March 27, 2011

• America No Longer “Best Ally”
• Ominous Religious War In Bahrain
• Following Gadhafi Money Explains Obama’s Lack Of Leadership
• Poll: Obama Cautious- Indecisive
• Whose side is God On?
• Iran Salivating Over Bahrain
• Muslim Virgin Rationing
• Hypersonic X-51 Tested off Pt. Magu Naval Base North of L. A.

18% now say it’s Very Likely that there will be a 1930’s-like depression in the next few years. Another 31% say such an outcome is Somewhat Likely. The data also shows that 34% say a new Depression is Not Very Likely while 8% say it’s Not At All Likely - only 10% rate economy as good/excellent.

In September of last year, a majority of adults favored defending militarily only five of 18 countries regularly in the news - Canada, Great Britain, Israel, Germany and Mexico, in that order. Then in January, five more countries including Australia and Italy - were added to that list. 

Roughly half of Americans (49%) think the United States should provide military help to the the Philippines if that country is attacked, but 33% disagree. Another 18% are undecided. A plurality of adults now supports defending Iceland by a 44% to 32% margin.

Most Americans support the United States helping to defend Panama and the Bahamas.

58% supports sending military aid to the Bahamas if that country is attacked. Thirty percent (30%) oppose helping to defend the Bahamas, and 12% are undecided.

Nearly half of Americans (49%) are opposed to providing defense aid to Argentina, but 30% are in favor of helping the Latin American nation defend itself. Another 22% are undecided.

Adults are almost evenly divided on providing military assistance to Denmark, Haiti and Poland. Most voters (53%) believe America’s military strategy should focus on defending the United States and its interests rather than trying to keep the world peaceful instead. Either way, voters see economic challenges as a much bigger threat to the United States than challenges on the military front. 

Sixty percent (60%) of all Americans think it is more important for the United States to be allies with any country that best protects our own national security than it is to be allies only with countries that have freely elected governments. 

Voters are fairly evenly divided as to whether the federal government spends too much or too little on national defense, but most also appear to dramatically underestimate how much is actually spent. 

The Northwest Jesuits, formerly the Society of Jesus, Oregon Province, along with their insurers have agreed to pay $166.1 million in a bankruptcy settlement aimed at compensating nearly 500 people with active claims of sexual abuse by priests. The settlement is part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization by the religious order. Lawyers in the case announced the settlement yesterday at news conferences across the region. Creditors include about 460 people with sexual-abuse claims against priests and another 15 or 20 with physical-abuse claims.

 Four days after the Western-Arab coalition decided Saturday, March 19 to enforce a no fly zone over Libya, only six Western warplanes - American, British, Canadian and French - are in the sky at any one time, debkafile’s military sources disclose. This is just enough to enforce the no-fly zone over Benghazi - not the rest of Libya.  It is also wholly inadequate tor collecting the basic intelligence over Tripoli and other parts of Libya for launching an offensive against Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.

The assault therefore ran out of steam after the first barrage of 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the sea. Monday, a dozen Tomahawks were fired - and only at Qaddafi’s coastal compounds for lack of intelligence about the rest of the thirty-one targets first postulated.

The military momentum was slowed substantially also by the haziness of the directives coming down from the coalition members’ governments about the offensive’s objectives. As the political leaders in Washington, London and Paris stumbled about and contradicted each other, the military commanders responded by confining their mission to the letter of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 of Friday, March 18.

The disagreements between Washington, London and Paris over the essential nature of the operation and its goals brought to light the uncomfortable fact that neither the UK nor France, alone or together, possesses the air power or crews for maintaining the no fly zone.

 Unless the US expands its aerial participation, most of Libyan air space will remain wide open for Qaddafi’s air force to resume operations. By Tuesday, March 22, there was no sign that Washington was willing to deliver - just the reverse. The Obama administration made it clear that its participation would be confined to support functions, such as advanced electronic surveillance craft - no more warplanes.

The Obama administration, for its part, has worked itself into a jam: an acerbic argument has developed in the United States over the Libya operation’s immediate and final goals.

In his latest comment, President Barack Obama Monday, March 21, stood by this opaque definition: “The goal of the United Nations-sanctioned military action in Libya is to protect citizens, not regime change - but the goal of US policy is that Muammar Qaddafi has to go.”

