WarSclerotic

US poised to become world’s leading liquid petroleum producer
By Ed Crooks in New York and Anjli Raval in London
September 29, 2014 5:10 pm
Via The Financial Times

(Thanks to little American ingenuity, we’re taking back our freedom one barrel at a time.-LS)

The US is overtaking Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of liquid petroleum, in a sign of how its booming oil production has reshaped the energy sector. US production of oil and related liquids such as ethane and propane was neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia in June and again in August at about 11.5m barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency, the watchdog backed by rich countries.

With US production continuing to boom, its output is set to exceed Saudi Arabia’s this month or next for the first time since 1991. Riyadh has stressed that the rise of the US should not detract from its own critical role in oil markets. It says it has the ability to increase its output by 2.5m b/d if needed to balance supply and demand.

Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s deputy oil minister, said earlier this month that the kingdom was the “only country with usable spare oil production capacity”.

However, even Saudi officials do not deny that the rise of the US to become the world’s largest petroleum producer – with an even greater lead if its biofuel output of about 1m b/d is included – has played a vital role in stabilising markets.

Global crude prices have fallen in the past two years, in spite of the turmoil in Syria and Iraq, fighting in Libya and Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. Brent crude hit its lowest level in more than two years last week at about $95.60 a barrel, down from a peak of over $125 a barrel early in 2012. Over that period, the growth in US production of more than 3.5m b/d has almost equalled the entire increase in world oil supplies.

New extraction techniques and high oil prices boost US oil production. The US industry has been transformed by the shale revolution, with advances in the techniques of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling enabling the exploitation of oilfields, particularly in Texas and North Dakota, that were long considered uncommercial. Crude prices that are high by the standards of a decade or more ago have made it profitable to use those techniques to extract oil.

US production of crude hit 8.87m b/d earlier this month, up from 5m b/d in 2008, and is on course to break through 9m b/d before the end of the year. Rising oil and gas production has caused the US trade deficit in energy to shrink, and prompted a wave of investment in petrochemicals and other related industries. It is also having an impact on global security. Imports are expected to provide just 21 per cent of US liquid fuel consumption next year, down from 60 per cent in 2005.

Although that decreased import dependence has not led the US to disengage from the Middle East, it has encouraged calls for a reduced military commitment to the region. China’s emergence as a larger oil importer than the US has increased its interest in the Middle East, reflected in the first visit by a Chinese warship to Iran this week.

US crude oil production in August was still lower than either Saudi Arabia’s, at about 9.7m b/d, or Russia’s at 10.1m b/d. The overall US leadership in petroleum is accounted for by its higher production of natural gas liquids such as ethane and propane, which have a lower energy content and are often used as feedstocks for the petrochemical industry rather than for fuel. Still, on current trends the US could catch up with Saudi Arabia and Russia on crude production alone by the end of the decade.

Netanyahu: To defeat ISIS and let Iran have nuclear arms is to win the battle and not the war
By HERB KEINON 09/29/2014 Via The Jerusalem Post

LA-LA-LA-LA-LA…I can’t hear you!

(Bibi beating a dead horse once again…or as the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.-LS)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the UN general assembly on Monday in New York and warned the crowd of the threat of radical militant Islam.

He said that the Arab world, for the first time, was beginning to recognize the benefit in aligning themselves with Israel and seeing they have a common enemy.

He also said that he is willing to make a “historic compromise” with the Palestinians.

The prime minister spoke in his speech of the correlation between Hamas and ISIS, saying the two are “branches from the same poisonous tree.”

He warned that the escalation of the radical groups is similar to that of the Nazi’s and continued to warn about Iran, saying that Iran is not actually willing to give up nuclear weapons, rather just wants to get rid of the sanctions against them.

Netanyahu then spoke about Operation Protective Edge, saying that the IDF is the most moral army in the world.

Netanyahu said that Israel “faced a propaganda war because in an attempt to gain sympathy, Hamas used human shields, homes and hospitals to fire rockets at Israel while Israel surgically struck military targets.”

