‘At first there was a wall of secrecy about a supposed Israeli attack on Syria 10 days ago. Now, the leaks have started and there are suggestions the air assault by Israel was in response to Syria’s nuclear ambitions.
In Israel itself there is an official blackout on any information related to the attack, with the Israeli military censor banning any reporting from Israeli sources.
However the British and American press, quoting unnamed US sources, have been putting together an alarming picture.
What happened in Syria 10 days ago has been at the centre of one the biggest guessing games in Israel. Whatever it was, it was very serious.’
‘A group of soldiers find a location they suspect has an IED. They use a bomb defusing robot to neutrailize it but end up setting off the IED completely destroying the robot.’
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‘America’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.
Fed veteran Greenspan lambasts George W Bush on economy
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.’
‘A school in northern France was evacuated yesterday after a nine-year-old girl took a World War II handgrenade to show to the class.
Her teacher had asked students to bring an unusual object to school, according to deputy police chief Vincent Roberti.
The girl obliged, pulling a grenade her brother had found out of her bag.
The teacher “immediately reacted, putting the weapon in a plastic bag, taking it to the courtyard and warning the school principal,” Mr Roberti said.
Police, firefighters and bomb-disposal experts arrived on the scene while the 191-student school was evacuated.’
‘The Defence Department is urging war veterans and historical groups to write in and tell them why they deserve a free decommissioned Leopard Tank.
The German-built Leopards began service in 1977 but are being phased out to make way for 59 new Abrams tanks.
The 42-tonne armoured monsters are nearly 10 metres long and come with a 105mm main gun capable of firing armour-piercing shells.
The Australian Army’s Leopards have never been used in action.
To be eligible for consideration organisations need to show that the tank will have historical or cultural significance.’
‘Jon Stewart recaps the “hard-hitting” questions General Petraeus had to endure during Tuesday’s Senate testimony, and highlights the furthest-right Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee. Hint: He’s from Connecticut and his name is not Chris Dodd.’
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‘A U.S. citizen has confessed to using an axe to kill a Dutch student after failing to find a soldier to attack, his lawyer said Tuesday.
The suspect, Carlos Hartmann, 41, of Tecumseh, Mich., has confessed to the Sept. 8 killing on a train platform in the southern city of Roosendaal, defence lawyer Peter Gremmen said.
Gremmen said Hartmann wanted to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq. [..]
“He hates soldiers, and says that the army kills people, so it would be legitimate if he were also to kill someone . . . from the American military – or from its NATO allies,” Gremmen said in a telephone interview.
When he failed to find a soldier at the Roosendaal train station, “he got such a crazy, disturbed idea that he killed a civilian,” Gremmen said.
Hartmann did not attempt to escape and was arrested shortly after the killing.’
‘In a small district in southern Afghanistan, U.S.-backed Afghan drug forces opened fire on farmers who were blocking roads and throwing rocks to protest the destruction of their poppy fields earlier this year. Scores were injured in the firefight.
Poppy farmer
Undeterred by the violence, a group of angry farmers gathered around Masood Azizi, the Afghan official supervising the eradication. They maintained that cultivating poppy for opium is the only way they can survive. “We are hungry, thirsty, and we don’t have any money. We are in debt,” one said.
It’s a message that reverberates throughout this impoverished, war-torn country. [..]
Eradicating opium poppies has been a key pillar of U.S. policy in Afghanistan since 2004, said Doug Wankel, director of the U.S. Counter-Narcotics Task Force in Afghanistan.
Yet today, Afghanistan produces roughly 93 percent of the world’s illicit opium, according to the UNODC report, and the Taliban are making inroads in remote areas of the country thanks, in part, to proceeds from the drug trade.’
‘The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers.
Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.
“I’ve been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they’re saying to me, ‘We’re seeing things we’ve never seen before,'” said Sandy Schneider, director of Vanderbilt University’s brain injury rehabilitation program. [..]
“It’s the so-called invisible injury. It’s where a troop takes 10 times the normal time to pack his rucksack … a complicated injury to the most complicated part of the body,” said Dr. Alisa Gean, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco.’
‘He survived landmines and the best efforts of the Taliban’s bomb makers – but could not dodge an accident at the hands of his own side.
Today it emerged that an Australian army explosive detection dog, Merlin ,has been killed while on active service in Afghanistan.
The Australian Defence Force said today the dog died when accidentally run over by an Australian Light Armoured Vehicle (ASLAV) at the Australian Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) base at Tarin Kowt earlier this month.
