Poland may get nuked over MI-Complex's pet missile shield.

[Octafish]

That's it in a nutshell -- from a nook-yoo-ler nutshjob from the War Party.



"History, we don't know. In a hundred years, we'll all be dead."

The US missile defence system is the magic pudding that will never run out

Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in Washington

By George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday August 19 2008

It's a novel way to take your own life. Just as Russia demonstrates what happens to former minions that annoy it, Poland agrees to host a US missile defence base. The Russians, as Poland expected, respond to this proposal by offering to turn the country into a parking lot. This proves that the missile defence system is necessary after all: it will stop the missiles Russia will now aim at Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK in response to, er, their involvement in the missile defence system.

The American government insists that the interceptors, which will be stationed on the Baltic coast, have nothing to do with Russia: their purpose is to defend Europe and the US against the intercontinental ballistic missiles Iran and North Korea don't possess. This is why they are being placed in Poland, which, as every geography student in Texas knows, shares a border with both rogue states.

They permit us to look forward to a glowing future, in which missile defence, according to the Pentagon, will "protect our homeland ... and our friends and allies from ballistic missile attack"; as long as the Russians wait until it's working before they nuke us. The good news is that, at the present rate of progress, reliable missile defence is only 50 years away. The bad news is that it has been 50 years away for the past six decades.

The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn't know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon's missile defence agency: the word "success" features more often than any other noun. It is true that the programme has managed to hit two out of the five missiles fired over the past five years during tests of its main component, the ground-based midcourse missile defence (GMD) system. But, sadly, these tests bear no relation to anything resembling a real nuclear strike.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/19/usforeignpolicy.russia

Unfettered by truth or democracy, the world hurtles toward Chimpageddon.

[10 Year Freeper]

1. GOP Disaster in the Making

It's certain that the bellicose rumblings on the right will further antagonize the Russians.

[Octafish]

6. How to Do Business With a Blacklisted Russian Weapons Company

Now, I don't like a lot of what Putin's doing to his country, but looking at things from his perspective: NATO's got the Russians surrounded. That must be why we sell them weaponry.

How to Do Business With a Blacklisted Russian Weapons Company

By Sharon Weinberger

July 28, 2008 | 1:16:00 PMCategories: Cash Rules Everything Around Me, Crazy Ivans

We now know that the U.S. Army handed out a sole-sourced deal to sell nearly two dozen Russian Mi-17 helicopters to Iraq. But the lingering question is, how?

Rosoboronexport, the Russian state agency in charge of military exports, is blacklisted from working on U.S. government deals. So how did the U.S. Army and the Carlyle Group-owned company ARINC manage to pull off the $325 million deal? Or more to the point, did they knowingly violate this ban?

Let's talk about that ban. In July 2006, Rosoboronexport was accused by the U.S. government of violating the Iran-Syria Nonproliferation Act and was placed on what is informally called a "no go" list, ostensibly shutting the Russians out of some big-ticket foreign military sales to Iraq (ironically, the Russians deny wanting to sell weapons to Iraq, given their unhappiness over the U.S.-led invasion).

The U.S. ban against working with Rosoboronexport has policy as well as legal dimensions. Russia, for example, has clashed with the United States over Moscow's arms deals with Venezuela. Just last week, in fact, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was in Russia to seal new arms deals with Rosoboronexport, and according to news reports, he called for a broader alliance with Russia against the United States. Rosoboronexport also faces accusations of violating an international arms embargo against Sudan by selling the conflict-ridden country MiG-29 fighters -- Russia is adamantly denying this charge.

Given all this, how did ARINC set up the helicopter deal? According to contract details confirmed by the Pentagon, ARINC avoided the Rosoboronexport ban by purchasing the helicopters as commercial items from Kazan, a Russian helicopter manufacturer, thus avoiding direct work with the Russian state agency, which handles military exports. The helicopters would be converted for military use in the United Arab Emirates. That would make the deal costly, but legal.


CONTINUED...

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/07/how-to-do-busin.html#more

Hiya! A most hearty welcome to DU, 10 Year Freeper!

[Mme. Defarge]

2. Good read, and

grimly reassuring!

[leftchick]

3. " because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats"

Why do I never see this in the US press??? Oh yes, because it is THE TRUTH!

<snip>

So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I'll give you a clue: the answer is in the question. It persists because it doesn't work.

US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.

To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do. Russia is not without its own corrupting influences. You could see the grim delight of the Russian generals and defence officials last week, who have found in this new deployment an excuse to enhance their power and demand bigger budgets. Poor old Poland, like the Czech Republic and the UK, gets strongarmed into becoming America's groundbait.

If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.

[Pavulon]

4. MAD trigger

if that happens everyone dies.

[malaise]

5. In that photo no one is chatting with Bush

A picture says a thousand words.

[Disturbed]

8. The MIC is a monster that is devouring Amerika.

Thanks to our Govts, Rethugs & Dims, the MIC is getting fed. It's the biggest Wealth Care System ever devised. The Russians won't nuke any place. It's a ruse by both Oligarchs.

[moondust]

7. Pugs want a new arms race?

Perhaps they've figured out that "Terrorism!" has limited mileage as a big bucks bogeyman? Military-industrial-media complex fearing famine ahead? Build a better scarecrow!

[Karenina]

9. . .

:kick:

[DailyGrind51]

10. Russia nuking Poland is like nuking itself!

The radioactive fall-out will drift over Russia. You can't nuke the guy next door!