Upgraded Iron Dome system being tested. (See 1 below)
---
Big problems ahead no matter who wins. the key is who best can solve them. Steyn sees collapse if Obama wins. (See 2 and 2a below.)
---
Karl Rove's predictions so you can track how accurate he is. (See 3 below.)
---
This from a dear friend of longstanding and a fellow memo reader. Pretty much sums up things. (See 4 below.)
Tom Sowell and Obama's mockery of the rule of law because of presidential right to waive flies in the face of the 14th Amendment. (See 4a below.)
If Obama wins then I believe we have a far bleaker future than were Romney to win. I still believe Romney will win .
This will be my reaction:
Be forewarned:
| WHAT'S NEW ON PJTV | |
|
There's been a lot of ink spilled on secret talks with Iran, speculating on who's involved, what it's about and where it all might lead. Dr. Michael Ledeen draws on his personal involvement in secret talks with Iran in the 1980s to put current talks in perspective. Why is a high Iranian official flying somewhere in Western Europe on the eve of the U.S. presidential election? And what will determine whether he continues on to the United States? Find out.
---
When I reported the IAF attacked Sudan I heard from some who did not believe me. Perhaps this article will change their minds. (See 5 below.)
---
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)MAFAT successfully concludes testing for upgrade of Iron Dome's operational
capabilities. Another upgraded battery is expected to join the existing
4-battery layout
The Homa Administration at MAFAT held a series of tests in the past few
days, as part of the effort to develop and upgrade the Iron Dome interceptor
system. The series of tests was intended to expand the system’s performance
and improve its capabilities against an unprecedented variety of threats.
The administration is responsible for developing Israel’s multi-layered
defensive array, which includes the Iron Dome system for intercepting
The administration is responsible for developing Israel’s multi-layered
defensive array, which includes the Iron Dome system for intercepting
short-range missiles, the Trophy, Arrow 3 and Arrow 3 systems. The Iron Dome
system, which was developed by Israeli defense industries (Rafael, Elta and
mPrest Systems), MAFAT and the IAF is the first and only system in the world
of its kind which is already operational.
The test carried out in the past few days was concluded successfully and
will result in the upgrade of the system's operational capabilities.
Following the successful test, the Israeli Ministry of Defense is expected
to delivery the fifth battery, which will include improved capabilities, to
the IAF, thus providing Israel with five operational Iron Dome systems.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)A Vote For Obama-Biden Is A Vote For National Collapse
By Mark Steyn
In political terms, Hurricane Sandy and the Benghazi consulate debacle exemplify at home and abroad the fundamental unseriousness of the United States in the Obama era. In the days after Sandy hit, Barack Obama was generally agreed to have performed well. He had himself photographed in the White House Situation Room, nodding thoughtfully to bureaucrats ("John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; David Agnew, Director for Intergovernmental Affairs") and Tweeted it to his 3.2 million followers. He appeared in New Jersey wearing a bomber jacket rather than a suit to demonstrate that when the going gets tough the tough get out a monogrammed Air Force One bomber jacket. He announced that he'd instructed his officials to answer all calls within 15 minutes because in America "we leave nobody behind." By doing all this, the president "shows" he "cares" – which is true in the sense that in Benghazi he was willing to leave the entire consulate staff behind, and nobody had their calls answered within seven hours, because presumably he didn't care. So John Brennan, the Counterterrorism guy, and Tony Blinken, the National Security honcho, briefed the president on the stiff breeze, but on Sept. 11, 2012, when a little counterterrorism was called for, nobody bothered calling the Counterterrorism Security Group, the senior U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, FEMA rumbles on, the "emergency management agency" that manages emergencies, very expensively, rather than preventing them. Late on the night Sandy made landfall, I heard on the local news that my state's governor had asked the president to declare a federal emergency in every New Hampshire county so that federal funds could be "unlocked." A quarter-million people in the Granite State were out of power. It was reported that, beyond our borders, 8 million people in a dozen states were out of power.
