Archive for August 5th, 2012
Highest expensive Cheat War Game: Executed in Iraq, failed, at a cost of $2 trillion
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 5, 2012
Highest expensive War Game: Executed in Iraq, failed, at a cost of $2 trillion
General Paul Van Ripple (The Rip) is a retired from the Marines Corps. In the spring of 2000, Rip is called in by the Pentagon to head the Red Team of the Millennium Challenge ’02, a War Game in the planning that will cost $250 million by August 2002 as the US Blue Team lost the war game.
The Red Team in the scenario is a “rogue” military commander (not satisfying the interest of the US government policies) and who enjoys considerable power base from strong religious and ethnic loyalties. The Red Baron is harboring and sponsoring 4 terrorist organizations, he is a virulent anti-US and threatening to engulf the entire Persian/Arabic Gulf region in war.
The US Blue Team is called the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM).
Marine Corps, air force, army, and navy units at various military bases in the US stood by to enact the commands of Red and Blue Teams’ brass. For example, if a Blue Team commander orders the firing of a missile at target, or launching a plane…a missile would occasionally be fired live, or one of the 42 separate computer models would simulate the order-action. The simulated firing was so precise that the war room staff couldn’t tell that it wasn’t real…This war game was to last about 15 days when D-Day was announced and the Red Team received the ultimatum to desist from rogue behaviors…
Specialists monitored and recorded every conversation and a computer kept track of every single bullet fired and every tank deployment… The War game was meant to be a full dress rehearsal for actual war against Iraq of Saddam Hussein.
The Pentagon wanted to test a set of new and “radical” ideas about how to go to battle: Conventional war would rarely be fought from now on. Two armies fighting it out in an open battlefield as during Operation Desert Storm of 1991 was not realistic: Conflict is to be diffuse, actions taking place in cities and engaging economic, social, cultural dimensions.
A JFCOM analyst said: “The decisive factor is how you take apart your adversary systems. We are going after war-making capabilities, connected to the economic and cultural systems, to personal relationships, and to understanding the links among all these systems…”
The head commander of the Blue Team was General William F. Kernan who said: “Blue Team has the means and tools to interrupt people’s capabilities, to influence the national will of the enemy, to disrupt all communication systems, and to take out the power grids…”
Blue Team was not to be waging any battle under uncertainties: All data, information, and pieces of intelligence will be available and accessible within seconds before making any decision…The Blue Team enjoys the full benefit of high-powered satellites, sophisticated sensors, super computers…in order to lift any fog before any decision…
Blue Team brass was endowed with much greater intellectual, military hardware, and communication systems, and human resources than the Red Team could even dream of. JFCOM was to apply the Operational Net Assessment (ONA) decision-making software, a tool meant to break the enemy down into series of systems and create a matrix of interrelations among all the systems, and evaluate the critical most vulnerable links in the array of systems (social, political, economical, military, chain of commands…)
Blue Team hoarded a tool called Effects-Based Operations capable of extending a comprehensive, real-time map (Common Relevant Operational Picture) of any combat situation… Blue Team was given a tool for joint interactive planning…
In short, Blue Team had an overwhelming advantage in instant information and pieces of intelligence gathered around the US and the World…
The Red Team was to make do with lower quality weapons, communication systems that rogue States dictators possess.
The Rip understood that he will have to forego electronic communication systems and relied on motorcycle carriers to transmit messages and orders…
The Rip strategy is never to overburden his field commanders with irrelevant frequent orders and information…The field commander cognitive power was not to be disrupted in the heat of battle and has to rely on his expert knowledge and split-second decisions acquired from long years of doing this business…
The Rip is in command but out of control during the battle: He gives his general intention and strategy and let the brass do their jobs…
The Rip told his staff: “We will not use the Blue Team terminology. and I don’t want to hear that word “Effects” or ONT…We will use our wisdom, experience, and good judgment…No need to waste time explaining your decision or meeting to discuss on critical decisions…”
The field commanders were to decide and take risks under uncertainties
The Rip dispatched hundreds of small rafts and boats to locate Blue Team war ships.
