Delayed raid likely cost Chauncey Bailey his life

By Thomas Peele and Bob Butler

OAKLAND — The August 2007 raid on Your Black Muslim Bakery was postponed 48 hours to accommodate the vacation schedules of two senior SWAT commanders, a delay that likely cost journalist Chauncey Bailey his life, according to police sources and a lawyer representing an officer deeply involved in planning the raid.

During the delay between the first scheduled date, Aug. 1, and the raid Aug. 3, a masked gunman killed Bailey — a slaying in which authorities believe bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV was involved.

Officers familiar with the raid's planning and execution say Bailey's killing could have been prevented if not for the delay. While police did not know Bailey was being targeted, they strongly suspected bakery members had begun a killing spree that had resulted in two July 2007 deaths and described the need for the raid as paramount.

Police have for 15 months denied delaying the raid.

"I was never given any other date" other than Aug. 3, Assistant Chief Howard Jordon told Bay Area News Group-East Bay in October 2007.

On Monday, police Chief Wayne Tucker made varying statements about the matter in an interview with the Chauncey Bailey Project.

First, Tucker said there was no delay, then he said the decision to delay the raid from Aug. 1 to Aug. 3 was because "we were not ready. "... It was my decision and mine only to delay."

Then Tucker contracted further, saying, "It was never scheduled to go on the 1st. My staff may have wanted to go on the 1st. I didn't want to go on the 1st. And I made the decision based on what my comfort level was and my assurance that it was going to be successful."

Questions about the delay were "call(ing) my reputation into question," he said.

Four officers involved in the raid and two other senior members of Alameda County law enforcement confirmed the first scheduled date of Aug. 1, and said it was delayed because two senior SWAT commanders, Deputy Chief David Kozicki and Capt. Ed Tracey, were on a backpacking trip, and they wanted to be present.

Kozicki and Tracey did not respond to messages Monday or attend Tucker's brief interview at police headquarters.

Michael Rains, an attorney representing another officer involved in the raid planning, said his client, homicide Lt. Ersie Joyner III, knew of the delay, and objected to it.

"A decision was made to delay and put off the (raid) and the service of the search warrants to Aug. 3," Rains said.

That postponement came "over (Joyner's) very strong statements. He was prophetic" that Bey IV would order more killings, Rains said. Rains is representing Joyner and detective Sgt. Derwin Longmire in an internal affairs and state Department of Justice investigations into the handling of the Bailey case.

A former Oakland lieutenant who was a watch commander in 2007 about the time of the raid said the delay was unfortunate but not intentional.

"There was no violation of protocol, there was just an unfortunate set of circumstances. So just own up to that," said retired Lt. Patrick Garrahan.

In midsummer 2007, police believed bakery members were responsible for two North Oakland gun killings: Odell Roberson on July 8, 2007, and Michael Wills four days later.

On July 25, at the urging of Joyner and homicide Sgt. Lou Cruz, the police Targeted Enforcement Task Force began night surveillance of Bey IV. After several nights of watching the bakery, the raid was scheduled for Aug. 1, officers said.

The idea was to hit the compound to search for evidence in the Wills and Roberson cases — which remain unsolved — and a May 2007 kidnapping for which Bey IV and three followers face life sentences if convicted.

On Monday, July 30, 2007, SWAT teams drilled at the Oakland Army Base in preparation for raiding the bakery less than 48 hours later. They practiced storming buildings and ripping through doors with a chain saw to gain entry.

But then, officers said, they were ordered to stand down. The raid was pushed back two days — to Friday, Aug. 3, because Kozicki and Tracey had been on a backpacking trip and wanted to participate, according to Rains and police sources.

Police on July 30 rented two U-Haul trucks to carry a strike force to the bakery from a staging area several blocks away. They tried to extend the rental agreement on the vehicles, but were turned down and had to hurriedly rent other trucks from the Penske company to use Aug. 3, officers said.

Credit card slips and rental agreements obtained from the city under the public records act confirm the transactions.

