Yeah, it the Freepers, but it's funny as h-e-double-toothpicks. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/06/2009 18:15 ||
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#1
Did you still contain a consideration that you are old or callow? I'm ineluctable that not, the mechanism is that you are average, but people nearby are either old or callow, and that's chance all the time. What did you regard as with reference to retired people when you was 12. And you consideration that you've got to do so much previous getting retired after you reached 44. But you should get that the the most prominent mechanism is that as earlier you start retirement planning, the happiest pep you'll get after getting retired.
#2
This is John Bolton so there is a good mind behind the ideas but neither Jordan or Egypt want the Palestinians. If I recall correctly Jordan had to kick the trouble makers out around 20 years ago.
January 6, 2009: The Israeli economy grew by 4.1 percent in 2008. The Palestinian economy in Gaza didn't. Hamas blames Israel for the economic collapse in Gaza, because a blockade intended to keep out weapons, for use against Israel, also keeps out other goods. Israel applies economic pressure in much the same way Hamas does (by crippling economic growth in southern Israel with rocket attacks.) But Hamas and Israel have different priorities. For Israel it's survival and growth. For Hamas it's the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a worldwide Islamic religious dictatorship. From a distance, it's easy to ignore the goals of Hamas, but the closer you get, the uglier, and more lethal, Hamas becomes. For example, Egypt has remained very hostile to Hamas, and any ceasefire that does not curb the organizations violent behavior. A recent poll of Israelis shows 95 percent of Jewish citizens support the operations against Hamas. Those are numbers no politician in a democracy can ignore.
The Israeli Air Force has been launching about 90 attacks a day on targets in Gaza. Smart bombs and guided missiles have been used extensively. For the last two years, the Israeli Army has been developing new tactics and equipment for fighting Hamas and Hezbollah type gunmen in urban areas. The Israelis have built training areas, with dense urban construction, and run many of its ground troops through special exercises. How well the new tactics and training are will be seen in the next week or so. The new tactics are meant to minimize civilian casualties, while enabling Israeli troops to quickly move through the area and kill or capture enemy personnel and equipment. Reservist units being called up, that have not gone through the special training, are being sent to the new training centers for at least a few days of instruction on the new tactics. These new methods, while officially secret, apparently involve some new fighting tactics, and lots of electronic warfare. Hamas has had to operate with both cell phones and landline communications down. In addition, their walkie-talkies are sometimes jammed, and apparently listened to carefully by Israeli electronic warfare troops. This is causing command and coordination problems for Hamas fighters.
In the north, the military has warned civilians that Hezbollah may begin firing rockets if Hamas looks like it is taking too much damage (that is, being defeated in the court of public opinion.) So far, about 550 Palestinians have died, and seven Israelis (including three soldiers killed in a friendly fire incident).
Hamas cannot win when fighting Israel, and is determined to win an Information War. That means getting the maximum number of Palestinian civilians killed or wounded and getting images of that onto TV worldwide. While Israel is keeping reporters out of the combat zone (since December 29th), Hamas is not, and reporters from Moslem nations are eager to tell the story as Hamas wants it told (you get expelled from the area, or worse, if you don't, but that's a story that won't get reported until long after this is all over.) Getting enough diplomatic pressure on Israel to force a ceasefire allows Hamas to re-arm and increase its attacks on Israel. You only have to look at the Arab language message coming from Hamas through all this. The destruction of Israel and extermination of the Jews is what Hamas is all about. They make no secret of it, but do play it down in their non-Arabic press releases. That's because Hamas knows that, by playing the victim, they get more sympathy (and threats of sanctions against Israel) from the West, and mode aid (cash, volunteers) from the Islamic world. Hamas believes last year was a victory for them, as terrorist attacks killed 36 Israelis in 2008, up from 13 in 2007. Most of these attacks were not the work, directly, of Hamas, but rather West Bank based terrorists or Israeli Arabs caught up in the "destroy Israel" movement. Although most Israeli Arabs are better off than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East, many still back calls for the destruction of Israel, because it's (for most Arabs) the right thing to do.
Calls for a ceasefire are going unanswered because Hamas and Israel cannot agree on the terms. Israel wants an end to the smuggling from Egypt and an international police force ensuring that no more rockets or mortar shells are fired into southern Israel. Hamas will not accept this, and is urging that Israel stop bombing targets in Gaza, and get its troops out of Gaza. In return, Hamas offers a ceasefire like the one that ended in December (fewer rockets fired into southern Israel, but no restrictions on the smuggling from Egypt). Arab diplomats are demanding acceptance of the Hamas rules, while European diplomats are urging Israel to "be reasonable".
