The US has offered Russia assurances over parts of a missile shield it wants to deploy in Europe, the Russian foreign minister has said.
I have no liking for the way Vladimir Putin appears to have run his country, but I can see his point of view. The U.S. administration says it wants to place missiles on European soil as a defence shield against Iran; an Iran which has no nuclear weapon and that has no missiles that can reach as far as Europe, let alone America. To my mind this is very similar to the, “We must fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here,” speech that led us (U.S. and U.K. with others) into the disastrous phony Iraq “war”, and is yet another blatant attempt to stamp an extremely large, but unnecessary – footprint on European soil.
It smacks of another pre-emptive action.
Over the weekend of the 2nd and 3rd February, Poland finally agreed to let America base a missile system on its soil. America will help bolster Polish air defences in return for permission to place 10 interceptor missiles on the country's Baltic seaboard. The US has also offered to strengthen Poland's short-to-medium-range air defences which could include missiles capable of shooting down incoming bombs.
Also, under the £1.75 billion plan, the Czech Republic is to allow a large American radar base to be set up in order to give early warning of incoming missiles.
Russia vehemently opposes this plan.
Mr Putin has repeatedly scoffed at US claims the defence shield is targeting rogue states, and said Moscow may aim its missiles at Europe in response.
Last year, General Nikolai Solovtsov, Russia's missile forces chief, said that if American interceptors were placed in Poland, Russia could aim its own nuclear warheads at Poland. Further aggravating the situation, Russia's Ambassador to Belgium said the programme could trigger an inadvertent nuclear holocaust.
"The trajectory of any American missile from Poland would be south-south-east and
the speed would be very high," Vadim Lukov said at a seminar in Brussels.
"In this situation any notion of an early warning evaporates. Poland is just six and a half minutes from Moscow and in this situation the Russians would rely on an automated response. I am sure you may all well imagine the unfortunate consequences." Telegraph.co.uk. 4 February
Last year, in June, to counter the problem of America having missiles aimed across Russia, Vladimir Putin suggested the U.S. and Russia could use a radar system in Azerbaijan; that would allow them to jointly develop a shield covering all of Europe, developing a base that could detect incoming missiles from so-called rogue states aimed at Europe or the US.
If the U.S. agreed to use the former Soviet radar base at Qabala in Azerbaijan, the threat to re-target Russian missiles against Europe could be withdrawn.
Are U.S. Motives Transparent?
What other reason would Washington have to place a missile defence system between itself and Iran?
Why does the U.S. administration seem so sure of its facts in spite of the recent National Intelligence Estimate that so took the wind out its sails and seemed to thwart any immediate attack against Iran. Why would Poland be persuaded to agree to such a system? Have the Czech and Polish Administrations been told something the rest of us can only guess at?
Back in 2006, James Risen published his book, State of War.
In it, he outlined the CIA’s efforts to supply Iran with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.
The idea, as maniacal as it seems, was to supply the plans for a TBA 480 high-voltage block via a Russian scientist who had defected. The catch was that these blueprints would contain errors and would cause the Iranians to waste several years going down a blind alley. Just why Americans in power think the Arabs and Iranians are so thick isn’t known, but they prove their own ignorance time and time again with the concomitant results; the Iraq invasion, the neglect of Afghanistan, the frightening continual misinterpretation of al Qaeda in Iraq - commonly known as indigenous freedom fighters who really, really, want the U.S. to leave Iraq.
So, according to James Risen, the plan was carried out. The problem for the CIA was their choice of messenger. The Russian scientist studied the blueprints the CIA had given him and within minutes identified a flaw. When he told the CIA officers he got no straight answers. When he was eventually handed a sealed envelope he was ordered not to open it but to pass it directly to a high-ranking Iranian official would be visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA in Vienna. Almost naturally, the CIA managed to underestimate their man. To cover himself, and to be sure the Iranians would retain their trust in him in future dealings, the Russian scientist unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints. He then added a letter that explained his misgivings about the flaw, or flaws, he had uncovered. It didn’t matter what the CIA told him. He knew there was a problem with the blueprints, and there was a high possibility the Iranians would find flaws themselves. If they did, they would never want to deal with him again. So he told the Iranians about the flaws in his letter.
After spending nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, the Iranians have some sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. The rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan supplied Tehran with nuclear blueprints, so they already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA.
Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws.
Go here for a much better explanation
Tags: Poland | Rice | Missile Defence | Pre-Emptive Strike | Putin | World
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