Gates, Kasab, & Kim.

This is coolbert:

Here with some miscellany as gleaned from the Chicago Tribune today:

"NATION AND WORLD"

1. "Gates: U.S. must rethink costly Navy priorities"

"WASHINGTON - - Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday called into question the Navy's expensive arsenal of ships and submarines."

"'Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one? Gates asked.'"

I had thought the number of carrier battle groups was a dozen! Eleven groups means that at any given moment about half are on duty and at sea! And these carriers and the air wing aboard are very expensive to maintain and support. The U.S. as the dominant world power JUST CANNOT AFFORD THE COST ASSOCIATED WITH SO MANY CARRIER BATTLE GROUPS ANYMORE??!!

And from a comment to a prior blog entry: "So why are we still building aircraft carriers?"

Ever since the end of the Second World War, OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO NOW, the aircraft carrier battle group has been the mainstay of U.S. POWER PROJECTION TO ALL POINTS ON THE PLANET!! Power projection as we understand it is now coming to an end!?

2. "Mumbai attacker convicted"

"Pakistani is only surviving gunman of '08 terror strike"

"NEW DELHI - - The lone surviving member of the November 2008 attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people was convicted Monday on 86 counts, including murder, conspiracy and waging war against India, while two Indian men accused of being accomplices were acquitted."

These two persons acquitted:

"delivered maps to operatives of Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] . . . But in acquitting them, the court found the evidence 'poor in quantity and quality'"

"Kasab's [the assassin] sentencing is expected within the next few days, with the prosecution likely to request the death penalty."

3. "A rare appearance outside the hermit kingdom"

[Korea has been referred to since ancient times as the "Hermit Kingdom" because of the reclusive ways as being the traditional manner for a ruler of the peninsula!!]

Comrade Kim of the DPRK on the move. Looking somewhat gaunt, hair existing only in clumps, not the normal roly-poly cherubic self we have seen in the past. Kim definitely has been sick and IS sick!!

"DALIAN, China - - North Korean leader Kim . . . made his first foreign journey in years aboard a 17-car armored train in what news reporters speculate is a mission to obtain money to prop up his cash-strapped regime."

The armored train. Kim eschews travel by airplane, afraid his own folks or even other "friendlies" will blow him out of the sky!! Such is life when you are a ruler akin to a mafia gangster. Always trying to be one-step ahead of your enemies and those you call "friend"!!

There you have it! Your daily TOP SECRET briefing, probably not a whole lot different from what President Obama reads the first thing in the morning.

coolbert.