Oh I understand now and that is a great point. We are close.
He nails it perfectly using the necons own words. This is utterly disgusting from any humanitarian standpoint, and speaks of a great cultural wounds being played out, perhaps unconsciously, but no less disturbing for that fact:
From the above link:
The War Party seemed desperate to get a Middle East war going before America had second thoughts. Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) called for an immediate invasion of Iraq. “Nor need the attack await the deployment of half a million troops. … [T]he larger challenge will be occupying Iraq after the fighting is over,” he wrote.The destructive and violent intent that lies at the center of every one of those statements, and a dozen others cataloged by Buchannan suggest to me that the people holding them have no place at the table of larger world affairs. They are deeply wounded individuals carrying an enormous amount of cultural baggage, operating from a place of deeply seated fear.Donnelly was echoed by Jonah Goldberg of National Review: “The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense.”
Goldberg endorsed “the Ledeen Doctrine” of ex-Pentagon official Michael Ledeen, which Goldberg described thus: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.”
(When the French ambassador in London, at a dinner party, asked why we should risk World War III over some “shitty little country”—meaning Israel—Goldberg’s magazine was not amused.)
Ledeen, however, is less frivolous. In The War Against the Terror Masters, he identifies the exact regimes America must destroy: First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And then we have to come to grips with Saudi Arabia. … Once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been brought down, we will remain engaged. …We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution. … Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.
Rejecting stability as “an unworthy American mission,” Ledeen goes on to define America’s authentic “historic mission”: Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law.
Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … [W]e must destroy them to advance our historic mission.
I mean what else are we to make of the fact that these people said things like "we need to pick up a crappy little country and throw it against the wall"? Or that "we" need to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes about as much sense as anybody? Seriously? How are these people still being given the time of day in life let alone still holding serious jobs?
If we follow their world view, all we'll get is endless conflict, and endless war. This serves certain psychological makeups rather well, especially those that are attracted to power, but it never serves the wider human interests.
The Israeli experiment ends very badly if that country allows itself to be led by those who seek to "win" by domination, death and destruction. Of course, I need to say the exact same thing about my own country.
sigh
You also need to be aware of China's hypersonic ballistic missile, the DF-21 as well, which they paraded about in September's military display. Here's a link.
A weapon so secret China would not reveal it for years made its first public appearance in a military parade on Thursday as China marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war.This puppy goes way up high, locks onto a target, and then comes almost straight down at up to 10x the speed of sound. 1,500 km gives China a bit of breathing room on her coasts.The Dongfeng (East wind) 21D “carrier-killer” missile, which threatens to reshape the balance of power in the western Pacific, has been the subject of much speculation after a stray mention last week in a Communist party newspaper ignited excitement among China defence watchers.
The defence ministry in Beijing has been notably silent on the missile, other than to confirm in 2011 that it was in development. Western defence experts estimate that it has a range of 1,550km and that it may be able to travel at up to 10 times the speed of sound — faster than anything that could intercept it.
Like an intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-21D goes into orbit, but after re-entering the atmosphere it manoeuvres on to a target, making it theoretically capable of landing a large warhead on or near a moving ship. China can also make about 1,200 of them for the price of a single aircraft carrier, meaning the missiles could easily overwhelm defensive countermeasures.
Further, China has been developing a large fleet of next gen aircraft and, it needs to be said, the US' own F-35 is a bit a dog (putting it mildly).
This article lays out some of the realities with the summary being that even if the US manages a 3:1 kill ratio against Chinese jets, China still wins by numbers.
Like I've been saying for a long time, whether the US is superior as a military force is not up for debate, but neither is the fact that the US hasn't been up against a quality foe in a very long time. Once the schoolyard bully gets a bloody nose…how many new foes emerge from the watching crowd?
My gun is bigger than your gun? Really that's pretty irrelevant. What will do us in is a pandemic, EMP or something simple like no electricity. I think it will be a pandemic of unknown origin in which case conventional and high tech new weapons won't matter. Instead of what's the target it could be "where is the bathroom?" Disease has been known to stop an advancing Army in their tracks. Just a thought.
AKGrannyWGrit
The Soviets certainly had more in WW2. They had an estimated 20-80 million people to spare, where the US had fewer than 500k. Certainly fuel, supply, disease, and everything else lead to the German defeat on Russian soil, but those numbers are terrifying. An army of combined Russia and China is comparable to a well-armed zombie apocalypse. It would never end without the big bombs.
That is a scary missile Chris. I was not able to read the FT article, but I did find this simulation video (I assume Chinese made) and starts at 1:06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_GHE2DjsqQ
In this simulation the US has 4 opportunities to take that missile down before mach10, and for the purpose of the demonstration all 4 anti-ballistic missiles missed.
What would happen in real life? Depends on how good the engineers at Ratheon are I think.
Also. the Chinese have a helicopter carrier already as a member of their fleet and they are in process of constructing an aircraft carrier, so it seems that even they too believe that carriers are still an important member of a fleet.
That’s what she said.
London on Monday to see the opening night of "Incontrovertible" at an independent cinema. Hosted by Tony Rooke and the mother and brother of a Brit murdered in the towers attack. Most of his bones have been repatriated and to their relief, thankfully revealed that he was not a jumper!
A fabulous motivational documentary filmed over the last 2 years in the USA and UK, the target audience being firefighters, police and military!
I recommend this film very highly. It adds a new dimension to the truth movement and targets the awakening of those that have the ability to actually make the difference between creeping tyranny another 9/11 and or WW3…or the locking up of those responsible and a return to a less sick society and safer world to live in! High expectations I know!