The Rip opted to preempt the first attack planned by Blue Team and fired thousands of missiles from all directions, sinking 16 ships and assassinating rulers of host US allied States…
Two days after the Red Team demolished the US fleet, the rules of the games were changed:
1. The ships were resurrected from the bottom of the sea: The Red Team missiles could not be that precise…
2. The assassinated head of allied States and their commanders were of no consequence to the war in progress…
3. The Red Team second in command was to receive orders from the Program Director to give the Red Team brass different set of instructions to facilitate the landing of the Blue Team marines. The second round was all scripted to permit Blue Team to win the game. These crazy tactics of the Rip cannot be conceived by any rogue commander and thus should not be considered!
And the Blue Team had won the game, with flying color and under certainty in all its decisions…
Maybe the Millennium Challenge is currently being revisited (against Iran) and the offensive of the Rip taken seriously as strong possibilities. Make no mistake: Iran and serious national resistance forces (Hezbollah) do read foreign sources and are updated on the latest policies and motivations…
Logically and rationally, the US has no interest in preempting any major war, not with Russia and China against a war on Iran.
However, the main objective of War Games is to instill a mind-fix among the military brass that the game should be tested live, at any cost and regardless of rational reasons.
I bet the military, Corporation America, and the financial multinationals want Mitt Romney to represent the “interest of America”. Why?
The economy is bad and unemployment pretty high. The natural resolution to the problem is a preemptive war to absorb all the unemployed lower middle-class in the US and get the Federal Bank to infuse vast liquidity in the market…
Note 1: Article inspired from a chapter in “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell
Note 2: The preemptive war on Iraq in 2003 should not have engaged that much technology and sophistication.
1. Iraq was experiencing 10 year of International embargo: Babies were dying by the thousands from lack of powder milk
2. Iraq had dismantled all its chemical facilities and whatever “nuclear” installations the US claimed Saddam had.
3. The army was totally impotent and not armed: The Republican Guard existed to preempt any military takeover.
4. Iraq was crumbling, hungry, scared and dissatisfied with the dictatorship
Wrong numbers, wrong reasons: What is the income of Palestinians under Israel occupation?
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 5, 2012
Wrong numbers, wrong reasons: What is the income of Palestinians under Israel occupation?
At a morning fund-raising breakfast, largely populated by ultra-rich Jewish Americans, Mitt Romney (Republican Presidential candidate) blurted out that Palestinians are poor because their culture is inferior to that of Jews.
Is Romney faking Not to know the reason most Palestinians have low third-world income levels? Romney must know that:
1. Palestinians under occupation are born into impoverished towns or refugee camps inside the gerrymandered Bantustans of the Palestinian Authority,
2. where border crossings are controlled by Israeli military authorities checkpoints by the hundreds (over 600 checkpoints). The trip from Ramallah to the Jordanian borders should take less than 45 minutes, but the trip last 8 hours for the Palestinians.
3. water sources are tapped to feed Jewish settlements. All the wells in the occupied territory have been depleted so that the settlers enjoy lush gardens. Every Jew in Israel enjoy ten times the amount of water reserved for the Palestinian
4. Israeli-built infrastructure bypasses the occupied Palestinian villages. The Wall of Same is 800 kilometers long and cut through Palestinian towns and villages. Why? So that the Israeli want have any opportunity to see a living Palestinians across from them…
5. the education system is funded by paltry international contributions and paltrier taxes,.. The UN has cut down on the budget to educating the Palestinians in the occupied land and in the refugee camps outside of Israel
6. agricultural land is periodically taken by Jewish settlers whose illegal seizures are retroactively approved by the government,. In period of harvesting olive or fruit trees, the settlers are instigated by the government to harass the Palestinian peasants and let the harvest rot…
7. land values are undermined because of the overhanging threat of expropriation by Israel…Israel routinely demolish villages on the ground of expanding military training ground…
Through all the savage indignities and economic violence of a 50-year-long occupation, by Zionist people whose ultimate goal is to force Palestinians off as much of the territory as possible, it is a miracle that Palestinians still have the energy and will to keep struggling and surviving.
An article in The Economist read:
“Gross corruption by Palestinian officials and counterproductive political and economic, attitudes on the part of Palestinian citizens, mainly a typical adaptive behaviours that any people tend to develop when they’re confined to massive donor-supported detention zones, have made the situation much worse.
