Now it's the Iranians claiming they're not getting the super-SAMs!
Go figure!

Never mind. We have managed to whip up a nice little tsunami in a glass of water here, and it's been a pleasure.
I'm confident Jastayme3, or any other of our honorable thread archaeologists/necromancers, will dig up this thread as soon as the Mullahs do get the S-300, or its Chicom clone.

Happy New Year to you all. May 2008 bring all of us Victory, Peace, and Wisdom.

...I fully agree with Darth Squirrel, and I somehow resent the way he is treated on this board.
There is no way the US will be able to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into democracies surrounding Iran from both sides, not in a million years, and even if they do, that still won't help the Iranian people get rid of a fascist police state with a large armed, illiterate and fanaticized militia. If there's anything DA and Herald don't understand, or refuse to face, it is how fascism works.
Now, their strategy of containment will give the Mullahs enough time, not only to develop nuclear weapons, but to acquire a nuclear arsenal such as what India and Durka-durkaPakistan now have. Which makes sure that when the Mullahs finally go to war in order to speed up the advent of the 12^th Imam, the war will be all-out nuclear.
Waiting for that to happen is a greater crime against humanity than an "aggression" against Iran's regime and military capabilities. Fact: the US and the West have the capability to prevent a nuclear holocaust in the Middle-East and to return Iran to its rightful place in the family of civilized nations, but would rather have all the Iranians (and their neighbors) incinerated in three years time than help them now.
But hey, what do I know about such things, I'm just an Israeli!
 

Shirrush:

The Wehrmacht took two of my German uncles, and they died fighting for a regime they hated..
My American grandfather died fighting against those Nazi bastards.
I've walked the ground of Bergen Belsen and Dachau.
I had my father shot up by PRC bandits, other members of my family suffered at the hands of those bastards as well..

I may not understand fascism the way you do, but I am not totally ignorant of what it is.

I also think I know what war costs.

Darth Squirrel gets what he deserves. He proclaims but does not justify. As I said elsewhere, I don't want a million  Human being's deaths on my conscience until we try everything reasonable. If reasonable measures fail, then let the hammer fall.


But we aren't quite there, yet.

Herald

   You're a good straightforward and linear thinker Herald, but your mind is unwilling (I didn't say unable) to cope with the abstract.  This is also the case for most of the (red-blooded) Americans involved in US geostrategic planning, and it is why the US is being beaten.  Both the relative and absolute power of the United States is declining rapidly, but most people, even professional military men, simply refuse to accept it.  Or rather, they refuse to accept that there are and will continue to be serious strategic consequences of this decline.  You are also out of the loop on a whole range of geostrategic issues that are well-accepted in certain professional circles. 

 

   On example is the proposal for forward-deployed missile defense bases in eastern Europe.  I outlined a technically simple but strategically advanced theory about the primary reason behind Russian opposition to MDA assets there (and Chinese opposition to them in the US and Pacific).  The reason is that a small but significant md capability negates an enemy's threat of initiating a limited nuclear exchange.  You denounced my theory as hogwash and smugly proclaimed that US nuclear doctrine calls for a full-scale retaliatory strike that would wreak total destruction of the enemy.  I let it drop because I figured it's not your area of expertise and I remember when my logic process was bound by the limits of what I wanted to accept, rather than reality as it was clearly before me.

   That theory is well-discussed in the geostrategic community but you

The above post is simply more long winded ranting, raving crap of course with no support for any of it's assertions.

-DA

You denounced my theory as hogwash and smugly proclaimed that US nuclear doctrine calls for a full-scale retaliatory strike that would wreak total destruction of the enemy.  I let it drop because I figured it's not your area of expertise and I remember when my logic process was bound by the limits of what I wanted to accept, rather than reality as it was clearly before me.

   That theory is well-discussed in the geostrategic community but you will not have read about it on the DrudgeReport, or seen it in a USNews piece, or even found it on more specialized websites (hobby sites, really) like Globalsecurity.org and Fas.org.  You were not able to offer a single piece of evidence to refute it, but you were also not able to offer an explanation as to why Russian opposition to it is so fierce.

He really is incorrect about the entire concept of missile defense and why Russia is mad at it. The suggestion that China or Russia would all of the sudden fire off one or two ICBMs in some limited strike under the assumption that the United States would only respond in kind and thats it is absurd. It's absurd to think the Russians and Chinese are that stupid and it's plane insane to think the USA would do any less that annihilate in total.

 

The reason the Russians are mad in addition to what Herald mentioned is because of the future implications a BMD would have on their nuclear forces which is the only real credible means of fighting NATO they have left.

 

-DA

By the way, nut hoarder-[that's you, DS] you are a LIAR. The Russians don't like OTH radars in the Czech republic  because it robs them of their chance to first strike us without warning from their western missile fields where the bulk of their best rockets are. Its the difference between thirty minutes and fifteen minutes as far as US warning times go. We can clear all silos in thirty. Not so sure how many Minuteman birds will fly in 15.

And of course it would spot Iranian inbounds.

Physics here is physics, not what YOU would call common sense. 

Herald

That seems odd to me, since our DSP satellites detect in the boost phase, as in within the first few seconds of launch.

 

Jim H