Israeli forces have seized sparsely populated areas in northern and southern Gaza and by Monday morning were dug in on the edges of Gaza City, which has been isolated and surrounded.
As of this writing, Hamas is trying to draw IDF forces into the cities of Gaza, and the IDF is trying to coax Hamas combatants out into the open. While Hamas is trying to pull the IDF in, the IDF currently has the time to decide where and what to strike. It's up to the IDF to decide which bait to take and which not.
But there is a question as to how long the forces can stay in their current static, defensive position, which leaves Hamas the initiative to bait the IDF. Once the IDF takes the initiative and attacks, it will force Hamas to "shape" its forces accordingly. The longer the IDF waits outside the cities the greater Hamas's power in shaping the battle.
There are several ways Hamas will try baiting the IDF into the urban areas. For one, it will attempt to kidnap soldiers, which would require rescue missions. Sniper fire is another form of bait, as the sources of fire have to be taken out. At present, snipers are being killed with anti-tank rockets and helicopter fire. But once they fire from civilian buildings inside an urban setting, these methods will become tricky.
Hamas will eventually fire mortars at troop concentrations outside the cities from within built-up areas and the IDF will then have to direct fire at the source of the sniper or mortar fire, which would ideally be done by tank, artillery, or helicopter, meaning from the outside.
In short, each side is trying to "shape" the other to suit its advantages and mask its weaknesses.
Further movement into the heart of the built-up areas would mean deadly urban warfare, replete with house-to-house fighting in crowded streets and alleyways familiar to Hamas's 20,000 fighters. Hamas has booby-trapped the streets of Gaza cities with explosives placed along routes and at the entrances to buildings.
This will be devastating for ground forces walking into that kind of area and will cause most of the IDF's casualties. Hamas has also dug tunnels throughout the major cities and will carry out much of its fighting through them. A target seen in one building could disappear through a tunnel and appear in another building. Hamas combatants will appear and disappear through tunnels, engage on several streets and building levels, and it will seem like there are more of them than there actually are.
In a densely populated urban setting such as Gaza City, there are a lot of hiding places for snipers to shoot from; suicide bombers can come running up from everywhere and even fall onto troops from buildings. There is not much a force can do about that, except for shooting anything that moves.
Any Gazan approaching a force will be suspected of being a shooter or suicide bomber. Many members of Hamas's military wing will not be wearing their uniforms. These two factors will make extreme prejudice on the part of the IDF very difficult.
Hamas may use stone-throwing children as shields, from behind which they'll fire at IDF units. Past experience has shown that civilians caught in the hell of urban warfare will try to run away, which means a lot of movement on the streets and much confusion about the identity of combatants and civilians.
If the IDF is to perform what Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu calls a "root canal and not just a filling" on Hamas's terror infrastructure, troops will have to go into the cities and take on the hardcore of Hamas's military wing. The IDF believes it has a good chance of inflicting damage on Hamas fighters inside the cities, as the military's training over the past two years has included testing fighting techniques - both in simulation and actual fighting - whereas Hamas fighters have not faced tough ground opposition in recent years.
Ten days of aerial bombardment have served to disrupt Hamas military coordination and the ground operation has severed Hamas military units from each other. Unlike Hizbullah, Hamas in Gaza has no territorial depth, and will find it hard to resupply its stocks of weaponry. The IDF is much better coordinated, its troops are trained in urban combat, and their marksmanship has improved radically in the past two years. The IDF has a range of aircrafts that provide ground units with tactical information as well as supporting fire.
Even though Hamas technically has superior numbers in the cities, the IDF can bring to bear a more effective fighting force. Technically, the IDF is invading Hamas territory, not occupying the Gaza Strip, so its operations there are offensive raids, whereas Hamas is playing defense. Since the aim is not to control the population of Gaza and occupy territory, IDF units can make aggressive incursions and retreat to staging areas.
This was not the case in Stalingrad, where each side was trying to take and hold territory. An occupying force needs to defend garrisons, which guerrilla fighters can attack in various ways [circa First Lebanon War].
There are two different types of urban combat: military-to-military and guerrilla. In the former, anything goes, including the use of artillery to bomb buildings, massive use of armor and indiscriminate aerial bombardment.
