Hundreds of Muslims in Bangladesh burned at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes of Buddhists on Sunday after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam, police and residents said.
Kenyan warships shelled the southern Somali port of Kismayu overnight after al Qaeda-linked rebels said they had abandoned the city, residents said on Sunday.
Stunned by an assault by sea, air and ground forces late on Friday night, al Shabaab rebels fled the city that had been their key source of revenue, retreating to surrounding forests and towns.
The shells may have been targeting any remaining pockets of resistance or military installations in the city that was the rebels' last stronghold.
Heavily armed Islamist fighters in Mali destroyed the tomb of a local Sufi saint near Timbuktu on Saturday, witnesses said, the latest attack on traditional shrines in the rebel-occupied north.
The result is that, at a time of escalating public debate in both the United States and Israel around the possibility of an armed strike on Iran, high-level Pentagon war planners have had to "fly blind" in sketching out what Israel might do -- and the challenges its actions will pose for the U.S. military. "What we do is a kind of reverse engineering," the senior planner said. "We take a look at their [Israeli] assets and capabilities, put ourselves in their shoes and ask how we would act if we had what they have. So while we're guessing, we have a pretty good idea of what they can and can't do." ...
But it's not clear that Israel, even with its vaunted military, can pull off a successful strike: Netanyahu may not simply want the United States on board politically; he may need the United States to join militarily. "All this stuff about 'red lines' and deadlines is just Israel's way of trying to get us to say that when they start shooting, we'll start shooting," retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman told me. "Bottom line? We can do this and they can't, because we have what the Israelis don't have," retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner said.
The U.S. has agreed to ship back Pac 2 Patriot anti-aircraft missiles Taiwan sent to the United States for upgrades in 2008. These were to have been sent back in 2009 but were delayed for three years by, well, no one will admit exactly what the reason was. Might have had something to do with China pressuring the United States to not send weapons to Taiwan.
Have aircraft carriers become obsolete? Since 1949, analysts have argued that some combination of strategic bombers and cheap anti-shipping weapons have rendered the aircraft carrier a relic. The latest round in the conversation over the continued viability of aircraft carriers was spurred by Robert Haddick’s Foreign Policy column suggesting that improvements in long range strategic airpower and ballistic missile technology could render the carrier irrelevant.
There’s no single answer as to why the carrier persists, but the experience of the last sixty-five years has helped give us a handle on the persistent utility of the flat deck aviation warship.
Iraqi officials said Saturday that a jailbreak where al-Qaida-linked militants escaped death row had help from inside, further tarnishing state authority and raising new concerns over corruption.
A day after the escape in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, scores of prisoners are still at large.
The Interior Ministry said there had been "clear collusion" between some guards and inmates in the Tasfirat prison. Weapons were brought in during family visits, and wardens left locks inside the facility open.
Am I crazy or is today’s NBC Nightly News broadcast actually almost fair in Obama vs. Romney terms? … The network isn’t exactly harsh on Obama regarding the highly suspicious intelligence-agency blame-taking on Libya misdirection–but Andrea Mitchell does offer only two alternatives: 1) “a coverup” 2) “trying to avoid acknowledging mistakes this close to an election.”
The New York Times reports the MTA will prohibit any advertisements that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.”
Still basking in the glory of his latest appearance at the U.N., Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now heads back to Tehran with his head held high after winning yet more American hearts and minds. As the Islamic Republic's official news agency, Fars, reports this morning, according to a new Gallup poll released Monday "the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than US President Barack Obama."
For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars.
Earlier this month, Russian media reports, quoting Andrei Dyachkov, President of United Russian Shipbuilding corporation which refitted the carrier, claimed the ship’s boilers had been damaged due to failures in the brick insulation separating them from the ship’s structure. The shipyard used “sub-standard Chinese firebricks,” Dyachkov said.
The statement by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that it represented a change in the U.S. intelligence assessment of how and why the attack happened. During the attack on two U.S. government compounds in the eastern Libyan city, four U.S. personnel, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed.
In the last ten days, there have been a half dozen episodes of North Korean fishing boats straying en masse below the inter-Korean water border called the Northern Limit Line. North Korea has long disputed the border.