Obama did not explain how or when he proposed to achieve this goal, although for now it is receding.

The Arab component of the Western-Arab anti-Qaddafi coalition, the pre-condition for NATO participation, has faded away since the Arab League’s Secretary Amr Moussa developed cold feet after his initial wholehearted support for the operation.  In any case, only one Arab country, Qatar, was willing to put up four warplanes for the no-fly zone. Based in Italy, the Qatari pilots have since been directed by Emir Sheikh Al-Thani to cross the Mediterranean only up to the point where the Libyan coast is visible - not an inch further. The United Arab Emirates, initially reported as offering to take part in the Libya mission, has not sent a single plane. 

Last weekend Nation of Islam “Minister” Louis Farrakhan says the United States lacks the moral right to attack the forces of embattled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

The leader of the radical Chicago-based organization received cheers Friday night from a packed crowd at a civil rights conference at Jackson State University.

Farrakhan  said his friend Gadhafi has played the role of a forceful parent in post-colonial Libya. He neglected to discribe how much moneyhe has taken from Gadhafi.

A few Mississippi religious leaders expressed outrage that Farrakhan has been invited to speak at the conference in their state.

Geraldine Anne Ferraro (August 26, 1935 - March 26, 2011) was a Democratic Party politician and a former member of the United States House of Representatives. She succumbed to blood cancer. Ferraro was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major American political party as Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984. They lost every state except Minnesota to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush by a 60% to 40% popular vote margin.

Bahrain’s King Hamad and his family appear resigned to the fall of the kingdom’s Sunni regime. as the United States, Bahrain’s closest ally is sitting on its hands.

Some analyst say that without active U.S. help, Hamad has no chance of surviving more than a few weeks. Saudi Arabia wants to destroy the Shi’ite revolt now, even if this means massive bloodshed but Obama is restraining it as he also put the Kibosh on Israel’s plan to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons plants. At the same time, Riyad does not want an Iranian invasion of Bahrain to stop a Shi’ite massacre because that would mean open warfare..

The Persian Gulf states pledged to send additional troops and military assets to Bahrain to counter the Shi’ite revolt. Obama remains paralyzed as the U. S. fleet has pulled back..

Officials said Qatar has become the fourth Gulf Cooperation Council member to send troops to Bahrain. They said Qatar was deploying several hundred troops to work alongside those from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Kuwait has decided not to send forces to Bahrain.

“Additional GCC troops will also arrive in the kingdom to support its forces,” Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said.

In an address to the GCC’s Peninsula Shield regional force on March 20, King Hamad announced that Bahrain had foiled a plot to undermine the security of GCC states. He did not elaborate.

Hamad portrayed Bahrain as the first line of defense for Gulf Arab states. The king did not say how Bahrain foiled the purported Iranian plot.

But officials said the kingdom has expelled at least one Iranian diplomat on charges of smuggling weapons for the Shi’ite opposition in Bahrain.

Bahrain’s Al Watan daily said the unidentified diplomat was given 72 hours to leave the country. Bahrain has also withdrawn its ambassador from Teheran, a move that prompted an identical measure by Iran.

About 5,000 GCC soldiers were said to have been sent to Bahrain this month to help the Sunni kingdom battle rising Shi’ite unrest. In a religious war. Officials said the last of 500 UAE troops arrived in Bahrain on March 18 amid Manama’s crackdown on the Shi’ite opposition.

Khalid said up to four GCC states were sending military contingents to protect strategic assets, including oil facilities. He said the foreign troops would operate under the umbrella of the GCC’s Peninsula Shield regional force.

For its part, Qatar has acknowledged the arrival of troops in Bahrain. A senior military commander said the Qatari troops were subject to the GCC chain of command.

“The duty of the Qatari troops participating in the Peninsula Shield force is to contribute towards restoring order and security [in Bahrain],” Qatar Army Col. Abdullah Al Hajri said. “As a Qatari force we are receiving our orders from the head of the Peninsula Shield force. There are no Qatari forces outside the Peninsula Shield in Bahrain.”

For his part, King Hamad said that his kingdom had foiled what he termed a “major terrorist plot” against the GCC. Hamad did not identify the country, but later officials said the reference was to Iran.

