Category: Peace Intelligence

SPEAKING FREELY
Lost Cruise fears save Obama on Syria
By Gregory Sinaisky

Asia Times, 3 October 2013

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

US President Barack Obama's reversal on the bombing of Syria took the world by surprise. For a long time, he was talking about the use of chemical weapons by Bashar Al-Assad's regime being “a red line”. There was a feeling that Obama's talk about chemical weapons use in Syria was like a proverbial “Chekhov's gun” – in a well-written play, if a gun is seen in the first act hanging from a wall, in the last act it must shoot.

Obama certainly knew for a long time that most Americans and all others were against involvement in Syria. He himself said that he was not obliged to ask the Congress permission for a remote-control war. Then suddenly the reversal. It certainly looks like something happened that he did not expect.

Nobody in the mainstream media had analyzed technical aspects of the attack, and nobody to my knowledge doubted the ability of America's armed forces to execute it. Yet this author's analysis, based mainly on data from open sources and technical common sense, shows that the reason for this reversal can very likely be found in limitations in military capability to execute a “clean” overwhelming strike on Syria.

Continue reading “Penguin: All US Military Precision Systems Subject to Jamming & Misdirection — Is This the Real Reason Elective Attack on Syria Was Called Off?”

All following appears consistent with Dinesh DiSousa's books and the film that came from them, “2016:  Obama's America,” which assert that POTUS is a rampant anticolonialist whose principal objective is to reduce America to the status of a Third World nation rather than to facilitate the nations of the Third World to achieving levels of political/social/economic development comparable to those of First World nations.

From: [RETIRED SENIOR US SPECIAL OPERATIONS OFFICER]
To: [REDACTED]
Sent: 02-Oct-13
Subj: A World Where No One Listens to America

A World Where No One Listens to America

Dilip Hiro

Real Clear World, September 30, 2013

What if the sole superpower on the planet makes its will known — repeatedly — and finds that no one is listening? Barely a decade ago, that would have seemed like a conundrum from some fantasy Earth in an alternate dimension. Now, it is increasingly a plain description of political life on our globe, especially in the Greater Middle East.

In the future, the indecent haste with which Barack Obama sought cover under the umbrella unfurled by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Syrian chemical weapons crisis will be viewed as a watershed moment when it comes to America's waning power in that region. In the aptly named “arc of instability,” the lands from the Chinese border to northern Africa that President George W. Bush and his neocon acolytes dreamed of thoroughly pacifying, turmoil is on the rise. Ever fewer countries, allies, or enemies, are paying attention, much less kowtowing, to the once-formidable power of the world's last superpower. The list of defiant figures — from Egyptian generals to Saudi princes, Iraqi Shiite leaders to Israeli politicians — is lengthening.

The signs of this loss of clout have been legion in recent years. In August 2011, for instance, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ignored Obama's unambiguous call for him “to step aside.” Nothing happened even after an unnamed senior administration official insisted, “We are certain Assad is on the way out.” As the saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Similarly, in March 2010, Obama personally delivered a half-hour-long chewing out of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a politician Washington installed in office, on the corruption and administrative ineptitude of his government. It was coupled with a warning that, if he failed to act, a cut in U.S. aid would follow. Instead, the next month the Obama administration gave him the red carpet treatment on a visit to Washington with scarcely a whisper about the graft and ill-governance that continues to this day.

In May 2009, during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama demanded a halt to the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem. In the tussle that followed, the sole superpower lost out and settlement expansion continued.

These are among the many examples of America's slumping authority in the Greater Middle East, a process well underway even before Obama entered the Oval Office in January 2009. It had, for years, been increasingly apparent that Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with several lesser campaigns in the Global War on Terror, were doomed. In his inaugural address, Obama swore that the United States was now “ready to lead the world.” It was a prediction that would be proven disastrously wrong in the Greater Middle East.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: SOF O-6 Sends – A World Where No One Listens to America”

Afghanistan Targeting 2015 Cricket World Cup

Posted by: Channels Television

Posted date: October 01, 2013 In: Sports | comment : 0 Comments

Afghanistan can qualify for the 2015 Cricket World Cup if they beat Kenya on Wednesday October 2^nd   and Friday October 4^th in the final two games at the World Cricket League Championship in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Ireland has already qualified from the competition as the top team and although the Afghans are fourth in the table of eight sides they can overtake UAE and Netherlands with two One Day International (ODI) victories in Sharjah to take the second qualifying spot.

If Aghanistan does not win both games, UAE will go to the 2015 tournament in Australia and New Zealand.

The Afghans and Kenyans have met four times in ODIs and each won twice. Afghanistan has won seven of its 12 championship matches in Sharjah, while Kenya has won five, including victories over both Ireland and UAE.

The coach of the Afghan side, former Pakistan international Kabir Khan, is confident.

The bottom six teams in the Sharjah competition still have a chance of qualifying for the 2015 tournament alongside other squads at next year’s ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier in New Zealand, which will determine the last two teams to go through.

Afghanistan whip Kenya to dent UAE’s hopes

Continue reading “Afghanistan Reaching for Cricket World Cup — Whips Kenya, One Game to Go”