But that's not an "emergency." No hurricane hit my county. Indeed, no hurricane hit New Hampshire. No hurricane hit "17 states," the number of states supposedly "affected" by Sandy at its peak. A hurricane hit a few coastal counties of New Jersey, New York and a couple of other states, and that's it. Everyone else had slightly windier-than-usual wind – and yet they were out of power for days. In a county entirely untouched by Sandy, my office manager had no electricity for a week. Not because of an "emergency" but because of a decrepit and vulnerable above-the-ground electrical distribution system that ought to be a national embarrassment to any developed society. A few weeks ago, I chanced to be in St. Pierre and Miquelon, a French colony of 6,000 people on a couple of treeless rocks in the North Atlantic. Every electric line is underground. Indeed, the droll demoiselle who leads tours of the islands makes a point of amusingly drawing American visitors' attention to this local feature.
If you're saying, "Whoa, that sounds expensive," well, our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it. Imagine if Obama's 2009 stimulus had been spent burying every electric pole on the Eastern Seaboard. Instead, just that one Obama bill spent a little shy of a trillion dollars, and no one can point to a single thing it built. "A big storm requires Big Government," pronounced The New York Times. But Washington is so big-hearted with Big Government it spends $188 million an hour that it doesn't have – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including Thanksgiving, Christmas and Ramadan. And yet, mysteriously, multitrillion-dollar Big Government Obama-style can't do anything except sluice food stamps to the dependent class, lavish benefits and early retirement packages to the bureaucrats that service them, and so-called government "investment" to approved Obama cronies.
So you can have Big Government bigger (or, anyway, more expensive) than any government's ever been, and the lights still go out in 17 states – because your president spent 6 trillion bucks, and all the country got was a lousy Air Force One bomber jacket for him to wear while posing for a Twitpic answering the phone with his concerned expression.
Even in those few parts of the Northeast that can legitimately claim to have been clobbered by Sandy, Big Government made it worse. Last week, Nanny Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, rivaled his own personal best for worst mayoral performance since that snowstorm a couple of years back. This is a man who spends his days micromanaging the amount of soda New Yorkers are allowed to have in their beverage containers rather than, say, the amount of ocean New Yorkers are allowed to have in their subway system – just as, in the previous crisis, the municipal titan who can regulate the salt out of your cheeseburger proved utterly incapable of regulating any salt on to Sixth Avenue. Imagine if this preening buffoon had expended as much executive energy on flood protection for the electrical grid and transit system as he does on approved quantities of carbonated beverages. But that's leadership 21st-century style: When the going gets tough, the tough ban trans fats.
Back in Benghazi, the president who looks so cool in a bomber jacket declined to answer his beleaguered diplomats' calls for help – even though he had aircraft and Special Forces in the region. Too bad. He's all jacket and no bombers. This, too, is an example of America's uniquely profligate impotence. When something goes screwy at a ramshackle consulate halfway round the globe, very few governments have the technological capacity to watch it unfold in real time. Even fewer have deployable military assets only a couple of hours away. What is the point of unmanned drones, of military bases around the planet, of elite Special Forces trained to the peak of perfection if the president and the vast bloated federal bureaucracy cannot rouse themselves to action? What is the point of outspending Russia, Britain, France, China, Germany and every middle-rank military power combined if, when it matters, America cannot urge into the air one plane with a couple of dozen commandoes? In Iraq, al-Qaida is running training camps in the western desert. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are all but certain to return most of the country to its pre-9/11 glories. But in Washington the head of the world's biggest "counterterrorism" bureaucracy briefs the president on flood damage and downed trees.
I don't know whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can fix things, but I do know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden won't even try – and that therefore a vote for Obama is a vote for the certainty of national collapse. Look at Lower Manhattan in the dark, and try to imagine what America might look like after the rest of the planet decides it no longer needs the dollar as global reserve currency. For four years, we have had a president who can spend everything but build nothing. Nothing but debt, dependency, and decay. As I said at the beginning, in different ways the response to Hurricane Sandy and Benghazi exemplify the fundamental unseriousness of the superpower at twilight. Whether or not to get serious is the choice facing the electorate Tuesday.
But let him keep the bomber jacket.
2a)ShadowStats' Williams: Big Trouble Looms No Matter Who Wins
Whoever wins Tuesday's election — whether it's President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger Mitt Romney — will battle economic depression and hyperinflation, thanks to years of a lack of political will to pay down debts, private-sector economist John Williams wrote on his ShadowStats website.
Monetary-stimulus measures that have weakened the dollar to jolt the economy will send the economy into depression at a time of soaring prices, likely around 2014, he wrote: "The next presidential term most likely will see the onset of a domestic, hyperinflationary great depression."