The area has been the site of deadly skirmishes in 2002 and 2009. The South Korean warship Cheonan was attacked near the westernmost South Korea-controlled island in that area in March 2010. And in November 2010, North Korea opened fire on the South-controlled Yeonpyeong Island.
Earlier this month, Kim Jong Eun himself visited the North Korea-controlled islands from which the North’s army fired artillery on Yeonpyeong.
Islamic terrorism often gets explained away as being a reaction to Western imperialism, or colonialism, or simply cultural differences. No one, especially in the Islamic world, wants to admit that the cause of it all is religious fanatics who would rather appear righteous than be righteous.
Much of the army strength is tied up in bases that are basically under siege by rebels. The troops can only get out (or get supplies in) via a major military operation. These isolated bases will eventually fall as they run out of food and ammunition. The rebels, ever careful about their own casualties (an important element in maintaining morale), are content to wait the army out. Foreign reporters are able to travel near these besieged bases and see for themselves this aspect of the war. While the rebels can besiege government troops, the government cannot do the same to the rebels. Most of the countryside is under rebel control or a no-man's land. There are not enough loyal (to the government) police and soldiers to assert government control everywhere. Only in the largely Alawite areas along the coast is the countryside pro-government.
The rebels believe that the only thing keeping the government forces in action is the air force, whose helicopters and bombers provide an edge in terms of reconnaissance and emergency firepower wherever the army is in big trouble. The big problem the air force has is fuel, which it is rapidly running out of. Aircraft consume tons of the stuff each time they fly off on a mission. While Syria stocked reserves of aircraft fuel for emergencies (like a war), these are not being replenished. As the warplanes fly less, the Assad forces will lose more ground and, eventually, everything.
Chinese mainland and Taiwan share the responsibility of safeguarding fishermen's rights in the Diaoyu Islands (known in Japan as Senkaku Islands and in Taiwan as Diayoutai) in East China Sea, the mainland's spokeswoman on Taiwan affairs said yesterday.
In an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said: "We are victims of Japanese colonial rule."
Kim, speaking a few hours before "serious" talks with Japan's foreign minister, also said South Korea would not compromise in its dispute over the tiny Dokdo islands, called Takeshima by Japan, which has further strained ties.
India fears that China might try to carry out a lightning campaign (a few days, or a week), and then offer peace terms (with China keeping all or part of Arunachal Pradesh). Since neither country would be willing to start a full scale nuclear war over Arunachal Pradesh (a rural area with a population of about a million people, spread among 84,000 square kilometers of mountains and valleys), the "grab and parley" strategy has to be taken seriously. In the meantime, China keeps finding ways to annoy India over this issue.I'd mentioned that I thought Kargil was the impetus to India's Cold Start thinking that would allow the Indian army to react quickly to a small attack with a portion of India's army rather than requiring a lengthy mobilization that might be too late to address a "grab and parlay" strategy.
Meanwhile, India seems quite confident that they can handle China if a war breaks out in this mountainous wilderness. Partly that's because India is playing defense here, which always confers an advantage. But India's big advantage is that it has recent (1999) combat experience in mountain warfare. ...
That 1999 war got little publicity, so it's generally unknown outside India how much that experience changed the Indian armed forces.
Kenyan troops invaded al-Shabab's last stronghold in Somalia, coming ashore in a predawn assault Friday. Other African Union forces were traveling overland to link up with the Kenyan forces in the port city of Kismayo.
Col. Cyrus Oguna, the Kenyan military's top spokesman, said the surprise attack met minimal resistance but al-Shabab denied that the city had fallen and said fighting was taking place. Oguna said that al-Shabab has incurred "heavy losses" but that Kenyan forces have not yet had any injuries or deaths.
Residents in Kismayo contacted by The Associated Press said that Kenyan troops had taken control of the port but not the whole city.
Somalia's al Shabaab rebels retreated from the southern port of Kismayu overnight, the group and residents said, abandoning the last major bastion of their five-year revolt to an offensive by African Union and Somali government troops.
Mali was initially opposed but has now agreed to host the 3,000-strong force in the capital, Bamako.