“An external plot has been fomenting for 20 to 30 years for the ground to be ripe for subversive designs,” the Sunni king said. “If this subversive plot succeeded in one GCC country it might then spread.”

In March 2011, the GCC poured more than 5,000 troops in Bahrain in an effort to help quell the Shi’ite revolt. In his meeting, Hamad met Peninsula Shield commander Saudi Maj. Gen. Mutlaq Bin Salem Al Azima. Al Azima also met Bahraini military chief Air Marshal Khalifa Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa and National Guard commander Maj. Gen. Mohammed Bin Issa Al Khalifa.

“What Bahrain has witnessed is a test from God,” the king said. “However, it will not succeed in Bahrain or in any of the other GCC countries. I tell you that this plot has been foiled.”

Officials said information on the Iranian plot stemmed from a crackdown on the Shi’ite opposition over the last week. They said opposition leaders have been arrested and interrogated, which elicited information on Teheran’s help for the Shi’ite revolt.

Meanwhile, a British security company has been facilitating the exodus of expatriates from Bahrain.

RTI has been contracted to help the families of at least three British companies leave Bahrain immediately amid the Shi’ite revolt.

Executives said the Shi’ite revolt has paralyzed Bahrain’s government and private sectors. They said Western and other expatriates were unable to report to work in Manama, where clashes have been fierce.

Executives said RTI was focusing on the families of staffers, including Americans and Britons. “We are helping about 40 people to leave, mostly family members,” RTI security director Tony Tesar said.

Tesar said about 50 percent of the family members were Americans or Britons. The remainder was comprised of Asian nationals who have been advised by their embassies to leave Bahrain immediately.

“These companies are still working and will hopefully be back to normal in the near future,” Tesar said.

Bahrain has employed a range of Muslim nationals for its military and security forces, a report said. The Congressional Research Service reported that Bahrain’s military and police included foreign Arab and Muslim nationals. The Bahrainis were said to serve as commanders while the troops stem from the Middle East and South Asia.

“The BDF [Bahrain Defense Force] and the police are run by Sunni Bahrainis, but are said to supplement their ranks with unknown percentages of paid Sunni Muslim recruits from neighboring countries, including Pakistan, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, and elsewhere,” the report, titled “Bahrain: Reform, Security, and U.S. Policy,” said.

CRS, in a report by Kenneth Katzman, said Bahrain’s military contained 13,000 personnel. The paramilitary National Guard was said to consist of 1,200 troops.

The report did not assess the ratio of foreigners to Bahrainis in the security forces of the Gulf Cooperation Council kingdom. But congressional analysts said the foreign component could run up to 50 percent.

The congressional report said the United States has funded programs to enhance Bahrain’s military and security forces. CRS said this included U.S. assistance to develop Bahrain’s maritime security patrol and counter-insurgency capabilities.

Over the last year, the administration of President Barack Obama requested a significant increase from $8 to $19 million in military and security assistance to Bahrain. The report said the effort was meant to improve Bahrain’s interoperability with the U.S. military as well as modernize the kingdom’s F-16 multi-role fighter fleet.

March 25 email from Bahrain, “This evening a lot of gunfire can be heard and tear gas is everywhere, this is not getting better at all. ” The Iranian-backed Shi’ite opposition has resumed the revolt against the Sunni kingdom in Bahrain.

 Obama’s lack of leadership has complicated the Libyan civil war. Among other things, his bumbling has widened the rift between the U.S. and European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and has made the U.S. increasingly less influential in global strategic issues.

Obama’s confused and reluctant approach has clearly exacerbated the rift - which official Washington chooses not to see - between Turkey and the U.S., and has hastened the move of Turkey into a strategic camp which is hostile to the U.S.

Obama specifically set back international efforts to restrain Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi when he telegraphed to Gadhafi the fact that the U.S. would not sustain a protracted military campaign against him; that the air and missile operations of Operation Odyssey Dawn would be of limited duration; and that the U.S. would under no account use ground forces against Gadhafi.

