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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
The Truth About Ukraine's Decision to Give Up Its Nukes in the '90s
2024-01-29
[Yahoo] Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many politicians and commentators have rued the day, back in January 1994, when Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin pressured Ukraine to dismantle its nuclear weapons. The missiles had once been controlled by the Soviet Union but were still on the soil of the newly independent Ukrainian nation. If Ukraine had held on to those nukes, some argue, Vladimir Putin might have been deterred from annexing Crimea in 2014 or invading the whole country in 2022.

In moments of pique, even Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and some of his top aides have argued that their predecessors shouldn’t have given up the nukes for that reason.

However, recently declassified documents—published Thursday by the National Security Archive, a private research group, which obtained them through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act—reveal that the argument is nonsense.

The documents—transcripts of conversations involving Clinton, Yeltsin, and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, at a historic summit on broad post–Cold War relations, held in Moscow and Kyiv exactly 30 years ago—clearly reveal these facts:

• Ukraine lacked the resources to maintain the nearly 1,700 Soviet nuclear weapons on its soil, many of them on intercontinental ballistic missiles that were nearing the end of their service lives. (My own reporting from several years ago, not reflected in these documents, indicates that Moscow retained command and control over the ICBMs, though Ukrainian officers could have fired the shorter-range nuclear missiles on their soil.)

• Kravchuk and almost all Ukrainian politicians were eager to dispose of the weapons, fearing that their nuclear cores might melt down in a manner reminiscent of the Chernobyl power-plant disaster, which had occurred in Ukraine just eight years earlier. Everyone involved—the presidents, the diplomats who spent months negotiating the precise terms, and British officials, who later signed the deal as well—viewed it as mainly a measure to promote nuclear safety and nonproliferation. The U.S. Senate had recently passed a bill—named for its sponsors, Democrat Sam Nunn and Republican Richard Lugar—to pay for the cleanup and dismantlement of nuclear weapons throughout the former Soviet Union. (The deal signed in January 1994 provided “a minimum” of $175 million to Ukraine for this purpose.) Also, the U.S. and Russia were negotiating the SALT II arms-control treaty, which would require the elimination of the SS-19 and SS-24 ICBMs inside Ukraine.

• Finally, Yeltsin forgave Ukraine mountains of debt for oil and gas that Russia had supplied, and Clinton promised to persuade the International Monetary Fund and the G7 nations to pay Ukraine’s energy imports into the future. At a meeting with Clinton, according to a memorandum of their conversation, Kravchuk said, “When we have stabilization of our currency and private investment for Ukraine, then everyone will understand that the agreement signed by the three presidents [to remove nuclear weapons from Ukraine] was the only possible step.” At a meeting with both Clinton and Yeltsin two days later, Kravchuk said, “There is no alternative to nuclear disarmament.”

The U.S.-Russia-Ukraine accord—which one of Clinton’s top aides called “the crowning achievement of the summit”—can be looked back at as a betrayal of Kyiv in one sense. Clinton and Yeltsin did promise Ukraine “full guarantees of security, as a sign of friendship and good neighborliness.” The two leaders also reaffirmed “the obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” including Ukraine.

Later that year, at a conference in Budapest, the U.S., Russia, and Britain formalized those security assurances to Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (the latter two former Soviet republics had also given up the nuclear weapons on their territory), in exchange for their signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Putin clearly violated this pledge when he annexed Crimea 20 years later, in 2014, and then invaded all of Ukraine eight years hence. The U.S. and Britain, while not legally obligated to come to Ukraine’s aid (other than to seek immediate assistance from the U.N. Security Council, as the Budapest Memorandum required), didn’t raise a huge stink about the incursions either. A case could be made that the relative passivity encouraged Putin to mount his all-out invasion, believing—incorrectly, it turned out—that the West would do little to stop him.