Please contact www.killingauntiefilms.co.uk to order a copy of the film, copy and distribute to those that need to be targeted!
I'm a big fan of numbers, so I present the following military stats based on the following team compositions. I assume Mongolia and Georgia will be forced into the red team and that Syria is a functioning country. Also India, Sweden and a few other regional powers remain neutral.
Almost. China is not building a CV…yet. They purchased the ex Soviet VARYAG (KIEV class hull and propulsion) from the Ukraine and have been refitting/backfitting for almost 20 years now. It is expected that there will be an indigenous, organic construction plan based on reverse engineering soon, if it hasn't already started, with delivery of two more CVs some time around 2020.
Once the hulls are delivered it will take decades to develop proficiency at CVBG strike and air operations. A lot of Chinese pilots are going to splash their Shenyang J-31s in the drink before they are good. Funny thing about building a plane to fit a platform…if you forget to account for the physics of a ski jump deck on the bow of the LIAONING, you end up snapping the landing gear off a plane with a full fuel and weapons load. Ooops. I suppose you could always take off with a short fuel and weapons load and try to get business done. That however, did not work out very well for the Japanese at Midway.
China is not capable of conducting extended, sustained blue water carrier battle group operations. I will retract or amend that statement when China has 11 (or more) functioning carriers, AND 80 years of practice.
Thanks for your military experience DIAP. I was set to join the air force before I saw the Crash Course. With an ecology degree, I knew the environmental story, but I had never connected it to the economy. As a result, I went into crisis-mode after watching the Crash Course (thanks Chris) and did not end up joining.
Sometimes I wish I did.
Anyways, wikipedia says there is an aircraft carrier under construction, so that is my source of information for that statement.Usually wiki is reliable, not always. Wiki also says they are using the Liaoning as a training ship for their pilots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning
Also, I did lose a distant relative trying to land a plane on a carrier. I certainly do not have the courage for that business. You have to be an amazing person to be a carrier pilot.
Wiki has conflated "backfitting" with "construction" I think. But, since the VARYAG was pretty much gutted and had no propulsion systems, the level of effort for a backfit vs construction is pretty much the same. It's shades of grey without the bondage and S&M…
Contracts have been let for two Chinese shipbuilders to start work on two "home grown" hulls based on LIAONING. Since a lot of ship construction today is modular, they may have started and it simply hasn't reached a level of assembly that is observable yet. Even if they have, I think the 4-5 year delivery estimate is a touch optimistic. In any event, as I alluded to in my earlier post, a hull in the water does not constitute capability - but it does confirm Archimedes' Principle.
You don't have to be "amazing" to be a carrier pilot…you have to be off your freakin' rocker. Take that with a grain of salt since it comes from a guy who volunteered to serve on ships that intentionally sank themselves…our rule of thumb was add up the number of dives and surfaces. Divide that total by 2. If you don't get a fraction, it's safe to open the hatch.
Just doing some wild imagining here. I have no military experience, but I have read a lot of Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum novels. 
I'm going to go with AKGranny's idea here, along with Greer's Twilights Last Gleaming, Howey's Wool, and a dozen other pandemic / EMP type of war / apocalypse story lines.
1. One of the underdogs gets tired being tread on. But it does not have the military power to face off with NATO head to head. But, it is clear that they are about to lose everything and decides it is better to take out the foe and go down in flames than to take it lying down. A brilliant strategist is tasked to build an attack plan. Elements of the plan are compartmentalized and go through intermediaries making the origin of the attack hard to trace.
2. Surreptitiously the underdog moves shipping containers loaded with short range missiles, into US port cities (and possibly unloads them from ships and transports the shipping containers on flat bed trucks into the USA using the normal freight delivery system).
3. Shipping containers are opened by "visiting art students" and several nuclear missiles are launched high into the stratosphere where detonations produce EMPs throwing the USA back to the stone ages. Most of the population living in cities dies, lawlessness is rampant, etc., etc.
4. Alternatively, a "lone deranged" microbiologists makes a highly virulent, aerosol-transmissible virus and release it at the last day of an international conference so that attendees carry the virus back to their home communities during the incubation period…
5. Or, a chip maker in China offers the US military low cost high quality chip design and manufacture services for flight control and engine control computer chips of airplanes. Only a "back door" is designed in so that they can be hacked sending a flight control instruction (like aileron full left) at a crucial moment.
6. Though the sailors/soldiers/airmen aboard the warships and airplanes might be well protected, their wives and children living near military bases in the US are not. I would target the families of the warriors. I might aim for the water supply of a base, or just EMP the region. (Dishonorable combat at its finest.)
The elements are:
- surreptitious pre-conflict preparation and positioning,
- a surprise attack as the opening,
- highly unconventional mode of attack,
- aimed at a vulnerable point in the dominant nation, not into the strength of its military.
when can I read the first novel?
I was going to say batshit-crazy, but I figured that would be disrespectful!
Negative. To a "naval aviator", "batshit-crazy" is a complement.
But you may not want to get too good at those conspiracy novels 
…
Ex-CIA agent says Andrew Breitbart and Tom Clancy assassinated (DC Clothesline)
Point I was trying to make is that there is an open question on the topic, at least out on the interweb…so you get to do your own research if you like.
Tom Clancy Death
Just saying. It has no operational air group, and it only leaves port once per month, and its armed with a couple of machineguns - but they do have a carrier.
Thai media have allegedly nicknamed the vessel the Thai-tanic. Others have suggested its just a glorified royal yacht.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTMS_Chakri_Naruebet
North Korea has a carrier, but it does not have an operational air group either. Just warriors and gods.