He said that Israel took steps to minimize civilian casualties and that “Palestinians were tragically and unintentionally killed. Israel was not targeting citizens.”

Prior to leaving for the US on Sunday, Netanyahu said that his speech would “deflect all the lies about us, and tell the truth about the heroic soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world.”

Netanyahu’s comments followed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the UN on Friday, in which he accused Israel of “committing genocide in Gaza.”

In what appears to be a new phase in the Palestinian diplomatic drive for unilateral recognition of statehood, Abbas said that he would seek the approval of the Security Council for a draft resolution that establishes a timetable for independence.

“During the past two weeks, Palestine and the Arab Group undertook intensive contacts with the various regional groups in the United Nations to prepare for the introduction of a draft resolution to be adopted by the United Nations Security Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to push forward the efforts to achieve peace,” he said.

Netanyahu was scheduled to discuss Palestinian unilateralism and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapon in his meeting with US President Barack Obama on Wednesday.

Islam Does NOT Deserve Tax Exempt Status Because islam is NOT a Religion
By: Diane Sori Via The Patriot Factor

(The author makes a convincing case.  No exemption, no protection under religious rights.-LS)

Off-Duty Cop Stops Beheading Attack by Shooting Suspect
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
September 26, 2014 12:30 pm

Alton Nolen – yet another Muslim wanna be.

(Another case of workplace violence? I think not.-LS)

Mark Vaughn was able to stop Alton Nolen’s violent rampage through an Oklahoma food distribution warehouse by shooting him with a rifle.

(Good shot Mr. Vaughn! Just remember, always fire no less than 3 rounds to make sure the threat is neutralized.-LS)

Vaughn came upon Nolen while he was brutally attacking his coworkers. He then shot Nolen and ended his attack,  according to KFOR.

Sgt. Jeremy Lewis says the alleged suspect, 30-year-old Alton Nolen had just been fired when he drove to the front of the business, hit a vehicle and walked inside.

He walked into the front office area where he met 54-year-old Colleen Hufford and began attacking her with a knife.

Police have said that Nolen, who reportedly converted to Islam recently and had tried to convert others, beheaded his first victim.

Lewis confirms that Hufford was stabbed several times and that Nolen “severed her head.”

He then started stabbing a second woman. As the second stabbing was ongoing Vaughn arrived at the scene and shot Nolen.

Officials say at that point, Mark Vaughn, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy and a former CEO of the business, shot him as he was actively stabbing Johnson.

“He’s a hero in this situation,” Sgt. Lewis said, referring to Vaughn. “It could have gotten a lot worse.”

WTVR reports that Mark Vaughn is both an employee of the company Nolen attacked and a police officer. He was off duty at the time of the attack.

The person who shot and injured Nolen was the company’s chief operating officer, Mark Vaughn, who also is a Oklahoma County reserve sheriff’s deputy.

The woman Nolen was stabbing when Vaughn shot him is reportedly alive and in stable condition. She is expected to survive, according to NewsOK.

The second victim in the attack was Traci Johnson, 43. Her injuries are not thought to be life-threating.

Taliban Militants Attack Afghan Villages, Burning Homes And Beheading Civilians
AP By AMIR SHAH 09/26/2014 5:38 am EDT

(Meanwhile, back in sunny Afghanistan…-LS)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban beheaded 12 Afghan civilians, mostly family members of local policemen, in an assault that was part of a week-long offensive that has so far killed 60 people and wounded scores in a remote province in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.

The violence comes amid the annual Taliban offensive, which this year will be an important gauge of how well Afghan government forces are able to face insurgent attacks ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops at the end of the year.

According to the Ghazni provincial deputy police chief, Asadullah Ensafi, the Taliban on Thursday night captured and beheaded 12 civilians and torched some 60 homes in an attack in the province’s district of Arjistan.

Details were sketchy because of the remoteness of the rugged mountainous area, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the capital, Kabul, but Afghan officials said women and children were believed to be among the casualties. There are no NATO troops stationed in the district.