After intense regional diplomatic efforts, the authorities have given the green light for a logistical base on the outskirts of the city, BBC West Africa correspondent Thomas Fessy reports.
Mali's interim President Dioncounda Traore was known to be unhappy about foreign troops being posted in the capital.
Citing a letter sent by Mali's interim leaders to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on September 18, [French Foreign Minister] Fabius said Mali had requested a U.N. Security Council resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter to mandate an international force "to help the Malian army to reconquer the occupied areas of northern Mali."
"The fact that we haven't been able to change the tone in Washington is disappointing," Obama said, in response to a question about his greatest failure. "The most important lesson I've learned is you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."
The X-37B is slated for its third launch in October, the Air Force said, but like its two orbital predecessors, the mission of the unmanned spacecraft remains shrouded in secrecy. The exact timing of the October spaceflight, dubbed Orbital Test Vechicle-3 or OTV-3, is also tentative.
Spanish political satire magazine El Jueves has published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover, soon after violent protests rocked the Muslim world over a U.S. film and French caricatures deemed insulting to Islam.
Anti-Americanism is a potent force in the Arab Middle East; polls show that in several countries — though not in Libya — U.S. prestige has fallen during the Obama administration. But in a region where power is up for grabs, it is only one of many competing agendas, and much evidence suggests that its champions are in the minority. That means the appropriate U.S. response is not to write off the region, or to cancel aid programs — as some in Congress propose — but to help moderate forces defeat and marginalize the extremists.
The U.S. Army is experimenting with Regionally Aligned Brigades (RABs). These are regular combat brigades that customize their training to prepare for likely service in a particular part of the world. The first brigade to be so trained (from the 1st Infantry Division in Fort Riley, Kansas) will be prepped for service in Africa. That means the brigade will be getting ready to work for AfriCom (Africa Command). That could include everything from sending teams to train troops, to joint training with African troops to peacekeeping or aiding in some catastrophe. If this experiment succeeds, the army will designate RABs for Southern (SouthCom in South America), Central (CentCom in the Middle East) and Pacific Commands (PacCom). RABs would be assigned to commands in numbers each of the commands feels is adequate.
What Kessler and the Obama White House do argue is a matter, not of fact, but of opinion — that it does not matter if Obama attends a daily intelligence meeting because he reads his PDB every day. Kessler compares Obama to former presidents going back to Reagan and Nixon and finds that “many did not have an oral briefing” – and that this means Obama has simply “chosen to receive his information in a different manner than his predecessor.” There are several problems with this.
First, Kessler ignores one giant difference between then and now: Sept. 11, 2001.
Chinese state media initially fanned the flames of hatred but then tried to tamp them down. The police gave the demonstrators free rein but also directed them to go home once they vented their anger.
This dual approach typifies Beijing's attitude. The Communist Party benefits from keeping anti-Japanese feeling simmering, since it derives its historic legitimacy from (supposedly) driving out the Japanese invaders and restoring China to its proper place in the world. But anger against Japan must also be kept within bounds, lest protesters blame China's leaders for not being more assertive with Tokyo.
As the insurgency began to develop in 2003, for example, a group of officers in the U.S. military's intelligence cell in Baghdad developed a plan to work with the Sunni tribes in the western province of Anbar that was never carried out. Col. Carol Stewart had met with a group of Anbari sheiks and devised a plan to bring them into the fold. The strife-ridden Ramadi and Fallujah areas would be designated a "tribal security zone." Tribal leaders would be authorized to police their own areas and given vehicles, ammunition, and money to pay their men, who would be dubbed the "Anbar Rangers." ...
The Red Team assumed that the only U.S. forces available were the ones that were already on hand, which meant that there was no way to blanket the country. So it proposed the concentration of forces in specific areas to effect a mini-surge. The command, for example, could use the beefed-up security for the upcoming December elections to establish an initial ink spot, perhaps in Baquba or in the Fallujah-Ramadi corridor. As more ink spots were created in 2006, they would be linked in a "Two Rivers campaign" to control the population centers along the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Iran would probably mine the straits if sanctions, or military action, halted all Iranian oil exports. Otherwise, mining the straits would be economic suicide. If Iran tried to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, it's more likely that effort would fail and the straits would remain open for non-Iranian oil. With the loss of their oil exports, Iran would find its remaining military forces being hunted down and destroyed day after day. Not only would Iranian oil exports be halted, but so would imports. Iran depends on imports of food (over 100,000 tons a week) and gasoline to keep its economy operating.