The Obama approach - despite the clear, professional, and comprehensive accomplishment by the U.S. Armed Forces of those tasks assigned to them for the engagement - reflected Obama’s belief that he must be clear of foreign military operations to successfully win a second term in the White House. However, it also reflected the very real knowledge that Obama and many of his friends and associates have been compromised by funds which had been made available to them by Gadhafi in recent years. This is now an open secret in Washington policy circles. For Instance:

• 1. CAIR the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asked Muammar Gaddafi to underwrite CAIR’s efforts in the United States during a September 2009 audience with the Libyan dictator. Those efforts included plans to distribute a million copies of the Quran to elected officials, libraries and schools nationwide along with other jihadist literature targeting blacks.
• 2. One month before attacking Libya the president asked. Congress to increase U.S. aid for Qaddafi’s military to $1.7 million.
• 3. The U.S. government approved $40 billion in worldwide private arms sales in 2009, including more than $7 billion to Mideast and North African nations including (Libya and Egypt) that are struggling with political upheaval.
• 4. But, the really stinky part is that Gadhafi has been tied to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s spiritual adviser for more than 23 years, and strongly supported the Nation of Islam and its leader, failed calypso singer Louis Farrakhan.
• 5. Obama has ties to Farrakhan and his radical para-military Muslim group. Farrakhan has funneled millions from Gaddafi into various Obama backdoors.
• o Farrakhan has been financed by Gadhafi, including with a $5 million interest-free loan in 1985.
• o Later that year, Gadhafi spoke by satellite to Farrakhan’s Saviour’s Day Convention in Chicago, and told Farrakhan supporters he was prepared to provide weapons to a black army in the U.S. to destroy “white America.”
• 6. In October 1995, Gadhafi called Farrakhan with congratulations on the success of the Million Man March that Obama and Wright attended. Gadhafi was said to have assured Farrakhan that together “we will unite our capabilities and efforts to achieve this.”
• 7. According to reports in 1996 from Libya’s news agency, JANA, Farrakhan and Gadhafi agreed to work together to mobilize “oppressed blacks, Arabs, Muslims and Red Indians” to help reshape U.S. foreign policy.

In large part that explains Obama’s lack of leadership on the Libya question - after Obama had recently so notably encouraged protestors against the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, and the Government of Bahrain in the face of Iranian-backed protestors - coupled with the military intervention by a number of external governments in the Libyan civil war this month (as a result of the March 17 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 of 2011), has served to accelerate growing divisions between European powers: between some European states and the U.S.; and within NATO.

One of the most significant developments has been the growing polarization between Western European states and Turkey, which has become increasingly aligned with Russia and Iran, and which has clearly aligned itself with Gadhafi.

The emerging alignments on the Libyan question are marrying with other trends which have effectively now ended the fiction that Turkey can become a member of the European Union (EU). Indeed, there is increasingly a view in much of the EU that Turkey is positioning itself as the major problem for the Union and for NATO, but one which still has a significant “gatekeeper” role in affecting the oil and gas traffic from Central Asia and the Caucasus to Western Europe.

Turkey remains a critical transit region, too, for the airlift of non-combat support to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and is home to a number of U.S. Air Force units and to U.S. nuclear weapons. As a result, many U.S. decision makers do not want to face the issue of what a Turkish “defection” from its six decades of alliance with the U.S. would mean. U.S. global strategic doctrine would have to be re-written to reflect the move of Turkey out of the Western camp. Indeed, even the Cold War and post-Cold War concept of “the Western camp” needs to be reconsidered.

It is ironic, then, that the Turkish leadership and Obama fundamentally agree in their support for Gadhafi. Turkey has gained commercial success in Libya under Gadhafi, but there is no reason why it could not also prosper if Libya had its democratic and constitutional government restored. But the Turkish Prime Minister has - like so many Washington officials - prospered at the direct or indirect hand of Gadhafi.

Meanwhile, the U.S. withdrew on March 25 from its temporary operational leadership of the 12-country coalition - which includes Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Qatar, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates - and allowed NATO as an organization to assume coordination (on March 26) of the “no-fly zone”. The Turkish Government immediately contested this, and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggested that NATO would resolve this internal NATO challenge over the weekend of March 26-27. The U.S. military would continue to participate as a supporting member of the enforcement coalition over Libya.

