Wendesday Open Thread 2
Posted by Prof. Goose on March 8, 2006 - 4:32pm
because one just isn't enough, at least for today.
“Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.”
—Claire Huchet Bishop
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Well first off, all the generals have learned the lesson of Iraq, which is you can't hold population centers. So the first order of business would be to get Iran to do something REALLLLY STUPID,, like cutting off oil to the west. This would be a political action, but would be required to carry out any successful invasion of Iran. The reason being, is that if we invade Iran, with the ultimate goal of disarming Iran, and implanting an Iraqi style government, it would be doomed to failure, and Bush and all the gererals know this. BUT, if the ultimate goal is to "restore the free flow of oil to world", then you have an achievable goal.
So right off the bat, the invasion of Iran will be an invasion to restore Iranian oil output, not an invasion to free it's people.
So after a lot of study of Iranian oil field locations, Oil pipeline and NG gas pipeline location, and looking at population densities and locations, I come to the very easy conclusion, that the areas surrounding the bulk of the Iranian oil infrastucture is relatively free of people and major cities.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iran_major_oilfields78.jpg
Looking at the Mid-East map
You realize that Iran is SURROUNDED ON ALL SIDES, by areas controlled by the U.S. Iraq and Kuwait on one side. On the Other side you have Pakistan and Afghanistan, and on the other, Turkey. The only open sides faces Turkmenistan, which to be honest, I'm not sure which way they would turn in the event of an invasion. But my guess, is that in the next few months you'll start to hear more about them.
And most importantly The United Arab Emirates are directly across the straights of hormuz from Iran. And Dubai(remember that), is home to most of the US Gulf regions naval forces.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iran_pol01.jpg
So here is a look at the way I would cut off the rest of Iran, from it's oil fields. I would bring armor across from Iraq, and then bring light armor across the Straights of Hormuz. There would be a feignt of some sort towards the capital of Tehran, forcing much of Iran's heavy infantry and armor to form up around Tehran. But they would swing into Iran, and then head down towards the oil fields. Coming up from the Straights of Hormuz, would be the light armor, which would quickly cut the major roads leading into the Iranian Oil patch. With air cover from carriers, and the bombers from Abu Dabai, and Diego Garcia. You would be looking at a complete wipeout of Iranian defenses in that area quite quickly. With land based fighters coming in from Afghanistan, and Iraq, you could quickly plunge Iran into a "dark age". And any attempt to move armor from The south down to the oil patch would be met with pounding air power, just like the road of death in Iraq from the first gulf war. A-10 warthogs prowling the sky, looking for anything on the road to blow up.. Most of the oil pipelines leading to the North and to Tehran would be immediately cut. Most of the major oil pipelines start in the Persian Gulf or in the areas directly across the border from Iraq, and then flow up to the north. If these were diverted to the south and accross the straights of Hormuz into Dubai or Oman. They could easily be transported to any of the offloading areas in Saudi Arabia.
I would think the initial invasion portion would require less than 50 thousand troops, and pretty much all available naval airpower and Air Force bomber protection in the area. Things like the converted C130 Gunship would have to be in the area. It would take less than 2 weeks to militarily pacify the area, and then you could move into defensive mode. Which as any good tactician will tell you, is much easier. If you have a clearly defined area to protect, it's much harder on the invader than it is you. And in this case Iran would become the invading force not us. Once we have that foothold with no plans to expand outward to conquer the whole country, there will be no need for us to pacify an entire country. If you look at the resource maps of the middle east, with this move we would be in contol of all mid-east oil. From the Kirkuk fields of Iraq all the way through Southern Iran and the straights of Hormuz, accross and down through Dubai, the UAE and into Saudi Arabia.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/iran_population_density_2004.jpg
Check and Mate
Robert NW Ohio
We'd have to strip our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . and there still would be insufficient troops. Not a workable plan.
What we do have an abundance of is strategic air power. After their electricity is gone, so is any potential to make nuclear weapons.
Gimme an R
gimme an A = F = T
what's that spell? oh sh*t
looks like we'll be headin' to Canada for more than strong beer and cheap drugs.
To be honest/serious, though::
I can't imagine the US public getting behind another war, let alone one requiring a DRAFT.
This isn't 1941. Maybe I'm underestimating the Rummy/Fox News Right. Could they be so patriotic?
Heaven help us.
If you have a clearly defined area to protect, it's much harder on the invader than it is you.
This is probably valid in conventional warfare, but will hardly work with the guerilla resistance I would pick if I were on the Iranian side.
Clearly the chances that we will "restore oil supplies" are even lower than we had them with Iraq. Everybody knows it and the international resistance will be fierce.
You wrote:
> Most of the major oil pipelines start in the Persian Gulf
> or in the areas directly across the border from Iraq, and
> then flow up to the north. If these were diverted to the
> south and accross the straights of Hormuz into Dubai or
> Oman. They could easily be transported to any of the
> offloading areas in Saudi Arabia.
Vous rigolez, m'sieu - n'est-ce pas?