Merlin had been lying in the shade of the ASLAV when the vehicle drove off, inadvertently running the dog over.’
‘The long and short of it is that by next spring some of the 20 U.S. combat brigades currently in Iraq—perhaps as many as a quarter to a half of them—will be pulling out, and nobody will replace them. This is a mathematical fact, quite apart from anything to do with the upcoming election or the war’s diminishing popularity.
Whether or not you regard this fact as lamentable, President Bush only makes things worse by howling that any pullback would erode American power and embolden the terrorists. Even if his warning is true, for a president to state it so urgently, over and over and over and over, deepens the damage when the storm hits. And given that the storm is certain to hit, it’s irresponsible—it’s baffling—that he’s howling so loudly.’
‘”Have you ever been through the Denver airport? It’s strange. It’s one of the busiest, but I’m telling you, it’s weird. There’s a firestorm of people talking about this thing.”
Especially on June 11, when George Noory devotes all four hours of Coast to Coast, his nationally syndicated talk-radio program dedicated to the “paranormal, extraterrestrial and other topics typically overlooked by more mainstream media outlets,” to a discussion of Denver International Airport. Broadcast on more than 500 affiliate stations, including KHOW, the popular overnight show is the 60 Minutes of conspiracy theories, often with self-educated experts expounding on such subjects as the occult, psychic visions, crop circles, Skull and Bones and apocalyptic predictions. And almost all of these conspiracies intersect at DIA.’
‘The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.’
‘A man looking for a new home on an online mapping service has stumbled across an aerial image of a US nuclear-powered submarine in dry dock showing a part of the vessel that wasn’t meant to be seen.
The image – which appears on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth mapping service – is of the seven-bladed propeller used on an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine.
The vessel was being worked on at a dry dock at the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Washington State, in the north-west of the United States. The base is part of Bangor’s Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific which houses the largest nuclear weapons arsenal.
Propeller designs have been closely guarded secrets since the days of the Cold War. It is still common for them to be draped with tarps or removed and covered when a submarine is out of the water.
The propeller design is an integral part of a submarine’s ability to remain undetected during operations, ensuring that it can patrol the seas in stealth without giving its position away to surface ships.’
‘The Americans were getting close. It was early in the winter of 2004-05, and Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, a sentry, posted several kilometers away, spotted a patrol of U.S. soldiers who seemed to be heading straight for bin Laden’s redoubt. The sentry radioed an alert, and word quickly passed among the Qaeda leader’s 40-odd bodyguards to prepare to remove “the Sheik,” as bin Laden is known to his followers, to a fallback position. As Sheik Said, a senior Egyptian Qaeda operative, later told the story, the anxiety level was so high that the bodyguards were close to using the code word to kill bin Laden and commit suicide. According to Said, bin Laden had decreed that he would never be captured. “If there’s a 99 percent risk of the Sheik’s being captured, he told his men that they should all die and martyr him as well,” Said told Omar Farooqi, a Taliban liaison officer to Al Qaeda who spoke to a NEWSWEEK reporter in Afghanistan.’
‘The Navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability, but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity determined on the basis of individual performance.
It is recognized, of course, that Negro performance in Naval training and tasks on the average has not been equal to the average performance of white personnel. Explanation of this difference by resort to some theory of differences in natural endowment, however, leads only to confusion in which the potentialities of individuals become obscured.
It has been established by experience that individual Negroes vary as widely in native ability as do members of any other race. It is the Navy’s responsibility to develop the potentialities of individuals to the extent that the exigencies of war require and permit.’
‘Taliban fanatics terrorised the wife of an RAF officer by phoning her and saying: “You’ll never see your husband alive — we have just killed him.”
Rebels in Afghanistan are targeting British forces’ families with hate calls after tapping into Our Boys’ mobile phones.
The tearful wife rang the RAF fearing the worst after receiving the midnight call — and was told her husband was safe and well.
But the Taliban calls are a sick new plot to destroy morale, and British forces in Afghanistan have now been BANNED from using mobiles.
Army chiefs believe extremists are using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment to trace home numbers when forces call their loved ones in Britain.’
‘During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe l’oeil to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.’
‘The minister of defense checked the Web page again — still nothing. He stared at the error message: For some reason, the site for Estonia’s leading newspaper, the Postimees, wasn’t responding. Jaak Aaviksoo attempted to pull up the sites of a couple of other papers. They were all down. The former director of the University of Tartu Institute of Experimental Physics and Technology d been the Estonian defense minister for only four weeks. He hadn’t even changed the art on the walls.
