From the Associated Press:
President Barack Obama has declined for a second day to answer questions about the Somali piracy standoff.
Reporters asked the president about the situation at the end of a White House meeting Friday with his economic advisers. Obama did not answer.
Four Somali pirates are holding Capt. Richard Phillips. He was captured during a failed attempt by the pirates to seize a U.S.-flag cargo ship on Wednesday off the Horn of Africa.
Obama also brushed aside questions Thursday when reporters sought his reaction on the incident.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label defense. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label defense. Tampilkan semua postingan
Jumat, 10 April 2009
'O' Wants $$$, Voted 'No!'
From Reuters:
President Obama asked the U.S. Congress for an additional $83.4 billion to fund the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday, saying the security situation along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier was urgent.
"The Taliban is resurgent and al Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border," Obama said in a letter to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, that was released by the White House.
Obama said 95 percent of the $83.4 billion in supplemental funds he was requesting would go to support U.S. military operations in Iraq and the U.S. effort to disrupt and defeat al Qaeda.
How Obama voted on war funding while he was in the Senate:
May 2007: Congress approved a roughly $100 billion spending measure to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and domestic projects, including hurricane relief. Obama voted no.
December 2007: Congress cleared a $555 billion catchall spending bill that included $70 billion for U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama did not vote.
President Obama asked the U.S. Congress for an additional $83.4 billion to fund the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday, saying the security situation along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier was urgent.
"The Taliban is resurgent and al Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border," Obama said in a letter to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, that was released by the White House.
Obama said 95 percent of the $83.4 billion in supplemental funds he was requesting would go to support U.S. military operations in Iraq and the U.S. effort to disrupt and defeat al Qaeda.
How Obama voted on war funding while he was in the Senate:
May 2007: Congress approved a roughly $100 billion spending measure to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and domestic projects, including hurricane relief. Obama voted no.
December 2007: Congress cleared a $555 billion catchall spending bill that included $70 billion for U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama did not vote.
Rabu, 08 April 2009
Defense Cuts Threaten Security
From Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt in the Wall Street Journal:
On Monday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a significant reordering of U.S. defense programs. His recommendations should not go unchallenged.
In the 1990s, defense cuts helped pay for increased domestic spending, and that is true today.
Though Mr. Gates said that his decisions were "almost exclusively influenced by factors other than simply finding a way to balance the books," the broad list of program reductions and terminations suggest otherwise. In fact, he tacitly acknowledged as much by saying the budget plan represented "one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity" -- the "necessity" of course being the administration's decision to reorder the government's spending priorities.
However, warfare is not a human activity that directly awards virtue. Nor is it a perfectly calculable endeavor that permits a delicate "balancing" of risk. More often it rewards those who arrive on the battlefield "the fustest with the mostest," as Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest once put it. If Mr. Gates has his way, U.S. forces will find it increasingly hard to meet the Forrest standard. . . .
Mr. Gates justifies these cuts as a matter of "hard choices" and "budget discipline," saying that "[E]very defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk . . . is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in." But this calculus is true only because the Obama administration has chosen to cut defense, while increasing domestic entitlements and debt so dramatically. . . .
The budget cuts Mr. Gates is recommending are not a temporary measure to get us over a fiscal bump in the road. Rather, they are the opening bid in what, if the Obama administration has its way, will be a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less wallop. But what is true for the wars we're in -- that numbers matter -- is also true for the wars that we aren't yet in, or that we simply wish to deter.
On Monday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a significant reordering of U.S. defense programs. His recommendations should not go unchallenged.
In the 1990s, defense cuts helped pay for increased domestic spending, and that is true today.
Though Mr. Gates said that his decisions were "almost exclusively influenced by factors other than simply finding a way to balance the books," the broad list of program reductions and terminations suggest otherwise. In fact, he tacitly acknowledged as much by saying the budget plan represented "one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity" -- the "necessity" of course being the administration's decision to reorder the government's spending priorities.
However, warfare is not a human activity that directly awards virtue. Nor is it a perfectly calculable endeavor that permits a delicate "balancing" of risk. More often it rewards those who arrive on the battlefield "the fustest with the mostest," as Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest once put it. If Mr. Gates has his way, U.S. forces will find it increasingly hard to meet the Forrest standard. . . .