Still, it is false to contend that Ukraine would not have given up the nuclear weapons on its soil had Kravchuk or any other leader at the time known that Russia would violate its guarantee of Ukrainian borders. That pledge, though important, was more a bonus than an essential element of the accord. The nukes in Ukraine (and Belarus and Kazakhstan) were going to be removed, with the host leaders’ permission and blessing, regardless of what else was said or done.
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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
US military biolabs in Ukraine: Ukraine responds and history is revealed
2022-03-11
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] Briefing by the Russian Defense Ministry on the US military biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine.
Translated into English



So far, the Russian Federation has provided more facts and evidence of attempts by the Americans to develop WMD in Ukraine than the US itself could find in Iraq in an attempt to "discover" Saddam Hussein's WMD.

For blog readers, this topic is certainly not new, the first materials on this topic were published 5 years ago. Now it's just that all this is gradually being confirmed and overgrown with texture. Hence the hasty US attempts to clean up the tails.

Nuland, of course, made a big mistake when she admitted the existence of laboratories, and then began to justify them. For this, not only here, but also in the states, they seized on. If the Russian Federation correctly plays this card, it may turn out the same way as it was with the story about the secret CIA prisons, which were also in Ukraine.

Courtesy of Omomolet Phutch9064. Unfortunately part of the headline was lost — Omomolet Phutch9064, do you recall what it was?
US undersecretary of state acknowledges there are biological warfare labs in Ukraine. So much for the
The World Socialist Web Site is very excited. LookLookLook!! Propaganda points to be made!!!
[WSWS] State Department Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria J. Nuland speaks during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, Jan. 27, 2022.

On Tuesday, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland stated before a Senate hearing that "biological research facilities" have been operating in Ukraine, in response to a question from Senator Marco Rubio (Republican of Florida) about the presence of chemical or biological weapons in the country.

While she said nothing about US involvement in the labs, Nuland rapidly shifted her testimony during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to efforts by the State Department to "prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces." She went on, in a carefully orchestrated exchange with Rubio, to say that if there were a biological or chemical weapons attack inside Ukraine, it would "no doubt" be carried out by Russia.

The following is the transcript of the exchange between Rubio and Nuland:

Sen. Marco Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?

Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we’re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.

Sen. Marco Rubio: I’m sure you’re aware that the Russian propaganda groups are already putting out there all kinds of information about how they have uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to unleash biological weapons in the country, and with NATO’s coordination.

If there is a biological or chemical weapon incident or attack inside Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100% it would be the Russians behind it?

Victoria Nuland: There is no doubt in my mind, senator. And in fact, it is a classic Russian technique to blame the other guy for what they are planning to do themselves.

The extraordinary admission by Nuland about Ukrainian bioweapons labs confirms reports from Moscow that a military biological program was being operated inside the country by the US. The State Department admission also proves that statements by the Pentagon calling the Russian reports "absurd," and from the office of Ukrainian President Zelensky denying that such programs existed, were entirely false.



Ukraine did not develop weapons of mass destruction, Zelensky said
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[RIA Novosti] Volodymyr Zelensky stated on his Telegram channel that chemical or other weapons of mass destruction were not developed in Ukraine, and laboratories in the country remained from Soviet times and are engaged in "ordinary science."

"Most (laboratories) ... are left over from Soviet times and are engaged in conventional science. Conventional, not military technology," Zelensky said in a video message.

"We are adequate people. I am the president of an adequate country, an adequate people... Nobody is developing any chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction on our soil," he added.

The Russian Ministry of Defense previously held a presentation showing that the US spent more than $200 million to operate biological laboratories in Ukraine that were part of the US military biological program. The Russian Federation , in connection with the facts of US military biological activities in Ukraine, does not exclude the launch of a consultation mechanism under the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC), Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lizqian, commenting on information about US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine, urged Washington to clarify their biological militarization activities at home and abroad.

Finally, a comment two days ago on another article on the subject by Angaiper Ulavins1210 presents the historical record of this “new” Russian discovery:
Good idea. Were they possibly Soviet, that is to say Russian, originally?

Yep, 2005: ThreatReduction Program Extends Reach to Ukrainian Biological Facilities
U.S. cooperation with Ukraine under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program was expanded Aug. 29 with an agreement to use U.S. CTR funds to improve security for pathogens stored at biological research and health facilities in the former Soviet republic.