For an Iranian mining attempt to work they would have to get the mines onto the bottom of the straits and then prevent the rest of the world from clearing those mines. That would be difficult, as will Iranian attempts to plant additional mines. Such attempts would not be impossible as Iran has small submarines and speed boats along with sailors willing to carry out suicidal missions to deliver the mines. Even that may not be sufficient as this sort of fanaticism failed against the Americans in the 1980s. While Iran has worked to overcome their shortcomings, most of the solutions appear to be publicity stunts mainly meant to make the Iranian population feel better.
The Taliban attack on an air base in southern Afghanistan on Friday drew coverage for the way the insurgents cloaked themselves in U.S. army uniforms to gain a tactical advantage, but few have taken note of the historical proportions of the damage inflicted.
A report today in an official outlet of the Iranian regime claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, will meet with members of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ahmadinejad is currently in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, where these reported meetings will take place.
“Obama is not a foreign born socialist giving away free health care. That would be Jesus.”
Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid.
Ryan C. Crocker, the former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, offered his own perspective on the last tortured negotiations in the country where American troops fought for more than eight years. “I don’t think either government handled it as well as it could have been handled,” he said. “The U.S. side came to it late. You have got to leave a lot of latitude for difficulties, foreseen and unforeseen. On the Iraqi side, they should have said, ‘If you want this don’t try to determine our own procedures.’ ”
Did you smile or cheer when U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced Quantitative Easing III (and the markets went up)?
He just declared war on your job, and the whole Canadian economy.
Of course, so did the European Central Bank, the central bank of the Peoples' Republic of China and others.
All of them are engaged in the same practice. They're printing money. Gobs of it, in programs that have no end point.
Some are doing it to apply stimulus to revive their economies. Some are doing it to play extend-and-pretend games to hold their banks together.
For a country like Canada, with an economy in reasonably good shape, a government that's not out of control, banks that are healthy and dependent on exports, it's a declaration of war.
While managing a bilateral relationship is never easy, especially one as complex and multi-faceted as that between Canada and the U.S., sources close to the Canadian government stress that America totally did not break up with Canada, Canada broke up with it first. They point to the Obama administration’s politically motivated decision to block approval of the Keystone XL pipeline extension as an important irritant in the relationship, adding that America has been avoiding Canada in the halls for weeks.
A senior commander in Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard warned that Iran will target U.S. bases in the region in the event of war with Israel, raising the prospect of a broader conflict that would force other countries to get involved, Iranian state television reported Sunday.
The Taliban (and related groups, such as the even-more-fanatical Haqqani network), are far from defeated. They remain secure in their Pakistan sanctuaries, which a decade’s worth of American efforts have done nothing to dislodge. The Taliban even maintain many sanctuaries within Afghanistan itself, particularly in eastern Afghanistan, where the coalition has never had enough troops to do the kind of “clear, hold, and build” operations that have been conducted in the south.
From last winter to this summer, I've asked whether we were going to complete our phased offensive plan by shifting to the offensive in Regional Command East after our initial main effort in Regional Command South in 2010 and 2011. I worried that we weren't going through with it and were giving up the campaign to simply ease out of the war. ...
So we appear to be on a different sort of offensive than the one I anticipated. Casualties in Afghanistan are neither high enough to make it clear we are leading an offensive nor low enough to make it seem like we are avoiding combat.
Rather than taking the lead to knock back the Taliban, we are pushing the Afghans forward while we are still there. We're the training wheels, it seems, to give the Afghans confidence that when they take the lead after 2014 they can stand with our logistics help, intelligence help, and advice.
The Ground Self-Defense Force and the U.S. Marine Corps on Saturday held a joint drill on Guam aimed at bolstering their ability to defend remote islands.
North Korea plans to allow farmers to keep more of their produce in an attempt to boost agricultural output, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said, in a move that could boost supplies, help cap rising food prices and ease malnutrition.
