This is forwarded from USMC Corps Air Station,
Futemna, Okinawa.
17-Mar;
Quick note to let you know what's happening and a sincere, "thanks" for your note of concern...it's not taken for granted and appreciated greatly.
We worked all weekend...(Air Station is normally limited hours on Saturday's, closed Sunday's)...open 24/7 now in support...our guys/gals will be fairly ragged soon.
MEF pushed 8 Phrogs and 10 or more C-130s North to Iwakuni over the weekend. A Joint Task Force (JTF) was established by USFJ...led by Army 3-star; his deputy is the Division's CG...(our guy), a 2-star select.
31st MEU is inbound...MEB has moved forward as well...JTF will attempt to establish its HQ at Sendai Airport once they can get in there and clear some things....(but a third reactor just blew, not sure how close they get just now). Devastation truly is "atomic equivalent" in nature.... entire villages cities)..gone, "everyone" within their populations (in some cases 10,000)...missing or dead. Damage isn't isolated to just Sendai area....over 10 cities were taken "out"....gone, off the map, along with their people. I cannot write this without tears...it's that bad.
Helos from Oki, Korea, supporting...with as many fixed-wing as possible as well...all branches of service. Flew all weekend myself, along with our other OSA aircraft (3 jets, 1 C-12 from Oki), Two C-12s from Iwakuni, getting people up to Yokota (Tokyo area), Iwakuni, Atsugi, etc....
Most will move forward into the disaster area when able to support what will no doubt be a very long recovery process and HADR ops. My XO is flying today...(I was scheduled to, but was pulled off the sched to support other ops). XO is flying the Generals over the latest reactor explosion area...(above what's now becoming a nuclear cloud). USS Ronald Regan floated through the "cloud" yesterday and became contaminated to a degree. Helo's are doing the same, and have to be "decon'd" upon returning to base....rescuers and victims are becoming "exposed" to the radiation, and unfortunately for now, the end isn't in sight as to how bad the nuclear situation will get.
Thanks again Horn....I'll keep you updated when I can.
Appreciate the prayers for all....(wx's been good, but rain and snow are moving into today up there, as if the people weren't suffering enough). At times like this, all one can do is their best, and remember, God has a plan we sometimes don't understand, but have to trust, He's in control.
Semper Fi,
Posted by: Besoeker on the road again. ||
03/21/2011 02:46 ||
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#1
IIRC NET > circa 17 USN Sailors aboard the "RR" had to be treated for minor Nuc Contamination after the CVN sailed through the cloud.
* ION PEOPLE'S DAILY FORUM > SEOUL SAYS YELLOW DUST FROM CHINA CONTAINS RADIOACTIVE SUBSTANCES, as likley due to leaky mainland Chin Nucplants, + in addition to CHEM SMOG = POLLUTION FROM CHINESE FACTORIES IN BOTH CHINA + MONGOLIA.
IOW, CHINESE NUCPLANTS, GOODS FACTORIES = POOR FILTRATION SYS, ETC.???
For weeks as international pressure built against him, Muammar al-Gaddafi insisted again and again that the rebel forces that he was fighting in eastern Libya were linked to al-Qaeda. The mere fact that Gaddafi said it was seemingly enough for virtually all commentators to dismiss the claim out of hand. And in case doubts about the source were not enough, then we had the New York Times to send a reporter to Darnah [1], one of the eastern Libyan towns at the heart of the supposed Islamist uprising, and to assure us that there was nothing to see there, move along.
But the problem is that it is not only Muammar al-Gaddafi who has identified the coastal cities of Libyas eastern Cyrenaica region as al-Qaeda strongholds. The analysts of the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point have as well. The findings of the latter are based on the so-called Sinjar Records: captured personnel records identifying foreign combatants who joined al-Qaeda in Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007. (The full study is available online here [2]. The relevance of the study to the current situation in Libya was first pointed out by Andrew Exum in a blog post here
#1
It would be amusing if Obama, in choosing to intervene from 50,000 feet, removes Gaddafi only to see Islamists take over. I have always been against intervention because I saw Gaddafi as the lesser of two evils. Intervention without ground troops runs the risk of enabling a Taliban state with its own oil reserves. Some might argue that we already have that in Saudi Arabia. Not true. We're not concerned about the troglodyte tendencies of the population so long as their leaders don't allow anti-American terrorist groups to train on their soil for things like 9/11. We invaded Afghanistan not because they were (and are) 7th century troglodytes, but because they helped bin Laden kill 3000 Americans.