You seem pretty knowledgeable about US weapon systems (though so do a lot of people with access to the Internet). But what is your background in the oil industry? You don't just "divert" multiple million barrel per day pipelines, especially with an entire hemisphere of angry Muslims gunning for anything that looks vaguely American. You'd have to invade, occupy and lock down everything from Algiers to Surabaya to get anything like "control" of Iran's oil.
Easier to occupy a limited area? Most of the big fields in southern Iraq (open desert) lie within an hour's drive of each other, 15 minutes by helicopter, 3 minutes by F16 (take your pick, it makes no difference). You can see all the flare plumes from any of the Gathering Centers. Yeah, the Americans - sorry, the Coalition - are doing a bang-up job of maximizing output from the area. NOT.
I should put on record my considered opinion that Shrub isn't stupid enough to try something like this. Old Deadeye's advice has to be good for SOMETHING. And if that wasn't enough, America - sorry, the Coalition - has already had a pretty good demonstration rammed down its throat that it just doesn't work.
Another good reason you can't hijack a country's oil industry is that it's pretty easy under IMO regs to get an international maritime arrest warrant. This lets your bailiffs arrest a ship in any port in the world and tie it up for months (at $40k per day demurrage for a VLCC on current Worldscale dayrates) while the courts puzzle it out. Most shipowners won't touch legally encumbered cargoes (they don't like losing control of their vessels), and last time I looked all the big shipbuilders from San Diego to Singapore were fully booked years ahead (it's those high oil prices, don'cha know?).
Or does your Tom Clancy fantasyland include abolishing maritime law and setting the USMC loose on the high seas looking for tankers to seize?
The pipelines are already there, check a map with oil infrastructure on it. All of the pipeline run right down towards the straights of Hormuz. So all you have to do, is protect what you have.. Tall order..
In response to the fact that Iraqi oil is not up to pre-war levels. You have to remember that Iraq's oil infrastructure was completely decimated before the war even started. 10 years of neglect and mismanagement guaranteed that we wouldn't see significant oil from Iraq for 5 plus years.
Robert NW Ohio
Invading Iraq has been a disaster for oil output; invadind Iran would lead to the same outcome.
Yes, the Iranians could shut down the Straights with one missile. A couple more would shut down the Saudi's. At that point, every country in the world is directly effected. Even net oil producers would be screwed: the following depression would hit them just as much.
The US wouldn't need to invade; the rest of the world would do it for them. The most likely way is assassination, bombing, and a coup. The mullahs hold the power in Iran but there are an awful lot of Iranians who hate them. Military officers freaked at such an action could rebel.
I don't think the Mullahs would last long and I think they know it. They're pretty wealthy and fat these days. It's one thing to convince a boy to seek his reward and quite another to do so yourself.
My only fear is that the cult that the President belongs to tries to bring the Mahdi back; that requires that the world be in chaos, apparently.
As far as limiting world supply goes I think they are much more likely to use al-Sadr in southern Iraq to keep the Iraqi oil off the market (and keep the Americans tied down).
My only realistic fear too. I don't admire Baby Doc Bush but I think he is backed into a corner by history and circumstance. A corner he knowingly walked into... no way he was blind to peak energy/fossil fuels. No need to kid ourselves.
Hopefully the Iranians don't really believe they "hear the voice of God" ... and hopefully Baby Doc doesn't really believe that either ("my dad (godz) kin beat up your dad (godz) anyday!).
Homo Da Saps.
The religious group he belongs to has a decidedly apocalyptic bent. The election that put him in power was carefully controlled: only approved candidates allowed. The mullahs like him. Whether they like him because he scares the bejeezus out of westerners or because they agree with him isn't clear (at least to me).
Iran holds some hefty cards and they know it.
Honestly - the God-HEARing are the most hideous and scary of all homo sapians... they turn their religions form helpful hammers that build communities into Terrible Hammers that smash skulls in their community.
Same with Mad Scientists practicing With Out the required Mother Nature's Licensing...
Beware of Global FruiCakes Claiming their Snake Oil Will Cure the Climate Blues... just as dangerous as the Distraction we call Religion for the poor sap we call Hom (IMHO)
In 1980 Saddam attacked Iran because he thought he could take advantage of the internal chaos in the country after the Iranian Revolution. The part he wanted to have is exactly the one you point out: the oil fields.
It took them 8 years and I don't know how many hundred thousand lives to figure out this wouldn't work.
If I was a general tasked with invading Iran, I would have an obligation not to commit such a war crime. I would be required to refuse such an illegal order.
Tactically, we cannot hold the oil fields against the Iranians. They do not need electricity to mount human wave attacks, as they did against Iraq. About all we can hope to accomplish is to destroy the oil infrastructure that is there, so that nobody can get any oil out of it.
My conclusion was, and is: military invasion of Iran is almost completely non-viable given present situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be an open invitation to escalate insurgency in those countries. It also has almost no benefits - Iranian oil doesn't supply US at all. It would have political repercussions: Chavez might cut oil supply to US. It might lead to impeachment of president. It might encourage a revolution in Saudi Arabia. It would increase instability and violence in Israel / Palestine. It would further isolate the USA.
What might be the benefits? I hope they don't include access to several million bpd oil production, that assumption would be very silly.