Mr. Gates justifies these cuts as a matter of "hard choices" and "budget discipline," saying that "[E]very defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk . . . is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in." But this calculus is true only because the Obama administration has chosen to cut defense, while increasing domestic entitlements and debt so dramatically. . . .
The budget cuts Mr. Gates is recommending are not a temporary measure to get us over a fiscal bump in the road. Rather, they are the opening bid in what, if the Obama administration has its way, will be a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less wallop. But what is true for the wars we're in -- that numbers matter -- is also true for the wars that we aren't yet in, or that we simply wish to deter.
Selasa, 07 April 2009
Obama: Nuclear Illusionist
An editorial from the Wall Street Journal:
Rarely has a Presidential speech been so immediately and transparently divorced from reality as Mr. Obama's in Prague. The President delivered a stirring call to banish nuclear weapons at the very moment that North Korea and Iran are bidding to trigger the greatest proliferation breakout in the nuclear age. Mr. Obama also proposed an elaborate new arms-control regime to reduce nuclear weapons, even as both Pyongyang and Tehran are proving that the world's great powers lack the will to enforce current arms-control treaties. . . .
The President went even further in Prague, noting that "as a nuclear power -- as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon -- the United States has a moral responsibility to act." That barely concealed apology for Hiroshima is an insult to the memory of Harry Truman, who saved a million lives by ending World War II without a bloody invasion of Japan. As for the persuasive power of "moral authority," we should have learned long ago that the concept has no meaning in Pyongyang or Tehran, much less in the rocky hideouts of al Qaeda.
The truth is that Mr. Obama's nuclear vision has reality exactly backward. To the extent that the U.S. has maintained a large and credible nuclear arsenal, it has prevented war, defeated the Soviet Union, shored up our alliances and created an umbrella that persuaded other nations that they don't need a bomb to defend themselves.
The most dangerous proliferation in the last 50 years has come outside the U.S. umbrella on the South Asian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan want to deter each other. No treaty stopped A.Q. Khan. Meanwhile, the world's most conspicuous antiproliferation victories in recent decades were the Israeli strike against Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant at Osirak, and the U.S. toppling of Saddam and the way it impressed Libya's Moammar Ghadafi.
All of which means that any serious effort at nonproliferation has to begin with North Korea and Iran. They are the urgent threat to nuclear peace, the focus of years of great-power diplomacy and sanctions. U.N. resolutions have formally barred both countries from developing an atomic bomb and the missiles to deliver them. If Iran acquires a bomb or North Korea retains one despite this attempt to stop them, then the world will conclude that there is no such thing as an enforceable antinuclear order. It will be every nation for itself.
In the Middle East, a Shiite bomb will send the region's Arab nations scurrying to Pakistan to get a Sunni weapon. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and perhaps even Iraq will be in the market for a deterrent. The Turks -- long a power in the region but wondering if NATO membership is enough protection -- will also seek to join the nuclear club. Meanwhile, Japan will increasingly wonder if Americans would really risk an attack on themselves in order to protect Tokyo. The nightmare imagined by strategists at the dawn of the atomic age in the 1950s, with every major nation getting the bomb, will be that much closer.
Mr. Obama is a brilliant talker, and his words thrilled a Europe that wants to believe he can conjure peace and a nuclear-free world. But note well how little the Europeans answered the President's call for more troops in Afghanistan, much less any help in stopping a nuclear Iran. Mr. Obama is offering pleasant illusions, while mullahs and other rogues plot explosive reality.
Rarely has a Presidential speech been so immediately and transparently divorced from reality as Mr. Obama's in Prague. The President delivered a stirring call to banish nuclear weapons at the very moment that North Korea and Iran are bidding to trigger the greatest proliferation breakout in the nuclear age. Mr. Obama also proposed an elaborate new arms-control regime to reduce nuclear weapons, even as both Pyongyang and Tehran are proving that the world's great powers lack the will to enforce current arms-control treaties. . . .
The President went even further in Prague, noting that "as a nuclear power -- as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon -- the United States has a moral responsibility to act." That barely concealed apology for Hiroshima is an insult to the memory of Harry Truman, who saved a million lives by ending World War II without a bloody invasion of Japan. As for the persuasive power of "moral authority," we should have learned long ago that the concept has no meaning in Pyongyang or Tehran, much less in the rocky hideouts of al Qaeda.
