Target Centermass

Author: Gunner

  • Major League Lacrosse Completes 2006 Expansion

    Well, this sucks.

    Major League Lacrosse, the premier professional outdoor lacrosse league, has secured its three remaining expansion cities to join Los Angeles for the start of the 2006 season, according to MLL Founder Jake Steinfeld. Major League Lacrosse will expand to include teams in Chicago, Denver and San Francisco in addition to Los Angeles, which joined the league on March 9, 2005.

    L.A., Chicago, Denver and San Fran are the picks to bring the five-year-old MLL westward and grow from six teams to ten. The scuttlebutt was that Dallas was a leading contender. It certainly would have made sense, as the sport is booming in the area and across the state. Plus, the new stadium built in suburban Frisco for Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas seemed a perfect facility for the sport.

    The league plans to add two more western teams for the 2008 season, and the leading cities are Dallas and San Diego. Or so the obviously unreliable rumor mill says. Should the professional level of the sport finally arrive in the Lone Star state, count me in on season tickets. ‘Til then, I’ll just spend the next two seasons stewing bitterly.

  • Quick Hits, 23 AUG 05

    Young Muslims choose Sept 11 for day of action

    Islamic youth organisations that were not part of Prime Minister John Howard’s summit yesterday say they have been working against extremism behind the scenes.

    They have chosen a date for a planned day of action – September 11.

    The group says it wants to try to change the date’s association with extreme Islamic violence, and to highlight how mainstream Muslims have become victims of prejudice and bias.

    Granted, 9/11 is rather obvious, but it should be noted that there is no shortage of anniversaries of bloody radical Islamist terror strikes. Methinks these folks are moving too slowly, and that by years.

    Army Specialist Casey Sheehan – Someone You Should (Have) Know(n)

    Casey Sheehan’s Sergeant asked for volunteers. Sheehan had just returned from Mass. After Sheehan volunteered once, the Sergeant asked Sheehan again if he wanted to go on the mission. According to many reports (and according to his own mother), Casey responded, “Where my Chief goes, I go.”

    Blackfive pays tribute to a fallen soldier who deserves far more attention for far better reasons than his own mother, the media’s story of the month and the anti-war movement’s latest hope to undercut our current military efforts.

    Suicide bombs breakthrough gives police vital clues

    The four terrorists who killed 56 people in London on July 7 triggered the bombs themselves by pressing a device similar to a button, senior police sources have told the Guardian.

    The discovery scotches the theory that the four British-born men may have been duped into carrying the rucksack bombs on to three crowded tube trains and one bus, unaware they were going to explode.

    This is an interesting development — the London bombers apparently were not duped as some had theorized. This only should compound European fear of the true danger of the radical Islamist threat in its midst. Ah, but will it?

    Military History Wiki

    Blogs of War readers may be interested in participating in a new Military History Wiki.

    Not much of a quote there, but John Little at Blogs of War points us to an interesting fledgling internet project — an open-source military history site. I’ve bookmarked it already and will certainly be paying attention to its growth.

  • More on the Sino-Russian Wargames

    On the eve of this week’s massive joint military exercise by Asian rivals Russia and China, I blogged the following:

    Terrorism is not the target of strategic bombers, not yet anyway. Nor is it the target of submarines and amphibious landings. The same goes for extremism. That leaves separatism, read Tiawan.

    […]

    The Chinese ambitions on Taiwan are obvious and its build-up is transparent. The values of this exercise toward their ambitions are clear: bombers hoping to threaten the American assets, subs meant to hold off the U.S. Navy, and amphibious and airborne troops training to seize Taiwan.

    What dogs do the Russians have in this hunt? Simply a paying customer.

    Now, as the games progress, it seems that analysts and sources have reached the same conclusions about the true agendas behind the exercise.

    All this, codenamed Peace Mission 2005, is supposed to be an anti-terrorist exercise.

    China’s first proposed location, the coast of Fujian province facing Taiwan, would have made its main interest a little clearer. The Russians, anxious not to be dragged into a war over the island republic, wanted the war games on the border of landlocked Xinjiang, in China’s north-west.

    Shandong, the compromise, is closer to China’s objective. A Russian military source, quoted by the Japanese news agency Kyodo, said: “This scenario envisages blitzing into Taiwan’s nerve centres while enforcing naval blockades for containing the US military’s intervention.”

    Wu Min-chieh, a writer for Hong Kong’s Communist Party-linked newspaper Wen Wei Po, said the exercises had multiple objectives — showing off the level of military co-operation between China and Russia; demonstrating the ability to intervene in Korea, just across the Yellow Sea; and deterring independence forces in Taiwan.

    Other analysts see it as continuing pressure by the two powers to force the US out of its military presence in central Asia as part of the Afghanistan invention since 2001, especially following Uzbekistan’s recent order for the US to quit an air base.

    […]

    The exercise is also a chance to show some of the weapons [Russia] hopes to sell to the Chinese, including the Tu-22 bomber, aerial tankers, and airborne radar planes.

