Iran Nukes: Israel policy against shooting first with nuclear weapons

Newsweek, Periscope, Nukes: Too Deep To Hit, By Mark Hosenball, November 3, 2008

Western intelligence experts believe that Iran’s nuclear facilities are so deep underground that it would be difficult for Israel to wipe them out, or even significantly damage them, with a quick airstrike. In order to deal a serious setback to Iran’s nuclear program, at least four key sites inside Iran would have to be hit, said one Western official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information. The facilities, however, are located in tunnels fortified by barriers more than 60 feet thick. According to this official and other U.S. experts, Israel does not possess conventional weapons capable of knocking out the facilities. Breaking through the thick shell would require, at minimum, several bunker-buster bombs striking precisely the same spot. “These targets would be very hard to destroy,” said former U.N. nuclear expert David Albright.

Theoretically, Israel could do a lot more damage with a nuclear strike. But U.S. and other Western experts say there is no reason to believe the Israelis will abandon their policy against shooting first with nukes.

Interview with Robert Gates: Threats and Challenges

‘That Was Amateur Night’, (Newsweek)…John Barry, Nov 3, 2008.

Interview with Robert Gates … More dangerous than the Cold War …

Look around. Iran. North Korea. A Russia that people have a hard time figuring out what to make of. The Chinese are not so much a security challenge, but they clearly have some very significant military modernization programs underway that are worrisome. North Korea: what’s going to happen now? The entirety of Central Asia, where you have pressures on them from Russia to toe the line, and their wanting to maintain some sense of independence—but how much? Again, nobody knows where that line is… The problems that Pakistan faces. So you’ve got all of these. You’ve got the whole Israeli-Palestinian-Syrian challenge. In our own hemisphere, Venezuela. And then, of course, there is Al Qaeda and a variety of violent extremists that are still very much out there. That’s a pretty long list of challenges that the new guys need to be prepared to deal with from day one.

An ambitious agenda.

Yes, and one of the many obstacles to reform is that, at the top of government, the urgent always tends to crowd out the important. And that tension has gotten worse now, I think, because of the complexity of the world we face. I recall Henry Kissinger in 1970. There had been the Syrian invasion of Jordan. I think something was going on in Lebanon. And we had discovered the Soviets were building a submarine base in Cuba. I always thought Kissinger managing two or three crises at the same time was an act of legerdemain. I tell you: that was amateur night compared to the world today.

Financial Crisis – New Industry Model – Crisis was predictable

Risk Management 2.0: Overcoming the Current Financial Crisis and Restoring Stability and Prosperity with a New Perspective on Risk by Bob Tapscott and Don Tapscott, Oct 2008.

The “risk bubble” has broken. Restoring long-term confidence in the financial services industry of the US and other industrialized nations will require more than government intervention, fresh capital, and updated regulations.

Building on the digitization of everything financial, participating organizations (issuers, investors, and intermediaries) need to become Next Generation Enterprises. This requires a new industry model built on the four principles of Wikinomics: transparency, peering, sharing intellectual property, and acting globally. Call it Risk Management 2.0.

The current credit crunch was predictable.

In 2005, Yale economist Robert J. Shiller published the now famous index tracking housing prices back to 1800 (Figure 1). Over a 200 (!) year period, housing values in the U.S. only went 20% above the inflation- adjusted 1800 price level three times, and each was the peak of a bubble that quickly collapsed.

From 1997 to 2005, U.S. housing prices rose from 10% above the inflation-adjusted level to 100% higher. How any economist, regulator, or central banker could look at the chart below and not surmise that something was amiss is astounding.

HIGHLY recommend looking at Figure 1: Historical Home Values … from 1890 on page 4 of the report.

Plotting Points: Election Polling Data

FiveThirtyEight.com

Extracts fro the FAQ page.

What is the mission of this website? Most broadly, to accumulate and analyze polling and political data in way that is informed, accurate and attractive. Most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections.

What is the significance of the number 538? 538 is the number of electors in the electoral college.

Book (Process Review): Wikinomics

Book: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott (Author), Anthony D. Williams (Author).

Wikinomics: transparency, peering, sharing intellectual property and acting globally.

One-Line Summary: Leveraging the power of the internet to accelerate the quality and quantity of results.

The process using the success story of the Goldcorp – a small gold-mining firm who needed to find new deposits.

1. Identify the requirement (provide focus) — In the case of Goldcorp, it was to find more sources of gold.
2. Share info. (Goldcorp made proprietary info available).
3. Seek help from those “outside” you respective organization and/or industry. Goldcorp sponsored a contest.
4. Provide an incentive — monetary and/or non-monetary. Goldcorp’s winning prize was $575,000.

Steps 2 and 3 are the tough parts for organizations where “knowledge is power.” On step 3, typically, nearly impossible for those “inside the system” to change it — takes outsiders with different perspectives.