An example of this is the battle of Stalingrad. Gaza will not be Stalingrad. In Gaza, the IDF's armored units will become susceptible to anti-tank rockets in the narrow streets and tight corridors, which can easily disable the slow-moving machines. Pulling men out of burning tanks and APCs becomes more difficult under a hail of bullets and RPGs. During the Second Lebanon War, units would stop their advance to rescue and evacuate wounded comrades.
The units in Gaza have been trained to first suppress the source of fire and only then deal with wounded, so as not to put more soldiers into death zones already created by the initial burst of fire. In Gaza, the IDF will mostly be using infantry without armored support. Before taking over buildings, soldiers will have to sweep them for bombs. The main goal is to minimize the amount of infantry within the streets. The IDF will try damage the enemy as much as it can "from the outside" - using suppressing fire from tanks and helicopters.
Once the troops enter dense urban spaces to carry out missions, they will be operating in an extremely sensitive environment, requiring careful command and control abilities and specific fighting techniques.
They will have to work slowly but move quickly, and be very aggressive. Both sides aim to cause the other a maximum amount of casualties. So far, the Israeli public has displayed much more sensitivity to soldiers' deaths than Gazans have to Hamas combat dead. The commanders will have to learn their routes and know exactly which buildings they are to take.
They will need to know their environment well so that when the teams disperse nobody gets detached from the force. Most of the work for the commander is coordinating movement and fire. A company or platoon commander has to know where his soldiers are at all times and make sure there is no friendly fire, which is the most difficult part.
The problem with urban areas is that all IDF's technological advantage will be largely nullified. Everything becomes close-quarters battle. On the streets of Gaza it is easy to be surprised by the enemy, because targets cannot be seen properly. With technology diminished, training and technique come to the fore. Effective urban guerrilla fighting comes down to movement on the streets using cover fire from several different positions, and the IDF has been training intensively for this.
A force heading towards a target will want to enter its theater of operations through several different streets, so that each part of the force can have cover fire from the other. If one force is stuck another one can outflank the enemy.
In urban fighting cover fire is of supreme importance. Every corner wall that a soldier passes he momentarily loses eye contact with the rest of his force. These are perilous seconds.
Command and control becomes key and here again the IDF has been putting a lot of emphasis in its training over the past two years. In an urban area a commander will not always be able to see the troops he is controlling. Each movement has to be extremely well coordinated to avoid friendly fire, which is also a very big concern in an urban area.
The trick is to work slowly and systematically.
Units cannot allow themselves to be drawn into traps, which is exactly what Hamas is trying to do. The forces cannot work too slowly, however, as the threat to their safety increases in proportion to the amount of time they remain in the theater of operations.
#1
"Stalingrad" > HMMMMMMMM, IMO NO. Again, MUSLIM/ISLAMIC MIL HISTORY = there will likely be a ROUND TWO, etc. AS PER THE BATTLE/WAR FOR IRAQ BTWN ISLAMISTS + US-ALLIED.
I'm a'thinkin more of DAMASCUS ANDOR BASRA FOR A "STALINGRAD" SCENARIO, espec iff and when the ISLAMIST-HIDDEN IMAM/MAHDI choses to makes an Appearance during the OBAMA ADMIN 2009-2010, NLT 2012, VEE IRAN NUCLEARIZATION.
* 2012-2016 OBAMA SECOND? TERM > POSSIBLE, BUT MY GUT SAYS IT'LL BE TOO LATE FOR THE JIHAD + IRAN BY THEN.
#3
I would imagine that working after dark with night-vision goggles is one of the best technological advantages available to the IDF. I hope they make use of the advantage.
As the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip entered its 10th day, Hamas has begun sending conflicting messages regarding its intentions. These contradictory messages, Palestinian political analysts said, reflected the state of confusion in Hamas and raised questions as to who was calling the shots in the Gaza Strip. While some Hamas leaders have been openly signaling their readiness to accept a new cease-fire, others are still calling for pursuing the fight against Israel "until victory."
What is clear is that Hamas is now desperate for a lull in the fighting. But it is also eager to score some kind of a "military victory" before a cease-fire is reached. Hamas can't accept a new cease-fire without having proved to the Arab and Muslim masses that it was capable of making Israel pay a heavy price for its military offensive. Hamas is fighting for its survival and its leaders know that their collapse would constitute a severe blow not only to the movement, but also to its patrons in Teheran and Damascus.
