The glory and honor of the Republican Party

[Mr. Perfect]

[Mr. Perfect]

[noddy]

yer, all them cushy government funded defence jobs reagan created.. nice blend of government and unions and corporate interests.. then more expensive petrol as a cherry on top.

[skyhook77sfg]

FOR THOSE INEXPERIENCED IN MATTERS MILITARY

We support Pakistan today -- and remain engaged -- because it is the most dangerous nation on the face of the planet today.

Withdrawing from Pakistan, despite what Hitchens accurately describes as a nearly criminally perverse relationship, would trigger wildly dangerous scenarios -- in part because a substantial portion of the Islamist radical cells that exist in key corners of Pakistan's national security establishment seem to relish a nuclear conflagration with India and are as ideologically committed to global destabilization schemes as Osama bin Laden was.

But America needs to invent leverage in this relationship rather than become more trapped in the muck of it. Today, Pakistan is engaged in high stakes extortion -- demanding funds and support or its already bad behavior could get much worse. That's how North Korea survives.

Barack Obama is beginning a long process of beginning to pull troops out of Afghanistan -- but as long as the US maintains a large military footprint there, we have less leverage than otherwise with Pakistan, which controls many vital choke-points that the US depends on in waging war in Afghanistan. A key to diminishing Pakistan's leverage over the US and changing the equation in the relationship is to 'shrink' the US presence in Afghanistan and minimize dependence on Pakistan.

Some inside Pakistan did applaud the killing of Osama bin Laden; some even helped behind the scenes provide intelligence that eventually led to the storming of his compound. But the people that mattered, who are in the news, who are running the national security, diplomatic and intelligence ministries and agencies did not come out and say "We would have killed bin Laden had we found him."

They are not saying that -- and are instead condemning the US for its covert Seal Team Six operation -- because they are fearful of their own angry, armed religious radicals. To secure legitimacy in Pakistan right now, one must be allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan and overtly anti-American, at least in public.

Unfortunately, the raw truth is that America has no real choice but to remain engaged with Pakistan -- but this can't be a binary arrangement in which Pakistan extorts and the US turns a blind eye to Pakistan's role empowering rogue regimes and animating some of the world's worst transnational terrorists.

Slow disengagement, a decrease in financial support (as the US has just done) -- though not a full suspension -- some arm-twisting of its patrons like China and Saudi Arabia and some strategic clarity in the Obama administration on what the real prize here is -- which is a less psychotic Pakistan -- rather than plodding along in the debilitating Afghanistan quagmire could move things, eventually, to a less dangerous course.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/




OH YES THERE WILL BE CUTS ...

IN THE CONVENTIONAL MILITARY BUDGET

THE NOW PROVEN VALUE OF ASYMETRIC SPECIAL OPERATIONS IN ASYMETRIC WARFARE

IS WHERE THE MOST BANG FOR THE BUCK WILL BE SOUGHT AND FOUND

FINALLY.

[Mr. Perfect]

Make sure to hold your breath on that, tell me how it goes.

[skyhook77sfg]

empty smartassisms like the one above do not do this forum and its habitues justice...

please raise the bar a bit

or bite your keyboard

[Mr. Perfect]

Why? You write a lot of ridiculous things.

[skyhook77sfg]

dead end

lets hang a u...

[AzariLoveIran]

[Tinker]

[AzariLoveIran]

[crashtech]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Sometimes when I am feeling particularly paranoid, I can't help but think all those "former leftists," specifically the ex-communists that made up the neo-cons, have actually infiltrated the party with an ol'Gramsci march and have hollowed the Republican party in the most nefarious manner possible.

[Colonel Sun]

[skyhook77sfg]

QUITE WRONG

the former trotskyites who became neo cons were in general not associated with Ramparts

either as staff or regular contributors....

Ramparts luminaries were Noam Chomsky, Cesar Chavez, Seymour Hersh,

Tom Hayden, Angela Davis, Jonathan Kozol, Todd Gitlin, Sol Stern, Tariq Ali,

Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens, David Welsh, and John Beecher.

the only two exceptions im aware of are Hitchens and Horowitz


carry on "colonel"

[skyhook77sfg]

ERRATUM

informed by Mr Hitchens he is not now nor ever has been a member of the neocon conspiracy...

that puts David Horowitz in a class all by himself...

a traitor to his patron saint Trotsky

and his fellow cell members at Ramparts

and selfconfessed traitor to his country.

TRUE TRIPLE THREAT