"The long-term solvency issues of the United States remain the primary threat to domestic financial, economic and political stability and to the relative global valuation of the U.S. dollar. The dollar’s vulnerability to this issue has been seen consistently with ongoing failed federal budget negotiations and ever-expanding quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve."
The Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy since 2008 via three rounds of stimulus measures known as quantitative easing.
Under quantitative easing, the Fed buys assets such as mortgage debt or Treasury holdings from banks, pumping them full of liquidity in a way that pushes interest rates down across the economy to encourage investing and hiring.
Side effects to such extraordinary measures — dubbed by many as printing money out of thin air — include rising stock and commodity prices, a weakening dollar and mounting inflationary pressures.
Loose monetary policies coupled with crushing U.S. debt burdens will prompt investors to cease viewing the country and its currency and debt as safe-haven assets, which will lead to economic depression and hyperinflation.
"Neither Obama nor Romney, as president, has much if any chance of stabilizing the economy or fiscal conditions in the short-term, and of preventing a hyperinflationary collapse of the U.S. currency," Williams wrote.
"Where Mr. Obama, upon entering office in 2009, had the chance to change the future of U.S. fiscal conditions dramatically, he did so, but in the wrong direction," Williams added.
"Mr. Romney has promised to take immediate actions to balance the budget, to restore fiscal normalcy. Any President, new or re-elected, deserves the benefit of the doubt—irrespective of truly intractable deficit difficulties that largely were ignored during the presidential race."
Fed officials themselves are at odds over the U.S. central bank's loose policies, with most favoring accommodation and others sounding alarm bells over inflation, most notably Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker, who dissented against several Federal Reserve decisions.
"The behavior of inflation is fundamentally attributable to the actions of the central bank, while growth and labor market conditions are affected by a wide variety of factors outside the Fed's control," Lacker recently told a business conference in Roanoke, Virginia, according to prepared remarks from his speech.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
Friend,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Subject: The truth
3)
Monday, November 5, 2012
|
Friend,
Without twelve toss up states (MN, NV, CO, IA, WI, MI, OH, PA, NH, VA, NC, AND FL), Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are tied at 191 each. I predict Mr. Romney will win FL (29), NC (15), VA (13), NH (4), OH (18), IA (6), CO (9) and Mr. Obama will get MN (10), NV (6), WI (10), MI (16), PA (20).
This brings Mr. Romney to 285 Electoral College votes and Mr. Obama to 253. These are just my base predictions and I still think several of these states are too close to call. For example, while I put them in Mr. Obama's column, I still believe NV, WI, and PA are in play and very winnable for Mr. Romney. If crowds at his recent stops in these states are any indication of his supporters' enthusiasm, Mr. Romney will likely be able to claim victory in these states as well.
Map and trendline can be found here: http://www.rove.com/election
All the best,
So sorry .. but you do want me to be honest with you. And honestly, I’m pessimistic. America has lived beyond it’s life expectancy. No nation or society based on the rule of law and personal and economic liberty has survived this long. Obama is the instrument of American destruction.
· The two numbers that matter are 49.1% and 40.7%. The 49.1% is the percentage of American household in which at least one household member is getting an unearned entitlement check from the government … and we’re not talking Social Security and Medicare. Members of these households, and they amount to more than 50% of the people, can be expected to vote to keep those checks and get even more. The 40.7% figure is the percentage of babies born in this country to unmarried women. These women – or most of them – expect the government to be their baby daddy.· The election may rest on the Obama and ObamaMedia lie that Obama saved the auto industry. What he actually saved was the auto worker’s union. The industry was going to survive a reorganization bankruptcy, just as almost every major airline and retailer had. Ohio voters believe this lie. It may cost our country dearly.· Reports from The Bureau of Labor Statists that the coal industry – big in Ohio – lost 9,000 jobs in October alone. What’s more, the EPA has a boat-load of new anti-coal regulations set for release --- AFTER the election. Look for more jobs losses in the coal industry. This is what Obama SAID he would do. A promise kept.· Do you realize that if Barack Obama was not president he couldn’t get the security clearance necessary to get a job emptying the wastebaskets in the Situation Room? Little matters like his former drug use and associations with known convicted terrorists – one of whom bombed the U.S. Capitol – would keep him outside the White House gates.· Obama says it was top-down policies that crashed our economy. Making loans to low-income people who could not realistically qualify for them is not a top-down policy. In the final analysis – this is what brought us down. Millions of home loans to people who had no chance of ever paying them off.· Bottom-up economic recovery? Oh yeah! Let’s sit around and wait for low-income Americans to start businesses and create jobs. Let me know how THAT one works out for you.· If you know Obama – if you know his history and how he was brought up – you know that he harbors a deep resentment for wealthy Americans. He was taught that these people obtained their wealth by exploiting and taking advantage of others. He is dedicated to seeking revenge on them by seizing their wealth to redistribute to those he believes they oppressed.· Then we have Republican Senatorial candidates Todd Aiken, Richard Mourdock and Congressional Candidate John Koster. Each one of these idiots has cost Mitt Romney female votes. If Romney wins we’ve dodged a bullet here. If Obama wins, these three men who have all the right answers about women and rape, take a huge part of the blame.· How incredibly uninformed are Obama voters? I challenged someone on Twitter to tell me all about the Romney “lies.” He responded by saying that Romney lied when he said that Obama increased the deficit. How does our country survive this type of idiocy?· Did you see that ad in the Washington Times today? Former military flag officers signed up in support of Mitt Romney .. over 450 strong. How many have endorsed Obama? About 7. Do you want a president the military has no confidence in?
