A Mammoth? Really?

A government employed engineer working in Siberia claims to have shot this video purportedly of a mammoth crossing a river. I make no claims as to the veracity of the video. Would it be cool though if they did locate an isolated vestigial population of wooly mammoths?

Complacency

Complacency (n) - A feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble, or controversy.

Roll back the clock if you will to a time when our nation's attention was squarely fixed on cutting the size of our military. There were congressional commissions charged with deciding which bases should be closed and the best methods to use to lure soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines to abandon the rigors of military life. We sang rousing strains of kum-bay-ah while basking in the light of our victory over our greatest foe. The time had come when we could finally stand down. We could finally look to "balancing our budgets" and beating our swords into plowshares. Medals were handed out, backs were patted and cigars lit for celebratory smokes.

I remember it clearly. I was a veteran of the cold war sitting in a bar listening to CNN and talking with some friends. They were all enamoured with the prospects of the cold war finally ending.

I was not. I told them of the small towns I had seen encircled in barbed wire where children played in their yards under the watchful eyes of armed guards who would not hesitate to shoot them if they chased their ball too near the wire. I had told them of seeing mile after mile of razor wire fences bristling with mines stretching as far as the eye could see and of small towns shorn in half by those fences. These people, I told them, were pure evil.

They laughed and told me that I was just exhibiting the hatred of my foe that the army had brainwashed into my head. They cited some idiotic Sting lyrics about the Russians loving their children too:

In Europe and America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Krushchev said we will bury you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the President
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie that we don't believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is that the Russians love their children too

I told them that I enjoyed the melody of the Sting song, but that hopeful lyrics would provide no shield. I explained that the Russians were not adverse to trading territory for time. They had done this extensively during World War II and they did it to Napoleon. It was a traditional tactic of theirs. I told my listening friends to mark my words. That those who ignored history were doomed to repeat it.

They laughed and bought me another beer, dismissing my words as the grumblings of a doom-saying brainwashed veteran.

Then I watched as the Russians ceded more and more territory and all the while we were growing more and more complacent... disarming and defeating ourselves.

Then I grumbled under my breath when the Russian president ordered the rusty Russian navy back to sea. I sighed when Bear bombers resumed threatening Alaska with nuclear devastation. Again and again the soul-less former KGB agent increased the stakes and ratcheted up the pressure. I nodded knowingly when Gary Kasparov was jailed for deigning to striving to create a political opposition. Finally I was vindicated when Russia rolled into Georgia brutally pulverizing a free and sovereign nation.

Now here we are; the Russians have signed a ceasefire agreement. The puppet president of Russia has promised again and again to pull out of Georgia and yet continued to build their fortifications inside the besieged nation.


We've sent our Secretary of State to hold meetings and talk to the Russians. They appease her and move missiles into the disputed province of South Ossetia. We threaten to kick them out of the G8. They say "that's nice" and take Georgian soldiers hostage.

We threaten to introduce a resolution into the UN Security Council. They laugh and confiscate US military material that was in Georgia to train Georgian troops for their missions in Iraq. We sign a deal with the Polish to build an anti-missile shield to protect them from Iranian nukes and the Russians threaten to target them with their nukes. Our allies look on aghast as the supposed "most powerful nation of the Earth" is impotent to stop Georgia's torment.

Oh yes Virginia, this gnarled old veteran was right. We scrapped the military might that set the Russians back on their heels. We sent thousands of veterans home with a handshake. We took the tanks from our very best forces and gave them trucks instead. We stopped allotting money to train the troops that remained. All of this we did without ensuring that the bear wasn't just playing dead. Now when that bear suddenly now comes around, baring its claws and flashing its fangs we ask it nicely to get back in its cave but we have nothing to compel that to happen. Our complacency has cost lives. How long will it be until it costs American lives? In a dangerous world it is folly to not be prepared to face those dangers and we unfortunately are folly's children.

Perhaps We Spoke Too Soon

I spent a large part of my time in the military facing down the Soviet military and the majority of my life under threat from Russian ICBM's. For that reason, the whole "glasnost" thing never really smacked of truth to me. It just felt like a ploy. Years of looking through binoculars at a people surrounded by barbed wire, mines, guard dogs and machinegun emplacements taught me the cruelty that these people were capable of. I was never able to blithely accept that they had changed their spots over night.

Sure, we won the cold war. We'd beaten them at the game, but there were no boots on the ground to ensure they stayed that way.

As time goes by I am seeing more and more that I was justified in my suspicion. Putin is reining in the political reforms that made us think they were moving toward an open and representative form of government, outlawing political organisations left and right that object to his policies. They've stymied every attempt at punishing the Iranian regime for thumbing its nose at international convention and decorum. Then comes this...

"He subsequently learnt from Iraqi, CIA and British intelligence that the WMD buried in the four sites were excavated by Iraqis and Syrians, with help from the Russians, and moved to Syria. The location in Syria of this material, he says, is also known to these intelligence agencies." (source)

This isn't coming from some neo-con Bush stooge either. It is coming from David Gaubatz, a decorated intelligence agent who was on the ground in Saudi Arabia and Iraq attempting to locate Saddam's WMD stashes at the conclusion of the campaign to unseat Saddam. Other sources have corroborated his claims that WMD materials were moved to Syria in that time frame. (Just read the damned article without dismissing it outright.)

There have been other indications that Russia has not been exactly playing the part of our ally. There have been indications that Russia was supplying arms to Saddam's military right up until he was ejected from power. I've read reports from the ground that indicate that a new type of Russian anti-tank weapon designed to defeat the M1's advanced chobham armor was fired at our troops resulting in the first M1 destroyed to enemy fire during our initial push into Baghdad. In other words it would appear that the Russians were using Iraqi surrogates to test their new weapons. Further reports indicate that these same RPG 29's were supplied by Russia directly to Hezbollah(via Syria), where they inflicted the heavy casualties on the the IDF during the 2006 Israeli/Lebanese conflict that made that conflict so costly (per Haaretz article on 08/06/06). Further, Russian-made SA14 Gremlin and SA18 Grouse antiaircraft missiles have increasingly become available, smuggled in from Iran and turned on our helicopters with devastating effect. The claims are that Iran is purchasing these missiles on the black market or manufacturing clones domestically, but I just do not trust the Russians. It's just as plausible that these weapons are being shipped directly across the Russian/Iranian border with full knowledge that they will be handed over to enemy forces in Iraq.

Perhaps they consider it pay-back for American involvement in supplying Afghan resistance fighters, or maybe, they have simply changed tactics. Rather than taking the Americans on head-to-head they have just decided to allow surrogates to attack their enemy for them, relieving them of all the worries of an American nuclear counterstrike. In either case Russia is not the ally that they wish us to believe and we would be well served by being a bit more wary of their intentions. Perhaps the "openess" they meant with glasnost was for us to open up our defenses.

Say goodbye to another piece of subhuman trash

It would appear that Shamil Basayev was killed today when a truck carrying dynamite that he was driving near exploded. I can not say that I will personally miss him. In fact I believe that this world is a better place with his entrails spread across the Russian countryside fertilizing weeds. It is s true pity that his death was so fast. I would have prefered that he suffer a long and agonizing death. For those of you unaware of why I might feel this way about this dirtbag, allow me to refresh your memory.




This is just a small sampling of this filth's handiwork. For me, there is nothing that justifies the intentional targetting of innocent children, not even retribution. Since we got Zarqawi and now Basayev, now all we need to complete the set is bin Laden and al Zawahiri.