It would be insane from just about all perspectives to invade Iran.
Iran will be delt with using international sanctions, probably for the next 50 years.
How long does it take to turn an oil well into not-an-oilwell but just a patch of desert with some cement-plugged pipes?
The US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan are already fully committed to tasks at hand - ie combatting a raging insurgency. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the Pentagon has yet to master the art of quantum deployment whereby marines that are doing combat patrols in Kandahar or Anbar cannot simultaneously spearhead an offensive into Iran. It's also worth noting that US forces are disposed in the wrong areas for either of these locations to be useful as a launching pad - apart from in Diyala province, there are no substantial concentrations of US firepower adjacent to the Iranian border. It's worth bearing in mind that at least 5000 Iranians go to Iraq every day, and that there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iranian military/intelligence/diplomatic assets in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other countries on their border - they know exactly what is happening on the ground there and any attempt to put forces into a hostile posture will be noted and countered long before anything
leaks into the public domain.
The second thing is that the Iranians have formal, normalised and peaceful diplomatic relations with every country on their border - that includes Turkey, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kuwait, the UAE, Iraq and Afghanistan. None of these countries have any particular motive for getting involved in a hare-brained scheme that is actually going to severely damage their interests. Pakistan complains every time the US military fires at a target in Waziristan - there is no chance of the US using its territory for military operations against Iran. Turkey, which was unwilling to allow the use of a land-corridor into Northern Iraq in 2003, in spite of a 60 billion bribe has no credible motivation for allowing the US to use its territory for this either ( domestic public opinion will not permit it, and their government is, er, democratically accountable ). Similar considerations apply to the gulf states and Kuwait - they can allow the US to use facilities for this at the price of domestic rebellion and some serious Iranian retaliation. For what?
Of course, the Iranians do have a pretty good idea of the threats ranged against them. This is why their regional military and domestic security system is set up to operate autonomously. Now, the oil areas may be away from the centre, but there are hundreds of thousands of Iranian forces stationed there who would have to be dealt with. The idea that the US military could just take the Khuzestan area and the Straits of Hormuz and the 500-mile Persian gulf littoral between the 2 areas with 50,000 troops, that the US doesn't have available anyway, is utterly fanciful. And of course, what happens when the Iranians start to fire back - there will be missile attacks against US ships, US bases in the region are all within easy range of Iran's large, varied and mobile missile inventory, and the Iranians will activate their mates in Iraq to cut the US logistics chain from Kuwait. This conflict scenario is pointless because you don't consider the range of Iranian options and what would be necessary to forestall them - once you do that the military assets required for invading and holding bits of Iranian territory and countering the various plays available to Iran are simply never going to materialise.
In short, it's a damn good thing that you aren't a US military planner, as you would be facing severe retribution when you screw up your military in a way that makes Iraq look like a Buckingham Palace Garden Party.
Robert NW Ohio
Basically, the problem is intelligence. We don't really know where to bomb. The intelligence turned out to be bad on Iraq, and is probably worse on Iran.
Iraq also had bunkers too deep for bunker busters. That's why Bush asked for nuclear bunker busters.
The Iraq and Iran problems, from a military stanpoint, are quite different. In Iraq we needed control of territory to look for WMD and to accomplish regime change and [though we did not have enough troops for this] establish the civil order and rule of law that would be needed to give the Iraqi people a shot at democracy.
In Iran, with bombs alone we can take out all their electrical power, plus the infrastructure needed to repair it. While people are freezing and starving and dying of disease in the dark, there will be no rebuilding of nuclear reactors. Eventually, we may be able to scrape together enough ground troops to secure the oil fields in Iran. So far as occupying the whole or even much of the country of Iran, why bother? What would be the point of doing so?
http://energybulletin.net/13605.html
[opening paragraph]
It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, "will make scarce resources, clean water, viable agricultural land even scarcer"--and this will "make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely."
- The booze is running out, but we'll come up with even better booze
- The booze won't be enough, but we'll drink coke instead
- The booze will be over, but we'll drink less
- The booze is almost over, we'll have to kill each other so there is enough for all
- The booze is over, the world is over, best thing to do is just shoot ourselves
Any more?I appreciate it guys you made me fall down the chair :)
(no booze envolved here :)
We will apply advanced booze recovery methods to extract booze more completely.
We don't need real booze, because we can now make synbooze from anything organic.
Every time we've ever needed booze, somebody has come through with a bottle, so why worry?
We protect the distiller, so he owes us.
We will also make trees.
- Learn to make your own booze?
I'm rather surprised that wasn't the first thought that sprung to mind.
I think you are falling into the trap of viewing the potential conflict between the US/Israel and Iran strictly in tactical military terms. This is one of the reasons the Bush regime screwed up so badly in Iraq. In that debacle the US has not lost a single 'battle' with the insurgents, but in spite of all our awesome military might, they are still there and appear to be getting stronger, while our problems are growing. Now why is that?
I have little doubt that the US military could attack Iran and split off a small chunk of the country, such as that oil-rich province everyone has been talking about lately. The real question is: what happens after we do that? Do you really expect the Iranians to sit back and say "Okay, you win!" I'm sure they know what the US is up to and have several different contingency plans to make our life hell.
