Two Houses
In the News Today:
Women may soon have to register for the draft. It’s long overdue.
North Korean hackers struck U.S. networks as Trump met Kim.
Days of military exchanges between India and Pakistan have sparked the gravest crisis in the disputed Kashmir border region in years.
The Pentagon is planning for war with China and Russia
The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.
Venezuela Agreed To Let Russia Set Up A Bomber Outpost
Top US general calls for more troops and warships to counter growing Russian threat
The Pentagon Is Bringing Back the Cold War “Assault Breaker” Concept to Thwart China and Russia.
I remember sometime in the second half of the 1950's I was following Dad around work. We were at the Chestnut Street Nursing Home and Dad took me out back and showed me a large, dry, abandoned cistern and he explained how it could be converted to a bomb shelter. He never did it, but he had reason to be concerned. Nuclear war was a real threat. Dad was a Lieutenant Colonel during WWII and toward the end of the war in the Pacific he was in charge of a ship load of troops headed for the invasion of mainland Japan. The nuclear bomb era started before the invasion and the war ended.
The cold war started in 1946. By the time Dad was thinking about building a fallout shelter I was learning to “duck and cover” in grade school.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962, was the closest we came to an intentional war with the Soviet Union. (We came closer when the soviet early warning system malfunctioned and the Soviet Union thought we had launched a nuclear attack. “Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defense Forces who became known as “the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident” refused to launch Soviet missiles.)
Some time between 1955 and 1962 Dave Doan, Rich Kolb, John Kolb and I were playing war. We would pull up corn stalks that had been cut off about a foot from the ground during harvest. There was a ball of roots and dirt that came up with the stalk and they reminded us of German “potato masher” hand grenades. We paired up and started throwing them at each other until Rich caught one squarely in the face, puncturing four or five root sized holes. That war was over. As we headed home I commented that I hoped we had a real war to fight when we were old enough. One of the other three said they thought we were at war somewhere right then. I said it would probably be over before we could join. I was wrong. Rich joined the Marines and was wounded in Vietnam. I was there in 1969, the second deadliest year of the war. (40,000 of the 58,000 US military casualties died in three years (1967, 1968, and 1969) of the nearly 20 year war.) Dave joined the Navy. I contend the war was, in part, a proxy war between the US and China and the Soviet Union. People thought the Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but more likely it never ended, just slept a few years and awoke as Russia.
“A major breakthrough (in the Cold War) came in 1985–87, with the successful negotiation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF Treaty of December 1987, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev, eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometres (310–620 mi) (short-range) and 1,000–5,500 kilometres (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). The treaty did not cover sea-launched missiles. By May 1991, after on-site investigations by both sides, 2,700 missiles had been destroyed.” This was important because it lengthened the time it took a missile to reach the USSR or Europe making an accidental war less likely. Both the US and Russia withdrew from the treaty this year.
Over 13 years ago my son-in-law fought in Iraq, the war that never ends. As the war spread into Syria it to, in part, became a proxy war between the US and Russia.
And so it goes.
Women may soon have to register for the draft. It’s long overdue.
North Korean hackers struck U.S. networks as Trump met Kim.
Days of military exchanges between India and Pakistan have sparked the gravest crisis in the disputed Kashmir border region in years.
The Pentagon is planning for war with China and Russia
The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.
Venezuela Agreed To Let Russia Set Up A Bomber Outpost
Top US general calls for more troops and warships to counter growing Russian threat
The Pentagon Is Bringing Back the Cold War “Assault Breaker” Concept to Thwart China and Russia.
I remember sometime in the second half of the 1950's I was following Dad around work. We were at the Chestnut Street Nursing Home and Dad took me out back and showed me a large, dry, abandoned cistern and he explained how it could be converted to a bomb shelter. He never did it, but he had reason to be concerned. Nuclear war was a real threat. Dad was a Lieutenant Colonel during WWII and toward the end of the war in the Pacific he was in charge of a ship load of troops headed for the invasion of mainland Japan. The nuclear bomb era started before the invasion and the war ended.
The cold war started in 1946. By the time Dad was thinking about building a fallout shelter I was learning to “duck and cover” in grade school.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962, was the closest we came to an intentional war with the Soviet Union. (We came closer when the soviet early warning system malfunctioned and the Soviet Union thought we had launched a nuclear attack. “Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defense Forces who became known as “the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident” refused to launch Soviet missiles.)
Some time between 1955 and 1962 Dave Doan, Rich Kolb, John Kolb and I were playing war. We would pull up corn stalks that had been cut off about a foot from the ground during harvest. There was a ball of roots and dirt that came up with the stalk and they reminded us of German “potato masher” hand grenades. We paired up and started throwing them at each other until Rich caught one squarely in the face, puncturing four or five root sized holes. That war was over. As we headed home I commented that I hoped we had a real war to fight when we were old enough. One of the other three said they thought we were at war somewhere right then. I said it would probably be over before we could join. I was wrong. Rich joined the Marines and was wounded in Vietnam. I was there in 1969, the second deadliest year of the war. (40,000 of the 58,000 US military casualties died in three years (1967, 1968, and 1969) of the nearly 20 year war.) Dave joined the Navy. I contend the war was, in part, a proxy war between the US and China and the Soviet Union. People thought the Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but more likely it never ended, just slept a few years and awoke as Russia.
“A major breakthrough (in the Cold War) came in 1985–87, with the successful negotiation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF Treaty of December 1987, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev, eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometres (310–620 mi) (short-range) and 1,000–5,500 kilometres (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). The treaty did not cover sea-launched missiles. By May 1991, after on-site investigations by both sides, 2,700 missiles had been destroyed.” This was important because it lengthened the time it took a missile to reach the USSR or Europe making an accidental war less likely. Both the US and Russia withdrew from the treaty this year.
Over 13 years ago my son-in-law fought in Iraq, the war that never ends. As the war spread into Syria it to, in part, became a proxy war between the US and Russia.
And so it goes.