Stratfor Analysis

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Yes, things could very well blow up in the Middle East again. We do still have more assets in Iraq than we do in Afganistan -even with the surge. The question is how fast we could move them, and how long they've been in the field (far too long) can we move them - overworked, overdue and committed assets is a very bad place to be. And now that wars are on budget the numbers will be there for everyone to see. The volunteer army is recruiting, but the recruits these days are not up to the physical or educational demands on the whole. As for a draft, fergit it, that died with Vietnam - it'll never pass.
 
One of the neocons who switched from former Soviet Union threats to Japanese economic threats, now shifting to Iranian nuclear threats. It's all about today, the now. Unfortunately, it all depends on where the money is going at the time, and lacks historical context. Soon, it'll be back to Russia again.

Unfortunately, nothing strategic on Yemen. That's from where the latest attacks on the US have emanated. Not Iran, not Iraq, not Afghanistan. That would have been nicer to know, don't we think? That would have been true value added to the American people.

However, I did agree with what he said about sending more forces to Afghanistan. Literally, we're not planning to win the war, but only to provide space for the Afghan government to build up forces.

I believe more than one person knew that a long time ago, that we couldn't win, not given the terrain.
 
phil said:
One of the neocons who switched from former Soviet Union threats to Japanese economic threats, now shifting to Iranian nuclear threats. It's all about today, the now. Unfortunately, it all depends on where the money is going at the time, and lacks historical context. Soon, it'll be back to Russia again.

Unfortunately, nothing strategic on Yemen. That's from where the latest attacks on the US have emanated. Not Iran, not Iraq, not Afghanistan. That would have been nicer to know, don't we think? That would have been true value added to the American people.

However, I did agree with what he said about sending more forces to Afghanistan. Literally, we're not planning to win the war, but only to provide space for the Afghan government to build up forces.

I believe more than one person knew that a long time ago, that we couldn't win, not given the terrain.
Click to expand...

What I post here from Stratfor is only the free content. You have to pay for a subscription to get all the other stuff. The videos, while interesting and informative to some extent, only allude to what their service has to offer to private parties.

I'm sure the US has its own intel on these countries.
 
In this case, I don't buy that the people that did it were Iranian government. They're pretty good about arresting people. It's possible that it's an opposition group. The fact is that the Israelis want us to again do their dirty work for them in the region. Again. We need to ask ourselves as to who has the agenda.

No thanks. We don't need that. It is possible to have a nuclear Iran, in my opinion. No one really wants to talk about it, but it offers some balance in the region.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7gXK09VRI
 
phil said:
In this case, I don't buy that the people that did it were Iranian government. They're pretty good about arresting people. It's possible that it's an opposition group. The fact is that the Israelis want us to again do their dirty work for them in the region. Again. We need to ask ourselves as to who has the agenda.

No thanks. We don't need that. It is possible to have a nuclear Iran, in my opinion. No one really wants to talk about it, but it offers some balance in the region.
Click to expand...

The jury is out as to how much involvement this scientist had with Iran's nuclear program. It appears he was mostly an academic, but we should hear more about this in the days and weeks to come.
 
Regrettably, the Iranians see their acquisition of nuclear weapons to be necessary for their security. They're right about that. Two of their close neighbors in the region, Pakistan and Israel, both have nuclear capabilities. They recognize that they're going to need them for their security, as both Israel and Pakistan have used surrogates in the past to push to the Iranian border.

No thanks. We don't need to send any messages to the Israelis. None whatsoever. In the end, we're going to leave Iraq. Hopefully, we'll also stop this useless alleged global war on terror. It's only succeeded in costing us more money than we have right now.
 
Besides, there's been a lot of politicization of the NIEs, in any case. Case in point was the leak of the NIE in 2007, "undermining" another drumbeat to war. The administration had also become completely marginalized by that time.....for many reasons.

http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2007/12/iran-nie-report.html

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council prepared a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Irans nuclear program entitled, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.
The previous NIE report issued in 2005 stated with "high confidence" that Iran had an active and on-going nuclear weapons program - but no actual evidence of that ever turned up. So now, the 2007 NIE report disowns that claim, and instead asserts that Iran used to have a nuclear weapons program until 2003, and could decide to restart it someday.
So here's my obvious question to the Director of National Intelligence: were you lying then, or are you lying now? If you were so wrong in the last report, why should anyone believe your latest report?
I have to ask because naturally, you can't expect the media to ask these sorts of questions - no, they're far too busy acting as government propaganda mouthpieces by uncriticially promoting the new NIE report.

This is a footnote from Perle's piece that I call: "we weren't the architects....really. There's no proof anyway, so there."

http://www.aei.org/article/29149

The undermining of the president by the CIA went well beyond Iraq to include, most blatantly, policy toward Iran, as the leak of a National Intelligence Estimate on December 3, 2007, shows. The authors of this estimate must have known its misleading headline that Iran had “halted” its nuclear-weapons program would cripple Bush’s effort to rally opposition to it.
 
Attacked the Serena again, and the ministry of Justice and the ministry of Defense. Multiple attacks INSIDE Kabul. Well, I guess we can start making some assumptions about goals here.
 
phil said:
Attacked the Serena again, and the ministry of Justice and the ministry of Defense. Multiple attacks INSIDE Kabul. Well, I guess we can start making some assumptions about goals here.
Click to expand...

This was not the first time the Taliban demonstrated it could strike inside Kabul. However, Stratfor's assessment is that this latest attack was "underwhelming" and tactically "half-baked". The Afghan security forces proved they could provide reasonable defense as their security measures prevented the Taliban from smuggling in larger quantities of explosives, which could have caused much more damage. Areas under guard were also untouched by the Taliban.
 
There's a saying that the Taliban have: you westerners have watches, but we have time.

What we're doing here is redefining victory. Yes, they didn't succeed in blowing up the Presidential palace. Therefore, we've won a great victory? Make no mistakes, these guys (if they're Taliban) were able to penetrate the city and take out their targets. Of course they're not going to attack areas under heavy guard, until they can successfully bribe the guards.....or coerce them.

coolhand said:
This was not the first time the Taliban demonstrated it could strike inside Kabul. However, Stratfor's assessment is that this latest attack was "underwhelming" and tactically "half-baked". The Afghan security forces proved they could provide reasonable defense as their security measures prevented the Taliban from smuggling in larger quantities of explosives, which could have caused much more damage. Areas under guard were also untouched by the Taliban.
Click to expand...
 
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