Tag Archives: defense policy

Syria and the Bomb

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In 2007, an Israeli air strike blew up Syria’s nuclear reactor facility (the reactor itself wasn’t yet completed) and with it Syria’s nuclear weapons program.

Or so we thought at the time. If Spiegel Online International‘s reporting can be taken as even a bit accurate, al Assad is still working on a bomb at a couple of different facilities.

According to IAEA research, Syria possesses up to 50 tons of natural uranium, enough material for three to five bombs once the enrichment procedure is completed.

Keep in mind that, with Israel’s size, three to five bombs is all it would take for this Iranian client state to wipe Israel off the map.

And this:

The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington D.C. likewise has strong indications for the existence of such stockpiles [including fuel rods for the blown up reactor-under-construction]….

And:

Analysts say that the Syrian atomic weapon program has continued in a secret, underground location. According to information they have obtained, approximately 8,000 fuel rods are stored there.

I hate unnamed sources of any sort; this is why such reporting needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But what if the reporting is accurate?

Outside Qusayr, which is 20 miles southwest of Homs (and which would be an added motive for Syria’s desperation to recapture Homs from the Syrian rebels)

satellite images show six structures: a guard house and five sheds, three of which conceal entrances to the facility below. The site also has special access to the power grid, connected to the nearby city of Blosah. A particularly suspicious detail is the deep well which connects the facility with Zaita Lake, four kilometers away. Such a connection is unnecessary for a conventional weapons cache, but it is essential for a nuclear facility.

SOI also claims to have copies of Hezbollah communications that refer to the “atomic factory” and that mentions Qusayr.

What worries me if even a couple of details are being accurately reported is this: what happens if Hezbollah, or ISIS, or al Qaeda units operating in Syria get hold of the raw uranium or the fuel rods—which are a more purified version of the uranium?

Punishment of Terrorists

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There is a strong view that terrorists should be executed for their acts. In the main, I don’t disagree. Capital crimes desperately want capital punishment: prompt execution.

However.

Many of these terrorists are doing their deeds in order to become martyrs and to live in Allah’s heaven. For these, execution is a reward, not a punishment; for such as these, execution is a goal devoutly to be wished, not a deterrent.

Instead, I suggest, expensive as it would be, that wherever possible, those terrorists who are acting for martyrdom should be taken alive and allowed to die of old age in a prison cell. Here is punishment for the terrorist, and here is the possibility of deterrence: the price of failure being to live a long life in a cage, to be denied death except through the senility of old age.

Coordinated Lone Wolves?

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The terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo raises a question in my mind and in many other minds. This was an isolated attack, á la a number of other isolated attacks. However, this attack also was associated in time with the murder of a woman cop on the south side of Paris and the murders of four citizens in a Jewish bakery in eastern Paris: these ancillary(?) attacks went in while French police and security units were occupied with the hunt for and capture of the Charlie Hebdo butchers.

I wonder, then, whether al Qaeda (I discount ISIS in this, for now; they seem to be focused on Syria, Iraq, and Jordan) is changing their tactics away from the larger, but harder to execute, attacks like blowing up an embassy or flying airliners into economically and militarily important facilities.

I wonder whether al Qaeda is moving toward smaller, easier to execute, coordinated “lone wolf” attacks whose purpose isn’t to stress police forces with a major one-off, but to try to overwhelm them with more, and simultaneous, attacks than a police force can handle.

Following its inability to cow the West with large, splashily destructive attacks, I wonder whether al Qaeda is moving its attacks on Western civilization toward lots of these smaller, coordinated attacks in a different effort to demonstrate our inability to protect ourselves, the impotence of our police forces, and ultimately to using that version of fear to break apart our various national societies.

I see this, though, as both a greater danger and an admission of defeat. They can’t beat us in the terrorist version of pitched battles, so they’re moving toward this. Many of these will succeed (Charlie Hebdo), but the damage done will be small in each case (if tragic for the victims). They can succeed overall, though, only if we give in to the fear. They can succeed overall only if we citizens choose not to be actively vigilant, keeping in mind that when seconds count, and the terrorists are coming, the police are (only) minutes away.

Armed, confident, and alert. They can’t beat us.

The Veterans Administration Revisited

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To repeat: the VA needs to be disbanded, its employees returned to the private sector, and its budget distributed to our veterans as vouchers with which they can get the care they need from the doctors and facilities they choose.

The latest example of the VA’s fatal dysfunctionality is a hospital in Aurora, CO—rather, a hospital shell, since the VA has been mismanaging this project to the tune of claiming to “need” $1 billion (yes, that’s with a “b”) to finish—finish, mind you—building this building.

Those billion dollars are three times the original construction cost estimate in 2005, just nine short years ago. Accounting for inflation, that original estimate of $328 million would be a bit over $400 million today. Assuming it really would have needed all nine years to build the thing. Apparently, though, including VA incompetence, 18 years will be needed; the “hospital” is only half done. And just to saucer and blow it: the VA “is in arrears” with the payments it owes its current contractor.

Hoover Dam was built in five years (yes, yes, the dam wasn’t hindered by other government claptrap that also is in the VA’s way, but still…).

VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson has conceded VA fault, and he’s actually apologized (to his credit, it wasn’t one of those 21st century pap statements being masqueraded as an apology).

I apologize to veterans here in Colorado. I apologize to the taxpayers. We have let you down[.]

Sorry, though. It’s a fine apology (I’ll assume sincerity), but words don’t get the hospital built. Words don’t recover those hundreds of millions of lost dollars. Coming as they do in the midst of ongoing VA failure, words of apology are entirely worthless.

Get rid of the VA.

Hostility

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In an article more centered on relations between Ukraine and Russia and Ukraine’s ending of its “nonaligned” status, Nick Shchetko and Alan Cullison had this remark in noting that Ukraine’s move

drawing a quick rebuke from Moscow, which has accused the West of bringing hostile forces to its borders.

No. Moscow is…not describing accurately…the situation. The only hostile forces on Russia’s borders are Russia’s own, looking out, and Russia’s own on the outside of Russian borders, looking further out.

If Russia doesn’t want hostile forces on its borders, all it has to do is stop behaving hostilely. Full stop.