Archive for the 'War & Warfare' Category

There is indication that Hezbollah used thermobaric weapons against the Israeli Army in the recent conflict, as asserted and discussed by Defense Tech.  On the other hand, the comments to this post at Defense Tech are interesting, one of which profers another explanation for the collapse of the building:

Nine elite IDF unit soldiers were killed, seven troops have been seriously injured, and 10 sustained light to moderate wounds after a building they were staying in collapsed as a result of a missile strike in the Lebanese village of Dibel.

Shortly after 1 p.m. Hizbullah gunmen fired several missiles at a structure in which the soldiers were staying. One missile hit the building, causing an arms cache to explode. Several soldiers were hurt as a result. A short while later, the structure partially collapsed, and a few other troops were hurt as well.

Either way, this post and the followup discussion point to a need in the U.S. defense capabilities that seems at the present to be unmet.

You can read about thermobaric weapons here and here.  The U.S. Marines used thermobaric weapons against the Iraqi army in the war with great success, although it appears that these weapons were used to knock selected walls down and were usually followed up by conventional fragmentation explosives (Marines Quiet about Brutal New Weapon).  Apparently the Hezbollah had some degree of success against the IDF using thermobaric devices, killing nine reservists in one structure by causing the structure to collapse.

One of the truly problematic things about thermobaric weapons — and one of the reasons the U.S. should designate the monies to get out ahead of the curve — is that they render body armor useless, and possibly even detrimental, to the Solider or Marine.  There is indication that the use of body armor in a thermobaric blast simply creates a larger surface area on the body with which the pressure wave has to work, thus causing more internal injuries.  There is also some indication that the use of body armor changes the loading function on the thorax.

There is a proliferation of these weapons, and while some attention has been paid to creating body armor that is different from the conventional ballistic body armor (multiple layers of composites that are of different densities), little has been published, and no such body armor is in service.

The U.S. needs to devote the time, energy, money and research resources to countering the effects of these weapons, or the battlefield casualties will be much higher during the next urban war.

Every once in a while you get the gift of peaking into the future just a bit to get prepared for it.  This is just such a time.  We see the effects of the use of thermobaric weapons against the IDF.  Now, can we prepare our troops in advance of the next urban war, please?

Hat tip to my friend Knighthawk at Polipundit, this from USA Today:

“I am shocked,” said Jürgen Lesch, 56, a Dresden software developer. “Now it looks like terrorism has reached us, as well.”

Germany’s refusal to take part in the U.S.-led war in Iraq once had Germans thinking Islamic terrorists would focus elsewhere, said Lesch’s wife, Marita, 52, a teacher. “We didn’t fight in Iraq, and until now we assumed that if we behaved well in the world, nothing would happen to us,” she said.

Michael Lüders, a Middle East expert and government policy consultant, said, “Germany is reorienting its (foreign) policy. It did not call for an immediate cease-fire (during Israeli attacks) in Lebanon, and that was disappointing in the Arab world. Some radical forces now think Germany should be punished,” he said.

I have always found that I can talk to liberals because at least you know where each other stands.  Most often I cannot persuade the liberal to see things my way, but at least there is a clash of world views, and eventually one will be proven correct.

The most difficult times I have when conversing with people who do not yet understand the war that radical Islam has declared against the U.S. is the “conservative” thinker, the isolationist who, like Pat Buchanan, believes that it is U.S. presence and intervention in the affairs of other nations and the existence of our troops in other parts of the world that has “caused” the radical Islamicists to hate us so.  If it had not been for our hegemony and colonialism, they say, none of this would have happened.

I find it so difficult to talk to these people because there is almost nothing to say to them.  The fact that history denies this view is irrelevant.  In other words, it is fairly well known that the so-called Crusades were primarily defensive struggles against Islam as it came north into Europe (or at least we can say that it began that way).  At the time that Islam began to assert itself militarily, there was no colonial presence of Europe into Africa or the Middle East.

And yet the Islamicists still attacked, didn’t they?

Folks, we could fold our tents in Iraq, remove all U.S. troops from everywhere in the world, and declare that we will never again have U.S. troops on foreign soil for any reason under the sun.  And the Islamicist response?

To cheer their victory and then begin planning their all out attack on the U.S. homeland.

So here are a couple of questions for you: Do you want to fight the terrorists on foreign soil or U.S. soil?  Do you want to have IEDs blowing up in the streets of Ramadi, or the street on which you live?