    I also wrote that Russia intended the exercise as a dog-and-pony show for its soft underbelly exposed to Islamist terror. This lengthy critique of the Russian motivations for the exercises agrees with concern about the southern border but concludes that Russia is looking at it wrongly.

    Analysts said the maneuvers with China were also meant to send a warning to Washington, blamed by Moscow for backing peaceful pro-Western revolutions in former states once controlled by Moscow. The Kremlin denies the suggestion.

    “As far as Russia is concerned, the joint games were intended to demonstrate to the United States that Moscow has a powerful ally,” independent analyst Pavel Felgengauer said.

    Peaceful revolutions have already ousted governments in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Moscow fears they could spread and further erode its influence in a region where it was once master.

    The hardline Uzbek government is under Western pressure after its troops killed over 500 people in the city of Andizhan in May. And Kazakhstan faces possible turbulence with presidential polls in December.

    Critics say the military exercises match the instincts of a backward-looking military that does not want to reform or change its traditional, and cheaper, reliance on a conscript army.

    “As long as you have a big potential foe, you have good reason to justify delaying reforms,” Golts said.

    Post-Soviet history shows that Russia’s main threat now comes from regional conflicts, such as the 10-year rebellion in Chechyna that remains unresolved.

    “Nothing answers less the need to meet modern security challenges than a massive draft army,” said Golts.

    Both are interesting examinations of an unprecedented and provacative exercise. As the first story points out, the U.S. military is “very interested” in the proceedings.

  • 40 Suspected Rebels Killed in Afghanistan

    It’s been quite bloody in Afghanistan lately, and that bloodshed has been largely one-sided.

    U.S. and Afghan troops killed at least 40 suspected rebels in an offensive targeting militants who ambushed Navy SEAL commandos and shot down a special-forces helicopter — the deadliest attacks on American forces in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Monday.

    The military declared the weeklong operation in lawless Kunar province near Pakistan a success, following the spate of insurgent attacks that already has made 2005 the bloodiest year for American forces in the country since the Taliban’s ouster.

    This year alone, 66 American service members have been killed — more than a third of the 187 who have died in and around Afghanistan since 2001. Four were slain Sunday when a massive roadside bomb blew up an under armored Humvee.

    The number of U.S. casualties is a fraction of those suffered in Iraq, yet the barrage of near-daily ambushes, bombings and execution-style killings here has raised fears that almost four years of nation-building is under threat.

    Most of the recent fatalities have occurred during coalition operations aimed at preventing militants from subverting crucial legislative elections Sept. 18, seen as Afghanistan’s next step toward democracy after more than two decades of war and civil strife.

    Well, that story, on its face the reporting of a successful series of offensive operations, quickly turned to a rather negative tone.

    Never one to be outdone in its negativity, the New York Times devotes an entire piece to the American losses for the year to date in Afghanistan.

    This year is already the deadliest for American soldiers in Afghanistan since the war of 2001, and the violence is likely to intensify before the nation’s legislative elections on Sept. 18.

    Feel free to read the rest. As is the norm when the Times covers the American military, anti-depressants are optional.

    This brings to mind a recent point by Paul Mirengoff over at Power Line.

    Have you ever read a history of war that focused almost entirely on casualty figures (with an occasional torture story and grieving parent thrown in), to the exclusion of any real discussion of tactics, operations, and actual battles? I haven’t. But that’s what our self-proclaimed “rough drafters” of history are serving up with respect to Iraq.

    So true. The first filters of the history of the day are, in my opinion, doing a great disservice to the public. The typical American is receiving no information about the overall competence and professionalism of our troops. Little is said of what life is like for our boots on the ground, their successes and sacrifices (unless they die, that is).

    Should the U.S. fail in its endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan, it will not be because the mission could not be successfully accomplished. It will not be because the American fighting soldier was not able to attain victory after victory. Rather, it will be because the American public’s willingness to sustain the effort will have been sapped by the near-constant bleakness in the media and the harping of the far left. Should we fail, however, expect a rousing chorus of “we told you so” from these entities instead of the apology to the public and our future generations for the defeat, a defeat to which they will have contributed to as much or more than the terrorists our forces face in the field.

  • A Couple of College Rankings

    First, a look at colleges from the social side, as the University of Wisconsin-Madison is rated as the nation’s top party school.

    The University of Wisconsin-Madison topped the list of the nation’s party schools Monday despite a decade-long effort by school officials to reduce its reputation for heavy drinking.

    UW-Madison has ranked among the top party schools on the annual Princeton Review report in 13 out of the 14 years it has compiled the list and was No. 3 a year ago. Meanwhile, Brigham Young University was tops among “stone cold sober” schools for the eighth straight year.

    […]

    The other top party schools are: Ohio University in Athens; Lehigh University in Pennsylvania; University of California-Santa Barbara; State University of New York at Albany; Indiana University-Bloomington; University of Mississippi; University of Iowa; University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Loyola University New Orleans; Tulane University in New Orleans; University of Georgia; Penn State University; West Virginia University; The University of Texas-Austin; University of Tennessee-Knoxville; University of New Hampshire; University of Florida; Louisiana State University; University of Maryland-College Park.