Palestine was not going to be a wealthy nation under any circumstances. But without the occupation they might have been as wealthy as, say, Jordanians, who have a per capita income (purchasing-power-adjusted) of $6,000.
BUSH Jr. was never much of a CEO, but Mitt Romney, by all accounts, was a killer CEO; his campaign so far has been lackluster, and his first trip abroad has been a bit of a horn-honking, floppy-shoed clown show.
After spending several days getting flayed by the British press for insulting the country’s handling of the Olympic games, Romney moved on to Israel, where his campaign promptly involved itself in a diplomatic scandal (this time with actual consequences) over whether it had said that Mr Romney would back a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran.
Mr Romney went on to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, a position no American administration has ever taken because discussions over the final status of the city are the most explosive subject in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
At a fund-raising breakfast of ultra-rich Jewish Americans, Mr Romney managed to blurt that Palestinians are poor because their culture is inferior to that of Jews:
“As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,”
The Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel…Romney, seated next to billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson at the head of the table, told donors at his fundraiser that he had read books and relied on his own business experience to understand why the difference is so great.
“And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney said, and went on to citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the “hand of providence.“
Palestinians were less than thrilled. Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian official said:
“What is this man doing here?Yesterday, he destroyed negotiations by saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and today he is saying Israeli culture is more advanced than Palestinian culture. Isn’t this racism?”
To make matters worse, Mr Romney got his numbers wrong. Per capita income in Israel is over $31,000; in the Palestinian territories it is closer to $1,500.
Those aren’t the kinds of numbers that divide industrious Protestants from happy-go-lucky Catholics. They’re the kind of numbers that divide South Korea from Ghana. You don’t get those kinds of divisions because of cultural differences.
Comparing the income of the average Israeli to that of the average Palestinian, as though their prospects at birth had been equivalent and their fortunes today are largely the result of their own efforts and their “culture”, is gratuitously insulting and wreaks damage to American diplomacy.
And it’s just wrong. Mr Romney may have noticed a rather large concrete wall running between many Palestinian towns and the roads (Wall of Shame) that might otherwise connect them with markets. To coin a phrase, Palestinians didn’t build that.
If one were looking for a country in which citizens of different religions are born into relatively equal positions and have equivalent levels of economic freedom, one might try comparing income by religion in the United States.
Perhaps at a fund-raising breakfast in New York, Mr Romney might compliment the city’s wealthy Jews and Hindus on their culture of educational excellence, which has made them so much richer and more accomplished, on average, than America’s evangelical Christians and Mormons.
Maybe it’s not just culture; perhaps the “hand of providence” plays a role, as well. With the political deft touch Mr Romney has displayed so far on his trip abroad, I wouldn’t put such a remark entirely past him.”
Does Romney forget that the State of Israel received more then $1,000bn of clear money just from the US, and not counting another $trillion from Germany and France and Italy and England…? Excluding the yearly funding that private corporations and Jews sent (tax free) to expanding the settlement grid?
Note: I doubt that Gaza was included in that picture. Over 1.5 million Palestinians are crammed in Gaza, totally blocked from the outside world and unable to trade or communicate with even the West Bank. Israel destroyed all the infrastructures, hospitals and schools in Gaza and frequently cut off the power supply and water sources…
Hot posts this week (Aug 4/ 2012)
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 5, 2012
- Hot posts this week (Aug 4/ 2012)
- Claiming to be food-tasting expert: With only three kinds of taste buds?
- Police car chasing is fatal, at any Speed…
- A one year baby looks you straight in the eyes. He want to feel: Is your gesture toward him of love or made out of fear?
- War of lies and hypocrisies in Syria: Robert Fisk
- “I can pick up bits of a 3-minute conversation and feel confident which relationship is in serious trouble…”
- Communities life cycle: How to mind our social fabrics in the Near East?
- Sex workers, the homeless, ethnic minorities, and working class residents of London hate the Olympics Games?
- Moment of reckoning: Pseudo-State in Lebanon at a cross-road
- I am still in a blank: What happened in the bus at airport of Burgas (Bulgaria)?
Adonis Diaries 