Posted on 09/14/2001 6:16:03 PM PDT by oxi-nato
YEREVAN, Armenia, Sept. 14 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Friday tried to squelch speculation that a U.S.-led anti-terrorist operation could be launched against Afghanistan from formerly Soviet Central Asia. I DONT SEE any basis for even the hypothetical possibility of NATO military operations on the territory of Central Asian nations that belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States, Ivanov told reporters in the Armenian capital Yerevan.
He announced that the chiefs of the army general staffs of the 12 countries of the CIS a loose grouping of formerly Soviet states would meet in Moscow on Sept. 26 to discuss coordination of military steps against terrorism. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is scheduled to hold talks on joint anti-terrorist efforts in the Russian capital next week.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Friday he could not comment on media reports that Washington was allegedly talking to Moscow about staging strikes from Central Asia. He was meeting in Almaty, Kazakstan with his counterparts from four Central Asian republics and China. Speculation that Russia might allow, and even join, a U.S.-led strikes against Afghanistan from its Central Asian backyard has been fuelled by Moscows shared view that bin Laden and the Taliban are responsible for fomenting widespread unrest in the region including in Chechnya, where Moscow is fighting a separatist rebellion.
TAJIK ROLE The prime minister of Tajikistan, Akil Akilov, said his country would consult Russia if Washington asks for air corridors for strikes on neighboring Afghanistan. Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, the head of the Russian General Staff, said it was unlikely that the Russian armed forces would take part in acts of revenge for this weeks deadly attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Interfax news agency reported.
The United States has powerful enough military forces that it can cope with this task on its own, Kvashnin was quoted as saying. He added that there had been no talks on the military level between the United States and Russia about Moscows participation in any operation. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was the top suspect in the attacks. Afghanistans ruling Taliban have given bin Laden refuge in their country.
Kvashnin said that according to his information, bin Laden is now hiding in the mountains around Kandahar, the southern Afghan city where the Taliban headquarters is located. Russia has about 25,000 troops stationed in Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan and is one of the few countries from which an offensive could be launched. Impoverished Tajikistan is still trying to recover from a five-year civil war between mostly Islamic opposition forces and the hard-line secular government, and it is frequently wracked by violence.
ELUSIVE BIN LADEN Nikolai Kovalyov, the former head of Russias Federal Security Service, the KGBs main successor, warned Friday that a U.S. attack on Afghanistan would fail to reach bin Laden and would backfire on the United States. In Afghanistans mountainous terrain, it takes a trainload of explosives to destroy three militants, he said at a news conference. The chance of hitting bin Laden is zero.
Russian Colonel Yuri Shamanov, who spent half a decade fighting in Afghanistan, warned the United States against deploying in Afghanistan. If the Americans go to war, I pity those boys. And their mothers and sisters and brothers. It will be 10 times worse than Vietnam. Vietnam will be a picnic by comparison, he said.
That has been my suggestion on other threads if he is located in the mountains. Not if it "gets really bad" but as a first option.
As to going in on the ground, just the altitude adjustment might take several months acclimitization for any troopies, even already young and in good combat shape. It's HIGH altitude there. It's no joke terrain, and remote as heck.
My solution is a war with bean counters. Yep, total economic devastation, track down the economics of his structure base and seize it, over and over, through all the holding companies. Not sexy or bloodthirsty, but it would work.
Taking a western, technological peoples and reducing them to goat herder status is devastating. when you are trying that with people who are already goat herders, it's really not much of a big deal. The amount of men and materiel to "conquer" afghanistan doesn't exist in the US at this point. If we tried it it could run over 100 billion bucks a year or more, real easy I imagine, just to attempt it. That's why I like use bean counters to fight the war, accountants and detectives. We are getting hit with unconventional warfare, we need to be as unconventional as it takes right back, and one thing the US people are good at is paper work and money dealings. We can bankrupt those people effectively and cheaply. It could work, and it would require some SERIOUS leanings on our so called ally, the saudi dictators, something we have needed to do anyway for a long time. Notice that list again who recognizes the taliban.
Next step domestically is total regaining of control over immigration and tourism and business here, end the open no borders concept, it's a disaster. Just been proven.
After that, manhattan project on energy independence for the US, total energy independence, complete, 100%. We are innovators, we need to innovate, do whatever it takes. We need to stop the money flow to the fanatics. these various regimes use a significant part of that oil money for weapons purchases and more research into WMD. This is nuts we still trade with them. This is hitting yourself with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop.
Today we mourn, tomorrow we bury, then.....it's your ass!
Eric Rudolph or Bin Laden?
You do realize, don't you, that Bin Laden is probably already on a beach in Cancun watching CNN?
THIS 'WAR' IS BS.
We will see.....we will see.....
I stand corrected that you are an American citizen of Croat/Austian descent. Thank you for clearing that up. I am making this a public post so I may state that I inferred from your earlier post identifying yourself as half-Croat and half-Austrian that you lived in Austria, and I was very wrong in that assumption. (I even managed to mangle your nationality into Austrian-Slovene, for which I apologise.)
Also, you did indeed say: I was proud of the German army during WWII. I was NOT proud of the SS.. Some people, such as yourself, see a sharp distinction. And I, myself, hardly think every single German conscript during WWII was a monster, even though my grandfather was mustard-gassed by regular German army units, and my father-in-law, at the age of five, was separated from his parents while trying to flee St. Petersburg when the regular German army shelled the refugees on the dock and spent several years at near-starvation afterward.
Likewise, perhaps you have me confused with some others who attacked you on the earlier thread. If you will go back and check, I think you will find I have always been very polite to you, and even said some very nice things about you. (So has getoffmylawn, BTW.)
Finally, your post #15 sounds like a young man who's never been in the middle of a war, who has fine sentiments and even finer hopes, while my post #27 in reply sounds like someone who has been in the middle of a war or two, and who wishes your fine sentiments would win out, but who bitterly knows they cannot...and is railing more against this tragic truth than at the young man with the bright hopes (which I so wish were realistic -- in a just world, they would be -- and my hope of hopes and prayer of prayers is that idealistic young people like you will continue to carry forth such a bright flame -- the world needs it!).
Perhaps the two of us should simply take into account our various histories, acknowledge our differences, apologise for our mistakes, and move on from here as fellow travellers, if not friends?
I'm actually a very nice lady, and I think you are actually a very nice young man.
In any case, I hope you will remain on FR, as there is much to be learned here, at least when folks don't let emotions get in the way ;)
Best regards, wonders
In short: The hard part is knowing where the caves are. I am now in the position of hoping that one of the more tinfoil applications alleged for HAARP is actually real--earth-penetrating tomography (EPT). EPT allegedly uses some exotic HF propagation factors to see underground. There is a patent out there--but it might not be worth the paper it's printed on (patents no longer require a working model to demonstrate the concept).
Once you have that data, there is a RANGE of nasty tricks you can play--FAE bombs, nukes, or drop a precisely timed series of JDAMs above the caves, and let resonance collapse the caves for you.
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