Beheadings are rare in Afghanistan, though they occasionally take place as part of the Taliban campaign to intimidate and exact revenge on the families of Afghan troops and security forces.

Over the past week, the Taliban have been attacking several villages in Ghazni’s Arjistan district, Ensafi said, and battles in the area were still raging Friday, he said.

On Friday morning, the Taliban detonated a car bomb in front of an encampment where some 40 Afghan policemen were based in Arjistan, killing at least 8 policemen, said the province’s deputy governor, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi.

Ensafi said it was not immediately possible to reach the area to determine the exact number of casualties because the insurgents had mined the roads.

Ahmadi, who also confirmed the beheadings, said that attack and the car bomb brought the overall death toll in the Taliban offensive in Ghazni to 60. The victims included both civilians and policemen, he said.

Ahmadi said Afghan commandos have been airlifted from Kabul to the area to battle the Taliban and prevent the district from falling to the insurgents.

In Kabul, Ghazni lawmaker Nafisa Azimi said the situation in the province remains very dangerous, adding that the Taliban have taken scores of civilians from Arjistan hostage.

Each spring and summer bring an escalation in fighting in Afghanistan with the end of snowy winter weather, which hampers movement. The melting of the snows also opens up mountain passes, allowing militant forces to move in from neighboring Pakistan.

ISIS Fight: Mariam Al Mansouri Is First Woman Fighter Pilot for U.A.E.
BY ERIN MCCLAM September 25, 2014 Via NBC

(Silly me…and I thought women were not allowed to drive cars-LS)

The first female fighter pilot for the United Arab Emirates led the mission when that country joined the United States and other allies in airstrikes against ISIS over Syria earlier this week.

Maj. Mariam Al Mansouri graduated flight school in 2007 and was one of the first three to join the Emirati air force when it admitted women. She flew an F-16 Desert Falcon on Monday night.

“She is a fully qualified, highly trained, combat-ready pilot, and she led the mission,” Yousef Al Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to the United States, said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“Actually, funny story is, the U.S. tanker pilots called in for air refueling and asked for the UAE mission, and when they heard a female voice on the other side, they actually paused for about 20 seconds, radio silence,” he said.

Mansouri, 35, was born in Abu Dhabi and graduated college with a degree in English literature. She told the magazine Deraa Al Watan earlier this year that her love of country and a passion for challenge and competition drew her to aviation.

But she said that she never focused on competing with male pilots: “Competing with oneself,” she told the magazine, “is conducive to continued learning.”

Mansouri served in the Army before enrolling in flight training. She told The National, an English-language Emirati news outlet, in 2008: “A woman’s passion about something will lead her to achieving what she aspires, and that’s why she should pursue her interests.”

“Being in the air force is a responsibility,” she said. “I feel proud, especially that I am part of the first batch. And that encourages me to continue in this field.”

Earlier this year, the Emirati government presented Mansouri the Pride of the Emirates medal for excellence in her field.

The Emirates were among five Arab allies that joined the United States in the first round of airstrikes in Syria to beat back ISIS forces. They were the first to confirm their participation.

Otaiba, the ambassador, told MSNBC that it was imperative for moderate Arab and Muslim countries to step up and say: “This is a threat against us.”

He said the fight comes down to: “Do you want a model or a society that allows women to become ministers in government, female fighter pilots, business executives, artists — or do you want a society where, if a woman doesn’t cover up in public, she’s beaten or she’s lashed or she’s raped. I mean this is ultimately what this breaks down to.”

WHO ARE KHORASAN? THE AL-QAEDA LEADERS WHO MAY TIE IRAN TO 9/11
by JORDAN SCHACHTEL 24 Sep 2014 Via Breitbart

(Iran…the snake in the woodpile.-LS)

Is Muhsin al-Fadhli, the Khorasan leader with a $7 million dollar price tag on his head, ultimately responsible for successfully soliciting Iran’s alleged cooperation in the al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on 9/11/01?