The Obama administration has portrayed its keenness to minimize U.S. military involvement against Gadhafi as a result of pressures from the U.S. Republican Party majority in the House of Representatives to stop the administration from entering another conflict without clear objectives or endgame. In reality, Obama has resisted U.S. military participation against Gadhafi in large part because of his long history of association with Gadhafi, who has financed many around Obama over the past years. Gadhafi, in a number of his broadcasts during February and March, issued veiled warnings to Obama, saying that Obama would know where his duty lay.

But while U.S. influence has moved into a period of precipitous decline, including declining influence in Europe, Operation Odyssey Dawn has demonstrated - yet again - the reality that states cannot acquire true, world-class military capabilities merely by buying advanced weapons systems. The Libyan Armed Forces, never trusted by Gadhafi, were consistently denied training, true operational experience, and even the ability undertake live-fire exercises or training in exercises alongside advanced partner forces. This was demonstrated in the UK-Argentine war over the Falkland Islands in 1982.

In that conflict, the only force which operated well for Argentina was the Air Force, which had consistently exercised with the U.S. Air Force. The Argentine Army, Navy, and Marines had not had recent exposure to any equivalent or superior military force, and thus failed to compete adequately with British forces.

In Libya today, the forces still loyal to Gadhafi have only been able to perform at all against the Constitutional forces opposed to Gadhafi because of better access to weapons and communications, and - more importantly - because the Constitutionalist forces have equally had no training or experience. When Gadhafi’s forces came against first-rate military forces, they have failed to perform even at a basic level. The question facing the Constitutionalist forces in Libya, then, is whether they can now use the breathing spaces the international community has bought for them to build some viable command and control capability to confront Gadhafi’s forces.

This lesson cannot be ignored by other military leaders in Africa and the Middle East. The lesson is that advanced military capabilities cannot be acquired merely by buying advanced military systems.

If that is the case, then second- and third-tier military forces must consider what, indeed, they can do to ensure that they can provide the capabilities required to fulfill their missions. One of the first steps, clearly, is the appropriate selection of adversaries, which requires an emphasis on diplomacy, psychological strategy, and sound strategic intelligence. Another is to ensure that forces are developed to utilize local cultural attributes and then enhanced through adequate adoption of technologies which must become inherent to the logic of those forces.

Gadhafi did not ensure that his armed forces were geared to any goal other than to intimidate his own population. It is third rate at best. Significantly, as well, the anti-Gadhafi forces - those who have been suppressed since 1969 - failed to prepare for the eventuality which they knew must come: the collapse of Gadhafi’s government, or his death or flight. The opposition forces talked incessantly for four decades, but failed to make any plans for what has occurred in 2011, and that failure is also showing now.

Friday night before last the trollish, unfunny Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a “dumb c**t” during his HBO Show. Not surprisingly the misogynistic epithet was pretty much sluffed off by leftists and most main stream media.

Only17% see Obama as a strong and decisive military leader, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken after the United States and its allies began bombing Libya.

Nearly half of those polled view Obama as a cautious and consultative commander-in-chief and more than a third see him as indecisive in military matters.

The poll also found that 60 percent of Americans support the United States and its allies bombing Libya to impose a no-fly zone to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed said the United States and its allies should try to remove Libyan leader Gaddafi, who has ruled the oil-exporting North African country for more than four decades.

This finding was similar to a CNN poll released Tuesday, which found 77 percent of those questioned said it was very important or somewhat important to oust Gaddafi from power.

Of the 60 percent in favor of the Libya military action, 20 percent strongly supported it and 40 percent somewhat supported it. Twenty-five percent somewhat opposed it and 14 percent were strongly against.

Of those polled, 48 percent described Obama’s leadership as commander in chief as “cautious and consultative,” 36 percent as “indecisive and dithering,” and 17 percent as “strong and decisive” in a question that offered only those three choices.

April 12, 1961 - 50 years ago - Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri.A.Gagarin rode a rocket into orbit with the altitude of 181 km at perigee and 327 km at apogee, circled the globe.and plopped safety back to earth to a newly soft plowed field near the Volga River. In October, 1956 Sputnik I (satellite one) was launched into orbit beeping its way at 18,000 MPH sending the world into backyards with binoculars and tuning shortwaves radios to listen to it beep as it whizzed overhead. Both caught the U. S. flatfooted.

A larger percentage of the faithful see a divine role in the seemingly endless spate of disasters in recent months, according to a poll released today by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service, USA Today reports.