First, I think we can be fairly certain that an attack on Iran (especially if Israel is involved) will result in the largely restrained Shiite militias in Iraq going into full attack mode against the US forces. One military analyst I've corresponded with also thinks it's not out of the question that the Iranian's would launch a massed infantry attack into Iraq. Though they would suffer massive casualties, it would tie down US forces for quite a while and plunge Iraq into total chaos. He also fears that our lines of communication coming up from Kuwait could be cut and thus leave large concentrations of US troops stranded.
Of course there would also be missile attacks on the Green Zone, US bases, and also probaby against Arab countries friendly to the US such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. How effective these would be is not known.
Then we have the problem of protecting the super tanker traffic going into and out of the Persian Gulf. It is not good enough for the US to secure the Strait of Hormuz. Most of the Iranian coast has rugged terrain perfect for the concealment of mobile anti-ship missiles. Even super tankers hugging the Arabian side of the Gulf would be mostly within range. It's hard to picture a moving target that's easier to hit than a super tanker. Just one super tanker sinking would send world oil markets into total panic.
Nor are our aircraft carrier battle groups safe from the same sort of attacks. Regardless of a protective cordon on missile frigates, etc, just one or two cruise missile hits on the deck of a super carrier would so materially degrade its ability to continue its mission as to effectively take it out of action. If we do attack Iran, expect our carrier battle groups to leave the Gulf and take up a safer position way beyond the other side of the Strait of Hormuz.
Then we come to the biggest potential danger, and it is one that has nothing whatsoever to do with the 'battlefield'. And that is the reaction of the rest of the muslim world. Pakistan is a particular worry. Musharref is hanging onto power by his fingernails, and If the US/Israel attacks Iran, I think he is toast. Then what happens to Pakistan's nukes? And what if a country like Venezuela refuses to send oil to the US? What about a major oil embargo by countries furious at what the US has done? It will be a total mess.
Of course, Iran will have its oil fields and related infrastructure all set up for demolition should it appear that the US will gain control. You can count on a total scorched earth policy, much like the Russians did with both Napoleon and Hitler. It would probably take years to get Iran's oil back up to pre-war production.
No, if you thought that Iraq was a cake walk, wait'll see Iran!
Some people are structurally incapable of learning from their mistakes, and unfortunately many of them occupy high positions in the Bush regime.
Though the US will probably be able to secure the Hormuz straits eventually it will take time, for reasons you explain. That's a lot of oil that isn't getting to market for a while. A US attack on Iran is, as things currently stand, akin to US economic suicide IMO.
The graphs on crude, gasoline & nat'l gas all show that we are well above the 5-yr channels. Again illustrating the unlikelihood of sustained price spiking.
http://trendlines.ca/economic.htm#USAReserves
There will be both a new monthly extraction record & new quarterly global production record in 2006Q2.
I'm not so optimistic about the 2 mbpd cushion, where exactly did those numbers come from? the post doesn't explain. If true it should be enough to fill China's intended SPR if they get that act together. I'd be happy if the cushion stayed at 1+ mbpd for the next two years.
Note as well that some OECD reserves were shipped to US in wake of hurricanes, hopefully they have been replenishing them already.
December may have been a record but it's still looking like a plateau to me. I guess we'll all crack open a good bottle when(?) production breaks the 85 mbpd barrier, it won't be in January or February 2006. I rhetorically wonder how many months in 2005 the production data exceeded the 2004 equivalent? I'd suggest that if the answer is between 4 and 8 it's looking like a plateau, if higher then it suggests scope for higher production (I haven't checked in advance, BTW).
I totally agree that stocks are generally high (crude, distillate, gasoline and gas) ATM, and prices should probably drop further to reflect that. A certain amount of risk premium does appear to have become structural but I'd guess that is no more than about $5.
Today we have high prices even though stockpiles are larger than normal, but this is because markets foresee possible supply shortages in the future. It is those anticipated shortages that the Exxon guy describes as "fear" of a shortage. But the point is that this is perfectly reasonable and rational market behavior.
Certainly there are many factors in play that could reasonably be anticipated to produce oil shortages in the months ahead: Iran, Nigeria, and hurricanes to name three. Given this uncertainty it would be irrational for oil prices to drop to $40 or whatever. It's not just blind "fear", it is a perfectly reasonable and prudent anticipation of possible problems.
What is interesting is that it is all driven purely by the profit motive. Speculators in the oil markets drive up prices for summertime oil delivery, gambling on shortages. This in effect drags up today's prices. That causes demand today to be suppressed, which causes stockpiles to build, and that leaves us in better shape to handle these shortages if they happen.
It's Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" at work. The result is that this decentralized oil market, with thousands of participants all just trying to maximize their own profits, works in just the manner that a centralized director would have it, taking steps today to moderate demand and prepare for problems later this year. And it works far more efficiently than any centralized system could manage.
Go to: http://eia.doe.gov/ and click on "This Week in Petroleum" over at the right, under "Publications and Reports". This should take you to http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp
The second paragraph starts off, "As EIA predicted in its February 15 edition of This Week in Petroleum," with "This Week in Petroleum" highlighted as a link.
