Non-Crisis Continues: Norks Test New Missile

The Norks just unclenched their fist again.

North Korea has launched a short-range missile from its Musudan-ri rocket launch site on the country's east coast, a South Korean government official said Friday.

"What the North has launched this time appears to be different from what it had launched (previously)," the official said. "It is a new type of a land-to-air missile," the official said.

But don't worry, this isn't a crisis.

"I don't think that anybody in the administration thinks there is a crisis,"Gates said. "What we do have, though, are two new developments that are very provocative, that are aggressive, accompanied by very aggressive rhetoric."

Gates' comments, damping tensions, came after reports that U.S. and South Korean forces had been put on alert as North Korea said it was preparing for a U.S. attack.

It might be time for some more "sanctions" and strongly-worded letters.

Good News! 'Sensitive' Nuclear Missile Parts Lost

Um, I think we've got a little record-keeping problem here.

THE US military has lost more than one thousand "sensitive" nuclear missile parts, officials close to the Pentagon say.

A recent investigation condemning the US military's accidental shipment of nuclear cones to Taiwan also found that the US Air Force doesn't know what happened to many other nuclear parts, The Financial Times reported.

The US Air Force chief of staff and air force secretary were sacked by US Secretary Robert Gates after the investigation.

Mr Gates said the Pentagon would do a stocktake on every piece of nuclear weapon-related parts “to re-establish positive control of these sensitive, classified components”.

“(The investigation discovered) the gradual erosion of nuclear standards and a lack of effective oversight by air force leadership,” Mr Gates said.

Pentagon to Pantsuit: Shut the Hell Up

The Pentagon has told a very haggard Mrs. Clinton she needs to shut up. Finally, someone has stood up to this obnoxious witch.

The Pentagon told Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda.

In a stinging rebuke to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded to questions Clinton raised in May in which she urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.

A copy of Edelman's response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman wrote.

He added that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called Edelman's answer "at once outrageous and dangerous," and said the senator would respond to his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Ooooh, I'm telling!

Judging by the above picture, it looks like it's time for The Pantsuit to get another makeover.

Now she responds.

Clinton responded Friday in a letter to Edelman's boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, asking if he agreed with Edelman's charge.

She said Edelman had ducked her questions and "instead made spurious arguments to avoid addressing contingency planning."

"Undersecretary Edelman has his priorities backward," Clinton wrote, calling his claim "outrageous and dangerous."

She repeated her request for a briefing — classified if necessary — on the issue of end-of-war planning.

The senator's spokesman Philippe Reines said: "We sent a serious letter to the Secretary of Defense, and unacceptably got a political response back."

These two need to go soak their heads.

Bombs Link Iran to Iraq Extremists

Time for retaliation, no?

Serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to deadly explosives used by Iraqi militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in some of the administration's first public assertions on evidence the military has collected.

While the Bush administration and military officials have repeatedly said Iranians have been tied to terrorist bombings in Iraq, they have said little about evidence to bolster such claims, including any documents and other items collected in recent raids in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the trashtalk continues.

A top Iranian cleric said on Friday the United States was within Iran's "firing range", a day after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to hit back at US interests worldwide if attacked.

"Americans have surrounded us but it works to our advantage. They are within our firing range in the east, west and elsewhere," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in his Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio.

He was referring to the US military presence in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the Gulf waters off southern Iran.

"Would you dare to violate Iranian borders? See what harm will be done to you then," said Jananti, who heads the hardline electoral watchdog the Guardians Council.

Give them what they're begging for.

Meanwhile, another useful idiot speaks.