Could apply the same process internally within the organization — outsiders being those from outside the respective department.

I would think it would be a tough process to compete with … Worked pretty well for Goldcorp.

Iraq: Surge and U.S. Political Impact

Casualty Of The Surge, (Washington Post)…Michael Gerson, Oct 24, 2008.

The dramatic success of the surge in Iraq is not a central issue in the current presidential race. It did, however, set its shape — and may help determine its outcome in an unexpected way.

John McCain won the nomination of his party, in large part, as a vindicated prophet. After visiting Iraq in the summer of 2003, he argued on “Meet the Press” that “the men and women in the military are doing a superb job. . . . The problem is that they don’t have enough resources. There’s not enough of them, and we are in a very serious situation, in my view, a race against time.” McCain added, “Time is not on our side …

This raises the question: If McCain benefited politically from being correct about the surge, why has Barack Obama not been punished for opposing it?

It was, after all, the single most important decision Obama has made as a public official. His judgment? “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” This initial reluctance is perhaps understandable; many shared it. But Obama persisted in his skepticism after the results became evident. Even in July of this year, he argued, “the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true.”

But the main reason Obama has escaped the political consequences of his poor judgment on the surge has been the success of the surge itself, which has taken the issue almost entirely off the table.

So Obama is left with a pleasing paradox: The successes of a strategy he opposed may have paved his way to the presidency.

And McCain is left with a poignant comfort. He once said he would rather lose an election than lose a war. He may lose an election, in part, because he helped win a war.

AFRICOM – Location – Unique Mission – Prevention

Area May Be A Finalist For Military HQ
(Charleston (SC) Post and Courier)…Ron Menchaca, Oct 24, 2008.

The Lowcountry is in the running to become the headquarters for a major U.S. military command focused on Africa that could inject hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars of investment into the Charleston area.

“Unlike traditional Unified Commands, Africa Command will focus on war prevention rather than war-fighting,” according to the Web site. “The creation of U.S. Africa Command does not mean the U.S. military will take a leading role in African security matters, nor will it establish large U.S. troop bases.”

DARPA: Flying Sub for Military

New York Daily News
October 24, 2008
Pg. 28

Military Wants Flying Sub

By Barry Keevins and Corky Siemaszko, Daily News Writers

THE U.S. MILITARY is seeking designs for a new weapon that could be in a James Bond movie — a flying submarine.

While Bond drove a Lotus that turned into a sub when it hit the water in“The Spy Who Loved Me,” what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, wants is far more ambitious.

Its specs call for a submersible flying machine capable of carrying eight men and their equipment a combination of 1,150 miles by air, 115 miles by sea, or 22 miles underwater — in less than eight hours.

It must have the “stealth of a submarine” and be able to hide beneath the water’s surface for up to three days to pick up the men after their “coastal insertion” mission is completed.

“We are open to submissions from anywhere,” DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker said. “DARPA has a budget of $3 billion.”

Previous attempts to come up with such a craft failed because “the design requirements for a submersible and an aircraft are diametrically opposed,” according to the specs.

The Soviets tried to come up with one during World War II. And in the 1960s, the Navy doled out thousands to weapons contractors to come up with new flying sub designs.

Flying subs were featured on the TV series, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.”

Iran: Next National Security Issue

Stopping A Nuclear Tehran, (Washington Post)…Daniel R. Coats and Charles S. Robb, October 23, 2008, Pg. 19

It is likely that the first and most pressing national security issue the next president will face is the growing prospect of a nuclear-weapons-capable Iran. After co-chairing a recently concluded, high-level task force on Iranian nuclear development, we have come to believe that five principles must serve as the foundation of any reasonable, bipartisan and comprehensive Iranian policy.

… Fourth, so that Israel does not feel compelled to take unilateral action, the next president must credibly convince Jerusalem that the United States will not allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability.

Both to increase our leverage over Iran and to prepare for a military strike, if one were required, the next president will need to begin building up military assets in the region from day one.

Daniel R. Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, and Charles S. Robb, a former Democratic senator from Virginia, are co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s national security task force on Iran.

Sen. Obama has stated as recently as Oct 3, 2008, that ” the use of military force should not be taken off the table when dealing with Iran, which he called “a threat to all of us.” Sen McCain has stated that “We cannot allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon”

Phillipines: Successful war against Islamic terrorists

The Philippines: America’s Other War On Terrorism(McClatchy Newspapers (mcclatchydc.com))…Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers, Oct 22, 2008.

…On a Southeast Asian front that’s vital yet largely unfamiliar to most Americans, some 500 U.S. Special Operations Forces and their Filipino counterparts have been fighting a different, unconventional — and seemingly successful — war against Islamic terrorist groups with links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida.

The lessons of this relatively low-budget effort could be invaluable as the next U.S. president assumes the task of fighting Islamic extremism with a federal Treasury drained by the nation’s economic woes and the Army and Marine Corps strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.