As my friend Knighthawk says of the Islamicist approach: “Conform or die.  Get it?”  And as I say, fight them there or fight them here.  Get it?

The Washington Post is reporting what so many news outlets in Israel are reporting (JPost, Haaretz, etc.), regarding the absolute debacle over the last several weeks:

JERUSALEM, Aug. 18 — Sgt. Lior Rahamin’s Israeli reserve unit had not trained in two years. When its members were called up for the Lebanon war, they didn’t have straps for their guns, spare ammunition, flak jackets or more than one good radio. There were other shortages: Twice their operations were canceled because they had no water to take; once they went two days without food.

“Hezbollah didn’t surprise us. We were surprised by the Israel Defense Forces,” said Rahamin, 30, a paratrooper who was wounded fighting in Lebanon in 1997 and who volunteered to go with his unit again. The next time they call, he said, “we will not show up.”

[ … ]

“If we would have gone in with more foot soldiers, we would have done more,” said Avi Hubara, 40, a schoolteacher and reservist who volunteered to go to Lebanon to fight. “But the politicians were scared to make decisions. It was a failure. We got people killed. There was lots of friendly fire. We did not hurt the capability of the Hezbollah. We did not return the kidnapped soldiers. We did not win.”

[ … ]

“We were getting ready to board the bus in Lebanon with faces painted for combat, but they called us back,” said Sgt. Yuval Drori, 30, a reservist who works at a software company. “Another time we were at the border, with bullets in the chambers, but they canceled again. The mission changed every 30 minutes. There was a great sense of a big mess.”

“In the last six years, there hadn’t been any preparation” for putting soldiers into combat, said a retired major general, Shaul Givoli, director of the Council for Peace and Security near Tel Aviv. “Even the rations had expired.”

I think that there are some lessons to be learned, but some lessons to reject as well.  In fact, it may be as important to reject the wrong ones as to learn from the right ones.

There is almost an orgy of international praise for Hezbollah’s military capability right now.  I think it is important to get this right.  Hezbollah has a few thousand men, some bunkers, and several thousand rockets.  They don’t even come close to a major military power.  Their having survived the recent conflict should be attributed to the facts that they were deeply dug in and knew how to disappear amongst the population.  They did prove two things though: they are on a war-footing, and they are willing to perish for their beliefs.

In my post “Israeli Army in Disarray During War,” I cited a news report that:

Israel’s largest paper, Yediot Ahronot, quoted one soldier as saying thirsty troops threw chlorine tablets into filthy water in sheep and cow troughs. Another said his unit took canteens from dead guerrillas.

This is very telling.  I get word from my son in the Marines frequently concerning his training, what he is going through at the time, and how he feels.  It doesn’t bother me that the Israeli army was without food for a while.  I should not go too far with the details of my son’s training (this is considered a “no-no”).  But it is customary to go several days without sleep or food.  They must be capable of doing this while waging war and making battlefield decisions, since at times they will be doing exactly that while their lives are on the line.

And it may seem strange to lay hold of something as simple as water as a touchstone for the condition of the Israeli army, but I think it makes perfect sense.  An army that is without water is in serious … serious … trouble.  While I am certain that his superiors do an adequate job of training my son concerning the dangers of dehydration and overheating, I regularly (via phone) give my son a “safety brief” concerning these matters.

You must remember the facts concerning water and body heat.  The body can discharge heat in several ways: convection cooling, radiation cooling, conductive cooling and evaporative cooling.  Of these, evaporative cooling is the most significant.  When you sweat, the idea is that the water is then able to evaporate, taking with it the heat necessary to change phases (this is called the latent heat of vaporization).  This change of phase takes with it from the body just under 1000 BTUs/lbm of water, and without it a man on the battlefield is in danger of not only heat exhaustion, but heat stroke and even death.  I regularly lecture my son on ensuring that his “camelback” is full of water, and that he hydrates regularly.

Regarding heat stroke, if the core body temperature increases to around 105 degrees F and stays for any length of time, the proteins in the brain begin to change form, and permanent brain damage occurs.  Of course, exhaustion, fatigue, medical problems and brain damage are not good things on the battlefield.  Finally, in conditions of dehydration, the blood thickens and less of it is sent to the brain.  This causes a loss of mental and cognitive capabilities.  Again, not a good thing on the battlefield.

The lack of basic provisions such as water (the most basic of all) shows that Israel was not — and is not — on a war footing.