Nearly six in 10 evangelicals believe God can use natural disasters to send messages - nearly twice the number of Catholics (31 percent) or mainline Protestants (34 percent), according to USA Today.

Evangelicals (53 percent) are also more than twice as likely as the one in five Catholics or mainline Protestants to believe God punishes nations for the sins of some citizens.

The poll found that 56 percent of Americans believe God is in control of the earth, but the idea of God employing Mother Nature to dispense judgment (38 percent of all Americans) or God punishing entire nations for the sins of a few (29 percent) has less support.

“It’s interesting that most Americans believe in a personal God and that God is in control of everything that happens in the world … but then resist drawing a straight line from those beliefs to God’s direct role or judgment in natural disasters,” noted Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute.

The poll found that most racial and ethnic minority Christians (61 percent) believe natural disasters are God’s way of testing our faith - an idea that resonates with African-Americans’ history of surviving through slavery and racial discrimination.

U. S., French and British ground troops have been on the ground in Libya since before the first cruise missile struck a week ago. They gather intelligence, spot and “paint” targets laser designating targets for air attacks. So far there has been no announced casualties among these covert operatives. British operatives were captured and quickly released.

 Iran has deemed Bahrain a primary target in plans to dominate the Gulf, two new reports say.

“Iran does not need to change the balance of power in the region through the overt exercise of military force,” a U.S. consultant said.

“Its covert capability, unchecked by American force, is significant. It can covertly support pro-Iranian forces in the region, destabilizing existing regimes. With the psychology of the Arab masses changing, as they are no longer afraid to challenge their rulers, Iran will enjoy an enhanced capacity to cause instability,” concluded the report “Bahrain and the Battle Between Iran and Saudi Arabia” by George Friedman.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs asserted that Iran, in wake of the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, has identified Bahrain as a prime target for takeover. In a report, the center said Iran was destabilizing Bahrain through its Shi’ite majority without leaving traces of direct intervention.

“Bahrain rulers are practically sitting on a barrel of explosives whose detonator lies in the hands of the leaders of Iran,” the report, authored by former Israeli intelligence official Jacques Neriah, said.

The report said a Shi’ite takeover of Bahrain would lead to demands to expel the U.S. military presence from the Gulf Cooperation Council kingdom. Neriah said Bahrain, with an area of 760 square kilometers, marked Iran’s asymmetric warfare strategy of undermining rivals through subversion rather than military intervention.

“Bahrain is, in fact, the ideal target for such an Iranian strategy,” the report, titled “Could the Kingdom of Bahrain Become an Iranian Pearl Harbor?” said. “Iran does not need to employ its air force against the U.S. naval facility, but only to topple the pro-American regime of the Al Khalifa family and replace it with a new Bahraini regime backed by the Shi’a majority which seeks the immediate withdrawal of the fleet.”

Iran has long claimed Bahrain and over the last few years was said be supporting the Shi’ite opposition. In 2008, Shi’ite protests included banners for the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah, now said to be helping the opposition.

“Bahraini officials often tell their American counterparts that some Shi’a oppositionists are backed by Iran,” the report said. “The king himself has claimed that members of the opposition have received training in Lebanon with Hizbullah officers even though the Americans were unable to confirm this report.”

The report cited U.S. State Department cables that detailed Iranian involvement in Bahrain, which contains up to 70 percent Shi’ites. In a 2008 cable, the department assessed that 30 percent of Bahrain’s Shi’ite clerics follow Iranian spiritual leaders. The cable said about 15 percent of Bahrainis speak Farsi at home.

The Shi’ite protest campaign in Bahrain has threatened U.S. national security, the report said. Neriah said Bahrain has developed close intelligence cooperation with Washington and cooperations in naval issues.

“There is a clear possibility that the American naval presence in Bahrain will become a target for potential Iranian terrorist acts,” the report said.

The report said the Sunni regime in Bahrain could only survive through the use of force. Neriah said this would present a human rights dilemma to Washington, already concerned that Shi’ite unrest would spread to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

“Finally, it seems that if Iran perceives a situation where the U.S. would treat the king as it treated Mubarak earlier, this would definitely encourage Iran to increase its offensive subversion in Bahrain and possibly in eastern Saudi Arabia,” the report said.