Click that link!
It takes me here:
http://looneytunes.warnerbros.com/stars_of_the_show/tasmanian_devil/taz_story.html
which is a page about Taz, the Tazmanian Devil star of the Looney Tunes cartoon show.
This is using Firefox, maybe it is specific to that browser. But not exactly something you expect to see on an official U.S. Government Department of Energy web site!
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html
If you just mouse over the link on the TWIP page, you get this:
http://taz/ClearanceOOG/twip/production/operations/twiparch/060215/twipprint.html
which redirects to that bizarre site hosted at Hermetic.com. "The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism"?? I don't think the government is going to be too happy about that. (This is in Firefox. Even more strangely, when you use IE, there is no redirect, just a "we can't access that page" message.)
http://deoxy.org/deoxy.htm (3 years ago this was, I felt, a groundbreaking net site)
http://www.mkzdk.org/index.html
...your mission, should you accept it, is to find your way to the philosopher's stone page without cheating by using this link:
http://www.mkzdk.org/philosopherstone.html
- but do go to that page and understand the truth. It is probably the most ultimate 'truth' for humans as we currently are.
While I'm at it I'll dump some similar-ish links on you:
http://www.kli.org/
http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/
http://www.cfpf.org.uk/
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
http://hedweb.com/welcome.htm
http://eonix.8m.com/
http://www.alternativescience.com/index.htm
http://www.integralscience.org/
http://fusionanomaly.net/interplanetaryinternet.html
http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/pitcairn/1421/index.htm
http://www.entheogen.com/
http://www.oxytocin.org/
Note that I do not necessarily endorse, believe or agree with any of the above sites, travel at your own mental risk ;)
http://deoxy.org/dodorant.htm
http://www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/BHAN-5372WP?open
Item #51 talks about the population threat. There was a plan to send a breeding pair to Copenhagen Zoo but there is no test yet for the mystery tumour.
http://taz/ClearanceOOG/twip/production/operations/twiparch/060215/twipprint.html
That link, and all truncated versions of it, go nowhere for me :-(
It really isn't a good idea to attack Iran. Mainly because we don't know how they will react. Wars, nasty things that they are, have a habit of surprising us and getting out of hand!
Iran is roughly four times the size of Iraq. It's population is far bigger than Iraq's. It hasn't been subject to seige like Iraq was. Iraq was a country vertually on it's knees prior to the invasion. Iran is far stronger than Iraq was. Iranians are not Arabs. Iranians are very well organised, resilient and disciplined. It would be fatal to underestimate them.
One could not expect them to sit back and allow the United States to occupy their oil fields without a fight. The Iranians are Shias. The majority ethnic group in Iraq are also Shias. The Shia politicians in Iraq have, almost to a man, the closest imaginable links with Iran. Links of culture, religion and politics. An attack on Shia Iran would be rightly seen as an attack on Shia Iraq too. I believe the Shia would rise up in their millions, in a revolt that would make the current Suni resistance seem like tea-party! They could overrun the American army in Iraq or at the least cause massive casualties. What do we do then - nuke them?
One of the problems is, we've empowered Iran, by destroying Iran's great foe, Saddam and his Sunni army and his secular state. We've replaced it with a Shia pro-Iranian theoracy allied with Iran. This would be almost funny if it wasn't so disasterous.
Now, it seems the US, having finally realised this, now wants to change horses in mid-stream, by dumping the Shia and supporting the traditional ruling-class the Sunis! The American ambassador in Iraq has been trying for over three months to reverse the results of the Iraqi election, by calling for a government of national unity. This means giving power to the Sunis at the expense of the Shia who won the election! Naturally the Shia say no, we won the elsection why should we share power with the Suni minority?
The whole thing is a complicated mess. We've opened up Pandora's Box and we haven't a clue how to go forward. But how do we stop the conflict in Iraq spreading and escalating into a full regional conflict? With Shia states and Suni states getting dragged in? It is going to be difficult, requiring a level of intelligence, sophistication, knowledge and luck, which I don't believe the current Bush administration has.
I recon the administration is split about what to do. Pulling out of Iraq is a really big defeat, worse than Vietnam in my opinion because the stakes are higher. Maybe Iraq would fall apart even if we pull out? We've destroyed so much in Iraq that maybe it simply can't be put back together again. This of course would be disasterous for the region and somebody would have to step in and restore order. Who would that be?
The alternative to cutting and running is escalation. Sending hundreds of thousands of extra troops and before that even attacking Iran and smashing the emerging Shia super-state. Clearly escalation and another war with an unknown outcome is also fraught with danger for the US. I wouldn't want to go there! Will desparation on the part of the Bush administration be the deciding factor. I know some of you will talk about Bush bashing etc. However, it's valid in this case because after all they got us into this mess and they chose to destroy Iraq as functioning state.