The four officers said that the nature of SWAT operations requires a constant state of readiness and the ability to react with little notice. There were more than enough senior officers available to supervise the operation Aug. 1, they said, even though the risks were thought to be high.

"Based on the (intelligence) we received we knew that it was going be rough," said one SWAT officer. "We expected to take some casualties on this." We were doing a final run-through at the Oakland Army Base on Monday to prepare for Wednesday's raid when word came down that we had to wait until Friday when Kozicki and Tracey got back."

Because of the delay, the officers assigned to watching Bey IV stood down in the early morning hours of Aug. 1. The officers had been working double shifts, were exhausted, and were needed for the raid, rescheduled for Aug. 3, said police sources. On Aug. 2, shortly after midnight, Bey IV and two of his followers, Antoine Mackey and Devaughndre Broussard drove from the bakery to Bailey's apartment near Lake Merritt and parked there for 14 minutes, according to a tracking device on Bey IV's car and police statements.

Police also have a recorded statement of a bakery worker saying Bey IV was highly agitated Aug. 1. The person also is said to have told police that Bey IV prayed for strength with Mackey and Broussard.

A man who lived at the bakery told police he loaned Bey IV a white minivan without license plates about 6 a.m. Aug. 2. Bailey was gunned down about 90 minutes later near downtown. Witnesses told police they saw the masked killer flee in a white minivan without license plates.

The bakery worker who spoke to police said Bey IV said of Bailey's killing "that will teach them to (expletive) with me."

The next morning, Aug. 3, 200 officers raided the bakery compound on San Pablo Avenue without incident. Later that day, Broussard confessed to killing Bailey, a statement he has since recanted.

But the operation was too late for Bailey.

"The police department, they just fumbled everything," said Bailey's sister, Lorelei Waqia. "They caused the death, really. If they had moved on it, my brother would still be alive."

Retired Lt. Garrahan said SWAT officers told him "all the coordination had been done; that the reason I kept getting was that this backpacking trip was the reason for the delay."

Garrahan retired in April, but keeps in touch with many officers. Many of those officers, he said, are angry that police commanders have never acknowledged the raid delay.

"If the guy on the street, the man or woman that's driving around in that police car out there, is held accountable to a standard where you must be honest, you must be truthful, then that should go all the way up the chain of command," he said.

Timeline shows Bush, McCain warning Dems of financial mess

What the ruling party does not want you to see. Now they also want to turn out the lights on what is and has happened in Illinois and Chicago.

This video shows that George Bush tried to warn Congress starting in 2001 that this economic crisis was coming, if something was not done. But congress refused to listen, along with Barney Franks. This video says it all.

The liberal AMERICAN media did not want this video on You Tube, so they had Time Warner threaten a law suit (proprietary rights) if it was not taken off.

This link is of the same video but is routed through Canada. Everyone in America needs to see this! must read and bailout

Disgraced Illinois governor never met an illegal alien he didn't like

By Dave Gorak

When the news broke that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich had been arrested by the FBI on a laundry list of corruption charges, I had mixed feelings about what awaits the man who was my governor before my wife and I legally crossed Wisconsin's southern border three years ago and took up residence in "America's Dairyland."

Naturally, I was pleased to learn that "Blago" probably is headed for a fairly long stay in a federal prison, but whatever sentence he receives won't be long enough to suit me. That is because none of the charges in the feds' 78-page complaint include what he has done to make the state in which I was born and worked my entire life an even bigger magnet for illegal aliens. Latest estimates show that nearly 600,000 illegals are living on the backs of Illinois taxpayers.

Never reluctant to boast that he is the "son of immigrants," Blagojevich wasted no time in hanging out the welcome sign for illegals. In May 2003 he signed into law a bill giving in-state tuition to illegals, and he always has supported the idea of giving them drivers licenses so they "could get to work." Fortunately, numerous attempts to "make the roads safer" in Illinois by teaching illegals the "rules of the road" have thus far failed.