    Alas! No love for my alma mater, Texas A&M.

    On the other hand, A&M did quite well in another interesting study (hat tip to INDC Journal) which attempted to rank schools by their relative contributions to America.

    The first question we asked was, what does America need from its universities? From this starting point, we came up with three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service. We designed our evaluation system accordingly.

    A&M came in at a tidy little #7. Sweet. Now, if only we could get back to that level in football.

  • Quote of the Week, 21 AUG 05

    If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

    —Thomas Paine

  • Nothing Tonight

    Except a little bit of breaking news: weddings can quickly grow to be expensive propositions. Eloping remains an option.

    Back to blogging tomorrow, folks.

  • Just when I thought that I was out

    … they pull me back in.

    Stupid oncall pager. I had planned to blog a monumental essay on the Monkees, specifically the strong anti-war message in the rousing Randy Scouse Git, and their lingering, oft-overlooked effect on American military morale throughout the ’70s on up to the Grenada operation. Alas! Work has short-circuited that plan. Another day, Pre-fab Four, another day.

    While I’m on the topic of music, JohnL at TexasBestGrok points the way to some … hmm … interesting Flash videos. I particulary recommend this catchy one based on the LotR movies.

  • China, Russia: Would You Like to Play a Game?

    Despite their shared communist histories, long time antagonists China and Russia are about to launch their first-ever coordinated military exercise. And it certainly is a doozie, as are its ramifications.

    China, Russia join forces for war games

    When China and Russia launch their first joint military exercise tomorrow, their neighbours will be wondering why long-range strategic bombers and amphibious landing craft are being deployed in what is supposed to be an anti-terrorism drill.

    The two countries are calling it Peace Mission 2005, but it looks more like a rehearsal for full-scale war. The 10,000 Russian and Chinese soldiers will be practising a variety of standard combat techniques: long-range bombing runs, cruise-missile attacks, a naval assault on a coastal beachhead and a parachute landing by paratroopers.

    It’s the first time the two nations have conducted a joint military exercise, and their neighbours — including the United States, Japan and Taiwan — will be watching with some trepidation. There are growing concerns that Beijing and Moscow are forging a military alliance that could shift the global balance of power in an unpredictable new direction.

    According to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, the joint exercise “will help strengthen the capability of the two armed forces in jointly striking international terrorism, extremism and separatism.” But with its strategic bombers and submarines, the exercise seems to go far beyond the needs of a mere anti-terrorism action.

    Terrorism is not the target of strategic bombers, not yet anyway. Nor is it the target of submarines and amphibious landings. The same goes for extremism. That leaves separatism, read Tiawan.

    Chinese war games leave US unfazed

    The Bush administration has described a planned joint Chinese-Russian military exercise in the Yellow Sea north of Taiwan as one that could advance the “mutual goal of regional stability” in East Asia, despite some reports that paint the exercise as being eerily similar to a rehearsal for a joint invasion of Taiwan.

    Trust me, these exercises are most assuredly not being viewed in terms of their value towards regional stability.

    The Chinese ambitions on Taiwan are obvious and its build-up is transparent. The values of this exercise toward their ambitions are clear: bombers hoping to threaten the American assets, subs meant to hold off the U.S. Navy, and amphibious and airborne troops training to seize Taiwan.

    What dogs do the Russians have in this hunt? Simply a paying customer. That, and a possibly effective dog-and-pony show.

    Russia, China open first joint military exercises

    The first-ever joint military exercises between the giant neighbours, who share a 4,300-km (2,700-mile) border, also present a commercial opportunity for Russia, China’s biggest supplier of arms and weapons technology, to flog its wares, analysts say.

    “The main target is the United States. Both sides want to improve their position for bargaining in terms of security, politics and economics,” said Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at the People’s University of China.

    Both countries say “Peace Mission 2005,” which involves 10,000 troops and army, navy and air force exercises, is aimed at building ties between their militaries and analysts say it is not targeted at any third country.

    Okay, I’ll give the Russkies some credit. The efficiency of their weaponry has two targets: their customer in China and those radical Islamists spread all along the soft underbelly of Mother Russia.

    For just another game, this one is pretty damn serious.

  • Reciprocity XVIII

    It’s well past due since I’ve done this again. Every so often I like to take an opportunity to express my gratitude to those who have blogrolled or linked to Target Centermass.

    First, thanks to the following fine blogs for adding TCm to their blogrolls:

    Second, thanks to the following for recent links to TCm:

    Third, I would especially like to thank Mrs. Greyhawk at The Mudville Gazette for multiple inclusions in her regular and valuable “Dawn Patrol” round-ups.

    As always, if you’ve linked or blogrolled Target Centermass and I haven’t found you, please send an email or post a comment. No good deed should go unacknowledged.