What is not the case is that Hezbollah’s ranks are filled with supermen.  Again, this is not a lesson to be taken from this conflict.  Israel can get itself on a war footing again, but it will require re-arming, re-training, re-tooling the command and control, ensuring that there is a clear line of authority all the way up the ranks, and most of all, preparing mentally for the fact that Israel is at war.  This war will not abate for some time into the foreseeable future.  Israel has a smart army and one of the best and most seasoned air forces in the world.  This standoff is not the end.  It is only the beginning.  I have no doubt that Israel will do what is necessary to win.

But it will not be helpful to learn the wrong lessons.  The wrong lesson is that Hezbollah is a powerful army.  No, it is a band of thugs, several thousand strong, dug into holes in the ground.  The right lesson is that the IDF was unprepared.

Let’s hope that they learn the lesson well.

Just as I finished this post, I read a piece by Douglas Farah concerning the Islamic strategy in Europe.  His final quote is telling, not just for Europe, but for Israel too:

We do not have a plan. They do. History shows that those that plan, anticipate and have a coherent strategy usually win. We are not winning.

If Mark Steyn is correct, it won’t matter for Europe anyway since Europe is self-destructing.

In Iraq there are gains.  The recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict was a standoff and a debacle for Israel.  The war on terror in the U.S. has suffered from courtroom setbacks.  We have failed to stop Iran from regional hegemony, and the Shia world is riding high in their collective defiance of Israel, proposed U.N. sanctions, and the U.S. in Iraq.  The Iraq-Iran borders are leaking, and Iranian influence in Iraq is burdensome.

Faster … please?

There is good news coming from Iraq.  See the MNF web site for “Iraq security crackdown hinders terrorists,” and another story about more al Qaida in Iraq being caught, another about death squads being rounded up, another on knowledge being gained on terrorist networks in Iraq, and another on a huge weapons cache being discovered.  In my post “U.S. Generals and Captain’s Journal on Same Page – Almost,” I said:

Let’s take counsel from General George Patton.

“In war the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of the offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.

I feel sort of like Mike Adams when he writes for Townhall.com, wondering whether his wife is reading his prose about his Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin action figures.

Well, my wife doesn’t read my blog, so the secret about my love affair is safe with me and my readers.

For years I went to Myrtle Beach because my family wanted to.  They loved it.  I was mostly misreable.  There was hot sun, sand, salt and a gaggle of people.  Always a gaggle of people.  I would have been happier with a backpack strapped to me, hiking through the mountains of Appalachia under the canopy of the forest.  But if my family was happy, I was happy.

Still, she caught my eye.  I couldn’t help it.  Oh … my … goodness, was she magnificent!  Her curves were powerful, yet sleek.  I always had to admire her from a distance.  I was never with the “in” crowd, so I could only look and listen and wish.

When she graced us with her appearance, everyone looked.  And stared.  I do mean everyone.  Men, women and children.  But the men, especially.  Seeing her made the trips to the beach bearable for me, that is, right up until the time when Bill Clinton closed down Myrtle Beach Air Force Base.

Yes, that year was the last time I got to admire the A-10 “Warthog.”  I have always loved her.  I recall going on a tour of MBAFB with other civilians, and while standing before the beautiful A-10, some bimbo asked “where are the planes that Tom Cruise flew?”  I held my tongue, sort of.  I murmured something about the fact that ‘you’re an idiot, please allow the rest of us to enjoy the show.’

Here is a picture of the aircraft I saw that day:

It is a subsonic aircraft by design.  Its design is to lumber around the battlefield looking for tanks and other armored vehicles to kill.  It has been the most effective aircraft for doing just that every built and put into action.  It is more effective than the attack helicopter.

She has a 30 mm Gatling gun that fires (at the time we went on the tour) depleted Uranium bullets at the rate of 3900 rounds per minutes.  I distinctly recall the deep “Brrrrr …” of the gun during the first Gulf war, after which you knew that another of Sadam’s tanks had been destroyed.

Look at her engines.  They are in front of the rear wing, with the read wing being used as protection to decrease the heat signature of the engines in order to minimize the chances of a surface-to-air heat-seeking missle hurting her. 

It has a titanium bathtub for the pilot to sit above, and redundant hydraulics for control of the aircraft.  And just in case both trains of hydraulics are knocked out by enemy fire, there is backup manual control (by sticks and cables) to get the pilot home safely.