In late November 2005 Blago, working closely with the left-wing Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), created by executive order the New Americans Immigrant Policy Council (NAIPC) for the purpose of helping immigrants "assimilate" into Illinois society. Among the 15 council members is a representative of the ICIRR, which has received thousands of dollars from the Donors Forum of Chicago for the purpose of pushing legislation that would give driving privileges to illegals. NAIPC's national advisory board members include Frank Sharry, formerly of the National Immigration Forum and now head of America's Voice, and Cecilia Munoz, who had been a senior vice president with the National Council of La Raza before recently being named to President-elect Barack Obama's White House staff.

1. During the March 2006 illegal alien demonstrations in Chicago that included appearances by Mayor Richard M. Daley and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), Blago helped inspire the crowd when he told them in Spanish that he "understood" their values and concerns.

Recent revelations about Blago's very brazen and bizarre chicanery even though he knew for three years that he was being closely watch by the feds help explain another of his equally bizarre actions: Last August he signed a bill "prohibiting" employers from using, E-Verify, the federal government's highly effective voluntary workplace verification program that determines whether an individual can work here in accordance with federal law. In other words, if Illinois employers attempted to comply with federal immigration law they would find themselves in hot water with their state.

Blago's asinine attempt to circumvent our immigration laws (with the help of the General Assembly's Latino Caucus) was to have become effective at the beginning of this year, but it was put on hold after the state was sued by the Department of Homeland Security. The last I heard a new bill that substitutes the word "discourages" for "prohibits" is under consideration.

Wafa Sultan’s wake-up call to Colin Powell: “Is there something wrong with being a Muslim?”

(Compiler's note: A must read)

Wafa Sultan: “Is it not a duty for each one of us to view Islam not frivolously but in a most serious manner?”

One of the heroes of our age

When Colin Powell endorsed Obama in October, he went out of his way to criticize those who were trouble by the idea of a Muslim President. Hugh Fitzgerald explained what was wrong with Powell’s analysis in his article “Colin Powell and Jihad: A dereliction of duty.” And now the heroic Wafa Sultan contributes some observations of her own: “Contemplating Islam,” by Wafa Sultan in Hudson New York, December 15 (thanks to Pamela and JW):

Clueless ‘house negro’ Powell (Al Sharpton quote)

If we consider the Islamic texts, their content and the devotion that so many Muslims - including in America - attach to them; if we consider the tragic upshot of these teachings in terms of our current world’s security, is it not a duty for each one of us to view Islam not frivolously but in a most serious manner?There was an episode during the current Presidential election that greatly disturbed me. It was former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s interview on “Meet the Press.” For me this interview was a defining moment. He expressed his displeasure at some of his colleagues’ accusations that Obama might be a Muslim, and stated: “And what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim?”

Mr. Powell’s admonition at others who dare questioning Muslims, or Islam and its implications, in particular, people like me, who suffered immensely precisely because there is “something wrong with being a Muslim,” would indeed be disheartened. If Powell doesn’t understand what may be the dire consequences for being a Muslim, then who should understand? The man, who once held the post of American Secretary of State, asserts categorically that there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, even though the country he led has been suffering immensely from Muslim terrorism and has paid a high price because of it.

I appreciate that Powell, who has been nurtured by the American moral code, refuses to judge people on the basis of their religious affiliation. That is his right. But he does not have the right to nonchalantly disregard people’s apprehensions of Muslims, especially at those of us who have lived in Muslim countries. We have risked our lives to escape from them, and are now risking our lives again to speak up against the harm they cause, induced by Islamic theology and culture.

In order to understand my perspective one would have to be a woman, living in Syria, my birthplace, or any other Arab Muslim country.

Since immigrating to the United States more than five presidential elections ago, I always regarded American politics as a luxury that did not concern me. Living in the US was enough to satisfy me emotionally, physically and intellectually. Anything beyond that was more than I required.

I came to regard America’s might as much greater than any president that happened to be in power - Democratic or Republican. Hence, I assumed that any person, who attained the rank of presidential candidate, regardless of party affiliation, was capable of safely leading this great nation. Because of that, I never took the trouble to inquire which candidate was more worthy of victory; for me it was a mere toss-up.