Under the agreement, CTR funds will for the first time flow directly to projects aimed at securing pathogen strains and sensitive biological knowledge within Ukraine. The United States also will work to improve Ukrainian capabilities to detect, diagnose, and treat outbreaks of infectious diseases, as well as determine whether outbreaks are natural or the result of bioterrorism.

The agreement was signed during the visit to Kiev of a high-level U.S. delegation led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Among the facilities in Ukraine intended to receive security upgrades are those once linked to the Soviet-era anti-plague network, which continue to store libraries of naturally occuring pathogens for the purposes of research and public health. Andy Fisher, spokesperson for Lugar, told Arms Control Today on Sept. 15 the anti-plague facilities “were threats and they are threats,” given the risk that poor security could allow terrorists access to pathogens. Fisher also cited the possibility that outdated operating procedures and equipment could result in the unintentional leakage of pathogens from these facilities, endangering the public health of the region.

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-Obits-
Ex-US senator Lugar, foreign policy expert, dies at 87
2019-04-30
[DAWN] Republican Richard Lugar, a soft-spoken foreign policy powerhouse who championed nuclear nonproliferation during 36 years in the US Senate, died on Sunday at age 87. The Lugar Center, a Washington-based nonprofit, said in statement that he died peacefully due to complications from CIDP, a chronic neurological disorder.

Lugar, a professorial Midwesterner known for his keen intellect and mild demeanour, served as mayor of Indianapolis from 1968 to 1975 before his long stint in the Senate from 1977 to 2013. He was the longest-serving senator ever from Indiana.

Lugar was an influential Republican voice on foreign policy. Lugar, a former Rhodes scholar and an avid runner into his 70s, served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and also headed the Agriculture Committee. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1996.
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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Brian Williams: U.S. Is ‘The Only Nation to Have Used’ Nuclear Weapons ‘In Anger’
2016-05-29
In anger? Rather as a matter of cold calculation, you sad inheritor of a once-serious profession.
[NEWSBUSTERS.ORG] MSNBC breaking news host and ex-NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was allowed out on MSNBC’s airwaves early Friday afternoon to discuss President B.O.’s visit to Hiroshima so he could resurrect a taped report that aired in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bomb’s dropping on the Japanese city.

In the course of discussing the event afterward, though, Williams threw some shade in the direction of the U.S. military and then-President Harry Truman by complaining that "we’re the only nation to have used them in anger" against the horrifying Axis Powers member.

Leading up to that, Mitchell pointed out that the current President has shown an interest in nuclear disarmament since he took office but lamented has made little progress since the most recent conference in D.C. "because Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
 -- the other great nuclear power and the other curb on proliferation after the Cold War was the Soviet Union wasn’t present, was boycotting because of other tensions, tensions over Ukraine."

NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss compared the President’s Hiroshima speech to that of "John Kennedy at the American University -- so close to where we are now in 1963 and that was given with the same motive which was that was a time when talks about a test-ban treaty had been installed."

Asked by Mitchell to comment on the push by then-Senators Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to curb the use of nuclear material, Williams initially praised them, but then took a swipe at the entire reason that Truman had the bombs dropped (which was to end the war):

It is and that is still the threat that people worry about that this material will fall into the wrong hands. If people have found the U.S. to be preachy in the years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki about the use of weapons, it’s because we’re the only nation to have used them in anger. Sometimes, I am amazed that the world has been without these weapons all the years since, but it is a point of, a great pride by the people who have seen to it.

Of course, Williams has a past on this issue (as he does on most things -- including lying) going back to 2005 when, in addition to the taped piece, he pressed Enola Gay pilot Dutch Van Kirk on whether or not he has "remorse for what happened" and how he "deal[s] with" the bomb’s dropping psychologically.
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Home Front: Politix
Book Review: "The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy"
2011-12-04
by lotp

To understand how we got to where we are today, with a POTUS who's made it clear he would like to dismantle the US nuclear arsenal while madmen in Pyongyang and Teheran - or are they mad??? - work to acquire thermonuclear weapons and threaten by their actions to pass tactical nukes to terror groups, it helps to know how close we came - or how close some thought we came - to serious nuclear annihilation during the Cold War.