Prior to the United States’ Tuesday strike on al-Qaeda sub group Khorasan, American officials warned that the terror outfit, which has been given safe haven in Syria by the AQ-affiliated Nusra Front, has become as severe a threat to U.S. interests as the Islamic State.

Last week, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said bluntly, “In terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State.”

In 2012, the U.S. State Department announced a reward of $7 million dollars for information leading to the location of Muhsin al-Fadhli, who is recognized as the leader of the al-Qaeda sub group Khorasan. At the time, Fadhli was believed to be a chief operative of al-Qaeda in Iran, a terror entity largely given a free pass by Tehran to operate in their country.

Khorasan, however, is a relatively unconventional Sunni terror group because they have reportedly sought cooperation with the Iranian regime. The Islamic State, on the other hand, describes Shia Muslims as Rafida, or apostates, who reject true Islam.

In 2013, an intelligence assessment stated that Khorasan leader al-Fadhli “now plays a key role in advancing plans for attacks by al-Qaeda from Syria, in accordance with Iran’s interests.” Fadhli, who was once a trusted associate of deceased AQ leader Osama bin Laden, and is now reportedly a close confidant of AQ leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, was one of the few AQ members who was given advance notice of the 9/11 attacks, according to the State Department.

Many, including former U.S. President George W. Bush have noted the substantial ties between AQ and the Ayatollah’s regime in Tehran. Additionally, multiple members of President Bush’s 9/11 Commission filed affidavits determining that Iran’s direct cooperation with the AQ hijackers “constituted … direct support for al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.”

Middle East expert Kenneth Timmerman documented the substantial connections between al-Qaeda’s 9/11 jihadis and the government of Iran. He wrote, “Secret intelligence reports detailed the travels of about 10 of the hijackers into Iran and back and forth into Afghanistan from October 2000 through February 2001, where they were whisked through border controls without ever getting their passports stamped.”

In May, The Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn described al-Fadhli as a member of al-Qaeda’s “core,” the group directly responsible for the September 11 attacks. Additionally, in January, Joscelyn documented how Iran continues to let senior AQ operatives, including al-Fadhli, roam their country free of worry.

Will Khorasan and Muhsin al-Fadhli, as al-Qaeda’s premier bridge to Iran, end up refocusing the international spotlight on the atrocities committed by the Ayatollah’s regime in Tehran?

How “Khorasan” Went From Nowhere To The Biggest Threat To The U.S.
Sept. 23, 2014, at 11:38 a.m.
Rosie Gray BuzzFeed Staff

The guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) launches a Tomahawk cruise missile, as seen from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), in the Arabian Gulf. Handout / Reuters

(The US informed Iran of the bombing of ISIS positions in advance. I wonder if they were also told about the little side trip to Korasan land?-LS)

WASHINGTON — An Al-Qaeda-connected group that the Obama administration has targeted with airstrikes alongside ISIS was almost totally unknown to the American public until the U.S. started bombing them, though sources say the group has been known to the administration and to Congress for some time.

The U.S. claims that Khorasan, an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group said to be led by an operative named Muhsin al-Fadhli, was a direct threat to the U.S homeland. Little is known about al-Fadhli, though the Department of State says he was based in Iran. But hardly any public information was available about the group before this week and some are suggesting the Khorasan group is simply a renaming of already-known Al-Qaeda operatives in Syria.

That started to change in the last week, as stories about Khorasan began appearing in the media. U.S. officials have described the group as being part of Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria fighting both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces as well as ISIS.

According to a source familiar with the situation, U.S. officials have been aware of Khorasan for months. And Rep. Peter King, the former Homeland Security Committee chair, said that members of Congress have “known about it for several months.”

“I’m surprised it [the name] even came out,” King said. “It was supposed to be top secret, classified, and it wasn’t until last week that an AP story had it in there. But we weren’t supposed to talk about it.”

“The intelligence community has known about it … [Khorasan] are extremely lethal and dangerous,” King said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said “we have been briefed on the Khorasan group for some time.”