The whole situtation reminds me of Shakespeare's play Macbeth. Towards the end when Macbeth is surrounded by his enemies and he knows the game is up, he ponders his choices. None of them are good. Macbeth seas himself standing up to his waist in a rever of blood. What should he do, go backwards, go backwards to what? He can't undue all the killing he's done. Should he wade forward towards certain defeat? What a choice to have to make. Macbeth, being a tragic hero and a brilliant soldier, decides to keep his armour on pick up his trusty sword, and go forward across the river of blood to face his foes like a man face to face and go down fighting and take as many of his enemies with him on the way! I really wish we could send Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld out on the same mission and leave the rest of us out of it!
A: befriend Saddam all over again
B: invade and occupy
We all get to play Monday morning quarterback now. Had I been in Bush's sandals I would have picked option A. Why? Saddam was after all a client dictator of ours, to serve as a counterweight to Iran. After all the two had their Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. By throttled arms support, the two cancelled each other out like matter and antimatter.
Had we became buddy-buddy with Saddam again, the counterweight would remain, AND we could unsequester the oil, by playing along with Hans Blix. Iran would still be pinned down. Saddam also was able to keep a lid on extremism in Iraq too, cutting down on a supply of terrorists.
BUT NOOOOO!!!!! That was too much like making sense. Like a botched play causing you to get sacked, injured, and a newbie taking your place on the gridiron in a Superbowl, Bush decided on invasion/occupation. With Shiites being allied with Iran and rabid enough to drive an airliner into a building, we opened a Pandora's Box. And one minus the marble of hope but with a softball-sized blob of plutonium.
Now, there are two outcomes:
A: a civil war based on religion
B: an Iran-like theocracy allied with Iran
Kind of like being Socrates being given a choice of Hemlock or ethylene glycol to drink.
D. Three separate countries: Kurdish state, Shia state which will merge with Iran in time, Sunni rump state.
Having picked war was a surely irrevocable bad choice. No matter what we do now, we only sink deeper in the tar pit.
But seriously, I don't know how you can have intelligent people gathered together and not eventually get into the 911 discussion/debate. It was a watershed event that must never be forgotten. OOOPS... maybe I just committed a "hate/thought" crime by borrowing the "never forget" mantra!
Its very refreshing to have people thinking and have a good number of them questioning authority and the official "party line".
In some distant land many years ago, these same people would have surely filled the ranks of the gulags.
and brought back the Teleworker
newsletter, which is all about
telecommuting:
http://www.teleworkexchange.com/
- In the oil producing area of Iran (the Southwest), the dominant population is Arab not Persian. And they aren't happy with Persian domination.
- Iran's plan to block the Strait is not to use regular naval ships, but small fast boats loaded with 1 or 2 mines. But they have hundreds of them. In 6 hours, the Strait is blocked for months.
- The Israelis have subs in the Indian Ocean loaded with cruise missles, both conventional and nuclear.
So, while you armchair Iran keep these things into consideration...Have you ever heard of mine sweepers?
Moral: Keep watch.
For best results, add a web-cam to the CIWS so a person in Weps can grab a mouse and point to the go-fast on the screen and click the left button. BBBBUUURRRPPP!!!! go-fast gone fast. :) When a lookout sees the go-fast, he tells CIC, and the gunner on watch flips the switch to web cam mode, and has the second of fun. The individual CIWS radar can determine distance, and a computer can do the stepper motor to aim up the little bit. With the radar to determine range, a green laser pointer mounted on the CIWS can be used like the laser pointers on pistols already. Makes software development easier. When the gunner flips the switch, he puts the dot on the go-fast bomber and clicks. Mouse interface plus serial from radar makes it such that QuickBASIC could be used! (or use joystick port and trackball) With a CIWS and video game style interface, the go-fast bomber weapon is now ineffective... IF they keep a good watch.
You are, of course, aware that the minesweepers will have to be lucky every time whereas the minelayers only have to be lucky once.
In both World War I and World War II minesweepers were highly effective. New higher tech mines are harder to sweep for, but they are not widely available. Also, mines are most effective where you can lay a helluva lot of them of different types. The evidence I've seen suggests that the Iranian pirates (and that is all they are, really) have only low tech mines and not a huge number of them.
Since the opponent is willing to play MacGyver (hence IEDs using our own unexploded munitions) it sure adds a wildcard into the equation. Let's see. Mines (the anti-ship type) are aimed at disabling a navy, obviously. We and the opponent knows we like steel ships, but also use wooden-body minesweepers to rid a place of magnetic mines. Now, a minesweeper will look for METAL mines to get rid of. A sea variation of a Falkland Special (my own term) will not be detected. It need be only have .99 the density of the surrounding water to float but waves will hide it. It may sink some, but will come up to become a random hazard. The way these jerks think is they LIKE randomness. Throw a bunch of .99 specific grav plastic contact mines in the water and watch the fun. Some of the time they will be too deep to be in play except to subs. The rest of the time they wait until ANY ship hits it and jars a seismic fuse.
An easy time delay fuse to allow throwing them in is a battery that runs out releasing a solenoid that, no longer powered, engages the seismic fuse. The seismic fuse will not be TOO sensitive, as you want it to go off wnen a ship hits it, not an errant shark.