David Hoffman's 2009 book The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy recounts in detail threats the public remained unaware of at the time, and the slow dance towards strategic arms control agreements. Hoffman, a WaPo investigative reporter whose book greeted the newly installed Adminstration, favors disarmament. But do the remedies advanced by either the Left or the Right during and just after the Cold War address the threats we face today?

Hoffman's account leaves out some important history. In the 1950s the Soviet army vastly outnumbered that of the US. The Eisenhower administration's response was to announce massive nuclear retaliation for any Soviet hostilities anywhere, since the US couldn't respond with conventional forces to as many fronts as the Soviets might attack simultaneously.

Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles thought the idea of nuclear strike would be too horrible to contemplate and assumed that their announced policy would therefore deter Soviet aggression.

However Herman Kahn, who had contributed to US fusion weapons design and who was a key early analyst at Rand, argued that an "all or nothing" approach actually made nuclear attacks more likely, not less. Applying game theory and scenario planning, Kahn suggested one could both contemplate survival of nuclear war and reduce the likelihood of things getting to that point by identifying and countering enemy geopolitical moves in convincing ways.

The Left was horrified by the publication of Kahn's Thinking About the Unthinkable and On Thermonuclear War. The Right embraced the idea of strategic planning but paid less attention than they might have to Kahn's warnings about sober evaluation of the escalation path. Instead, both the US and the Soviets embarked on a major strategic arms race -- bigger and more numerous weapons, ICBM delivery systems, communications and rapid improvements in monitoring technologies (especially by the US).

By 1980 there were enough strategic nuclear weapons in the major powers' stockpiles to wipe out every large city on Earth, many times over.

But nuclear strike wasn't the only mass destructive threat that had emerged during the arms race. In 1979 a Soviet bioweapons lab accident just east of the Ural mountains released weaponized anthrax, killing over 100 people and numerous livestock. Later, Soviet scientist Kenneth Alibek would defect, but not before leading bioweapons programs that developed highly virulent strains of multiple pathogens, in direct violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention the Soviets had signed.

Hoffman's account starts with the anthrax leak at Sverdlovsk and with tensions in the early 1980s as the Soviets grew increasingly concerned about the US land and sea-based ICBM capability. He documents the hesitant, on-again/off-again attempts by leaders on both sides to find a way out of escalating arms development, with Thatcher and Reagan playing key roles in the West and Gorbachev doing the same in the East. Gorbachev was deeply concerned about what he saw as the corruption, bureaucratic lethargy and stupidity of the Soviet apparatus, as evidenced by the failure to act promptly and appropriately in response to the accident at Chernobyl -- a failure that suggested the country could not respond to a military attack effectively, either.

One system was allegedly in place for such an event, however. Code named Dead Hand it was intended to automatically, or semi-automatically, launch the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal at once towards the US if a series of events suggested that the Soviet leadership had been killed, according to Valery Yarynich, a Soviet expert who joined discussions in 1991 between US and Soviet civilians on nuclear command and control issues. His confidant, Bruce Blair, was a key member of the Brookings Institute, a leading liberal think tank on strategic matters.

Thus began an intense, high stakes dance at multiple levels: negotiations of arms limitation agreements and subsequent cat and mouse games in which the Soviets in particular made many attempts to avoid having their significant violations of those agreements be provably documented.

Earlier attempts at strategic arms limitations -- the SALT I and SALT II treaties -- had collapsed when the US withdrew due to blatant Soviet cheating and aggressive moves in Afghanistan and Cuba. A new 1991 SMART treaty did institute limits on nuclear stockpiles and a formal inspection regime.

However, treaties are negotiated between states and in 1991 the Soviet Union was unraveling. Sen. Sam Nunn, who had just visited Moscow, believed social chaos was imminent in the USSR. He consulted both Blair and also physicist Ashton Carter of Harvard, who stressed that nuclear safeguards were reliable only when there was social stability in a given country. Nunn approached the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Les Aspin, to jointly introduce a bill that would offer massive economic aid to Russia to forestall chaos they feared would lead to dispersal of the thousands of tactical nukes the Soviets had manufactured and stored all over the USSR. But Aspin's history of gleeful and publicity-seeking attacks on the Pentagon caused significant resistance to the bill, both by Pres. George H.W. Bush and by much of the public.