An aide rushed in with a report. It wasn’t just the newspapers. The leading bank was under siege. Government communications were going down. An enemy had invaded and was assaulting dozens of targets.
Outside, everything was quiet. The border guards had reported no incursions, and Estonian airspace had not been violated. The aide explained what was going on: They were under attack by a rogue computer network.’
Followup to Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia.
‘A shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia is not that of HMAS Sydney, an investigation by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) has found.
HMAS Sydney with 645 crew members disappeared in mysterious circumstances off the coast of Western Australia in November 1941.
The Navy hydrographic survey ship HMAS Leeuwin this week investigated a wreck near Dirk Hartog Island, based on coordinates provided by the Western Australian Maritime Museum.
The investigation concluded the 30m shipwreck lacked the overall dimensions and features of a military vessel of the scale of the Sydney.’
Followup to Wreck of HMAS Sydney found off WA.
‘In a break from historic Israeli opposition to U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday his country understands Washington’s plan to supply state-of-the-art weapons to Riyadh as a counterweight to Iranian influence.
The United States, knowing that Israel is sensitive about such arms sales, is also offering a sharp increase in defense aid to Israel and has assured the Jewish state it will retain a fighting edge over other countries in the region, he added.
“We understand the need of the United States to support the Arab moderate states and there is a need for a united front between the U.S. and us regarding Iran,” Olmert told a weekly Cabinet meeting.
The rare agreement reflects shared U.S. and Israeli concern over the potential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.’
‘A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.
The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.
The owners of C&D Distributors in Lexington, South Carolina — twin sisters — exploited a flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system: bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled “priority” were usually paid automatically, said Cynthia Stroot, a Pentagon investigator.’
‘According to an alarming new Department of Defense report combining civilian, military, and calendric evidence, Iran may be as few as nine years away from the year 2016.
“Every day they get one day closer,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a White House press conference Tuesday. “At the rate they’re going, they will reach 2016 at the same time as the United States—and given their geographic position relative to the international date line, possibly even sooner.”
The report recommended that the U.S. engage in bellicose international posturing, careless brinksmanship, and an eventual overwhelming series of nuclear strikes in order to prevent Iran from reaching this milestone.’
It seems in 1994 Dick Cheney actually talked sense.
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‘A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay. [..]
“It’s a slap in the face. It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re sorry he died, but he’s gay so we can’t help you,'” she said Friday.
Wright said High Point offered to hold the service for Sinclair because their brother is a janitor there. Sinclair, who served in the first Gulf War, died Monday at age 46 from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant.
The church’s pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men “engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing.” [..]
“We did decline to host the service — not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle,” Simons told The Associated Press. “Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it — yes, we would have declined then. It’s not that we didn’t love the family.”‘
‘The 66-year search for the wreck of HMAS Sydney, on which 645 Australians lost their lives, is almost certainly over.
A group of West Australians using just a grappling hook and an underwater camera last weekend found what they are sure is the Sydney, which sank after a battle with the German raider Kormoran on November 19, 1941.
Video film of the discovery shows scenes of tangled wreckage over a vast expanse of deck, much longer than any other vessel known to have sunk in the area.
The search team believe a series of details clearly visible on their video — decking bolts, extensive radio aerials, steam tubes and signs of massive damage — all point to the Sydney.’
‘Canada fired a warning shot in a new Cold War over the vast resources of the far North by announcing last night that it will build two new military bases in the Arctic wilderness.
A week after Russia laid claim to the North Pole in what is rapidly becoming a global scramble for the region’s vast oil and gas reserves, Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, said that Canada would open a new army training centre for cold-weather fighting at Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port at Nanisivik, on the northern tip of Baffin Island. The country is also beefing up its military presence in the far North with 900 Rangers.
[..] “This isn’t the 15th century,” Peter MacKay, the Canadian Foreign Minister, said. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say, ‘We’re claiming this territory’.”‘
Followup to Russians to dive below North Pole.
‘At the time of the Crusades, Europe was divided into states whose rulers were involved in petty territorial disputes. In Jerusalem (the most popular site for pilgrimages in Medieval Europe) at the time, the Seljukian Turks were gaining power and Europe saw it as a threat to the safety of the Pilgrims and to Christendom. In 1070 Jerusalem was taken, and in 1071 Diogenes, the Greek emperor, was defeated and made captive at Mantzikert. Asia Minor and all of Syria became the prey of the Turks. Antioch succumbed in 1084, and by 1092 not one of the great metropolitan sees of Asia remained in the possession of the Christians.’