The truth is that Mr. Obama's nuclear vision has reality exactly backward. To the extent that the U.S. has maintained a large and credible nuclear arsenal, it has prevented war, defeated the Soviet Union, shored up our alliances and created an umbrella that persuaded other nations that they don't need a bomb to defend themselves.
The most dangerous proliferation in the last 50 years has come outside the U.S. umbrella on the South Asian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan want to deter each other. No treaty stopped A.Q. Khan. Meanwhile, the world's most conspicuous antiproliferation victories in recent decades were the Israeli strike against Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant at Osirak, and the U.S. toppling of Saddam and the way it impressed Libya's Moammar Ghadafi.
All of which means that any serious effort at nonproliferation has to begin with North Korea and Iran. They are the urgent threat to nuclear peace, the focus of years of great-power diplomacy and sanctions. U.N. resolutions have formally barred both countries from developing an atomic bomb and the missiles to deliver them. If Iran acquires a bomb or North Korea retains one despite this attempt to stop them, then the world will conclude that there is no such thing as an enforceable antinuclear order. It will be every nation for itself.
In the Middle East, a Shiite bomb will send the region's Arab nations scurrying to Pakistan to get a Sunni weapon. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and perhaps even Iraq will be in the market for a deterrent. The Turks -- long a power in the region but wondering if NATO membership is enough protection -- will also seek to join the nuclear club. Meanwhile, Japan will increasingly wonder if Americans would really risk an attack on themselves in order to protect Tokyo. The nightmare imagined by strategists at the dawn of the atomic age in the 1950s, with every major nation getting the bomb, will be that much closer.
Mr. Obama is a brilliant talker, and his words thrilled a Europe that wants to believe he can conjure peace and a nuclear-free world. But note well how little the Europeans answered the President's call for more troops in Afghanistan, much less any help in stopping a nuclear Iran. Mr. Obama is offering pleasant illusions, while mullahs and other rogues plot explosive reality.
Senin, 06 April 2009
N. Korea: US Strike Favored
From Rasmussen Reports:
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of U.S. voters nationwide favor a military response to eliminate North Korea’s missile launching capability. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 15% of voters oppose a military response while 28% are not sure.
North Korea defied international pressure and launched a missile last night. Officials from that country claim a satellite was placed in orbit. U.S. defense officials confirm that a missile was launched but that no object was placed in orbit. . . .
The telephone survey was conducted Friday and Saturday, April 3-4, the two days immediately prior to North Korea’s launch. The question asked about a military response if North Korea actually did launch a long-range missile.
Support for a military response comes from 66% of Republicans, 52% of Democrats and 54% of those not affiliated with either major political party. There is no gender gap on the issue as a military response is favored by 57% of men and 57% of women.
Overall, 75% of voters say they’ve been closely following news stories about the possible launch. That figure includes 40% who’ve followed the news Very Closely.
Seventy-three percent (73%) are at least somewhat concerned that North Korea will use nuclear weapons against the United States. That’s up just a few points from 69% who held that view in October 2006. Prior to that survey, North Korea had successfully conducted an underground nuclear test.
Currently, 39% are Very Concerned about a possible nuclear attack from North Korea.Sixty-four percent (64%) of Republicans consider North Korea an enemy of the United States. That view is shared by 50% of unaffiliateds and 28% of Democrats. Most Democrats (57%) place North Korea somewhere between ally and enemy.*
*So, most Democrats "place North Korea somewhere between an ally and an enemy? Can someone tell ,e what the hell does North Korea has to do before these Dumbocrats decide whether it's an ally or an enemy? Someone? Anyone? Please?
Minggu, 05 April 2009
Obama Foreign Policy 'Fantasy'
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Sunday that President Obama's foreign policy on nuclear weapons is a "fantasy."
Gingrich's remarks came following news that North Korea had defied international sanctions in launching a long-range rocket capable of carrying a nuclear warhead on Sunday. The former House speaker said North Korea's nuclear program has been the focus of the U.S. government for years, but no one has done anything substantive to stop it.