However, the events of September 11th, 2001 stripped away my confidence. I began wondering how well Americans understand Political Islam - the underlying cause of this and other heinous attacks and how willing are we to probe into its ideology or comprehend its objectives. The events surrounding the most recent election have increased my doubts and my concerns for this country, which I love with all my heart.

So what is the problem? During and after the recent election, my fear for America was that Obama’s victory could breathe fresh life into the further rise of Islamism, including Islamic terrorism.

Why?

Islamists’ psychology is worlds apart from that of Westerners. They believe in absolute terms in their divine mission to submit the world to Islam. They are engaged in a constant search for divine meaning and inspiration - even in mundane matters.

First, there was Senator Obama’s Muslim background. It is well known that Mr. Obama was born to a Muslim father, spent part of his early life in Indonesia - a Muslim country - and attended a Muslim school there. Almost every day my inbox was flooded with e-mail rumors about Obama which reflected many American citizens’ fears regarding the Democratic candidate’s Muslim background.

But Mr. Obama reassured us that he is a Christian and that was enough to dispel the doubts I might have had about him being a Muslim. I let go of my fear for America should Obama win. For now, I regained my confidence in him.

However, Salafists interpret even daily events in a way that may not necessarily appear significant to Westerners. In this context some Islamists go so far as viewing the Islamic background of Obama as a heaven-sent confirmation of the first step in realizing the dream of submitting the West to Islam. The mere fact that American president bears a Muslim name like Hussein is enough to assure them that Islam is marching into America and has already infiltrated the White House.

Once, I was browsing through a website in Arabic and came across a news item announcing that the American actress Halle Berry gave birth to a daughter whom she named Nahla; an Arabic name meaning “bee”. I then read readers’ comments on this piece of news. A considerable number of them were jubilant, since they regarded this report as a God’s sign that Islam had begun to advance into America, because the word nahla is mentioned in the Koran.

As for Mr. Powell, does he understand that Islam is not just a religion but a political doctrine that seeks to impose itself on non-Muslims even by force? If he does, why should people not be doubtful?

This is not an Islamophobic prejudice I present. Muslims, like any other national group, can be either good or bad, and the best among them do not act in accordance with Islam’s political ideology, either because they are not familiar with it, or because they have deliberately progressed beyond it. But how are we to scrutinize the good from the bad when a high level political official like Mr. Powell undermines the questioning of any concerns related to this issue?

Certainly, Mr. Powell knows that Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, is most revered among Muslims. Does Mr. Powell realize that it is incumbent upon every devout Muslim male to emulate Muhammed’s ways? If so, has Mr. Powell studied the life of Muhammad as it is recounted in the original Arabic sources, as I learned it in my schooldays?

One particular part of the prophet’s historical account I studied in third grade at primary school. We read with pride how Muhammad beheaded eight hundred Jews from the Bani Quraiza tribe in one night, then took their wives and children hostage and spent that same night with a Jewish woman Safia, whose husband, father and brother he had just killed. This wretched story is only a drop in the ocean of numerous Arabic narratives written about Muhammad’s misconduct.

Moreover, according to Islam’s most revered jurists, a true Muslim must believe in Islam as both religion and a political entity. A committed Salafi Muslim does not recognize the American constitution. His willingness to live under that constitution is, as far as he is concerned, nothing more than an unavoidable step on the way to that constitution’s replacement by Islamic Sharia law.

The Koran states: “Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their numbers. Allah does not guide the wrongdoers” (5:51). Is it legitimate for Christians and Jews to be concerned about this tenet?

American government officials must spend funds to interpret Arabic texts word for word, without distortion or falsification. Among other illuminating tenets they may find, is the concept of taqqia (literally, “caution, prudence, dissimulation”). It allows a Muslim to conceal his true cherished beliefs when he feels that non-Muslims around him have the upper hand, while at the same time working secretly to achieve his “noble” objective, so that he can attack them when the time is ripe….

China's barely-noticed economic war with the U.S.

Sol Sanders also writes the "Asia Investor" column weekly for EAST-ASIA-INTEL.com.