A major thing is to think like a terrorist to understand the tactics possible to our opponent. That's what they know. We have to think accordingly to understand them. And keep a good watch.
Query: In the real world, how many ships, boats, or jet-skis have the Iranians actually sunk with mines over the past fifty years???????????
Is it possible to interconnect the energy grid so that demand is able to be met throughout the entire world and no electricity is wasted? I don´t think we(the world) would go for it because of security, however I am still curious of whether constructing a worldwide grid is possible/inexpensive to implement and would it produce surplus/cheap electricity?
At higher power costs (in EU Russia) it could be made to work with DC lines and significant line losses.
It would not produce cheap electricity but it might help maximise use of generated electricity. It also has the scope to exploit poorer nations who produce surplus electricity. Electricity distribution over long distances wastes electricity but advanced technology might reduce that waste.
Where else can it go? Why all the preparation? Why all the commotion? We've been there before, haven't we?
One other thing is clear: it will be disastrous. The empire failed to instill shock awe in Iraq even though it clearly intended to. What can it do to restore credibility by instilling it this time? This is what is truly horrendous to contemplate.
Is the initial wave of air power and armor. Nobody can stop us if we want to do it. After that it's the dog that caught the car. Now what.... If beating up Iran has to be done it can be, but we can't try to control the country on a local level.
Why? Because the industrialized world is experiencing a growing volume of attacks by fundamentalist Islamic fanatics. To allow Iran, the seat of this movement, to have a nuclear weapon would be suicide for industrialized societies.
In case anyone has not noticed, there is a world-wide war going on. The delicious irony is that the combatents are mutually co-dependent as suppliers and purchasers in the realm of oil. So no oil will be destroyed in the process of attacking the Iranian nuclear facilities.
Too bad, but kinda funny to watch from the sidelines (hopefully - got popcorn will watch the follies beyond my control Here and Now).
-------------------------------------
WORLD TRADE CENTER
There is no precedent for the burning and collapse of the high-rise steel-framed World Trade Center towers and neighboring 7 World Trade Center.
This catastrophe will alter building design and municipal building codes.
-------------------------------------
Posted above the fire hydrant in the fire fighting display room on the ground floor of the Museum of the City of New York, seen after I put out a fire in the adjoining men's room.
I have an open mind on 9/11. The official story is almost certainly not properly true but I find it near impossible to believe the regime complicit stories, nor is there adequate evidence for them that I have seen.
We'll know much of the truth of it, eventually.
You come to TOD to cheer up? What kind of sicko are you, LOL ;)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/02/13/spain.block.fire/index.html
and with even a giant crane load the the top of the building there was no collapse. Of course we think that Spain is part of old Europe, so the laws of physics have not been updated to the new way of "thinking".
Again, this does not support your case. From what I read, the fire was started by a cigarette, firefighters fought the blaze, the building did partially collapse, and had to be demolished. Imagine if the fire had been fed by several thousand gallons of slow-burning jet fuel. Imagine if the fireproofing had been dislodged by the impact of a jetliner. Imagine if columns had been sheared off by the impact of a jetliner.
Completely different situation.
How hard would it be for the US Governement to build such a test model? Some scrap steel welded together and a little bit of fuel?
They tested the foam puncture theory on the space shuttle, didn't they?
They did test the foam puncture theory, but they used an actual spare part from the shuttle. Full size. Cost almost a million dollars. And it was the only spare they had. NASA really didn't want to do it, but the investigators deemed it necessary.
The investigators did all the calculations, and had visual proof that wing was struck by foam as they theorized. They were sure that was the cause.
But many of the NASA engineers didn't believe that a foam strike could bring down the shuttle. It had happened numerous times before, after all, and the shuttles had landed safely. It was to prove it to them that the test was done. When the dust cleared and the gathered NASA employees saw the dinner plate sized hole the foam had created, there was an audible gasp. Some just hung their heads and walked away.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050223columbia.htm
Heat transfer can be modeled quite well for strange shapes, such as the cooling fins on motorcycle cylinder heads, CPU cooling fins, laser burning of micro integrated circuits and ceramic coated turbine blades in jet engines.
http://www.fluent.com/solutions/examples/x40.htm
http://www.fluent.com/solutions/electronics/index.htm
http://www.fluent.com/about/news/newsletters/98v7i2/a7.htm
Do you mean a scale model of the building? A full scale model can be (and most likely has been) run in someone's 3D structural analysis computer program.
The space shuttle foam was impact tested.
TWA 800? Now that was a shoot down!
Why can't they just use a full sized corner of one floor and load it with appropriate top weight while subjecting it to jet fuel flame to see how long it takes for the steel to fail? If it takes a lot longer than it took for the real twin towers to come down after the plane struck, then we'll know something is fishy.
But wouldn't you know it... NIST just couldn't get the towers to collapse.
Of course NIST also ignored the pools of liquid metal found in the basements of WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7, the video evidence of office workers standing on the edge of the airplane impact crater in the North tower who called in to say 'Don't worry, it's not that hot in here' as well as the audio evidence of NYPD Firemen making it to the 78th floor and calmly stating that a couple of water lines will put out the few fires that remain.