Shortly afterward, with the help of Ash Carter, Nunn and Richard Lugar got Congress to permit $500 million to help Russians control their nuclear stockpile and convert weapons industrial capability to civilian uses. At the Pentagon, Carter found little sympathy from SecDef Dick Cheney, who told Carter he wanted the Soviets to be "in freefall". Carter thought that Cheney was naive about the dangers of Soviet implosion. He was convinced that Nunn and Lugar were right: the best policy for the US was to seek cooperative ways to handle the issue of Soviet weapons capabilities in the former soviet states and their satellites.

A SMART II treaty was signed with post-USSR Russia in 1993 under Bill Clinton. Skeptics, however, have deep concerns about the treaty's effectiveness for controlling tactical nuclear weapons in particular.

Biological weapons were an even more difficult matter. In 1994 Andrew Weber led an inspection team that visited Kazakhstan and came away with clear evidence of the extent of the Biopreparat program -- massive tanks for generating not only anthrax but virulent weaponized forms of plague, smallpox and other pathogens. Weber also found stacks of processed uranium in Kazakhstan standing unguarded in warehouses and idle facilities. The Russians steadfastly refused to allow US inspectors access to facilities handling highly enriched uranium or plutonium. But by 1994 not only was this material available across Russia -- it had begun to find its way to other countries such as Germany.

A covert operation, Project Sapphire, was organized to purchase the Kazakh fissile materials from that government and airlift them to Oak Ridge's Y-2 facility. Andrew Weber stood on the tarmac in the freezing weather until the last C5 cleared the ice and snow with the final load.

In 2007 Weber was approached by Lev Sandakhchiev, head of the Vector bioweapons research facility, who told him that the Iranians were attempting to purchase Soviet expertise in advanced biological agents. Russian scientists were becoming desperate to support their families. Salaries hadn't been paid in months and someone was going to transfer lethal capabilities soon. Weber managed to overcome distrust about misuse of US aid by Russians with long involvement in the secret Soviet programs and with several million dollars diverted the Vector facilities to civilian uses.

In 2009, a few months after Hoffman's book hit the stands, Dr. Ashton Carter was nominated and approved as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics in the Obama administration. (He has since been promoted to Deputy SecDef.) Reporting to him was Andrew Weber as Assistant SecDef for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense. A congressional staffer who had also supported Nunn-Lugar activities, Kenneth Myers III, reports to Weber as head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, responsible for the US' counter Weapons of Mass Destruction capabilities. Myers is the first non-scientist, non-PhD to head DTRA or its predecessor agencies. The dominant policy promulgated by all three men, and by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, is the policy initiated by Nunn and Lugar, i.e. Cooperative Threat Reduction.

Herman Kahn urged US officials to examine possible geopolitical and military strategies, identify escalation paths and adopt stances that were designed to prevent escalation to strategic use of WMDs. Sometimes, he argued, those policies should intentionally escalate quickly so as to convince the other side that it was a losing policy to escalate fully. Scenario-based planning and game theory worked, more or less, during the Cold War because the players on both sides were nation states that were, more or less, rational actors.

Cooperative Threat Reduction is arguably a more tactical response, an approach that attempts to deal with the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons that threatened as a result of the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR. Weber treated ex-Soviet scientists with respect and support and many of them responded by exposing and dismantling bioweapons and nuclear capabilities.

But one might ask whether either CTR or the version of Kahn's approach that dominates strategic military planning in the US today is adequate to deal with states that may not be rational actors -- or that wish to be seen as possibly non-rational actors in order to gain negotiating power. Pakistan, Iran and North Korea do not seem to be responding in the desired manner to the pre-emptive humility on which President Obama has based his international efforts. Is that because Obama and Clinton do not understand the escalation curve or the incentives for those players? Or because those states are not, in fact, rational actors? Or because those states already have capabilities not publicly acknowledged which US officials fear will also disperse if a CTR approach is not adopted?