Beijing is waging economic warfare against Washington. But as is the Chinese wont, it is using traditional guerrilla asymmetrical tactics in what is more than a little fog of war.

With near financial hysteria and demi economic chaos in the U.S. and what looks increasingly like a meltdown of the Chinese economic model – export-led mercantilist state capitalism – the viewer has more than sand thrown in his eyes.

Shell-shocked old Hank Paulson in late November went through the motions of the semi-annual Strategic Economic Dialogue with the Chinese. Maybe it was a relief just to get out of Washington for a short visit to Beijing even without the usual Communist version of sing-song girls. So he hit the repeat button on old mantras about how helpful both parties were to each other.

An official and required report of the Treasury to Congress claims that no major trading partner, including China, fell below the standards that would label them a currency

manipulator. But there weren’t many analysts around who believed it. Even in the Treasury itself, Washington couldn’t quite get their songsheets together. In May a report to Congress said “…the pace of appreciation needs to continue in order to address the continuing substantial undervaluation of the RMB and the risks China is creating for itself, the Asian region, and the world economy in which China is playing a greater role. Treasury has been reinforcing that message to Chinese authorities on a frequent basis both bilaterally and multilaterally and will continue to do so.” bailout

Six months later, another Treasury report finds that China allowed its currency to appreciate a total of 6.2 percent against the dollar in the first half of 2008, just short of the 6.4 percent gain in the entire year in 2007. But in the last couple of weeks of November before Paulson’s meeting, the yuan slipped back to its lowest level in about five months, the report went on to say. [Were the Chinese trying to tell Paulson something in numbers instead of ideographs?]

Translation from Washington bureaucratese? “The Chinese are mucking around with their currency to the U.S. dollar and the whole world trade community’s hurt and we keep asking them to stop it. But they won’t.”

The Congressionally mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission – once the darling of the Taiwan lobby but now a dumping ground for Hill staffers – annual report in late November put it bluntly [if with not much documentation and therefore, apparently, little hope]: Congress should enact legislation to stop China’s currency manipulation. How?

It isn’t that Beijing is operating in a moneychangers’ vacuum. The Chinese government is doing everything it can to help its export sector. That’s because it is losing jobs at a rapid pace with the current global shutdown. That includes intervening to keep the yuan stable against the dollar instead of permitting it to continue to rise, even at the glacial pace for years it had informally promised the Bush Administration it would permit. That would make exports more expensive. With exports accounting, the mythmakers in Chinese statistics say, for a third of any growth in the Chinese economy, the reason is obvious.

Of course currency manipulation isn’t the whole story of this cat and mouse saga. Some observers have argued that the yuan is now probably so undervalued that only a massive – and therefore destabilizing – revaluation would really cut into China’s cheaper export prices for manufactured goods. That may be even harder with reports Beijing’s still cloudy $1.7 billion “stimulus” package – everybody has to have a stimulus package these days, the most fashionable policy around. A significant [and secret, of course] part is going to go into new export subsidies to back up the cheaper yuan.

Besides, the Chinese are buying American debt – and Washington is about to roll up vast news sums of that for export. The Chinese, long the largest holders of U.S. Treasury securities [along with its East Asian neighbors and the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms], continue to buy more. [With a $43.6 billion increase in holdings of U.S. treasury securities in September, China's overall holdings amounted to $585 billion with.Japan cutting its holdings to $573 billion from $586 billion in August.] What else could they do with the foreign exchange they are piling up with their mercantilist policies? Besides, for the first time in history, the Treasury has gone into minus interest rates for its securities. That means the world, generally, still thinks that the U.S. promise to pay the bearer on demand is more valid than other possibilities around the globe.