More than a week after President Barack Obama's cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.
"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. "Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation."
Added Meacham, "It's not so cut and dried."
China's ambassador to Canada warned in remarks published on Saturday against allowing domestic politics to drive the Canadian government's decision on whether to approve Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC Ltd's proposed $15.1 billion takeover of Canadian oil producer Nexen Inc.
[The] anti-American protests that broke upon 20 nations this past week must be reckoned a grand personal failure for Barack Obama, and a case of hubris undone.
No American president before this one had proclaimed such intimacy with a world that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia. From the start of his administration, Mr. Obama put forth his own biography as a bridge to those aggrieved nations. He would be a "different president," he promised, and the years he lived among Muslims would acquit him—and thus America itself. He was the un-Bush.
The repercussions of declaring that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist assault on the United States would be extensive. For starters, it would raise questions about the Obama administration’s precautions in a volatile region and its preparedness for anti-US strikes in an area known to harbor Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist elements.
More broadly, it could call into question President Obama’s Middle East policy in the wake of the Arab awakening. Some Republican critics are already tarring the policy as too weak and dismissive of the threats that the region’s tumult presents.
[French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian] said the initiative for military intervention would come from African states, saying "clearly, that is being developed."
The French defense minister noted that logistical support means indirect support, sending material, but not men.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been considering sending 3,300 regional troops to help restore order in northern Mali.
"The leadership of the FSA has entered the liberated areas (of Syria) after the success of the plan that the FSA has worked on with other battalions and units in order to safeguard the free areas," Colonel Riad al-Asaad said in a video statement.
A rebel source close to Asaad said that the colonel arrived in Syria two days ago. "The plan is that all the leadership of the FSA will be based in Syria soon, either in Idlib province or Aleppo province," the source told Reuters, adding that the move would be completed within two weeks.
A German satirical magazine has entered the row over an anti-Islam Internet video made in the United States and the publication by a French weekly of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
Titanic presented the front page of its October edition showing a photo montage of Bettina Wulff -- wife of former German president Christian Wulff -- being embraced by a Muslim fighter wearing a turban and brandishing a dagger.
The headline says: "West Rises Up: Bettina Wulff Makes Film About Mohammed."
The magazine, which prints 100,000 copies a month, comes out on September 28.
Editor Leo Fischer said in an interview with weekly Der Spiegel: "Now Mohammed is on everybody's lips and we are reacting."
An Islamist militia was driven out of the city of Benghazi early on Saturday in a surge of protest against the armed groups that control large parts of Libya more than a year after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
A spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia said the group had evacuated its bases in Benghazi "to preserve security in the city".
In a dramatic sign of Libya's fragility, after sweeping through the base the crowd went on to attack a pro-government militia, believing them to be Islamists, triggering an armed response in which at least 11 people were killed and more than 60 wounded.
Ground forces fared little better [than their air force] in their efforts to conduct combined arms operations in 2006 southern Lebanon. Tanks were distributed piecemeal in two-vehicle teams and attached to infantry units whose commanders had, in some cases, no idea how to employ them appropriately. The vehicles often advanced at a dismounted infantryman’s pace to provide security for the foot soldiers. On other occasions, tanks sat stationary for hours during village-defense missions. Former armor officers in particular decried these as inappropriate employments of the Merkava; one noted that the only penetrations of tank armor were in the rear, the vehicles’ most vulnerable spot and one difficult to strike if they maneuvered properly. The arguments have merit. A stationary or slowly moving tank is far easier to engage than one moving at a rapid pace. Vehicles sitting in built-up areas are particularly vulnerable; the considerable concealment permits an enemy—one more familiar with the terrain than the infantry tasked with protecting the tank—opportunity to stalk its prey without detection. The consequences were severe, as noted by retired IDF Brigadier General Gideon Avidor: “Sixty-two percent of our tanks were hit. They were hit from villages that we ‘controlled,’ because we went in and just held a few houses rather than truly controlling the village.” The bold maneuvers of 1967, 1973, and 1982 were little in evidence at either the tactical or operational level of war. Overcaution and static defense of hilltop village positions replaced the sweeping actions that were once the symbol of Israeli ground operations.