"We have been talking about this since the Clinton administration," Gingrich said. "One morning there is going to be a disaster...the time to think about it is before the disaster."
Gingrich said he would have taken pre-emptive measures to prevent North Korea form the test launch on Sunday. Gingrich said Obama's response to the launch falls short.
"He has some wonderful fantasy idea that we're going to have a great meeting next year," he said, referring to Obama's desire to resume diplomatic negotiations with nations such as North Korea that are pursuing nuclear weapons.
"I just think it's very dangerous to have a fantasy foreign policy," Gingrich added.
Sabtu, 04 April 2009
North Korea Launches Rocket
From the BBC News Channel:
North Korea appears to have launched a rocket, despite international appeals not to go ahead. Officials from Japan, South Korea and the US confirmed lift-off at 0230 GMT. The rocket appeared to have passed over Japan to the Pacific, Tokyo said.
North Korea says it is sending a satellite into orbit, but its neighbours suspect the launch could be a cover for a long-range missile test.
They say it violates UN resolutions and have warned of consequences.
"A short time ago a flying object appeared to have been launched from North Korea," the Japanese government statement said.
The US State Department and South Korea's presidential office also confirmed a launch.
Japan did not try to intercept it, as it had indicated that it would if its territory was threatened, it said in a statement.
The US called the launch "provocative" and the Japanese government described it as "regrettable".
North Korea appears to have launched a rocket, despite international appeals not to go ahead. Officials from Japan, South Korea and the US confirmed lift-off at 0230 GMT. The rocket appeared to have passed over Japan to the Pacific, Tokyo said.
North Korea says it is sending a satellite into orbit, but its neighbours suspect the launch could be a cover for a long-range missile test.
They say it violates UN resolutions and have warned of consequences.
"A short time ago a flying object appeared to have been launched from North Korea," the Japanese government statement said.
The US State Department and South Korea's presidential office also confirmed a launch.
Japan did not try to intercept it, as it had indicated that it would if its territory was threatened, it said in a statement.
The US called the launch "provocative" and the Japanese government described it as "regrettable".
Senin, 09 Maret 2009
Iran Goes Nuclear
From Herb Keinon in The Jerusalem Post:
In a chilling indication that Iran's arms program is advancing steadily, Israel acknowledged for the first time that Teheran had mastered the technology to make a nuclear bomb on the same day that the Iranians announced they had successfully tested a new air-to-surface missile.
Iran has "crossed the technological threshold," and its attainment of nuclear military capability is now a matter of "incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb into its strategy," OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet on Sunday.
"Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb," he said.
Yadlin said the Islamic republic hoped to use the expected dialogue with the Obama administration to buy time to procure the amount of high-enriched uranium needed to build a bomb.
"Iran's plan for the continuation of its nuclear program while simultaneously holding talks with the new administration in Washington is being received with caution in the Middle East," the intelligence chief said. "The moderates are worried that this approach will come at their expense and will be used by the radical axis to continue to carry out terror activities and rearm. In contrast, those in the radical axis are saying that despite the change in the Americans' stance, they will continue to act against them."
Yadlin's assessment brought him into line with a similar assessment made last week by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said Teheran had enough fissile material to build a bomb now.
In a chilling indication that Iran's arms program is advancing steadily, Israel acknowledged for the first time that Teheran had mastered the technology to make a nuclear bomb on the same day that the Iranians announced they had successfully tested a new air-to-surface missile.
Iran has "crossed the technological threshold," and its attainment of nuclear military capability is now a matter of "incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb into its strategy," OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet on Sunday.
"Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb," he said.
Yadlin said the Islamic republic hoped to use the expected dialogue with the Obama administration to buy time to procure the amount of high-enriched uranium needed to build a bomb.
"Iran's plan for the continuation of its nuclear program while simultaneously holding talks with the new administration in Washington is being received with caution in the Middle East," the intelligence chief said. "The moderates are worried that this approach will come at their expense and will be used by the radical axis to continue to carry out terror activities and rearm. In contrast, those in the radical axis are saying that despite the change in the Americans' stance, they will continue to act against them."
Yadlin's assessment brought him into line with a similar assessment made last week by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said Teheran had enough fissile material to build a bomb now.
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