Posted on 03/31/2003 8:29:43 AM PST by Smogger
NEW YORK: Iraqis have secretly bought as many as a thousand Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles which are lightweight, very powerful and easy-to-use, Pentagon officials claimed.
The sellers are Ukrainian arms dealers and possibly some entrepreneurial Syrian generals or the Syrian government itself, the officials were quoted as saying by Newsweek. They reportedly sent Baghdad some 500 Kornets in January.
The Kornet anti-tank missiles were used to attack two US tanks, both Abrams M1A1s during the ongoing war in Iraq. The first M1s ever destroyed by enemy fire in battle, they were caught in an ambush of the US Army's 3/7 Cavalry near As Samawah, on the west bank of the Euphrates River.
Two is not a large number and the invading forces have at least 650 tanks in Iraq with more on the way. But US officials, the magazine said, are worried about the skill or "at least the fanaticism" of the guerrilla fighters who sneaked up on the tanks driving a "technical," a jeep, under cover of a sandstorm.
Less than two weeks into the war, the magazine examined whether it started with enough force and whether Operation Iraqi Freedom risks blowing up into a Middle East War.
That scenario, once very remote, is no longer unthinkable, it said. Barring a sudden collapse of the Baathist regime - still a possibility, senior administration officials insist - the war in Iraq is about to get bloodier.
"Somewhere deep in his network of tunnels and bunkers," Saddam Hussein "is convinced he can win," not by defeating superior US forces on the battlefield, but merely by surviving while Islamic rage builds from Cairo to Islamabad, the magazine said quoting a senior US official.
With a show of "shock and awe," American might was supposed to overwhelm the Iraqis and crack Saddam Hussein's regime. Tipped off by a spy in his inner circle, the US military tried to kill him and his sons as they slept with a surprise "decapitation" strike on the first night of the war.
US officials were engaged in delicate secret talks with some of Saddam Hussein's henchmen which appear to have gone nowhere. Saddam Hussein is almost surely alive; the spy, according to a knowledgeable source, has been "compromised," meaning that he is probably dead.
When American soldiers began dying in ambushes from Iraqis pretending to surrender, it didn't take long for Washington officialdom to start leaking exculpatory memoranda.
One CIA memo made available to Newsweek was entitled "Iraq: Potential aRisks in Rear Areas." The paper warned of Saddam loyalists attacking American supply lines with "hit and run tactics" using "RPGs rocket-propelled grenades) and small arms."
The document was widely distributed at the Pentagon, though one intelligence official, Newsweek said, acknowledges that, given Washington's strange hothouse ways, the paper might have been more carefully read at the top if it had been stamped "TOP SECRET" instead of merely "SECRET."
Saddam Hussein's irregulars have adopted tricks from the Somali guerrillas, including firing from behind groups of women and children.
Saddam Hussein will try to increase the American death rate, possibly by ordering his commanders to use bio-chem weapons, the magazine said.
I did not get my history wrong. We had been blessed with a cordial, indeed friendly relationship with the Hawaiian people and monarachy. Congress, and the President never authorized the seizure of Hawaii during Cleveland's administration, so as a matter of imperial policy, it wasn't there.
Indeed, Grover Cleveland was all set to return the throne back to the Queen after investigating the matter, concluding the diplomat who had exceeded his authority and wrongly conspired with the ranchers and sugar plantations to subvert the throne. He fired said minister. He pulled the treaty back from the Senate. He, apologized to her, and was ready to put the queen back in power, if she would agree to let bygones be bygones. She foolishly refused. Hence she gave him no choice but to sit on his hands. And then the next president, Wm McKinley, did do the annexation, as the alternatives were worse at that point.
I like how Grover Cleveland summarized the final state of affairs with the Queen of Hawaii:
Actuated by these desires and purposes,and not unmindful of the inherent perplexities of the situation nor of the limitations upon my power, I instructed Minister Willis to advise the Queen and her supporters of my desire to aid in the restoration of the status existing before the lawless landing of the United States forces at Honolulu on the 16th of January last, if such restoration could be effected upon terms providing for clemency as well as justice to all parties concerned. The conditions suggested, as the instructions show, contemplate a general amnesty to those concerned insetting up the provisional government and a recognition of all its bona fide acts and obligations. In short, they require that the past should be buried, and that the restored Government should reassume its authority as if its continuity had not been interrupted. These conditions have not proved acceptable to the Queen, and though she has been informed that they will be insisted upon, and that, unless acceded to, the efforts of the President to aid in the restoration of her Government will cease, I have not thus far learned that she is willing to yield them her acquiescence. The check which my plans have thus encountered has prevented their presentation to the members of the provisional government, while unfortunate public misrepresentations of the situation and exaggerated statements of the sentiments of our people have obviously injured the prospects of successful Executive mediation.
Mama's boy Gads, how much steam did it take for you to come up with that one? Did you have to look or did your grandson help you? The only thing stupidier is the emails you're sending me...glad to know you can string curse words into one long string...however pointless. Bet you wear plad high water pants too.... What, you gonna tell me my grandmother wore combat boots? Well she did and she was a sniper too, your point? REMF...get a life and get over your serious inferiority complex. Just live up to the fact that you spent the overwhelming majority of your life shuffling papers, filling forms on form flow and doing power point slides while only reading about real men in Army Times and Stars and Stripes.
But that's irrelevant since you miss the key to America. We can take almost anybody and make them an American. All Russia can do with other people is call them foreigners, no matter how long they live with you. You foolishly think that because someone comes from Mexico or Asia that means they don't count as an American.
Funny, but your birth rates are still way behind your death rates. Even you should be able to grasp that your population won't grow if 16 people die for every 9 born.
Sadly, the only thing Russia leads in today is oil and Michael Jackson's favorite type of porn.
You have no concept what so ever. Russia is the home to 180 ethnic groups and has another 100 or so ethnic groups as immigrants. There are africans walking the streets of Russian cities and intermarring with Russians. Russians in the north are blond, in the south dark skinned. We mix with everyone. I have 9 ethnic groups in my blood lines...and that's only 5 generations back. There are blond orientals walking around, and they don't bleach their hair...called mixing and on the passports there is no nationality anymore, only citizenship...people are asked for demographics...what nationality do you feel yourself to be. There are no African-Russians, Irish-Russians, German-Russians, Chinese-Russians...but there are African-Americans, etc.
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