US 'to modernise Polish military'

[emad]

Source: beeb

The US has agreed to help modernise Poland's military as part of a deal to base 10 missile defence interceptors on Polish soil.

President George W Bush made the promise during talks with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Washington.

Before the meeting, Mr Tusk said the US anti-missile system, which has angered Russia, would reduce Poland's security.

Mr Bush says the shield will guard against possible attacks by "rogue states", such as Iran or North Korea.



Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7287843.stm

[Drum]

1. If that means

equipping their troops with overpriced, heavy and ineffective items and sending them into harm's way with no discernible mission, then I'm sure that the "US" are the right folks for this.

:(

[JerseygirlCT]

14. I'm sure the US manufacturers of all those items will be most

happy to provide them, too. At a price.

Wonder how much of that price will end up in Cheney's pockets?

[unkachuck]

28. "At a price."....

....maybe they'll pay us in Krakus hams and kielbasa's....mmmmmmmm, warrrr....

[emilyg]

2. How I wish Poland hadn't fallen for this.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

3. This is bullshit, here, have another helping of fear and new

weapons our most important international product.

[snooper2]

4. Chimpy should just send Rummy over there...

nt

[Doctor Cynic]

5. They will be upgrading from cavalry to WW2 Panzers.

[tom_paine]

6. They gonna fix all those submarines with screen doors?

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[CatholicEdHead]

8. I was wondering when this would be posted

:P

[kysrsoze]

40. New guns?

I'm Slovak and the joke normally applies to us too. Sorry, but it was too funny for me to pass up.

[ForeignSpectator]

12. Don't get it... what am I missing here? Enlighten me please! n/t

[tom_paine]

18. It's a variant of an old joke. "As useful as a screen door on a submairne."

"How do you sink a Polish Sub? Knock on the screen door."

and so forth...

[slampoet]

34. Ah yes ....socially accepatble biggotry.

FYI the "PO-LOCK" joke died in 1979.


Oh and a little tip. If you're going to insult the Polish People get the joke right first.


The question is why did their subs sink.


You look like the Moron from Raising Arizona.



and the next time you think of making fun of Poles

just remember that if it weren't for POLISH SHIPBUILDERS You would still be fighting the Soviet Union.


Read a book. Stop displaying your ignorance.

[redqueen]

37. Sorry you had to see that kind of crap here.

*sigh*

[slampoet]

46. In the last 24 hours i have also had to defend the fact that there were Irish slaves.

And on an other so called liberal website i had to rip a new orifice to someone who said gays can't operate computers.


Alan Turing was the gay man who invented modern computers during WWII.




Oh, and BTW I used up my damn 1000th post correcting this ignorance.



F.Y.A.

[leveymg]

16. And, maybe replace those old calvary horses with some fresh mounts?

[Doctor Cynic]

19. No, since Halliburton's screen doors will crack on contact with water.

[Sub Atomic]

7. Why is this continued waste of taxpayer dollars allowed to go unchecked and undebated?

Where is the Congress in this moronic spending spree that Little Boots is going on?

Why can't we fix our infrastructure here in our own country before spending billions of dollars on some fantastical weapons shield that has never worked?

[Kolesar]

11. the spy satellite budget is also out of control

Meanwhile a water main in Cleveland's Public Square breaks during the freeze and causes a colossal sinkhole in front of Terminal Tower. The water main dates back to the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes.

[sofa king]

9. He means "rogue states," such as the former Soviet Union.

The ABMs are going to Poland specifically to neutralize Russia.

It's worth mentioning that the last time the United States began to implement an anti-ballistic missile system that might work wasn't during Ronald Reagan's Star Wars giveaway in the 1980s. That crap didn't work. What did show potential were the Nike-X, Sentinel, and Safeguard systems of the 1960s.

The Soviet Union responded by speeding up development of an absolutely overwhelming ballistic missile fleet, using MIRVs and warheads of huge size, thus guaranteeing that America would be totally and completely destroyed in the event of a nuclear exchange.

That's what missile defense guaranteed for America: not safety, but total destruction.

We can expect Russia to respond similarly now. If these missiles go into Poland, Russia will once again point all of its missiles straight back at the United States, thus ensuring that any accident on the part of Russia will result in the total destruction of the United States.

Great job, Georgie.

[ConcernedCanuk]

22. Russia won't be pointing ALL of it's missiles toward the US - some will be now aimed at Poland.

.
.
.

China might be aiming a few that way too methinks.

USA missiles in their backyards won't be welcome.