“I knew about the group a year ago from the media but didn’t know the name or personalities until the past few days—again from the media,” said Will McCants, a terrorism analyst and fellow at the Brookings Institution.

An Amnesty International report on drones in Pakistan from October 2013 refers to an “al-Qa’ida-linked outfit” called Mujahideen Khorasan, but is unclear if it’s the same Khorasan. A source that was briefed on Khorasan in June said that the counterterrorism community believes that between 10 and 20 top Al Qaeda people had gone to Syria from Waziristan “to link up in Syria and establish a new AQ affiliate in Syria that would be focused on training and deploying against the West.”

“The group has been referred to elliptically in open-source reporting for several months now,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counter-terrorism analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Gartenstein-Ross said that the composition and size of the group is still unclear, though: “At the very least, number one, it’s embedded with Jabhat al-Nusra but it’s a separate organization from Nusra.” The name, he said, “has particular eschatological meanings related to jihadist views of the end times.”

Gartenstein-Ross said there could be more information coming out about other aspects of Khorasan: “It’s possible that information that’s coming out about the Khorasan shura [or council of leaders] is about its operational wing rather than information abut the entirety of the group. It certainly seems it’s more than just an external operations capability.”
The group, he said, appears to be connected to Ibrahim al-Asiri, the bomb maker for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was connected to the underwear bomber.

Both Gartenstein-Ross and Mustafa Alani, Senior Advisor and Program Director in Security and Terrorism Studies at the Gulf Research Center, were skeptical of Al-Fadhli’s reported role. “I’m not sure the information is accurate,” Alani said. “Muhsih Al Fadlhi is not the quality of the leader you’d see. He’s not a commander, not a field commander. He’s more a preacher then a commander.”

Aaron Zelin, an expert on extremist groups at the Washington Institute, said there was “no difference” between Khorasan and Jabhat al-Nusra.

“They are AQ members dispatched by Zawahiri that were based in AfPak or Iran to Syria to build up JN’s external operations capabilities since there’s more operational space and closer to the West,” Zelin said. He said there were reports about Khorasan going back “at least 6-18 months.”

Zelin said he thought the reports of a Khorasan threat against the U.S. were credible: “It’s AQ so I don’t see why they wouldn’t want to try and plan [operations] from Syria.”
Some are doubting the credibility of the threat, arguing that the Obama administration has exaggerated it to justify bombing Syria.

“I think the USG is blowing them [Khorasan] way out of proportion,” said a congressional aide who focuses on Syria. “They need a good story right now and saying they subverted a terrorist plot against America is good press.”

Obama himself has never publicly mentioned Khorasan until Tuesday, when the U.S. had already bombed them.

“Myself and some others are wondering why this suddenly appeared last week, why this leaked out after being kept so secret,” said a Republican congressman familiar with Khorasan. “It could be that they wanted a good reason why we attacked them in Syria. We are saying they are a threat to the US so they obviously wanted that out there before we attacked that.”

U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 21, 2014 Via The New York Times

(While Obama doesn’t have much of a bark, the US military still has one helluva bite.-LS)

CITY, Mo. — A sprawling new plant here in a former soybean field makes the mechanical guts of America’s atomic warheads. Bigger than the Pentagon, full of futuristic gear and thousands of workers, the plant, dedicated last month, modernizes the aging weapons that the United States can fire from missiles, bombers and submarines.

It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.

This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads.

Modernizing a Nuclear Arsenal

The government is upgrading major nuclear weapon plants and laboratories, which employ more than 40,000 people.

Nevada National Security Site
EMPLOYEES: 2,500
UPGRADES:
1 proposed
The National Criticality Experiments Research Center was built for $150 million.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 7,430
UPGRADES:
7 approved, 6 proposed
A plutonium processing site was recently renovated.
Kansas City Plant
EMPLOYEES: 2,730
The National Security Campus, recently completed for $700 million.

