"While the surprise selection of Adm. Fallon as the new CENTCOM is being well-received by those familiar with his extraordinary record at PACOM, especially his extensive and probing outreach to planners and theorists involved in all aspects of "GWOT". . .the Global War on Terrorism. . ."you have to suspect that a Navy man was picked, because they couldn't find a competent general who wanted the job if it involved the surge", an observer comments."
* the Armenian not-a-Genocide is in the news again. One wonders how much lobbying Mr Livingston is doing.
* there are a couple of good responses to my MIC post from yesterday. Starroute on capitalism et al and Pignut on the creation of permagovs - Pignut begins:
"Seeing the world in terms of big conspiracies can be disempowering. A lot of small conspiracies makes more sense to me. People driven by ideological motives getting manipulated by people with profit motives, who in turn are getting scammed by their colleagues and subordinates."
* amy:
"Report: 17,000 Iraqis Died in Last Six Months of 2006
New data from the Iraqi Health Ministry shows that more than 17,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in the latter half of 2006. That is more than three times the number of Iraqis reported to be killed during the first six months of the year. A Health Ministry official provided the data to the Washington Post. The actual number of violent deaths in 2006 is believed to be higher because the official said these numbers were incomplete."
* beeb:
"A gang of people smugglers who used an airplane to bring wealthy Turkish nationals to the UK in "club class comfort" have been jailed.
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The operation was linked to Abdullah Baybasin, 45, the Kurdish godfather of a multi-billion pound drugs empire who was jailed for 22 years last May.
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The court heard the plane, which had padded leather seats, was used to fly in up to 40 wealthy Turkish criminals and asylum seekers in comfort during various flights."
* Simon in the comments:
"Would anyone here like to become a honorary member of the SCUDWATCH team? In particular we could do with the help of a US citizen who would be willing to have a go at a couple of FOIA requests. We have in our possession a number of redacted documents. The originals, if we could get our hands on them, would be very very interesting indeed..."any takers? I'm not in the US obviously....
1 comment:
Luke,
Thanks for the bump to the front page. What we're trying to find out is exactly what happened on January 21/22 1991. The available CIA documents aren't exactly much help.
What we really want though is the US Space Command document "United States Space Command Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm Assessment January 1992". The heavily redacted version is available here (7.16Mb download), but contains no useful information. In particular we want TABLE 8.1 SCUD STATISTICS, pages 74, 75, 76, which has been completely removed, and annotated b(1).
We know from DOD Gulflink - Table 2 - Number of missiles fired by source - that the Space Command record should log 97 launches. This in itself is more than Iraq admitted to (93 missiles), a claim repeated as fact in Tony Blair's now famous September dossier:
The use of ballistic missiles
11. Iraq fired over 500 SCUD-type missiles at Iran during the Iran-Iraq War at both civilian and military targets, and 93 SCUD-type missiles during the Gulf War. The latter were targeted at Israel and Coalition forces stationed in the Gulf region.
Where did these extra missiles go then? And is it any wonder that Mr Kay and Co couldn't find them?
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