The NAACP is taking a greater interest in attracting leaders from the gay community. This explains their new name, the “National Association for the Advancement of Color-Coordinated People.”– Conan

Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike next Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda have so far failed to produce an agreement.

The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death would be cut by 25% this March from 72 to 60. A company spokesman said increases in recent years in the number of suicide bombings have resulted in a shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bombers’ union, the British Organization of Occupational Martyrs (BOOM) responded with a statement saying the move was unacceptable to its members and called for a strike vote.  General Secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, “Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad. We don’t ask for much in return, but to be treated like this is like a kick in the teeth.”

Speaking from his shed in Tipton in the West Midlands , Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained, “I sympathize with our workers’ concerns, but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day Jihad in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It’s a straight choice between reducing expenditures or laying people off. I don’t like cutting benefits, but I’d hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won’t be able to blow themselves up.”

Spokespersons for the union in the North East of England,  Ireland , Wales , and the entire Australian continent stated that the change would not hurt their membership as there are few virgins in their areas anyway.

According to some industry sources, the recent drop in the number of suicide bombings has been attributed to the emergence of Scottish singing star, Susan Boyle. Many Muslim Jihadists now know what a virgin looks like and have reconsidered their benefit packages.   

Germany has pulled its forces out of NATO over Libya. When the Germans don’t want to fight and the French do, the whole world is upside down. — Leno

The unmanned X-51 WaveRider is designed to deliver warheads at very high speeds with pinpoint accuracy almost anywhere on Earth.

 The U.S. Air Force tested the experimental aircraft last week off of Point Magu, Naval station north of Los Angeles that could potentially reach speeds of 4,000 mph over the Pacific Ocean in a test flight that could give the Pentagon a new way to deliver a military strike anywhere around the globe within minutes.

Built in Southern California, the unmanned X-51 WaveRider is being developed to deliver powerful warheads at tremendously high speeds with pinpoint accuracy almost anywhere on Earth.

Military officials say the need for the technology became clear in 1998 when the U.S. military tried - and failed - to kill Osama bin Laden. While positioned in the Arabian Sea, Navy vessels lobbed cruise missiles at training camps in Afghanistan, hitting their targets - 80 minutes later. By then, bin Laden was gone.

But with a hypersonic missile, such as the one being tested on the X-51, “the attack would have been cut to just over 12 minutes,” Richard Hallion, a former Air Force senior advisor, said last year in an Air Force Assn. report about hypersonic technology.

 While supersonic means that an object is traveling beyond the speed of sound, or Mach 1, “hypersonic” refers to an aircraft blasting through the air at five times that speed or more.

Developing an engine that can reach and maintain those speeds hasn’t been easy. For decades, the development of the hypersonic engine has been fraught with setbacks.

But engineers at Boeing Co.’s Phantom Works research center in Huntington Beach and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park proved they were on the right track last May when the X-51 made its first flight from Edwards Air Force Base.

The 14-foot aircraft was launched midair off the coast near Point Mugu, slung underneath the wing of a B-52 bomber. The WaveRider detached, falling about four seconds before its booster rocket engine ignited and propelled the aircraft to more than 70,000 feet. It then separated from the rocket and sped across the sky, powered by an air-breathing combustion engine, for more than two minutes, reaching about 3,500 mph.

The launch was considered successful because the longest prior hypersonic flight lasted about 10 seconds. But it did not reach the goals the Air Force had set. The military had hoped the plane would reach around 4,000 mph and fly for five minutes. It didn’t because a design flaw forced a shutdown.

Regardless, the flight was “a big deal” to Pentagon officials, said Charlie Brink, the X-51 program manager for the Air Force. The X-51 was built under a $250-million contract, but the government has spent millions more trying to achieve sustained hypersonic flight.

Initially, NASA led the program, fueling speculation that hypersonic engines could help propel spacecraft into orbit. Throughout the 1980s, NASA worked to develop a vehicle that could take off from a runway using jet engines until hypersonic engines kicked in and took it to the edge of space. But the space agency dropped the program because of a lack of funding.

 At least 15 people were killed Friday as thousands took to the streets in or made their way to the restive Syrian city of Daraa, where deadly clashes erupted over the last week between protesters and security forces.