And then there’s Obama’s vote for “revenge” remark
When you think about this, the “revenge” word was perfectly in keeping with Obama’s Chicago thug mentality. Where is politics played for revenge? Where else but Chicago ? In this case the “revenge” word played perfectly with the one main theme of Obama’s entire re-election campaign: wealth envy. Not only has wealth and class envy been the core of Obama’s campaign --- it’s been the focus of his presidency since the day he was inaugurated. The focus groups told him that wealth envy was rampant in the United States , especially during a recession when people not quite so financially prepared for hard times get angry and disgusted and people who aren’t struggling as much as they are. Obama’s presidency has been a lie, as has his campaign. He knows how much the rich make, and he knows how much they pay in taxes. He knows that the tax system in the U.S. is one of the most progressive – meaning that the more you earn the higher percentage of those earnings the government confiscates – in the industrial world. He knows his “fair share” rhetoric has been a lie. He also knows that the voters most likely to vote for him are ill-informed and couldn’t come with 20 percentage points of knowing how much the evil rich pay and earn. Obama’s target audience has really bought into his knowing and intentional lie that Romney pays a lower tax rate than middle class families. Obama lies because he knows the voters don’t understand the truth, and the media isn’t likely to enlighten them.
Obama had no choice. What else was he going to do other than run a class warfare campaign. Was he going to run on how well he’s done with the economy? Was he going to run on job creation? Was he going to run on the raving successes of his green energy investments (with borrowed money your children will pay back)?
The economy? For the four years of Obama’s presidency the economy has grown at below 2% per year. That is the worst economic growth record of any president since the Great Depression.
Job creation? Tomorrow – election day --- will be just like every other day during Obama’s presidency; there will be fewer people with jobs tomorrow, as there are today, and as there have been every single day Obama woke up in the White House; than there were on the last day of the presidency of George W. Bush.
Those great and wonderful investments in green energy? Tell me something; Name just one successful green energy investment Obama has made with your money? Just one! I’m all ears! While you’re working on that, would you like for me to rattle off the names of the failures? Are you ready? Here you go! Here’s a list with links! You can read all the gory details your self. Oh .. and that little asterisk? Those companies have declared bankruptcy. The list and links are from The Heritage Foundation. Let me know when you get your money back.
1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*3. Solyndra ($535 million)*4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*10. Amonix ($5.9 million)11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)16. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)17. ECOtality ($126.2 million)18. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*19. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*20. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*21. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*22. Range Fuels ($80 million)*23. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*24. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*25. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*26. GreenVolts ($500,000)27. Vestas ($50 million)28. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)29. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*30. Navistar ($39 million)31. Satcon ($3 million)*32. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*33. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)
He had to run on this because he had no economic achievements upon which he could campaign. Instead, he has chosen to divide the nation upon economic lines. That’s the kind of campaign Obama has chosen to run: divide and demonize -- Your way to get back at these evil rich people who need to have their taxes increased so that we can redistribute their wealth and invest it in things that the government has deemed worthy … the best way to get back at them is to vote your way into their pocket books. Vote of me, Barack Obama, and I’ll make sure that we take their money and I’ll “invest” it in things that will continue to buy me and my party power.