"It's hard to tell who's in charge in the Gaza Strip these days," said a Ramallah-based analyst. "Hamas's political leaders have disappeared after throwing away their mobile phones. No one knows exactly what Hamas wants."
The analyst said that according to his sources, the embattled Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip were no longer in direct contact with their colleagues in Syria. "The political leaderships of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Damascus have been disconnected from each other," he added. "I doubt if there's any coordination between them." He pointed out that the decision to dispatch two senior Hamas envoys to Cairo for talks about a cease-fire came as a surprise to the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. The two envoys are based in Damascus and report directly to Khaled Mashaal, he said.
Another Ramallah-based political analyst said that the political leadership of Hamas has given the movement's armed wing, Izaddin al-Kassam, full freedom to take any measures it deems necessary to prevent the collapse of the Hamas regime. "The gunmen on the streets are now in charge," he noted. "This is a dangerous situation, because they don't report to anyone at the top. This has created a state of anarchy and confusion."
Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip said on Monday that the general feeling was that Hamas does not exist any longer as a governing body. "All their government institutions have been destroyed," said a Gaza City reporter. "The Hamas leaders are now behaving like al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden and [his deputy] Ayman Zawahiri. Their only public appearances are through recorded messages aired on Arab TV stations."
On Monday, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar made his first public appearance in a previously recorded message broadcast on a Hamas TV station. Zahar's appearance was reminiscent of similar appearances made by al-Qaida terror leaders. Until two weeks ago, Zahar, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Interior Minister Said Siam - the three top Hamas leaders - were still sleeping in their homes and moving around freely and fearlessly. Until then, they were also frequent guests on various talk shows in the Arab media - especially Al-Jazeera, which is being accused by some Palestinians as serving as a mouthpiece for Hamas.
Sources close to Hamas said that in light of the new reality, where the Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip have virtually vanished, the armed wing was receiving its instructions from the movement's leadership in Syria. The sources said that Mashaal, the Damascus-based leader of Hamas, was in direct contact with commanders of Izzadin Kassam in different parts of the Gaza Strip. "There's a vacuum in the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip," they said. "The Hamas leaders in Damascus are now in charge. There's no one to talk to in the Gaza Strip."
The Israeli attack on Gaza is likely timed to coincide with the February elections in Israel and this month's inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama in anticipation of launching a comprehensive Middle East peace plan. The ultimate goal of the Gaza invasion is to create the conditions to introduce international troops into Palestine. Part of the purpose is to prop up the regime of President Mahmoud Abbas and allow the Palestinian leader to extend his mandate across all of Palestine. By calling for international military support, Abbas is seeking to end both the violence and the Israeli occupation at once. The hope is that he will re-establish his legitimacy and provide the grounds for a two-state solution as prescribed in President George Bush's 2002 UN Security Council Resolution 1397, "of two States, Israel and Palestine, living side by side within secure and recognized borders," a proposition openly rejected by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, and Likud, the Israeli right-wing party.
The idea for an international military intervention was first proposed by Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel under presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush 43, in a 2003 Foreign Affairs article, "A Trusteeship for Palestine?" The main idea is to replace the Israeli occupation with an international force that would train and guide the Palestinians into self-rule, while ensuring the security of both Israel and Palestine.
Indyk reiterated the plan in the summer of 2007 soon after Hamas took over Gaza. In a follow up to the Foreign Affairs article, he proposes the international force "partner" with the Palestinian Authority - rather than replace it as he had initially proposed - in an effort to extend control over all of Palestine, including Gaza. He argues that Hamas' control of Gaza does not undermine the trusteeship's long-term goal, but provides an opportunity to isolate Hamas (Fatah did stand down the majority of its troops), suffocate it (through the siege), and then dismantle it (following an invasion, which we are tragically witnessing today).
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
01/06/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Lemme guess who's gonna have to bankroll this 'International Force'.
AND take all the bullsh*t for it.
AND listen to all the bellyaching from the left end.
AND put up with the Paleostains.
AND be vilified for all our efforts.
#4
An international force comprised of Iraqi Kurds might be good. They would be Sunni and trustworthy which is a rare combination (and Shia Kurds could be ready for action on Israeli's northern border if needed, a direct threat to Syria).
Plus it would give Iraq some high profile international prestige.
At least 30 people were reportedly killed and 53 wounded in an explosion in a UN-run school in the town of Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinians. The IDF issued a statement saying the school grounds were used by terrorists to fire mortar shells at the troops. According to the IDF, among the dead were members of a Hamas launching cell, including operatives Immad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar.