Dumb move Poland.

[Heywood J]

25. Yep.

If Bush puts missiles miles outside of Russia's borders, expect missiles in Cuba again. Dana Perino can learn about the Cuban Missile Crisis firsthand.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. This highlights the great weakness of the EU

National armies and national foreign policies.

[Tempest]

13. Bush is bribing Poland

To take the anti-missile installations.

[moodforaday]

30. It may be the other way round

If Bush wanted to bribe us, the time to do that was over a year ago. Sorry to be hawking my own post, but please see the overly long rant I posted below.

[Arctic Dave]

15. One of the few things we export anymore

No wonder they arrested the "Lord of War" guy. The US doesn't want competition in suppling the world with more death and destruction.

[bushmeister0]

17. We refurbished their Soviet-era prisons for our "enhanced" interrogations

and they still want to extort more crap out of us?

The BBC:

"Mr Tusk's government, which came to power in November, has argued that Poland should get some reward for allowing the US missiles to be based in the country. It wants anti-aircraft missiles - such as the US Patriot, which was used to shoot down Iraqi Scud missiles in the 1991 Gulf War - in return."

They want Patriot missiles? You know, I don't think they've really figured out the whole bullet shooting bullet thing quite yet, despite the hype. Remember, the Patriot missiles used in the Gulf War never hit a thing -- Saddam's Scuds were manily duds -- and the new and improved version used in the Iraq invasion only managed to shot our planes down.

Corpwatch:

"On March 24 <2003>, a Patriot missile battery near the Kuwait border locked onto a British Royal Air Force Tornado G-4 jet that was returning from a raid on Basra. Four Patriot missiles were fired and one hit the jet, destroying the plane and killing two British pilots. Two days later, the radar for another Patriot missile battery locked on to a US F-16. The pilot of fighter jet located the radar dish and destroyed it. Then on April 2 an U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet was shot down by another Patriot missile, killing the pilot.

'They're looking into a software problem,' said Navy Lt. Commander Charles Owens. 'They're going to check everything out. When they do find a fault, they'll put it out to the rest of the world.'"

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11110

Right, still waiting . . .

If the Poles want a Patriot why don't they see if Wes Welker is available, at least he can CATCH a bullet!

[moodforaday]

29. We don't. Please see my long rant below (n/t)

[Acadia Blue]

20. Oh yea, lets borrow more money and spend it.....the economy is

not important to the rich. Just put it on the taxpayers credit card. PIGS

[Diclotican]

21. emad

emad

BRIBE, bribe,bribe, bribe..

And, with the new President in Russia, the friendship between Russia, Poland and more important US would be in the balance... If either of them provoke to much.. The whole situation would be out of control. Even without war. Russia would retaliated somehow. Some have pointed out that Russia would point nuclear bombs to US and to Poland.. And I fear that Russia would use a lot more money on new generation of deadly nuclear rockets, who would just start one more arm race... The first one (the cold war) wasted billions of dollar... But now Russia HAVE the money, and USA definitely dont...

Why cant US export some of the other stuff they are famous for, not just provoke, and selling armory.. Is that what USS can export, the only thing US can made on their own?... Weapon? The car industry are by far the worst in the world, Even that US made the biggest, meanest locking cars in the world... US cant survive on weapon alone.. Even if it is advanced weapon..

Diclotican

Sorry my bad English, not my native language

[emad]

23. Why cant US export some of the other stuff they are famous for, not just provoke, and selling armory

Poland is in NATO. NATO still the most important military organization we have despite its systematic emasculation by organised crime.

Bush, Putin, 99.9% EU leaders, Ratzinger...all part of the mobster cabal self-preservation society.

[Diclotican]

24. emad

emad

If you take the rhetoric coming out from Washington DC, and supported by the Neo cons and others, NATO as an alliance are there, if US want it.. if they don't, then NATO are not there, and should keep their mouth shut... To US need NATO again... I guess it is time for us in Europe, to get our act together, and start helping ourself when it come to defending our friends... We can not trust that our "allied" over the atlantic are there anymore.... Sad but true I fear.

They managed to get NATO into Afghanistan, when US told us to take more responsibility in the country.. It will take decades just to get by, not to men chen that NATO have to secure the government in Afghanistan.