Oh but FIRE COLLAPSED THEM!
Crazy huh?
Like that famous Congressman, newspaper reporters probably say: "Don't confuse me with the facts."
You can see various graphs representative of steel stress reductions with temperature (w/o fireproofing), here,
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head-degradation/vessel-head-degradation-files/4-material-properties.pdf
At around 500-600ºF steel is reaching stress levels that would equal many higher stress areas of the design. Tension members would start to stretch significantly. Local deformations of certain columns could easily cause a collapse the affected column. Both of these effects would tend to overload adjacent beams, columns and tension members. Given some of these members were probably damaged by the aircraft strike prior to a fire, there would be nothing unusual in my mind if collapse of the structure occured shortly thereafter. In fact, I was surprized to see that they lasted as long as they did.
Connection designs of the WTC (FEMA report Appendix B) and failure modes here,
http://www.house.gov/science/hot/wtc/wtc-report/WTC_apndxB.pdf
The discussions are consistant with my experience as a structural engineer and the photos are exactly what I would expect to see. (Of course I don't know if they showed them all, right?)
b) WTC steel was CERTIFIED to withstand MUCH MUCH higher temperatures and the FEMA report you refer to states the burning jet fuel (all 4000 gallons of it) was NOT the cause of the collapse
c) still haven't explained why there was MOLTEN METAL 80 floors down.
LOVE to hear your theory on that one.
I'm not trying to explain this, but OK, how'd the molten metal get down there and why is that relavent?
The design flaw was that instead of building it like Chicago style skyscrapers (monkey bars fit for Godzilla) they settled on a design of a load-bearing core and load-bearing walls. Trusses held up the floors. Against gravity and wind, it worked as good as the monkey bars design. They designed it that way so interior decorators had no load-bearing columns to deal with. Except for the core, they had the run of any given tenant's floor. It worked... until some idiots thought they were cute on 9/11/2001, of course. The planes served as giant molotovs, and we know the rest.
If I were to design a replacement WTC, I'd take the original design but add columns and tanks of water laced with airport fire fighting foam for a gravity-fed sprinkler system. Fun note for Navy vets: "airport fire fighting foam" has the exact same acronym as the Navy's "aqueous film forming foam" used for fighting Class Bravo (petroleum fuels) fires. This new WTC would be double strength and have a kick-arse fire suppression system to neutralise planes used as molotovs.
Open threads (and others, LOL) often drift off into very active sub-threads about current hot subjects or issues that arise. The increased activity at TOD makes individual topics a bit unwieldy. I suggest some possible solutions:
'Tis getting very busy around here!
However, automatic new threads may not be a good idea. They tried that at DailyKos, and no one liked it. Everyone knew that when the post count hit the magic number, a new thread would be started. No one wanted their immortal lines of deathless prose to be at the bottom of a long thread. So they'd post junk, to force the thread over the limit, so they post their real messages at the top of a fresh thread. It quickly made the open threads not worth reading.
Part of the issue is that the open threads are a free-for-all. They are not all about one topic. I suppose that a forum section would allow people to start their own thread about a particular topic, and then (hopefully) the comments there would be "on topic". That way we would not get posts about, say, Iran scattered over 3 or 4 threads. Once an open thread gets old, I hesitate to comment there, as it probably won't be read.
Just thinking out loud....
Just cause no one posts anymore doesn't mean it's not being read.
Perhaps the moderators (Goose, HO, SS etc) can add a header to the open thread once they see it heading in some major direction. Example: "SS note: Main theme of commentors here seems to be CTL technology."
http://www.livescience.com/technology/060308_sandia_z.html
Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.
This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.
They don't know how they did it.
(Why on The Oil Drum - here's the payoff)
One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma's ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.
(Interesting, over unity....somehow)
Well the program is surfacing now:
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/
over on the very left hand side for "Coming Up" it has:
It won't be until next week that we will get more details about the program.
Just as well it didn't run in Feb - that could have been during the Olympics.
There is discussion of the program here:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0602/01/sitroom.02.html
You can find more stuff by googling "We were warned" and "oil". The thing was screened on Monday at GMU:
http://gazette.gmu.edu/articles/7978/
http://www.broadsideonline.com/article.php?date=03-06-2006§ion=news&article=sesno.txt
I will repost this in the next open thread - people probably won't notice it here.
This week an Angry Reader Writes:
"I hope it does hit Fast and Hard
and in one year (homoSap)is BK and wondering what happened.
That sound mean etc - but the fact is That Much faster we stop the waste by Critters like him - unnecessary parasites left over from the Golden Age of Delusion.
Honest to godzain'tMighty - I'm not "ready" either but I want it now and I want it as hard as mother can make it.
No more having to play pretend or have to try to convince deliberately ignorant morons (hens or cocks guarding nest or picking Daily Lint furiously) anymore -
THERE you want proof you dumb motherfuckers - THERE now you have proof. Go eat your credit card dumb fucks all."
----------------
((( ...Mother says, "You betcha baby, you betcha, just let me rinse off here first little onezzz..." )))
Excerpts are here.
Being from the finance world, you know what a hedge is. This is a hedge.