You can read more about her here and here and here.  But there is an ugly wind blowing.  It is going to cost money to keep the old girls going.  Let’s make sure that they get this money.  The Strategy Page has this:

August 18, 2006: The U.S. Air Force wants to keep it’s A-10 ground attack aircraft going at least another ten years. That means that over 300 of them have to be rebuilt and upgraded. That’s because the A-10s were built three decades ago, with a service life of 4,000 hours in the air. Most have already got over 6,000 hours. So refurbishment will extend service life to 16,000 hours, and install an F-16 like cockpit, along with the ability to use a targeting pod and deliver GPS and laser guided bombs. This makes the A-10 the most versatile ground support aircraft in service. The A-10 still has its 30mm cannon, which, while designed to destroying armored vehicles, has proved useful against all manner of targets. The targeting pod also enables A-10 pilots to cruise around at night, and get a high-resolution view of what’s going on down there. The infantry depend on the extra eye in the sky, and the ability to deliver anything from 30mm cannon fire, to Maverick missiles to 500 pound JDAM smart bombs.

You will not find a better lady for the job for this money anywhere.  She is absolutely magnificent, and while I will never get to ride aboard this beautiful aircraft, I can still admire her from a distance, can I not?

Postscript: My job is in nuclear engineering.  I can weigh in a bit on this issue of depleted Uranium.  By depleted, they mean that U-235 has been removed and the only thing left is U-238.  U-235 is fissile, which means that it can fission with a “thermal” neutron, while U-238 is fissionable, not fissile, and can fission only with a neutron above 1 MeV.  Translation: U-235 can be used to make a bomb.  U-238 can’t.  But it pays to use U-238 to make a bullet, because it has a density just above 10 grams/cc, as compared to steel (7.82 grams/cc) or lead (which is too soft and maleable to be used to kill armored vehicles).

The AP is reporting:

Israeli soldiers returning from the war in Lebanon say the army was slow to rescue wounded comrades and suffered from a lack of supplies so dire that they had to drink water from the canteens of dead Hezbollah guerrillas.

“We fought for nothing. We cleared houses that will be reoccupied in no time,” said Ilia Marshak, a 22-year-old infantryman who spent a week in Lebanon.

Marshak said his unit was hindered by a lack of information, poor training and untested equipment. In one instance, Israeli troops occupying two houses inadvertently fired at each other because of poor communication between their commanders.

“We almost killed each other,” he said. “We shot like blind people. … We shot sheep and goats.”

[ … ]

“I personally haven’t thrown a grenade in 15 years, and I thought I’d get a chance to do so before going north,” an unidentified reservist in an elite infantry brigade was quoted as telling the Maariv daily.

Israel’s largest paper, Yediot Ahronot, quoted one soldier as saying thirsty troops threw chlorine tablets into filthy water in sheep and cow troughs. Another said his unit took canteens from dead guerrillas.

I had heard (from a source I will not name) an analysis from the U.S. that Israel doesn’t know how to conduct urban warfare; that U.S. troops practice stacks and room-clearing and various urban warfare tactics; and that the proof of U.S. readiness is what happened in Fallujah (and what happens every day in Iraq).  The U.S. is good at this.

But it would appear that Israel has allowed their readiness suffer, due in (at least some small) part to this over-reliance in air power.

The post-mortem on this whole ugly affair had better dig very deep and be very extensive.  Israel has up until now fielded troops and employed tactics looking as if its very existence depended upon being the premier military on earth.  This ordeal was a blunder of staggering proportions.

USA Today is Reporting:

WASHINGTON — The United States blocked an Iranian cargo plane’s flight to Syria last month after intelligence analysts concluded it was carrying sophisticated missiles and launchers to resupply Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, two U.S. intelligence officials say.

Eight days after Hezbollah’s war with Israel began, U.S. diplomats persuaded Turkey and Iraq to deny the plane permission to cross their territory to Damascus, a transfer point for arms to Hezbollah, the officials said.

The episode was detailed by one U.S. intelligence official who saw a report on the incident. It was confirmed by a U.S. official from a second intelligence agency and by a diplomat with a foreign government. They did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

[ … ]

•July 15: Three days after the war began, a source tipped off U.S. intelligence about an imminent shipment of missiles from Iran to Hezbollah.

•July 19: A spy satellite photographed Iranian crews loading three missile launchers and eight crates, each normally used to carry a Chinese-designed C-802 Noor missile, aboard a transport plane at Mehrabad air base near Tehran. Israel says Hezbollah fired a C-802, a precision-guided anti-ship cruise missile, at an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast on July 14.