Nor are nation states the only actors in this drama. Hoffman notes that Weber himself worries about the unknown threat -- the weapons and materials that were not cooperatively identified and neutralized in the ex-Soviet states.

The Dead Hand has little to say about Pakistan, or China, or religiously zealous terror networks and their own WMD aspirations. But neither Cold War strategies nor the post-Cold-War CTR tactics seem adequate to address threats we face today. Nor does Hoffman's book contemplate future threats: the imminent availability of bio-engineering capabilities that fit in a garage, for instance. As a record of the 80s and 90s, however, it does give insight into how we got where we are today.
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India-Pakistan
Pakistan military cut off ties for two days
2011-05-12
[Dawn] The Pak military cut off its communication with US and NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the style of the American pants...
 forces in Afghanistan for two days after a US raid killed Al Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now among the dear departed, though not among the dearest...
 in Abbottabad, an American general said on Tuesday.

In the US Congress, officials told news hounds that Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry
Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, the Senate's current foreign policy expert, filling the vacated wingtips of Joe Biden...
 might visit Pakistain soon to reduce tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

"For two whole days after the raid, we didn`t have very good contact" with the Pak military, said Maj-Gen John Campbell, the commander of US troops in eastern Afghanistan.

This forced his soldiers to safeguard some 450 miles of border with Pakistain, a suspected transit point for myrmidons, without support from the Pak side, the general said. The general`s statement, given at a briefing with journalists at the Pentagon, appeared on a day when a string of US politicians urged the B.O. regime to reconsider its relations with Pakistain.

In the US capital, Senator Kerry is seen as a strong supporter of America`s relations with Pakistain who also opposes proposals to suspend about $1.5 billion of annual assistance to Islamabad over the Bin Laden dispute.

Other politicians, however, have suggested stopping all military and economic assistance to Pakistain until Islamabad proves that it was not aware of Bin Laden`s presence in Abbottabad and will punish those who helped him settle there.

House Speaker John It is not pronounced 'Boner!' Boehner
... the occasionally weepy leader of House Republicans...
, who has supported Pakistain after the US raid on Bin Laden`s compound, also warned on Tuesday that relations between the two countries now faced a make-or-break moment.

"It`s a moment to look each other in the eye." Mr Boehner told NBC "Today" show that "if we`re really going to be allies, if we`re going to fight this war together, we need to be in it together all the time".

He said he still trusted the Pak government but conceded that questions lingered over "what they knew or didn`t know about Bin Laden being in their country — their willingness to pursue some gunnies but not others". Mr Boehner said he thought that Pakistain on balance "has been a real asset" in the war on terror.

But Senator Diane Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, disagreed.

"Either we`re going to be allies in fighting terror, or the relationship makes less and less sense to me," Senator Feinstein told news hounds, adding, "...to enable him (Bin Laden) to live in Pakistain in a military community for six years, I just don`t believe it was done without some form of complicity". Asked about the support Pakistain was getting from the Kerry and Lugar assistance act, the senator said, "I understand that. I feel a little differently". But Senator Kerry and Richard Lugar, who authored the aid bill, want to give Pakistain the benefit of doubt and have urged the B.O. regime to continue the $ 1.5 billion annual assistance stipulated in the act.

"Our lack of clarity has caused Afghanistan, Pakistain and many other players to start hedging their bets and planning for the worst rather than the best," said Senator Kerry while explaining the problems Washington was having with Islamabad.

Some other politicians also noted that the US still needed the Pakistain route for supplying its 140,000 troops in Afghanistan.

But at least one B.O. regime official indicated that the US had other alternatives too.

"We`re confident that we`re not dependent upon any particular single thread, and we can continue to supply the Afghanistan effort," US Under-Secretary of Defence for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Ashton Carter told a wire service.
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China-Japan-Koreas
Lugar: distribution of food aid to N. Korea must be transparent
2011-02-19
WASHINGTON -- A senior U.S. senator Monday called on the Obama administration to secure transparency in the distribution of food aid to North Korea before any resumption of the aid, which was suspended years ago over the same issue, is made.

