These Cats Are Making Me Dizzy

[AP]U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the al-Qaida terrorist network "was pursuing a sophisticated biological weapons research program," a Pentagon report to Congress says.

The report also says North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya have chemical and biological weapons programs they are working to enhance with help from companies in other countries such as Russia and China.

What a coincidence this accusation comes on the heels of a report released today from the Council on Foreign Relations that states China lags behind the U.S. militarily.

U.S. forces would prevail in a conflict with China, but China could "impose serious risks and costs" on the U.S. military if the United States battled with China over Taiwan, the report said.

Yet another coincidence[?] that recently the Bush administration added yet another hawk to their nest.

Neo-conservatives have scored a new victory in the administration of US President George W Bush with the hiring by Vice President Richard Cheney of a prominent hawk on China policy.

China specialist and Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg has been named deputy national security advisor and director of policy planning on Cheney's high-powered, foreign-policy staff headed by I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, one of the most influential foreign-policy strategists in the administration.

Both Friedberg and Libby, as well as Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and 21 other prominent right-wingers, signed the 1997 founding charter of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which called for the adoption of a "'Reaganite' policy of military strength and moral clarity".

Friedberg also signed another PNAC letter to Bush on September 20, 2001, which called for the "war on terrorism" to be directed against Iraq and other anti-Israel forces in the Middle East, in addition to al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

And the professor wrote a chapter on the threat posed by China in Present Dangers, a 2000 book edited by PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan that also included chapters by other leading neo-conservative hawks, including former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey.

The significance of his appointment lies both with Cheney's and Libby's influence in foreign policy-making and the fact that Friedberg will be the only recognized China expert in such a senior position.

Russia has had quite the week. Our relationship seems to have melted down from a tentative agreement on Putin's part to support missile defense to what is now being described as the return of a Cold War era.

It is rather ironical that Russia has sought and received billions of dollars in Western financial assistance, including funds meant to help Russia get rid of its chemical weapons and old nuclear submarines. Cynics might surmise that the financial leeway thus provided is now being used by Russia to deploy more and more modern nuclear weapons.

No doubt the subject will be raised in discussions between US president George Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin when the two men meet face to face on June 1st in St Petersburg and immediately afterwards at the G8 meeting in the French spa resort of Evian.

I wonder if anyone will inquire of George at that meeting why the United States is sanctioning Iran while at the same time ;

In the wake of its victory in Iraq, Washington has been raising eyebrows by flirting with a bloody organisation that has long been condemned by the US State Department as a terrorist outfit - the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organisation of Iran (MKO). US commanders signed a ceasefire agreement with the group last month, before backtracking last week by demanding its disarmament.

These on again, off again relationships leave my head spinning.