•July 20: The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane left for Damascus, but Iraqi air-traffic controllers denied it permission to enter Iraq’s airspace. The Iranian flight crew then requested permission to fly over Turkey. Turkish controllers granted permission — but only if the plane would land for an inspection. The plane returned to Tehran, where the military cargo was unloaded.

•July 22: The plane flew humanitarian aid to Damascus after stopping for inspection in Turkey.

Though the missiles were not visible in the satellite photos, the launchers and specialized crates with distinctive shapes allowed U.S. analysts to identify the missile type, the intelligence officials said.

Asked about the account during an interview Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “We work on these kinds of things all the time.” But she added, “I can’t comment on specific cases.” 

So here is my question: why the cloak and dagger routine?  Can someone please name me one strategic advantage in the secrecy?

No, there is no advantage.  This is the State Department trying to fight our wars for us, and until and unless we unshackle the armed forces of our country and finally go public with who we are fighting and what the real enemy is, this is still a secret war conducted for secret reasons by secret people at the State Department.

When this information was gleaned by our intelligence services, Bush should have marched out in front of the press corps in Washington, announced that Iran was trying to resupply Hezbollah, and said that the U.S. will blast the plane out of the sky if it didn’t turn around; and then videotape it and put in on the news if the plane actually tried to land and we had to shoot it out of the air.  In the background (double frame) of this videotape we should have had the brass at CENTCOM watching and cheering as the plane went down in flames.

We’ve absolutely got to get serious about this international war.  Finally, Michelle Malkin (actually, Bryan Preston over at Hotair.com) has a vent on “Flower Power Never Won a War.”

**** UPDATE ****

John Hawkins at RWN has this to say:

I’m still of the opinion that since Hezbollah is flagrantly violating the ceasefire by refusing to disarm or go North and since the international force is starting to fall apart before it gets started (Thank you, France), Israel should start bombing again.

I would add to this by saying that they should never have stopped bombing (nor should they have held in abatement an aggressive land invasion).  I said so from the beginning of this campaign.  Just after posting the original post below, I was watching coverage at FNC on southern Lebanon, and the reporter commented that disarming Hezbollah would be impossible because, in her words, “they have melted into the population and hidden their weapons.”

Of course they have.  Without a land invasion to root this out Israel cannot win.  And without eventually confronting the terror-master Iran (whose surrogate is Hezbollah), neither the U.S. nor Israel will win against terror.  The head of the snake must be cut off.  Our war is with Iran who supports the Shia in Iraq and Hezbollah in Iran.  We just haven’t battled them directly yet.  We are fighting a proxy war thus far.

**** ORIGINAL POST ****

The Strategy Page has this interesting assessment of the Israel – Hezbollah conflict:

August 16, 2006: The success of the ceasefire in Lebanon hinges on a condition that Lebanon and Hizbollah both insist will not happen. Hizbollah is supposed to disarm, but says bluntly that it will not do so. The Lebanese government says it will not force Hizbollah to disarm. So what’s going to happen? It appears that Israel is going to hold the UN responsible for carrying out its peace deal, and disarm Hizbollah. To that end, Israel will withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and leave it to UN peacekeepers to do what they are obliged to do. But here’s the catch, not enough nations are stepping forward to supply the initial 3,500 UN forces, much less the eventual 15,000 UN force. However, it is likely that, eventually, enough nations will supply troops. But many of those contingents may not be willing to fight Hizbollah. Israel says it will not completely withdraw from Lebanon until the UN force is in place.The Israeli strategy appears to be to allow the UN deal to self-destruct. If the UN peacekeepers can disarm Hizbollah, fine. If not, Israeli ground troops will come back in and clear everyone out of southern Lebanon. At that point, it will be obvious that no one else is willing, or able, to deal with the outlaw “state-within-a-state” that Hizbollah represents. Hizbollah will still exist after being thrown out of southern Lebanon, and it will be up to the majority of Lebanese, and the rest of the Arab world, to deal with Hizbollah and radical Shias.

Hizbollah suffered a defeat. Their rocket attacks on Israel, while appearing spectacular (nearly 4,000 rockets launched), were unimpressive (39 Israelis killed, half of them Arabs). On the ground, Hizbollah lost nearly 600 of its own personnel, and billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons. Israeli losses were far less. 

 

Well, I don’t completely buy it.  My post just below indicates my position on Iran: they are the clear winner, but I didn’t assess Hezbollah.