It's not all bad. The Sudan is an Islamist oil-producing state and it's not sponsoring* terrorists to strike at US targets. The problem is that the Sudan wasn't a leading source of al Qaeda-ists striking at US troops in Iraq. Libya was. Whatever they put in Libya's water, it seems to be - at the present time - a real font of Muslim revanchists of the kind who are willing to kill large numbers of people to make their point.
* One could argue, of course, that Sudan was relatively quiescent on the jihadi front internationally because it was fending off threats of internal secession with the animist, Christian and racially-black south.
#2
Sudan was relatively quiescent on the jihadi front internationally because it was fending off threats of internal secession with conducting jihad against the animist, Christian and racially-black south.
A constitutional referendum was held in Egypt on 19 March 2011, following the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
The proposed constitutional reforms include a limitation to at most two four-year terms for the president, judicial supervision of elections, a requirement for the president to appoint a deputy, a commission to draft a new constitution following the parliamentary election, and easier access to presidential elections, either via 30,000 signatures from at least 15 provinces, 30 members of a chamber of the legislature, or nomination by a party holding at least a seat in the legislature.
Opponents to the new constitution: An opposition coalition (including presidential candidates Amr Moussa and Mohamed ElBaradei, the New Wafd Party, the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution, the National Progressive Unionist Party, the el-Ghad Party and the Egyptian Arab Socialist Party) criticised the proposed amendments as not enough and that the new constitution needs to be written immediately to regulate the process and the requirements for members of parliament. They also said that the president's power was not limited enough under the proposed changes.
The Christian Church was also opposed to the amendments. As did the reformist faction of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Proponents of the new constitution: The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi movement think that the amendments are suitable for the time being and that the situation in Egypt is not suitable to write a new constitution at the moment.
They have suggested that Article 2 of the constitution (which states that Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence) will be removed or altered if the proposed changes are not approved even though the constitutional amendment committee said that Article 2 will not be touched.
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a very popular TV theologian on al-Jazeera, with some 40 million viewers, advised Egyptians to approve the referendum. The National Democratic Party (NDP), Mubarak's old party, also have asked their base to vote Yes.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the NDP are also perceived to be in favor of an approval because early elections could benefit them the most as they already have the biggest grassroots support while smaller and newly-founded parties would have little time to prepare for elections in the planned schedule.
One of the more interesting deletions in the new constitution is the elimination of Article 179:
"The Socialist Public Prosecutor shall be responsible for taking the measures which secure the peoples rights, the safety of the society and its political regime, the preservation of the socialist achievements and commitment to socialist behavior. The law shall prescribe his other competences. He shall be subject to the control of the Peoples Assembly in accordance with what is prescribed by law."
In any event, a completely new constitution is expected to be drawn after the elections, by the new parliament.
It's rumoured that Khamis Qaddafi a son of Daffy, one of those covered in this article has just died of burns. "I summon my blue-eyed slaves anytime it pleases me. I command the Americans to send me their bravest soldiers to die for me. Anytime I clap my hands a stupid genie called the American ambassador appears to do my bidding. When the Americans die in my service their bodies are frozen in metal boxes by the US Embassy and American airplanes carry them away, as if they never existed. Truly, America is my favorite slave." King Fahd in 1993
#4
I remember that quote. The problem with it is that no one knows where it comes from. The earliest mention I see on Google is Feb 1, 2001. If Fahd actually said that, he is uncommonly generous to his slaves. He paid $40b to the US for Desert Storm, dwarfing Kuwait's $10b and Japan's $10b, in a war where we lost just north of 100 men, and needed to fight to prevent Iraq from gaining control of Saudi Arabia and perhaps unifying Arabia. Meanwhile, Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us $1.2t and 6000 dead, and no one remotely thinks those countries will give us any money for our trouble. Europe cost us 400K men dead during WWI and WWII, and 50% of our GDP for 4 years, and I don't recall Europeans paying us for our operating expenses. In fact, a substantial chunk of the continent thinks we're war criminals for invading Iraq and Afghanistan. If Fahd's hefty recompense for our relatively light losses during Desert Storm are anything to go by, if we had lost anything near the casualties of WWII, we would have had a friend for life.
#5
I think the ultimate source is this website. It's pretty anti-semitic. My guess - from looking at some of its contents - is that it's either put up by leftists unhappy about Desert Storm or shilling for bin Ladenist or Khomeinist interests.
#9
That's strange Zhang Fei. The link was a google PDF quick view. Works perfectly for me.
Anyhow, here's the original PDF link.
