What You Don't Read in the Papers

[Occhidiangela]

As Occhi said international law is a bit of a joke nad always has been.

No, I said it is only as good as its enforcement. In some cases, enforcement is good, in some not so hot. Specifically in this post, I think I said that I see International Law as a work in progress. :)

But to specifically adress you.

(snip)

As for who you are - I have seen Jester before is this or maybe a past version of the LL. My guess is you are a psuedonym of another poster used to attack people so as not to soil your name. I beleive you once printed some trifleing little verse explaining who you were.

Ghost, this Jester has been around since before the Expansion came out. He and I were working on a "Magnificent 7" team with some other folks when I had to drop out. I have never noticed him to be a flamer, which category I now and again fall into, and I have generally found his posts to be worth reading, even if I don't agree with a lot of his assumptions, or even with his perspective on history. You may be confusing him with another entity, or I may not know that in a former, younger context, he was a flamer.

Back on topic:

As to Why International Law does not always work out, look at the allegations in this article in re China and UN Sanctions. I do not know how big a grain of salt to take this article with, and I cannot vouch for its level of truth, except for two things.

I know the Serbs are pretty handy with air defense: they used an SA 3 or an SA-6, I'd have to go look it up, to shoot down a "Stealth" F-117 fighter. SA-3 is a Soviet, Viet Nam era missile, SA-6 was introduced in the 1973 Yom Kippur War to the chagrin of Israeli A-4 pilots.

I am familiar with parts of the art of radar spoofing. It is plausible that some smart Chinese engineers made good, cheap, decoys to attract HARM Anti Radar missiles. HARM has been around for 15+ years. Chances are, some of its capabilities have been compromised via the usual combination of espionage and clever engineering tricks. Depending on the delivery platform, the HARM may be susceptible to some forms of spoofing. For example, if an EA-6B is the launch platform, the likelihood of successful spoofing is far less than if an F-18D (two seat) were the launch platform, due to the differences in equipment and crew on the two aircraft. If the launch platform were an F-16, I'd say it would be even more plausible, since a single piloted acft has to rely more on automated functions than a multi crew EW aircraft.

London Sunday Telegraph
December 14, 2003

How The Chinese Helped Iraq Fight The US

Beijing know-how was handed over to Saddam as air strikes began, reveals Con Coughlin.

Chinese military advisers played a key role in helping Saddam's air defences withstand coalition air strikes in the months preceding Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to the Iraqi colonel who last week revealed details of Saddam's programme of weapons of mass destruction.

Lieutenant-Colonel al-Dabbagh, whose revelations about Saddam's battlefield WMD capability were revealed exclusively last week in the Telegraph, said he worked with a number of Chinese air-defence specialists during 2002 and the early part of this year to devise methods to stop coalition air strikes destroying Iraq's air defences.

"They arrived in the spring of 2002," said al-Dabbagh, who commanded an air defence unit in Iraq's Western desert. "They were personally greeted by Saddam and seemed very happy to be in Iraq. A couple of them even grew moustaches and wore keffiyehs (Arab scarves) around their heads so that they would look more like us."

Saddam is believed to have made a secret military deal with Beijing, which opposed the Iraq war at the United Nations security council. This was a clear breach of UN sanctions imposed on Iraq at the end of the Gulf War.

The deal was struck in late 2001 after allied warplanes, which were then patrolling the no-fly zone in southern Iraq, attacked and destroyed several Iraqi radar installations. "Saddam went absolutely crazy," al-Dabbagh recalled. "He said, 'If we don't do something fast there will be no radar left in Iraq.' "

Initially, the Iraqis recruited about a dozen Serb air-defence specialists, who were each paid $100,000 (£57,000) a month to help devise a method to protect Iraq's air defences from attack. But their contract was terminated when their attempts to devise a mobile radar system failed because they could not find a truck large enough to carry the equipment.

According to al-Dabbagh, the Chinese were more successful and devised a sophisticated decoy device which forced missiles fired by allied warplanes to hit the wrong targets.

"The Chinese device only cost $25, but it was very successful," said al-Dabbagh. "The American pilot would return home thinking he had hit three of our radar units, when in fact all he would have hit were three $25 decoys."

Al-Dabbagh, who is now in hiding in Iraq after death threats following last week's revelations, said Saddam was delighted with the device and personally thanked the Chinese technicians, who performed an oriental dance in honour of the tyrant