The infantrymen returned mortar shell fire into the school grounds, the army said. Defense officials told The Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school triggered the secondary explosions which killed scores of Palestinians on the site.
This may be two weeks old, but, we should be afraid, very afraid. It's an astonishing story. This seemingly trustworthy guy named Bernard Madoff was supposedly investing something on the order of $50 billion for some of America's richest people, pretended it was earning gobs of interest, actually used the principal of some to pay others wanting redemptions -- and lost practically everything.
Here's a more astonishing story. Our seemingly benevolent federal government has taken from the public enormous sums of money for Social Security and Medicare, made it seem it was putting much of it in a trust fund, actually ran up stratospheric sums in unfunded liabilities and is now faced with major perplexities.
There's a close but imperfect analogy here, because both Madoff and the government have engaged in something approximating a Ponzi or pyramid scheme in which the money of new investors pays off old investors until finally there's nothing left, and everyone goes home broke.
The pretense used to be that when you coughed up your payroll tax, you were actually putting money into a personal Social Security account for your own future benefit. What's actually happened, of course, is that the taxpayer dollars go to pay the immediate benefits of today's recipients, whose numbers are about to vastly increase, while the surplus magically disappears into the supposed trust fund.
If you conceive of a trust fund as actual assets held someplace, there is no such thing, just a government obligation to repay the money someday. The surplus theoretically holds down deficits and debts so that its retrieval through borrowing won't be devastating, but, in fact, our spendthrift government has been racking up record deficits even after using up the surplus dollars, and what's facing us is a fiscal doomsday.
According to Heritage Foundation analysts, the unfunded liabilities for both Social Security and Medicare add up to more than $46 trillion, some 50 times this year's approved bailout funds, and the equivalent of having to come up with money comparable to the bailout billions "every single year in perpetuity." That figure of $46 trillion, Heritage calculates, is more than all the taxes collected since the nation's founding. The prospect is devastating tax increases or scrapping everything else the government does or facing economy-wrecking deficits or some combination of the three.
The Madoff-and-entitlements analogy does break down on several points. For one, it's not the intended entitlement recipients who may suffer so much as the taxpayers both rich and not-so-rich having to make up for the lost money. For another, it was possible to ferret out what was happening as our entitlements programs got us into a jam. While Heritage and other think tanks would like the government to be more "transparent" about the entitlements issue, the facts exist for those willing to dig. Madoff's clients apparently had no way to get at the truth.
And while there may be no way for those who invested with Madoff to get more than a smidgen of their money back if any at all, there are solutions to the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls. For instance, you can change the index establishing future Social Security payments so that they do not increase beyond the cost of living, helping to make a major difference in payouts. Fixing Medicare is more complicated, but doable if the government acts soon. Right now, most baby boomers are contributors to the systems, but will soon start becoming recipients in huge numbers, a change that will make repairs exceedingly tough.
Two things you don't want to do -- start new entitlements until we've fixed the old ones, or try to solve the entitlement problems just with more tax money. That would be about the same as Madoff trying to get out of his hole by seeking more investors.
#2
The idea was tossed around a few weeks ago that the govt. might try to lay their hands on private retirement accounts some day. That discussion died down quite quickly, but eventually they'll start frantically looking for money to lay their hands on for the 'greater good'.
That would really suck to have your 401k nationalized, then get bumped from any benefits because your estate is worth more than they feel is your fair share, which is another item of scuttlebutt in the financial world.
Essentially, if your estate was worth more than the threshold amount, say $1Million, you'd be ineligible to collect benefits. I believe they will, in their death throes, enact something like this, congressional retirement accounts excluded of course.
#3
They'll start means testing Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid soon enough, with the result that people like me will get nothing back. After that they'll add a surplus-income tax. But I don't believe they'll actually touch IRAs and 401-Ks -- any legislator involved in that would not return in the next election.
#4
TW
Remember that upwards to 50% pay no taxes. These people are probably not concerned about 401Ks 201Ks or my 101K. When you add the left wing loons that know how to except their 401Ks, we lose.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
It's an astonishing story. This seemingly trustworthy guy named Bernard Madoff was supposedly investing something on the order of $50 billion for some of America's richest people, pretended it was earning gobs of interest, actually used the principal of some to pay others wanting redemptions -- and lost practically everything.