Y-12 National Security Complex
EMPLOYEES: 4,720
UPGRADES:
5 approved, 4 proposed
The complex’s Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility was built for $550 million.
NEV.
CALIF.
MO.
TENN.
S.C.
N.M.
TEX.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 5,250
UPGRADES:
2 approved, 6 more proposed

Sandia National Laboratories
EMPLOYEES: 9,880
UPGRADES:
3 approved,
9 proposed
A complex for testing weapons was recently rebuilt for $100 million.
Pantex Plant
EMPLOYEES: 3,180
UPGRADES:
3 approved, 10 proposed
The plant’s high-explosives pressing facility is being built for $145 million.
Savannah River Site
EMPLOYEES: 5,670
UPGRADES:
1 approved
The new Tritium Engineering Building was recently completed.

Sources: National Nuclear Security Administration, Government Accountability Office

Supporters of arms control, as well as some of President Obama’s closest advisers, say their hopes for the president’s vision have turned to baffled disappointment as the modernization of nuclear capabilities has become an end unto itself.

“A lot of it is hard to explain,” said Sam Nunn, the former senator whose writings on nuclear disarmament deeply influenced Mr. Obama. “The president’s vision was a significant change in direction. But the process has preserved the status quo.”

With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say. Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.

“The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in his first term and now a scholar at Harvard. “That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”

That suits hawks just fine. They see the investments as putting the United States in a stronger position if a new arms race breaks out. In fact, the renovated plants that Mr. Obama has approved for a smaller force of more precise, reliable weapons could, under a different president, let the arsenal expand rapidly.

Arms controllers say the White House has made some progress toward Mr. Obama’s broader agenda. Mr. Nunn credits the president with improving nuclear security around the globe, persuading other leaders to sweep up loose nuclear materials that terrorists could seize.

In the end, however, budget realities may do more than nuclear philosophies to curb the atomic upgrades. “There isn’t enough money,” said Jeffrey Lewis, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an expert on the modernization effort. “You’re going to get a train wreck.”

While the Kansas City plant is considered a success — it opened ahead of schedule and under budget — other planned renovations are mired in delays and cost overruns. Even so, Congress can fight hard for projects that represent big-ticket items in important districts.

Skeptics say that the arsenal is already dependable and that the costly overhauls are aimed less at arms control than at seeking votes and attracting top talent, people who might otherwise gravitate to other fields.

But the Obama administration insists that the improvements to the nuclear arsenal are vital to making it smaller, more flexible and better able to fulfill Mr. Obama’s original vision.

Daniel B. Poneman, the departing deputy secretary of energy, whose department runs the complex, said, “The whole design of the modernization enables us to make reductions.”

A Farewell to Arms

In the fall of 2008, as Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency, a coalition of peace groups sued to halt work on a replacement bomb plant in Kansas City. They cited the prospect of a new administration that might, as one litigant put it, kill the project in “a few months.”

The Kansas City plant, an initiative of the Bush years, seemed like a good target, since Mr. Obama had declared his support for nuclear disarmament.

The $700 million weapons plant survived. But in April 2009, the new president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, vowed to rapidly complete an arms treaty called New Start, and committed their nations “to achieving a nuclear-free world.”

Five days later, Mr. Obama spoke in Prague to a cheering throng, saying the United States had a moral responsibility to seek the “security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

“I’m not naïve,” he added. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”

That October, the Nobel committee, citing his disarmament efforts, announced it would award Mr. Obama the Peace Prize.

The accord with Moscow was hammered out quickly. The countries agreed to cut strategic arms by roughly 30 percent — from 2,200 to 1,550 deployed weapons apiece — over seven years. It was a modest step. The Russian arsenal was already declining, and today has dropped below the agreed number, military experts say.

Even so, to win Senate approval of the treaty, Mr. Obama struck a deal with Republicans in 2010 that would set the country’s nuclear agenda for decades to come.

Republicans objected to the treaty unless the president agreed to an aggressive rehabilitation of American nuclear forces and manufacturing sites. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, led the opposition. He likened the bomb complex to a rundown garage — a description some in the administration considered accurate.