Obama then went on to use the same tired, false attack that Mitt Romney is going to cut taxes by $5 trillion for the wealthiest Americans. For a campaign that is hyperventilating over the “scare tactics” used in a Romney ad about Jeeps being built in China, this $5 trillion tax cut for wealthy people is one of the biggest, false scare tactic of them all … perhaps second only to “Romney-Ryan are going to end Medicare!” Remember, the very person Obama credits as the source of that $5 trillion number has disavowed it and asked that Obama quit citing his research falsely --- not that the media would ever tell you this.
Now the Obama administration has tried to explain what Obama meant by this “revenge” remark. You know that this quote has the potential to do some damage when the Obama propagandists are immediately out there trying to spin it. What is interesting about this comment is that it is yet another example of Barack Obama truly telling us how he feels when he goes off teleprompter. This is how we get comments like “we’ve got to spread the wealth around” and “I do believe at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” In these candid moments, we see the true Barack Obama and it is a Barack Obama that is ugly, divisive and has a fundamentally different understanding of how he wants to see our economy work.
By the way, Mitt Romney did respond to the comment within a few hours. Incorporating it into one of his speeches, Romney said, “He asked his supporters to vote for revenge — for revenge. Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country.”
It’s amazing how Obama has gone from “hope” and “change” to “revenge” in a matter of just four years.
4a)Waiving Freedom
By Tom Sowell
Among the objections to ObamaCare, one that has not gotten as much attention as it should is the president's power to waive the law for any company, union or other enterprise he chooses.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides for "equal protection of the laws" for all Americans. To have a law that can cost an organization millions of dollars a year either apply or not apply, depending on the whim or political interest of the President of the United States, is to make a mockery of the rule of law.
How secure is any freedom when there is this kind of arbitrary power in the hands of one man?
What does your right of freedom of speech mean if saying something that irritates the Obama administration means that you or your business has to pay huge amounts of money and get hit with all sorts of red tape under ObamaCare that your competitor is exempted from, because your competitor either kept quiet or praised the Obama administration or donated to its reelection campaign?
Arbitrary ObamaCare waivers are bad enough by themselves. They are truly ominous as part of a more general practice of this administration to create arbitrary powers that permit them to walk roughshod over the basic rights of the American people.
The checks and balances of the Constitution have been evaded time and time again by the Obama administration, undermining the fundamental right of the people to determine the laws that govern them, through their elected representatives.
You do not have a self-governing people when huge laws are passed too fast for the public to even know what is in them.
You do not have a self-governing people when "czars" are created by Executive Orders, so that individuals wielding vast powers equal to, or greater than, the powers of Cabinet members do not have to be vetted and confirmed by the people's elected representatives in the Senate, as Cabinet members must be.
You do not have a self-governing people when decisions to take military action are referred to the United Nations and the Arab League, but not to the Congress of the United States, elected by the American people, whose blood and treasure are squandered.
You do not have a self-governing people when a so-called "consumer protection" agency is created to be financed by the unelected officials of the Federal Reserve System, which can create its own money out of thin air, instead of being financed by appropriations voted by elected members of Congress who have to justify their priorities and trade-offs to the taxpaying public.
You do not have a self-governing people when laws passed by the Congress, signed by previous Presidents, and approved by the federal courts, can have the current President waive whatever sections he does not like, and refuse to enforce those sections, despite his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed.
Barack Obama, for example, has refused to carry out sections of the immigration laws that he does not like, unilaterally creating de facto amnesty for those illegal immigrants he has chosen to be exempt from the law. The issue is not -- repeat, NOT -- the wisdom or justice of this President's immigration policy, but the seizing of arbitrary powers not granted to any President by the Constitution of the United States.
You do not have a self-governing people if President Obama succeeds in having international treaties under United Nations auspices govern the way Americans live their lives, whether with gun control laws or other laws.
Obama's "citizen of the world" mindset was revealed back in 2008, when he said "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that every other country is going to say okay."
The desire to circumvent the will of the American people was revealed even more ominously when Barack Obama said to Russian President Medvedev -- when he thought the microphone was off -- that, after he is reelected and need never face the voters again, he can be more "flexible" with the Russians about missile defense.
