Iran won't retaliate for nuclear scientist killings: What We're Reading Now
Sep 27, 2011
IRAN
Iran won't retaliate for nuclear scientist killings
Reuters -- September 27, 2011
Iran will not retaliate against its enemies who killed Iranian nuclear scientists but wants international action to help prevent further attacks, its envoy to the U.N. atomic agency said on Tuesday.
U.S. Sells Bunker Busters to Israel
NPR -- September 25, 2011
Two years ago, the Obama Administration secretly authorized the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs — or bunker busters — to Israel. That's according to an investigation by Newsweek magazine. The bombs could potentially be used in Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz talks with Eli Lake, the reporter who broke the story.
NORTH KOREA
"Red Dawn" Remake to come out next year from FilmDistrict
Los Angeles Times -- September 26, 2011
A remake of the invasion movie "Red Dawn" — with its villains now digitally modified from Chinese to North Korean — will finally hit American shores next year.
Opinion: Pyongyang Looks for the Next Payoff
Andrei Lankov, The Wall Street Journal -- September 27, 2011
The lesson North Korean leaders learned from Libya is that there is no security without nuclear weapons.
Get A Leg Up/Give Up A Leg
Sep 23, 2011
Many years ago, during a debate on whether to build new bombers to carry nuclear weapons, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, former Representative Charlie Bennett of Florida, made a pointed declaration:
THE TRIAD IS NOT THE TRINITY!
By that wise pronouncement, Bennett was saying that the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons policy adopted early in the Cold War to spread the United States’ nuclear force among three legs or components was not the gospel, but rather a policy that no longer served its purpose.
The United States nuclear force is composed of three components that are described as synergistic:
--> On land, with intercontinental ballistic missiles--> At sea, with nuclear-powered submarines
--> In the air, with long-range nuclear bombers
Official Discomfort with Afghanistan War?
Mar 01, 2011
While key Administration officials continue to vigorously support the war in Afghanistan, there appears to be a less-than-enthusiastic larger view about the war.
Take Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In his recent speech at West Point, he pointed out:
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
That does not sound like a high level official who thinks that the United States military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq were bang up good ideas. Gates is not advocating getting out; he just does not think getting in was smart.
This skepticism was amplified at a February 17, 2011 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. There, Admiral Michael Mullen (USN), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not make the situation in Afghanistan sound exactly rosy.