Seems Ivan fell off the couch and bumped his head...
Russia 'could destroy NATO ships in Black Sea within 20 minutes' MOSCOW, August 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Black Sea Fleet is capable of destroying NATO's naval strike group currently deployed in the sea within 20 minutes, a former fleet commander said on Friday. However, Baltin said the chances of a military confrontation between NATO and Russia in the Black Sea are negligible. "We will not strike first, and they do not look like people with suicidal tendencies," he said. Ontop of all the other crap going on in the world, it seems that the Russians think they need to whip out their small balls and try to show them off...

I don't know. Seems we have finally hit a hornet's nest with a stick and these hornets can fight back. How would you stop them short of a nuclear strike?

Well, in regards to the US Nuc policy, the US will never strike first. And for conflict in general, the policy is not to attack unless attacked or provoked. All we would need to do is park a Carrier Battle Group within reasonable striking distance and have a show of force. At that point, it usually boils down to who blinks first. It wouldnt surprise me that if a NATO ship was sunk, there would be some hand wringing going on. But if a US ship was sunk? If the diplomatic apologies didnt start flowing in right away, you could just about bet there would be a return strike. Unfortunately, because there is no declared hostility, you cant just arbitrarily walk up and bitch slap the Russians into a duel. There would be the "We mistakenly fired on what we thought was a target ship" or "Your ship traveled into our waters so we defended our nation" blah blah blah. And America would take it just like we did with the USS Stark,USS Samuel B. Roberts and the USS Cole. All it would serve to do is heighten the tensions. Couple this with all the recent Russian T-95 Bear flights, and it shows that the Russians are trying to grow a set again. Unfortunately, the concept of total annihilation is of less value today to fanatics than it was during the Original Cold War. Common sense aint so common, I believe is the phrase. Working where I do now, it doesnt take a rocket surgeon to see whats going on with the "4 1/2 acres of mobile US soverginty" that stroll the globe. Realistically, its not Russia that we are worried about right now.

Well, in regards to the US Nuc policy, the US will never strike first. And for conflict in general, the policy is not to attack unless attacked or provoked. Well, this just isn't true, and it hasn't been true for any Western country since at least 1906. Pre-emptive strikes are very much a part of U.S. policy and strategy, and rightfully so; only idiots would let a serious enemy of theirs get off the first shot in these days of nuke and biological warheads. Bush's mistake in Iraq is the occupation; the right strategy was to destroy Saddam's military, and then we should have sealed off the cities and let the savages murder each other til they exterminated each other or came out on their own, unarmed. Only idiots think these savages can be democratic states. Only idiots would have allowed these savages to have their own states in the first place. We're still dealing with the hubris and failure of Versailles and it's aftermath in the ME. It doesn't matter in hindsight whether our intelligence was faulty or not, Saddam made the threats, and there was no certain way of finding out if he was lying or not, and besides, we already waited around for over a decade waiting for him to die or whatever all that 'containment' crap was supposed to achieve, and it was going nowhere; it was only a matter of time before we would have to wipe out his military once and for all, 9/11 or no 9/11. The man, and his people, made their own bed, and their deaths are on nobody's heads but their own; we owe them nothing, not a red cent, not a 'rebuilding program', nada. Bush's corruption and bad decisions are a separate topic actually, and he also should suffer the consequences, but Saddam was going down whether Bush was around or not.

Not only is the taxpayer rebuilding Iraq while they are collecting huge oil revenues, but Beady Eyes has now pledged 1 BILLION DOLLARS to Georgia... Russia occupies Georgia and we are sending 1 BILLION DOLLARS... THE CHI-COM EXPRESS CARD... He never leaves the White House without it... :roll:

Yes, and that is going to be yet another boondogle mess that the Moron In Chief will walk away from and leave for others to sort out. The man and most of his cabinet should have been impeached, indicted, and locked up years ago. But, the Establishment has pretty much demonstrated it's opinion of the American public, abject contempt, by it's choice of presidential candidates since Truman for us to select from. Currently, we have a Chicago ward heeler who obviously sat in a racist crackpot 'church' for twenty years and says he never heard a single word his 'minister' ever said, and some weird old man who can't remember how many houses he owns to 'choose' from ...