The guesswork – Chinese financial policy is such a tangle of propaganda, ineptitude, corruption and stealth that one can never be quite sure about even the estimates of the dismal scientists – is that the Beijing financial warriors have been more active recently. It looks like the Chinese have been using their massive foreign exchange reserves [now nearing $2 trillion in other people’s, mainly U.S., debt] to hammer the rate of the ren min bao [yuan] to the dollar. Cheaper Chinese currency to the American dollar, of course, theoretically fuels Chinese exports now as it has all through the boom period

The honorable experts have already been shaken and chastened by the latest [always suspicious] statistics on those exports. At a still magnificent $114.99 billion, they declined in November 2.2 percent from a year earlier, the sharpest fall since 1999, and, morosely, are predicted to continue to fall and bounce on the bottom for at least another year or so. Of course, the Chinese currency manipulation tends to keep out imports, anything but the industrial components and raw materials, especially energy. They are needed for the export machine, ironically, largely in the hands of the Western and Japanese multinational corporations who bundle and brand them to market. The worldwide collapse of commodity prices, particularly in metals and oil, also helped trim the import bill. So the trade balance recorded a new record: 40.1 billion yuan, $5.8 billion, well over the previous record of 35.2 billion yuan set in October.

China has been the third-largest export market for the U.S., and has been a major buyer of commodities – much of that from the U.S. and such other [until now] booming economies as Australia. Even India is going to be hit as a major exporter of iron ore with China’s purchases falling by 7.9 percent in November. [Crude wasdown 1.8 percent.] But that is likely to dramatically decline with the level of production in China.

All of this is leading to a galloping deflation in China – prices are falling everywhere. That’s good news for the ticket punching bureaucratic hacks at the Politburo in Beijing since the cost of living – particularly a sharp rise in food prices – was threatening back in the late spring to get out of hand. Theoretically it would also help the exporters to keep their prices down, if for no other reason, than growing unemployment has further strengthened the hand of the slave markets for industrial labor in the Pearl River Delta and Shanghai industrial complexes.

But the question is whether all this falderall will really help maintain the stability of a fragile Chinese politcal economy. Keeping export prices at an artifically low level – now with the help of worldwide deflation – may not do the trick. The question is, to use Maynard Milord Keynes metaphor, whether continuing to hold prices down for Chinese exports to the U.S. [the EU and Japan] will really push the hanging string of rapidly diminishing U.S., Euro and Japanese demand. With consumption patterns retracting in the U.S., Europe and Japan, at an alarming rate, nobody may want that new widescreen LCD/Plasma TV even at a bargain price. In fact, there may not be a market for that new Intel microprocessor measured in millionths of a millimeter even if we can use it to replace most of the tower of a PC or produce tiny little accelerator to fit inside your ear. Not for a while.

Most businesspeople in China "didn't imagine that these events in the U.S. would affect them," Li Qiang, chief statistician of the National Bureau of Statistics, told the Financial Times. "For most of the last 18 years, the economy has been continually growing, so they've gotten used to it." Curious, since everyone knew all the time they had been living on exports and had created only a relatively small internal market largely for a pampered elite partial to Guchi and Armani. In China, of course, that includes tens of millions of people. But in the coastal city of Yuyao, the Ningbo Wanglong Group, a food company, claims that years of rapid expansion have made it one of the world's largest producers of preservatives for food and feed. But the combination of continuing adulteration and poisoning scandals in Chinese foods, domestic and export have frightened away customers at a time of general decline in demand. That reflected in toys and other goods has resulted in growing unemployment including graduates of Chinese universities who had for some time been having trouble finding employment.

Ironically [or perhaps characteristically] there are no reliable estimates of Chinese unemployment, certainly no statistics. But anecdotal evidence is that the always rampant undereployment and unemployed in the economically stagnant countryside is now getting an addition, returning workers from declining industrial production. The 640 million question is, of course, how far will this go. Economists are already scaling back estimates of Chinese gross development product, from the slightly over 9 percent of the last quarters, to as low as 5 percent. It’s long been believed that anything less than double digit growth or thereabout does not absorb even a modicum of the growing labor force in China’s 1.3 billion. Large unemployment could mean trouble for Beijing’s rulers; incidents of social unrest including pitched battles with police have been growing. There may not be a lot American policy can do about helping a regime which has refused so adamantly to move politically toward more flexible policies.

