Mark Bossingham

Tokyo Construction Week 7

'Bee-sting' vs 'wrist-slap'

IN A statement on the OLC memos to the CIA, Barack Obama described "a dark and painful chapter in our history" in which interrogators considered putting a senior al-Qaeda terrorist in a box with a fake bee. That pretty much speaks for itself. But I wonder how the nonstinging insect in the cramped box "harsh" interrogation technique stacks up against the infamous U.N. Security Council "wrist-slap"?

Bad to worse

FROM ABE Greenwald on the Norks and the so-called six-party talks.

Bad actors don’t sit around waiting for hopeful American presidents to give them an opportunity to be good. They wait for naïve American presidents to give them an opportunity to be worse.

SEALS save hostage

WELL, COLOR me thrilled. The SEALS managed to save the hostage and the senior officers managed to not compromise the operation. Much credit goes to Obama where the buck did stop.

As U.S. Navy dithers, pirates gain upper hand

THE USS Bainbridge is standing "a minimum of 200 yards" off the lifeboat holding the pirates and the hostage. God forbid they might "collide" and scratch the paint. There is much discussion on the net on how either Obama or Clinton won't let the Navy act. Maybe, maybe not, but with senior naval officers and FBI officials playing CYA on-scene, don't expect much regardless of Obama's position. More likely, they only way these officers would do anything is if Obama gave them a direct order to get off their collective asses. In my experience, any Navy officer above the O-5 pay grade is merely a politician in uniform. We need to step down the chain of command to actual warfighters to accomplish anything.

Pathetic U.S. Navy response to pirates

DID WE really need to call in the FBI to negotiate with 4 pirates? The Navy's response has been wholly ineffective and has given the situation plenty of time to spin out of control. This is not in the least surprising, Naval officers are the most political, risk-averse in the military. However, I did expect them to perform at least better than the British when their sailors were captured by a handful of Iranians. The crew of the temporarily hijacked ship performed admirably, the "rescue" force, not so much. Tempting to blame the CO of the USS Bainbridge, but military-lawyer induced, top heavy command dithering was most likely the culprit. Honestly, I can't really imagine a crisis scenario feckless Naval officers could actually handle these days. 

Pics from Honolulu

HERE'S A bunch shots from the plane and the Grand Wakikian at the Hilton Village in Honolulu and the lagoon and stuff.

Tokyo Construction Week 6

Whose fault is it?

A QUOTE from Friedrich Hayek that could have been for written for Barack Obama.

“We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected.”

Back from Honolulu

WE ARE back from Hawaii. Spend a week in my wife's new timeshare, the Grand Waikikian in the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Fun. Didn't bother to rent a car this time, confining ourselves to walks to Ala Moana and along the beach in the Waikiki direction. Some pics of the joint are available here.