From a senior engineer of Iranian descent often in Iran:
The view from within Iran is that, “help us get rid of this regime”, people are even willing to welcome an all out air assault if it ends up with an eventual regime change , move to secularize, and early stages of democracy.
I do not see an attack on Iran in the coming year. However if there is ever a good time to attack the regime with air strikes this is it. The removal of the subsidies by the government every day common goods which accrued about 3 months ago which has now resulted in a major price increase on common good is just hitting the average poke book.
The utilities have gone up over %50 and in some cases more than doubled.
The number of factories closing down and the businesses going out of business which results in major layoffs is on the rise. The oil exports are decreasing and more oil wells are being shut down due to technical problems.
The majority of people have lost hope of meaningful reform.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center indicates that 10 years after the September 11 attacks, support for Islamic fundamentalism is growing within the Muslim world and that U.S. efforts to produce an ideological counterproposal to Islamic terrorism have fallen short.
Statistics released May 17 reveal, for example, that 47 percent of
Pakistan's 187 million people “sympathize” with Islamic fundamentalism and 4 percent believe that suicide bombing is sometimes justified. In Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan, the statistics show that 31 percent, 24 percent, and 36 percent respectively also support Islamist radicals who are the main force behind today's dominant terrorist groups such as Al Qaida, Hamas and
Hizbullah.
I think the best description of Robert Gates is that he is a very smart bureaucrat who exemplifies the concept of go along to get along. He demonstrated this admirably in his farewell ‘warning’ as reported in the Wall Street Journal. This was a “guns or butter” speech designed to reassure the defense industrial complex that the safety of the U.S. will depend on the continued acquisition of pointless complex and expensive weapons systems.
Rather interestingly in this speech Gates ignored two pieces of information that might have caused him to reconsider his advocacy of super weapons systems.
America can be a superpower or a welfare state, but not both.
Phi Beta Iota Sidenote: BOTH of the above “choices” are corruption incarnate. The correct choice was articulated by Thomas Jefferson: “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.”
EXTRACT:
In a series of farewell speeches, Mr. Gates has warned against cuts to weapon programs and troop levels that would make America vulnerable in “a complex and unpredictable security environment,” as he said Sunday at Notre Dame. On Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Gates noted that the U.S. went on “a procurement holiday” in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration decided to cash in the Cold War peace dividend. The past decade showed that history (and war) didn't end in 1989.
Robert Steele Sends. This is personal. In1995, Gates was one of four Americans invited to address the French national conference on “Waging War and Peace in the 21st Century.” He followed me on the schedule, and on hearing my presentation, sashayed up to the stage, sniffed dismissively, and said “I'm not even going to touch that.” As we now know, I nailed it in 1989 for General Al Gray, in 1992 for the Whole Earth Review, again in 1995 for all in France (and separately in USA for COSPO under Joe Markowitz and for US Government as a Whole), and again in 2000 for NATO. And onward to the UN and various multinational audiences who lack a single nation ready to play a leadership role in the M4IS2 arena. Robert Gates was arrogant then, he is ignorant now….and he does “do maintenance,” that is all he has done as a placeholder at Defense. Gate's farewell comments are crap, pure and simple. He has overseen the waste of America's blood, treasure, and spirit with abject amorality that Dick Cheney would be proud of. He has failed to demand what Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) called for–a strategy, a force structure (the four forces after next) suited to the 21st Century, and an acquisition system with integrity.
Anatomy of a Murder: How NATO Killed Qaddafi Family Members
28 May 2011
How many times must a parent bury a child?
Well, in the case of Muammar Qaddafi it's not only twice: once for his daughter, murdered by the United States bombing on his home in 1986, and again on 30 April 2011 when his youngest son, Saif al Arab, but yet again for three young children, grandbabies of Muammar Qaddafi killed along with Saif at the family home.
Now, I watched Cindy Sheehan as she bared her soul before us in her grief; I cried when Cindy cried. Now, how must Qaddafi and his wife feel? And the people of Libya, parents of all the nation's children gone too soon. I don't even want to imagine.
All my mother could say in astonishment was, “They killed the babies, they killed his grandbabies.”
The news reports, however, didn't last more than one half of a news cycle because on 1 May, at a hastily assembled press conference, President Obama announced the murder of Osama bin Laden.
Well, I haven't forgotten my empathy for Cindy Sheehan; I haven't forgotten my concern for the children of Iraq that Madeleine Albright said were OK to kill by U.S. sanctions if U.S. geopolitical goals were achieved. I care about the children of Palestine who throw stones at Israeli soldiers and get laser-guided bullets to their brains in return. I care about the people of North Africa and West Asia who are ready to risk their lives for freedom. In fact, I care about all of the children–from Appalachia to the Cancer Alley, from New York City to San Diego, and everywhere in-between.
On 22 May 2011, I had the opportunity to visit the residence of the Qaddafi family, bombed to smithereens by NATO. For a leader, the house seemed small in comparison, say, to the former Clinton family home in Chappaqua or the Obama family home. It was a small whitewashed suburban type house in a typical residential area in metropolitan Tripoli. It was surrounded by dozens of other family homes.
I spoke with a neighbor who described how three separate smart bombs hit the home and exploded, another one not exploding. According to the BBC, the NATO military operations chief stated that a “command and control center” had been hit. That is a lie. As anyone who visits the home can see, this home had nothing to do with NATO's war. The strike against this home had everything to do with NATO adopting a policy of targeted assassination and extra-judicial killing–clearly illegal.
Natalie, the gems girl, says, “Prostitution and pimping—it’s never going to stop. Tricks—they should start from there. If no one’s buying girls, then the pimps can’t make money.” That, in fact, is exactly the theory behind the Sex Purchase Law in Sweden. As of 1999, johns are punished by up to six months’ imprisonment, traffickers are locked up for 2-to-10-year hits, and prostitutes are offered medical care, education, and housing. As a result, prostitution has been reduced by 50 percent in Sweden, and the purchase of sex, which is understood to be a human-rights abuse, has decreased by 75 percent. In contrast, Europol studies show, nations such as Holland and Australia, where prostitution has been legalized, have become lucrative, low-risk magnets for international sex-slave drivers and organized crime.
Phi Beta Iota: Immediately obvious are the immediate focus on Iraq, Iran, Somalia, and Yemen. No big picture focus on preventive peace from the sea here. The emergent focus is on Central Asia (far from the sea) and the Indian Ocean area. One wonders if the time has come to tell the Navy to focus on defending the USA, not trying to intervene everywhere. Finally, the enduring languages are the usual suspects, but (we do not make this stuff up) we observe that there is no such thing as a Saigon Vietnamese dialect/language. Could they mean Ho Chi Minh (VS/QNS)?