Israel did not win, but it would appear to me that Hezbollah didn’t either.  The problem for Israel is that Israel is still at risk of war with Iran by proxy.

As to this notion that the U.N. plan will fall apart, perhaps it will.  But I don’t think that this will be something that will be announced from the rooftops.  The failure will be invisible to the world, because Hezbollah will be re-armed by night and by trickery and by deceipt.

Eventually, terrorism will befall the “peace-keeping” troops in southern Lebanon, but by then it will be too late.  Hezbollah will be back up to strength and ready to wage war again will Israel.

Bill Roggio has a very good piece over at the Counterterrorism Blog, entitled “After Action Report: Winners and Losers in the Hezbollah-Israel War.”  Regarding Iran, he says:

The 24 year old Iranian project of funding, training and arming Hezbollah in Lebanon has netted a large return. While the Israeli withdrawal form southern Lebanon in 2000 was certainly a victory for Hezbollah and their Iranian backers, the current Hezbollah victory is far more significant. Hezbollah gave the appearance of directly defeating the Israelis and forcing them to the negotiating table within one month of the onset of fighting.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the elite Qods Force have created a powerful military and political force capable of spreading the radical Khomenist agenda. The Hezbollah model is a tried and proven method of the subversive Iranian foreign policy, and will be applied elsewhere. The IRGC and Qods will study the Hezbollah-Israel war and apply the lessons learned to improve this model, as well as to incorporate the military and political lessons into their own doctrine. The IDF fights as most Western armies do, and the Israeli political vulnerabilities are also shared throughout the West.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s gambit has paid dividends, and he has successfully distracted efforts to cease the refinement of uranium and the further development of its nuclear program. “Today, we are fully mastering the nuclear fuel cycle for our peaceful atomic activities. It is a native technology… No one can take it away from us,” said Ahmadinejad, who has been emboldened by Hezbollah’s victory against Israel. The Western world has signaled it is fearful of confronting Ahmadinejad or his terrorist proxy Hezbollah head on. Ahmadinejad ‘s stature is the Islamic world will only grow over time as he demonstrates the ability to stand up to the West. 

Continuing the discussion, Iran has won in even more ways that Bill ennumerated here.  The IDF failed to drive Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, and more specifically, Hezbollah still has thousands of rockets to fire at Israel.  Given the ability to hide and discretely fire Katyusha rockets, no one but the dilusional would believe that any amount of so-called “peace-keeping” troops will be able to keep Iran from re-supplying Hezbollah to replenish their stockpile of terror weapons.

So the surrogate military force that Iran has in southern Lebanon has not been disarmed, will not be disarmed, and has now achieved rock-star popularity in the Muslim world due to the failure of the IDF to decisively defeat them.

In a recent post I cited an editorial from one of Iran’s hard line newspapers, where they seemed to parrot the hard line from the Muslim leadership:

“The American defeat and withdrawal from Iraq will forever bury the Neoconservative current in the U.S.,…while the formation of an Islamist state in Iraq, which will be a natural ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will form a contiguous link between Iran and Palestine through Syria and Lebanon, will bring about a sea change in the geo-strategic balance in the region in favour of Iran and to America’s detriment. This new alliance with its huge size will directly influence all developments in the Arab and Muslim Middle East

There is much good news and information coming from Iraq, as you can tell from a brief (or even a prolonged) visit to the web site of the Multi-National Force – Iraq.  I get the MNF newsletter and visit the web site regularly.

However, there is also disturbing news that still comes from Iraq.  The Washington Post had an article some time back on the resurgence of Kurdish nationalism.  There is a strong Kurhish population in Turkey, and in fact Turkish troops have been inside Iraq before (Turkey fears that Kurdish elements in Turkey and Iraq might unite to form a de facto nation).

The Seattle Times has hints of sectarianism building in Iraq, and there are undercurrents of a push for regional rule in Iraq.

But is is very difficult to imagine an Iraq without a stable and strong central government that is anything but a puppet of Iran.  Let’s remember what Iran’s position is on Iraq, straight from an editorial from one of Iran’s hard line newspapers:

“The American defeat and withdrawal from Iraq will forever bury the Neoconservative current in the U.S.,…while the formation of an Islamist state in Iraq, which will be a natural ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will form a contiguous link between Iran and Palestine through Syria and Lebanon, will bring about a sea change in the geo-strategic balance in the region in favour of Iran and to America’s detriment. This new alliance with its huge size will directly influence all developments in the Arab and Muslim Middle East