"Any resumption of U.S. food aid to North Korea should be contingent on North Korea allowing access and accountability by monitors in accordance with international standards," Sen. Richard Lugar (R-In) said in a statement. "It is essential to ensure that the U.S. assistance is actually received by hungry North Korean children and their families rather than reinforcing the North Korean military whose care is already a priority over the rest of the population."
Not sure if Lugar is doing this out of principle or to head off a primary challenge, but it's good to see him out in front on this.
The leading Republican senator at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued the statement amid reports that the Obama administration is reviewing North Korea's request for food aid made through the North Korean mission in the United Nations in New York.
Just say no. Let Kimmie develop a 'strong and prosperous' North Korea without us.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said earlier this month that Washington had "no plans for a contribution at this time," adding, "One of the sticking points in the past discussions we have with North Korea have always been confidence in the ability to ensure that humanitarian assistance provided get to those in need."

U.S. food aid to the North was suspended in early 2009 amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests and controversy over the transparency of food distribution. North Korea at the time refused to issue visas to Korean-speaking monitors, whose mission was to assure that the food was not funneled to the military and government elite.

The U.S. provided more than 2 million tons of food aid to the North over the past decade.
Which just delayed the crash and allowed the people to suffer that much longer.
International relief organizations suspended humanitarian food aid to North Korea in early 2009 as the North Korean government expelled international monitors amid escalating tensions over its rocket test launch and an ensuing nuclear test, the second after one in 2006.

The conservative South Korean government of Lee Myung-bak has also stopped shipping food to the North, demanding as a quid pro quo that the North make progress in the six-nation nuclear talks. Lee's liberal predecessors had each year shipped about 400,000 tons of food and as much fertilizer to North Korea without conditions.

Relief organizations have said that North Korea will need about 1 million tons of food from abroad to feed its 24 million people every year amid reports that thousands have starved to death this winter.
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Home Front: Politix
DREAM act dies in senate
2010-12-18
The DREAM Act cloture vote just failed in the Senate, 55 to 41.

The cloture vote was on the version of DREAM that passed the House earlier this month.

Among Republicans, only Sens. Bob Bennett of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted for the bill.

It will be back... but hopefully will stay dead with Republican gains.
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Africa Horn
Lugar: lax security of bio agents
2010-11-14
The Ranking Member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned on a tour of East Africa that security in labs dealing with biological agents there was lax, increasing the risk that the pathogens could fall into the hands of terrorists.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) was in Africa this week with a team of Pentagon arms control experts to study security efforts in containing deadly diseases such as ebola and anthrax.

On Friday, Lugar's team inspected three labs in Nairobi, Kenya, that harbored the dangerous viruses and bacteria for diagnostic and research purposes.

“These pathogens can be made into horrible weapons more simply than any dealing with chemical or nuclear devices," Lugar said. "Just one of the deadly viruses I witnessed today could, if in the wrong hands, cause death and economic chaos.”

The team noted virus samples stored in boxes stacked in hallways of the lab. Lugar also noted security lapses such as broken windows and a short wall with a couple of strings of barbed wire attached as all that separated a lab from a slum known as a recruiting ground for al-Qaeda affiliated groups. He posted this and other trip photos on Flickr.

“The threat is very geographically focused because in one instance the population of the slum is literally against the security wall of the laboratory," Lugar said in a statement.

“Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are active in Africa, and it is imperative that deadly pathogens stored in labs there are secure.”
It's a fair point, and one where we would hope the responsible governments would fix security issues. Unfortunately Uncle Sugar will at some point be asked to put coin on the table, and we pro'ly will ...
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Home Front: Politix
Young Illegals Out Themselves, Daring To Be Deported
2010-08-02
On July 20, 22 young illegal immigrants in caps and gowns entered the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., and began sit-ins in the offices of several senators. Twelve soon returned to the atrium, where they formed a circle around a banner reading "Undocumented and Unafraid." Refusing to be moved, the students were arrested by Capitol Police, as were nine others who had stayed put in the offices of Sen. John McCain and Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Yeah. Arrested them, threw them in the paddy wagon, drove them far enough away that they would be tired after they walked back, and let them out is more like it.
Less than two miles away, a similar protest by a separate but allied group was taking place at Lafayette Square in front of the White House. These students went a step further. Openly announcing their immigration status and giving their full names just across the Mall from Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, they forced a difficult choice upon ICE officials.
Yeah, I'm sure. Do nothing or don't do anything.
Take no action, and ICE would undermine the law. But come down hard by deporting the students, many of them still teenagers, and it would risk drawing overwhelming public outcry.
Uh, NO IT WOULDN'T. It would risk drawing the ire of the Obama regime.
These individuals—plus several hundred more high school and college students of illegal status—had come to the capital to call for passage of the floundering Dream Act. Dream, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, co-sponsored by 36 senators, including Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Richard Lugar (R., Ind.), would offer temporary residency to students who arrived in the U.S. illegally as minors if they attend college. It would grant them permanent residency upon graduating.
IOW: Citizenship would be the next step after that.
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Home Front: Politix
Nebraska's Nelson Becomes First Democrat to Oppose Kagan for Supreme Court
2010-08-01
Democratic Senator Ben Cornhusker Kickback Nelson of Nebraska said he will vote against confirming Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first in his party to announce opposition.

Also today, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said he will vote for President Barack Obama's nominee, the fifth Republican to do so.

Nelson said he had heard "concerns" from people in Nebraska about Kagan. "Her lack of a judicial record makes it difficult for me to discount the concerns raised by Nebraskans, or to reach a level of comfort that these concerns are unfounded," Nelson said. "Therefore, I will not vote to confirm Ms. Kagan's nomination."

Still, Nelson said he would oppose any filibuster of Kagan's nomination and favor allowing an "up or down vote." It takes 60 votes to force a final vote. With 59 votes controlled by Democrats and five Republicans in support, Kagan's nomination would have enough to end a Republican filibuster.

In announcing his support for Kagan, Gregg said she "has pledged that she will exercise judicial restraint and decide each case that comes before her based on the law, with objectivity and without regard to her personal views."

"Ms. Kagan and I may have different political philosophies, but I believe that the confirmation process should be based on qualifications, not ideological litmus tests or political affiliation," Gregg said.

Republican Senators Lindsey Endangered South Carolina RINO Graham of South Carolina, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine also have announced their support for Kagan. The Senate plans to vote on confirmation next week.
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Home Front: Politix
Lugar takes heat over Kagan support
2010-07-23
Sen. Richard Lugar on Wednesday became one of the first Republicans to back Elena Kagan's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

The Indiana Republican said he would vote for Kagan because she is "clearly qualified" and "has demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of court history and decisions."

"I believe that she has had a distinguished career in both education and public service and is well-regarded by the legal community and her peers," Lugar said in a statement.

State Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, used his Facebook page to criticize Lugar's decision, calling it disappointing.

"Elena Kagan, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, are all very liberal," Delph said. "None of these individuals is worthy of Hoosier support as they are all out of step with Main Street Indiana."

Delph said that Lugar is supposed to be the dean of the Indiana Republican Party but that his record on judicial nominations is abhorrent to the values the party stands for.

"He needs to be mindful of how people in Indiana view these nominees," Delph said in a phone interview.

Micah Clark, the executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, said Lugar "has become nothing more than a rubber stamp for this administration when it comes to judges and most nominees."

"Senator Lugar needs to retire and allow new representation in Washington, D.C., just as the junior senator from Indiana is doing," said Clark, whose group describes itself as a defender of the values and institutions that sustain families.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., also announced his support for Kagan on Wednesday.

"After carefully reviewing her record, I believe she appreciates the limited role of the federal judiciary and is well-qualified to serve on our nation's highest court," Bayh said in a statement.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted mostly along party lines Tuesday to send her nomination to the full Senate. Neither Lugar nor Bayh serves on the committee.
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