Global SITREP A1-13

19 March 2013 (Updated 21 March): It seems like yesterday. Anniversaries can do that to you. Ten years ago today after all the preparations were long since completed we were ready to go over the berm from Kuwait into Iraq. Within 48 hours after starting the movement northward 3rd ID would be almost 100 miles deep into Iraq. My thoughts were drawn into consideration of the four angels bound at the Euphrates River awaiting their release. With Saddam's threats of WMD warfare and all of us in full MOPP IV gear I had to wonder if this was the war that would release those four angels upon the world. And here I was smack dab in the middle of it with thousands of other guys dressed in DCUs on a mission to liberate Iraq. Nebuchadnezzar's, Cyrus' and Alexander's ancient stompin' grounds, this was going to be no fun at all I thought. Saddam's Scuds, Al-Samouds, Silkworms and U.S. Patriots and hundreds of coalition aircraft were launched, danced in the air and some occasionally landed explosively nearby. Seems like yesterday, but a decade later and far more learned about the correct exegesis of Bible prophecy than I was at that time, the effect that decade of spent time now has me wondering if its not four angels that are about to be released, but rather how much time Damascus has left to be a habitable city. You live, you learn.

So, it seems fitting at this point to begin doing an occasional global sitrep (situation report) on this blog because, who knows, Damascus could get ruined overnight one of these days, so why not keep track of events a little more closely leading up to that paradigm changing event. Thirteen years earlier, just after Operation Desert Storm and when Iraqi Scuds were pelting Israel little did anyone know that that war would come and go and just make an even bigger and more important war occur in the future. Hindsight is 20/20, so a little journal seems a good idea at this point. Now I do not think at this point it will be another decade because there's just too much going on in the Middle East right now for me to accept there that much time to expend yet again. Could be, but one cannot be dogmatic about these things.

At present we have North Korea threatening to nuke the US at a time when they have completed a couple of actual nuclear tests and long range missile launches. We have the US responding to this by flying B-52 missions from Guam to South Korea and the Pentagon essentially telling dear leader Kim Jong-Un that while he's feeling all kinds of froggy these days he had better think twice and not jump.  In the same time frame we have Russia flying nuclear-armed Bear-H bombers from distant bases in Kamchatka making simulated nuclear strikes against US and allied bases in South Korea, Japan (Okinawa) and Guam, and Communist Chinese gunboat diplomacy kicking things up a notch or two from Vietnam and the Philippines to Japan. East Asia is looking as warlike as the Middle East is. Rumors of wars.

In the Middle East, the ever present basket-case, we have Syrian Alawite jets bombing Sunni columns in Lebanon while the Al-Assad government and Sunni rebel forces trade accusations of chemical warfare attacks. I now am holding the assessment that two chemical agents were used Phosphorus Trichloride (PCl3) which is under controlled production by Schedule 3 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, and BZ which is a deliriant incapacitating agent. Which side executed this chemical attack remains undetermined; it could have been Al-Assad's forces or it could have been the FSA rebel forces. If our "red lines" have any meaning then Western military intervention will have to be forthcoming, with the possibility of  special forces seizing Syrian and/or FSA rebel chemical stocks or destroying them in place by surgical strikes. Syria does have a serious missile-borne WMD capability and Israel must look like a convenient game-changer to Al-Assad and his apocalypse-minded pals in Tehran given their poor battlefield prospects in Syria. No rumors here, real war is ongoing from the Turkish border to the Lebanese border to the Israeli and Jordanian borders. All the places mentioned in Bible prophecy that I am concerned about and always watching closely.

In Europe a financial crisis is threatening to come unraveled from one part of the former Roman Empire to another. The once mighty Euro currency is now worth about seventy-five cents American, and American currency is being printed as if were playing an artificially extended game of Monopoly. The Obama Sequester is about to chew up our armed forces at a time when really big shooting wars could erupt in any or all of the places I just mentioned. Oh, and we're still at war in Afghanistan. This is wars and rumors of wars.

Sorry for all of the seemingly bad news in this first installment, but at least we know that the new Pope isn't Petrus Romanus and we can giggle a little bit at those who gave that nonsense serious consideration. See you at the next edition of Global SITREP... if we aren't called home first.