I got it fine, thanks. I'm just referring to the speculative stuff on this guy's home page: http://www.markswatson.com/ . On the assumption that he did not hear the remark firsthand from King Fahd, it may be worthwhile to see what other things he believes, to see if he's a worthwhile source. Based on the items on his web page, I think he's a garden-variety conspiracy theorist. The Pakistani Patriot is basically an Islamist website, so that's also kind of questionable.
#1
Like many others, she [Samantha Power] was frustrated that the cause of preventing genocide had been undermined by George W. Bush's unilateral intervention in Iraq, which discredited U.S. military action abroad and made building coalitions to stop war crimes seemingly impossible.
What the heck page is she reading off of? Quite a bit of history revision. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was backed by many U.N. resolutions, support of Congress (The October 11, 2002 resolution that authorized President Bush to use force in Iraq passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House by 296 to 133), and a coalition of willing allies. Moreover, as I recall, a no-fly zone and an embargo were in place for sometime prior to the 2003 war which had little effect on Saddam.
The standard leftist description is something like "illegal and immoral war based on lies blah blah Cheney blah blah Halliburton blah blah Abu Ghraib, so Ms. Power probably thinks she's going easy on W by merely saying the war was unilateral.
Speaking of W, I hope that he and Laura are sitting in front of the TV laughing their rears off at Bambi's attempts to conduct foreign policy. But I suspect they're both just hoping that all our guys (and gals) come back safe. They define the term "class."
Posted by: Matt ||
03/21/2011 17:39 Comments ||
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#4
he and Laura are sitting in front of the TV laughing their rears off at Bambi's attempts to conduct foreign policy. Laughing just to keep from cryin', more likely.
#5
Before the election, Samantha Power also suggested that the US might have to "occupy" Israel to impose a peace settlement. Tells you all you need to know about the quality of her thought.
[The Nation (Nairobi)] Most Arab nations slapped Iran's diminutive PresidentMahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad's face last week.
Within days, they neutralised one of his trump cards, placed him in a Shakespearian "to do or not to do" situation, and exposed his hypocrisy.
The uprisings against Libya's Muammar Qadaffy and Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa especially triggered the backlash against Ahmadinejad.
Of course, most Arab nations, especially the Sunni-dominated one, have always been wary of Iran. They got an opportunity to make concrete the wariness.
Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has made denunciation of Western nations' real and imagined imperialism a trump card.
To him, Western nation's sole business is to dominate and exploit other nations.
In the Middle East, Western nations simply want to take over petroleum. Hence, in concert with Ahmadnejad's bogeyman, "the Zionist regime" the West constantly interfere in internal affairs of nations there.
What Ahmadinejad doesn't say is that nations, including Iran, either singly or jointly, have interests in various parts of the world. Inevitably, singly, or jointly, they poke noses into other nations' affairs.
For historical reasons and a largely gullible citizenry--especially when "War against Islam" laces propaganda-- Ahmadinejad's message plays well in the Mohammedan world. The fervent the faithful, the firmer the hold.
As Colonel Qadaffy intensified attacks against disaffected citizens, the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Iran's neighbours, fired the first salvo at Ahmadnejad's trump card.
They supported a no-fly zone over Libya. Britain and La Belle France were the leading proponents of the idea.
Soon after, the 22-nation Arab League, with three exceptions, followed suit. On Friday, the UN Security Council declared a no-fly zone and authorised international attacks against pro-Qadaffy forces.
A chagrined Ahmadinejad is now watching "imperialist" forces blow up targets in Libya, possibly including Qadaffy's famous tent.
Then came Bahrain. Early last week, King Al-Khalifa had enough of demonstrations. He got help from the Gulf council. The Sunni-dominated Soddy Arabia led the rescue force.
Ahmadinejad's biases for Shiite Mohammedans are well known. Now he had Sunni rulers clobbering Shiites next door.
Were he to send troops to help, the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain will cook up a "threat." Iran would get a bruising. For Ahmadinejad, "not to do" seems to be the only option.
Lamely, Iran called the Gulf action an "invasion." Yet the member countries have a defence pact. Ahmadinejad said regional nations hold the United States answerable for the "invasion" as if the Gulf nations aren't regional.
Since the uprisings in the Arab world erupted in Tunisia in January, Ahmadinejad has been effusive with praise.
Ostensibly, he saw the will of the people prevailing. Yet Iranian forces have ruthlessly suppressed protests that have punctuated Ahmadinejad's rule.
Yes, other peoples can protest to express their will, but not the Iranians. That's hypocrisy par excellence.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2011 00:00 ||
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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.
Mahmoud 
