for our failure to cripple our economy in order to fix what science has deemed a crisis.
I’m just not impressed with how the scientists involved are acting. Their thin skin makes it seem like they aren’t [...]
The Dignified Rant: Who Owns the Flag?
22 February 2007Whenever a suggestion is made that perhaps our enemy likes the Left’s plan to retreat and surrender to them, the Left is fond of putting an an outraged air and sputtering that their dissent is patriotic and that conservatives don’t “own” the American flag.
Yet when one war supporter tries to hand out small American flags [...]
The Dignified Rant: Dutch Treat
22 February 2007Hugo Chavez is simultaneously on a buying spree for modern weapons and purging any of his officers who might understand how to use them. That’s about par for the course for nutcase thugs, fortunately.
And as he trashes his own economy, Hugo might try to pick on a neighbor to rally his people:
But for the last [...]
The Dignified Rant: Never Get Out of the Effing Boat
22 February 2007Our Navy is returning to the brown waters (via my Jane’s email service):
After a near 35-year hiatus, the US Navy (USN) is returning in force to the riverine mission it quietly abandoned shortly after the Vietnam War. The Riverine Group, a battalion-sized unit conceived 17 years ago but implemented only after 2005, has stood up [...]