There are other signs of Obama's contempt for American Constitutional democracy, but these should be more than enough. Dare we risk how far he will go when he never has to face the voters again, and can appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his power grabs? Will this still be America in 2016?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5
Israel Hits Missile Site In Dry Run For Iran
By Uzi Mahmaini and Flora Bagenal A long-range Israeli bombing raid last week that was seen as a dry run for a forthcoming attack on Iran 's nuclear facilities has destroyed an Iranian run plant making rockets and ballistic missiles in Sudan .
Eight Israeli F-15I planes — four carrying two one-ton bombs, escorted by four fighters — struck the giant Yarmouk factory on the southwestern outskirts of Khartoum, the capital, in the early hours of Wednesday.
The raid, in which two people died, triggered panic across the city. Witnesses said they heard a series of loud blasts followed by the sound of ammunition exploding. "It was a double impact — the explosion at the factory and then the ammunition flying into the neighborhood," said Abd-al Ghadir Mohammed, 31, a resident. "The ground shook. Some homes were badly damaged." According to western defence sources, the 2,400-mile return flight took the Israelis four hours, with the jets flying south along the Red Sea and crossing into Sudan from the east, bypassing Egypt 's air defense system. "This was a show of force but it was only a fraction of our capability — and of what the Iranians can expect in the countdown to the spring," said a defense source, referring to possible airstrikes against Tehran 's nuclear programme. Preparations for the attack in Sudan began more than two years ago after Mossad agents suffocated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the top weapons buyer for the Palestinian group Hamas, in his hotel in Dubai .Before they left Mabhouh's room they removed a number of documents from his briefcase. One of them, according to intelligence sources, was a copy of a defense agreement signed in 2008 by Tehran and Khartoum . It committed Iran to build weapons in Sudan under full Iranian command. The Israelis discovered later that a large contingent of Iranian technicians had been sent to the Yarmouk factory, where Human Rights Watch had reported in 1998 that chemical weapons were being stored Under Revolutionary Guard supervision, the Iranians were building advanced Shahab ballistic missiles and rockets at a plant in the factory compound. "The Iranians had been facing growing difficulties in transferring weapons and munitions to Hamas and their other allies in the region," an Israeli defence source said. A British munitions adviser added: "There is a very clear and established arms smuggling network that goes through eastern Sudan northwards to Sinai and then on to the Gaza Strip." The threat of a new source of missiles set off alarm bells in Israel . "These ballistic missiles could be launched towards Israel from either Sudan or from the Sinai peninsula ," an Israeli security expert said. "They pose a direct threat." Major-General Amir Eshel, the new commander of the Israeli air force, assured Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, that the strike would succeed. He personally supervised the operation from the air force's command and control bunker in Tel Aviv. Training took many weeks, using a model of the factory. At least two long-haul rehearsals were held. America was alerted and closed its embassy in Khartoum to avoid any revenge attacks. It was just before 10 pm last Tuesday that the F-15I pilots took off from an airbase in southern Israel . Several hours earlier, two CH-53 helicopters had set off, flying low over the Red Sea . Each carried up to 10 commandos as a rescue team should a pilot be forced to bail out. They landed in darkness and waited for the jets to arrive. Radio traffic was muted as the jets raced towards the Red Sea . "There were two potential obstacles," a military source said.
"The first was Djibouti civil air traffic control. The second was not to 'wake up' Egyptian radar." The Israelis nevertheless maintained the advantage of surprise.
After 90 minutes, the jets linked up with a Boeing 707 refueling tanker. Then, with full tanks of fuel, roughly 18 tons each, they crossed into Sudan . At this stage a Gulfstream G550 filled with electronic warfare equipment began to jam the Sudanese air defence system and the radar at Khartoum airport. " Sudan 's air defense is based on old but lethal Russian SA-2 anti- aircraft missiles and a squadron of over 20 Russian MiG-29 interceptors," a military source said. The F-15I fighters flew high above their comrades, ready to pounce if the MiG s took off. But they remained grounded throughout the attack. Immediately afterwards the squadron leader, an Israeli colonel, flew low over the factory to survey the destruction. Halfway home, he sent a coded message to his commanders. In Tel Aviv the chief of the defence staff picked up the phone to Balfour Street — Netanyahu's Jerusalem home. "All went well," he said. "The guys are on their way home."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
No comments:
Post a Comment