President-elect Obama spoke out during the campaign against what he called unfair Chinese trade practices and currency manipulation. But Lawrence Summers, tapped to be Obama’s White House economic director, last year told the Congress they should go easy on China's currency policies. Fed banker Timothy F. Geithner who will slip into Paulson’s worn shoes as Treasury secretary in January, has lived in China, studied Chinese, and sat in the New York Fed where this problem of foreign currencies was uppermost. He may even have thoughts about how to approach it. Ken Lieberthal, a former National Security Council adviser on Asia under President Bill Clinton and who advised Hillary Rodham Clinton and then Obama during the presidential campaign, has made soothing noises about calming what he calls "mutual distrust about both sides' intentions [which] has grown." He claimed that on a recent trip to Beijing, he found many officials and ordinary Chinese who believed in one of those 9/11 conspiracy type theories: the United States purposely triggered a global financial crisis to thwart China's growth. Maybe Lieberthal, to introduce a little realism, had better remind the Chinese that their Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping, who started the modernization, said that it didn’t matter what color a cat was in this cat and mouse economic game, as long as it caught mice.

Airborne sensor needed to ID real vs dummy nuclear warheads

The U.S. military installs a radar system at a military facility in Israel's Negev desert on Nov. 12. The radar system, which the United States agreed in July to deploy in Israel to counter a perceived missile threat from Iran, is to go operational in mid-December. AFP/David Buimovitch

U.S. working urgently behind scenes as India-Pakistan tensions mount

from Geostrategy

Reports from Southwest Asia indicate India is preparing to take some type of military action against suspected terrorist bases in Pakistan, raising the specter of a conflict between the two nuclear armed regional powers.

Indian news media reported that Delhi has proof of links between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Mumbai attacks, including the names of instructors, training locations and that the United States possesses additional evidence that it shared with India.

Unidentified sources reported that the U.S. notified Pakistan of links to the attack from Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed.

India has asked Pakistan to turn over several terrorists it believes are responsible for the Mumbai terrorist attacks and Pakistan is demanding proof of the terrorists’ links.....

Doomsday: U.S. report warns of 'strategic shock' leading to massive unrest

(Compiler's note: Your going to want to consider this must read article!)

from World Tribune

WASHINGTON

— The United States could be sleep-walking into its next crisis, a military

report said.

The report by the U.S. Army

War College's Strategic institute, said that a defense community paralyzed by conventional thinking could be unprepared to help the United States cope with a series of unexpected crises that would rival the Al Qaida strikes in 2001, termed a "strategic shock."

The report cited the prospect of the collapse of a nuclear state leading to massive unrest in the United States.

"Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security," the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, said.

"Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters are all paths to disruptive domestic shock."

Titled "Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development," the report warned that the U.S. military and intelligence community remain mired in the past as well as the need to accommodate government policy. Freier, a former Pentagon official, said that despite the Al Qaida surprise in 2001 U.S. defense strategy and planning remain trapped by "excessive convention."

"The current administration confronted a game-changing 'strategic shock' inside its first eight months in office," the report said. "The next administration would be well-advised to expect the same during the course of its first term. Indeed, the odds are very high against any of the challenges routinely at the top of the traditional defense agenda triggering the next watershed inside DoD [Department of Defense]."

The report cited the collapse of what Freier termed "a large capable state that results in a nuclear civil war." Such a prospect could lead to uncontrolled weapons of mass destruction proliferation as well as a nuclear war.

The report cited the prospect of a breakdown of order in the United States. Freier said the Pentagon could be suddenly forced to recall troops from abroad to fight domestic unrest.

"An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home," the report said.

The report said the United States could also come under pressure from a hostile state with control over insurgency groups. The hostile state could force American decision-makers into a desperate response.

"The United States might also consider the prospect that hostile state and/or nonstate actors might individually or in concert combine hybrid methods effectively to resist U.S. influence in a nonmilitary manner," the report said. "This is clearly an emerging trend."

"The aforementioned are admittedly extreme," the report said. "They are not, however, implausible or fantastical."