Tuesday, 26 August 2008
JOSEPH BIDEN: LIAR, CHEAT, TRAITOR
Back on December 18, 2006, I wrote a column on Joseph Biden's decision to once again run for president. Biden has now been tapped as Marxist Barack Hussein Obama's choice for vice-president.
One columnist wrote this was akin to a Watergate suicide. Biden was dropped like a hot potato by the DNC in 1998 when he ran for president because Biden was exposed as a liar and cheat, although now it seems to be a qualifier for both the Democrat and Republican parties. I'm not a Republican and I would never vote a despicable person like Juan McCain. Like Obama, Biden plagiarized someone else's speech. Biden also plagiarized in law school; NY Times article back in 1987.
Some boob tube pundits have remarked that Joseph Biden is a "cultural Catholic." A what? There is no such thing as a cultural Catholic. You either follow Church doctrine or you're a heretic. Biden believes Roe v Wade should stand, but believes life begins at conception. So, while Biden believes a baby is a human life at conception, he believes it's okay that nine men on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it's legal to kill that human life. Biden believes that sodomite and lesbian marriages are inevitable, but doesn't support them. However, he is considered to be pro sexual deviants and their causes. (Voted yes to expand unconstitutional hate crime laws to 'sexual orientation.') The Catholic Church forbids abortion and the abomination of sodomy and lesbian sex. Clearly, while professing to be a 'practicing Catholic,' Biden has cherry picked which of God's laws and the Church he will uphold. More
Labels: CHEAT, JOSEPH BIDEN: LIAR, TRAITOR
Biden: Israel should accept 'nuclear' Iran
Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:20:21 GMT
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In a clandestine meeting with unnamed Israeli officials, which was partially covered by the US Jewish Army Radio, Barack Obama's vice-presidential nominee said, "Israel will have to reconcile itself with the nuclearization of Iran."
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Biden, a six-time Delaware Senator and chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the "amazed" officials, "It's doubtful if the economic sanctions will be effective, and I am against opening an additional military and diplomatic front."
Biden has been a Senator for Delaware since 1973, and is running mate to Barack Obama in the race for the presidency of the United States.
The pro-Israeli Senator also said that Israel is America's biggest ally in the Middle East and its strategic alliance has allowed the US to deploy fewer troops and warships in the region.
Iran says its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes but the Israeli regime and the US accuse the country of seeking nuclear weapons.
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August 23, 2008...9:05 pm
Biden: Liar, liar, pants on fire
“I would not accept it if anyone offered it to me. I would much prefer to stay as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.”
Putin promises an answer to NATO’s naval Black Sea presence
DEBKAfile Special Report
September 2, 2008, 8:54 PM (GMT+02:00)
On a visit to Uzbekistan, Tuesday Sept. 2, prime minister Vladimir Putin said Russia’s reaction to NATO ships “will be calm, without any sort of hysteria. But of course there will be an answer.”
Putin and Uzbek president Islam Karimov announced a deal will be finalized in the near future for a new natural gas pipeline to pump Turkmen and Uzbek gas across Uzbekistan into the Russian pipeline system for re-export to Europe.
Karimov said the proposed pipeline, with a capacity of 26-30 billion cubic metres (bcm), would be built alongside the two existing Soviet-era pipelines, known as Central Asia-Centre and Central Asia-Bukhara-Ural. The Russian monopoly Gazprom, which will operate the new pipeline, said agreement had been reached on the “price formula for Uzbek gas.”
Since the Georgian conflict erupted, Moscow has intensified its quest to undermine the Western-backed effort to lay a rival trans-Caspian route to bypass the Russian energy corridor. Russia has offered the Central Asian republics European prices for as much gas as they can sell to retain its control of westward export routes.
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Is the U.S. Army ready for conventional war?
Focusing only on counterinsurgency and nation-building is unwise. It must prepare to fight other armies.
By Gian P. Gentilefrom the September 2, 2008 edition
Images of Georgian infantry moving under fire and Russian tanks on the attack show that the days of like armies fighting one another on battlefields are far from over.
What does this mean for the US Army? As it considers its role after Iraq, should it be restructured for war and conflict along the lines of counterinsurgency and nation-building, or toward conventional fighting as represented by the Georgian war?
Armies trained to fight conventional warfare can quickly and effectively shift to counterinsurgency and nation-building. Contrary to popular belief, the US Army proved this in Iraq.
Its lightning advance up to Baghdad in the spring of 2003 happened because it was a conventionally minded army, trained for fighting large battles.
If the Army had focused the majority of its time and resources prior to the Iraq war on counterinsurgency and nation-building, the march to Baghdad would have been much more costly in American lives and treasure.
Critics argue that because the Army did not prepare for counterinsurgency prior to the Iraq war, it fumbled for the first four years of the war until rescued by the surge in February 2007.
Not true, according to "On Point II," a Army history of the Iraq war by Donald Wright and Timothy Reece. In fact, according to this book, the US Army very quickly transitioned from the conventional fighting mode. By the end of 2003, the Army – which spent much of the 1980s and 1990s training to fight large battles – moved into the successful conduct of "full-spectrum" counterinsurgency and nation-building operations.
There is more continuity than discontinuity between pre-surge and surge US Army forces in their tactics and methods in fighting the insurgency in Iraq. So if a conventional army like the one that started the Iraq war in 2003 can quickly and effectively make the transition, why reconfigure toward a hyperfocus on counterinsurgency and nation-building for future wars and conflicts?
History also shows that when states focus their armies on nothing but counterinsurgency and world constabulary missions to the exclusion of conventional warfare preparation, strategic failure can result.
In the summer of 2006 in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army suffered a significant battlefield defeat at the hands of Hezbollah, who fought with conventional tactics centered on small infantry squads using machine guns, mortars, and antitank missiles.
Israeli scholar Avi Kober and US Army historian Matt Matthews have shown that the result was at least partly due to Israel's hyperfocus on counterinsurgency. The Israeli army's conventional fighting skills had atrophied due to many years of focus on counterinsurgency operations in the Palestinian territories.
The British Army after World War I chose to mostly forget about fighting conventional wars and instead concentrated their efforts on building an imperial constabulary army to police their empire. In 1940, however, as the German Army raced across France to the English Channel, the British Army alongside the French were defeated by the Germans who had spent their interwar years preparing for large-scale battles.
If the US Army is not careful, a similar fate may await. Already, there is proof that the American Army's conventional fighting skills have atrophied. Three former combat brigade commanders in Iraq recently submitted a paper to Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, outlining how the Army's field artillery branch has lost the conventional fighting skills of firing guns at an enemy in open combat due to many years of counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. They refer to the artillery branch as a "dead branch walking."
Artillery firing was a critical asset in Russia's crushing defeat of the Georgian Army.
There are a range of scenarios that might include the US having to engage in heavy fighting. One of them involves a possible failed North Korean state. Focusing on counterinsurgency and nation-building operations will not prepare the Army for such a possibility.
The American Army must do what it takes to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But good counterinsurgency tactics practiced by proficient combat outfits cannot compensate for flawed strategies and policies.
Considering events today in Georgia and the recent past of Israel in south Lebanon, the Army must soon refocus itself toward conventional warfighting skills, with the knowledge that if called on to do so, it can easily shift to nation-building and counterinsurgency as it has done in Iraq.
If it doesn't, it courts strategic peril.
Gian P. Gentile is an active duty Army colonel. He served in Iraq in 2003 and 2006. The views expressed here are his own.