By all means.. They are much the same even if they talk, and walk differently.. But with a new russian president, who need time, and maybe show off that he is a tuff man, who would not just let US do as they want, on the doorstep of Russia.. I would guess now. But some military training in the border area with Poland, maybe even some mumbling over trade disagreement between Russia and Poland.. Maybe over oil and gas, and how much Poland really should pay for that stuff... As they have doing it with other in "their interfere" before...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad English, not my native language

[truebluecollar]

26. How come it took only six weeks for the Nazis...

...to conquer Poland in 1939?
They marched in backwards and told the Poles they were retreating.


Sorry. I couldn't resist either

[moodforaday]

31. Of course you know the real answer,

the real answer being that on 17 Sept 1939 the Russians invaded Poland from the east, which practically sealed our fate, since we were not strong enough to fight on two fronts? Just checking, carry on.

[moodforaday]

27. The Polish PM might be stalling. The story

goes somewhat like this.

When the media first broke the story in Poland, under two years ago, a lot of people loved the idea. There is plenty of history behind us that has taught us Poles not to put much trust in European alliances. (Not the right policy today, I think, but it's deeply ingrained.) On the other hand, for whatever reasons the US has always been the promised land, for many intellectuals and working-class people alike (and, I might add, it's not because of the Bill of Rights or similar niceties). "We" love Ronald Raygun, "we" despise Carter, "we" absolutely adore Zbigniew Brzezinski, go figure. So "we" loved the missile defense shield, since it was billed as the US giving Poland a gift of protection, FREE! They said the shield would protect us against Iran, and it worked for a while, with few voices of reason dissenting.

But those voices persisted, and meanwhile everybody who's so much as ever wiped his ass with a newspaper has had plenty of time to figure out how well Iraq is going. The F-16s Poland bought (much to the chagrin of the French) have become the laughingstock of the nation, they're lemons, did Lockheed Martin move their assembly lines to Korea? Then we've seen the US reneging on the contractual obligations re investment and "technology transfer" (part of the F-16 contract), and so it went.

Meanwhile still, we had a heavily right-wing, Bush-lite government for two years, an embarrassment of ungodly proportions, and kicked them out last fall. You might remember the awful twins. (One of them is still our president, with 3 years to go, but has relatively little power. He loves the shield but doesn't speak any English - there is a God!) This in itself is a long story, but one of the bits of propaganda they kept spewing endlessly was how previous Polish governments had talked to foreign powers "on their knees", or "on all fours", or "prostrated themselves" before West European governments, or were "Soviet agents", and I could go on.

Now, whether or not there was any truth to that at all, it became ridiculously obvious that while that very government played hard to get within the EU, they were on their knees, or - on a good day - lay prostrate before Bush. Anything Bush said or wanted would be accepted and delivered unconditionally. Three bags full, sir! Most people could see that little hypocrisy right there.

The missile defense negotiations went on in complete secrecy, but if one thing seemed clear it was that the government was accepting the shield on US terms all the way. It looked like no conditions whatsoever were being made on the deployment of the shield. So by then a lot of people and much of the media smelled the... um, the elephant in the room I guess, and finally dared talk about the elephant's trunk wiggling its way up our collective ass. One of the most outspoken was a guy called Roman Kuzniar, a foreign policy advisor and chair of the Polish Institute for International Affairs. He got relieved from this particular duty by our then-PM right after he penned a report highly critical of the shield. I don't know if he had a wife in an intelligence agency, but a Joe Wilson comparison is not all out of place.

That government of ours is, thankfully, history, though they keep the venom flowing in the parliament. The new government realizes that the clear majority of voters do not want the shield (some 60% in recent polls, IIRC). They're still right-wing, but they're not fundamentalist and they listen to reason (sometimes, maybe).

Officially the policy is, now we are negotiating for real, and since the shield puts us in some danger, we are asking Bush to compensate us for that by providing additional weaponry - presumably to be used against a hypothetical enemy who would attack us for having the shield in the first place - ain't that brilliant?

Off the record, unnamed US negotiators have expressed shock at hearing any demands, since it was a new thing to them. Quoting from memory and back-translating to English, a guy said "Before, whatever we asked Poland for, Poland said yes before we finished the sentence. Not any more".

Of all the false, half-false and utterly absurd arguments in favor of the shield, it seems that only one has persisted in the official circles: if we invite the US to construct the shield on our land, it will be in the interest of the US to protect the shield. Therefore, if we get bullied by Russia, we'll run to Uncle Sam and tell him Russia is looking crooked at your SHIE-IELD and even swinging her FOOT at it!! If you still think this is a dumb way to get security, you are right, but please know that at this point at least no-one here believes the shield is meant to protect us from Iran, because even the media have mostly figured out by now that Iran is not a threat. So we're only half as dumb as we were two years ago.

It is also possible - at least I hope so - that they are stalling the negotiations, playing for time. I do hope that either your Congress is going to kill the funding, or that the next president, not the one that serenades about bombing Iran mind you, is going to put the thing on the backburner.

Now please someone ask the Czech people what's wrong with THEM, since they've all but signed on the dotted line for the radar part of the shield already, and they demand nothing in return, much like the previous Polish government didn't. Now the Czech PM is looking at Poland as if we were the crazy ones!

Or maybe we are. Maybe those people know something we don't. After all, we Poles have at least one reason to really, really be thankful to the US, and I'm dead serious. We may well be the only country in the whole sweet world you guys (excuse my generalization) have actually helped(*) without bombing us before, during, or after the process. And for that, I am thankful. Now if a critical mass of people in the US would also figure out that Iran is not a threat, and convinced your presidential nominees-to-be that they are really, really safe from Iranian nucular missiles, well then at least you would spare yourselves the expense and spare us Russia's swinging foot.

(*) Some people will dispute whether "shock therapy" and a squad of professors from the Chicago School of Economics constitute "help", but that's just those niggling doubts they nurse. You didn't bomb us and we thank you, even if it looks like the whole anti-missile shield gizmo thing is designed to rectify that undeserved exclusion.

[sofa king]

35. Heh. Thanks for the insight.

I love the way you write, and I feel like I just learned something important. Thank you!

[Tempest]

36. One comment, sorta tongue in cheek

Now the Czech PM is looking at Poland as if we were the crazy ones!

They might be wondering why you're willing to fight when you could get the U.S. to do the fighting for you.

[moodforaday]

43. There is a point though,

to your remark. The underlying premise of the shield and the attendant negotiations is that all the governments involved seem to expect to be doing some fighting somewhere, some time.

And that, of course, is worrying.

(And I wasn't kidding about the F-16s. Today morning, a few hours after I wrote the above, one fighter developed engine trouble and did an emergency landing at Warsaw International (civilian) airport. It's like a weekly occurrence now, almost. I would think that we got the planes but did not secure the servicing know-how, except that the first failures occured when two of the first three of the F-16s Poland bought had issues over the Atlantic on their delivery flight to Poland, and had to do a stop-over in Iceland, IIRC.)

[bushmeister0]

44. Don't feel so put upon. Our entire United States CAP was grounded . . .

last November, then put back into service and then . . . last December:

"Barely more than a week after returning the F-15 Eagle fleet to flight the Air Force is once again grounding most of the planes, Military.com has learned. F-15 models A through D -- a total of 442 planes -- were ordered grounded by Air Combat Command,Langley Air Force Base, Va., late on Nov. 27, ACC spokesman Maj. Thomas Crosson said in an interview. The latest problem is with cracks in the planes' metal support beams, called longerons, that run the length of the aircraft, and make up the sill on which the canopy sits, Crosson told Military.com. The entire F-15 fleet was ordered grounded in early November after the break up and crash of a Missouri Air National Guard Eagle. The Air Force began lifting the restrictions on the fleet Nov. 19 - starting with F-15E Strike Eagles - following aggressive inspections of the planes."

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003877.html

And remember what I said about the Patriot missile system in my previous post. Our military industrial complex is an equal opportunity seller of crap to all comers, it's not just because you're Polish.

[Tempest]

45. You can always sell the F-16s for parts

I hear Iran is having trouble finding parts for theirs. ;)

[redqueen]

38. Thank you so much for sharing your insight. (nt)

[bhikkhu]

32. Sure...we don't need the money here at all, why not?

[Bozita]

33. Translation: Military-industrial complex needs fat payday to enhance bottom line...

... and turn the economy around.

[Ordr]

39. Great.

Now that we have universal health-care, a balanced budget, a rising economy, and a diminishing dependency on foreign oil, we can definitely afford to do this.

[AlphaCentauri]

41. This is funny, who wants to attack Poland?

unless they have a US anti-missile system.

[ReformedChris]

42. Poland's been a punching bag for the last 100 years of war/tyranny, they're vulnerable to false hope

Its easy to see why they would be seduced by the offer of protection. The armies of darkness and of currupted Communism have inflicted endless suffering on the Polish people for the last 100 years. They have simply had enough and are looking to the big boy in town to help take care of them. What they don't realize is that the missle shield makes them target number one if the Russian Empire rises again (who knows with Putin?).

[saigon68]

47. ~