Under fire, the administration promised to add $14 billion over a decade for atomic renovations. Then Senator Kyl refused to conclude a deal.

Facing the possible defeat of his first major treaty, Mr. Obama and the floor manager for the effort, Senator John Kerry, now the secretary of state, set up a war room and made deals to widen Republican support. In late December, the five-week campaign paid off, although the 71-to-26 vote represented the smallest margin ever for the ratification of a nuclear pact between Washington and Moscow.

The Democrats were unanimous in favor, their ranks including six senators with atomic plants in their states. Among the Republicans joining the Democrats were Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee and both strong backers of modernization. (“We’re glad to have the thousands of jobs,” Mr. Alexander said recently in announcing financing for a new plant.)

In open and classified reports to Congress, Mr. Obama laid out his atomic refurbishment plans, which the Congressional Budget Office now estimates will cost $355 billion dollars over the next decade. But that is just the start. The price tag will soar after 10 years as missiles, bombers and submarines made in the last century reach the end of their useful lives and replacements are built.

“That’s where all the big money is,” Ashton B. Carter, the former deputy secretary of defense, said last year. “By comparison, everything that we’re doing now is cheap.”

A Wave of Modernization

The money is flowing into a sprawling complex for making warheads that includes eight major plants and laboratories employing more than 40,000 people. Its oldest elements, some dating to 1943, have long struggled with fires, explosions and workplace injuries. This March, a concrete roof collapsed in Tennessee. More recently, chunks of ceiling clattered down a stairwell there, and employees were told to wear hard hats.

“It’s deplorable,” Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, said at an April hearing. Equipment, he added, “breaks down on a daily basis.”

In some ways, the challenge is similar to what Detroit’s auto industry faces: Does it make sense to pour money into old structures or build new ones that are more secure, are fully computerized and adhere to modern environmental standards?

And if the government chooses the latter course, how does it justify that investment if the president’s avowed policy is to wean the world off nuclear arms?

The old bomb plant in Kansas City embodies the dilemma. It was built in World War II to produce aircraft engines and went nuclear in 1949, making the mechanical and electrical parts for warheads.

But a river flooded it repeatedly, and in the past year it was gradually shut down. Today, visitors see tacky furniture, old machinery and floors caked with mud.

Its replacement, eight miles south, sits on higher ground. Its five buildings hold 2,700 employees — just like the old plant — but officials say it uses half the energy, saving about $150 million annually. Everything is bright and modern, from the sleek lobby and cafeteria to the fitness center. Clean rooms for delicate manufacturing have tighter dust standards than hospital operating rooms.

It is called the National Security Campus, evoking a college rather than a factory for weapons that can pound cities into radioactive dust.

Rick L. Lavelock, a senior plant manager, said during a tour in July that employees had a “very great sense of mission” in keeping the arsenal safe and reliable.

Their main job now is extending the life of a nearly 40-year-old submarine warhead called the W-76. Drawing on thousands of parts, they seek to make it last 60 years — three times as long as originally planned.

The warhead’s new guts, a colorful assortment of electronic and mechanical parts, lay alongside a shiny nose cone on a metal table outside an assembly hall.

The last stop on the tour was a giant storage room. Mr. Lavelock said it covered 60,000 square feet — bigger than a football field. Laughing, he likened it to the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scene showing a vast federal warehouse that seemed to go on forever.

If the Kansas City plant is the crown jewel of the modernization effort, other projects are reminders of how many billions have yet to be spent, and how even facilities completed successfully can go awry.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, plans for a new complex to shape plutonium fuel emerged a decade ago with a $660 million price tag. But antinuclear groups kept publicizing embarrassing details, like the discovery of a geologic fault under the site. The estimated cost soared to $5.8 billion, and in 2012, the Obama administration suspended the project.

A different problem hit the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. A $550 million fortress was erected there to safeguard the nation’s main supplies of highly enriched uranium, a bomb fuel considered relatively easy for terrorists to make into deadly weapons.

In 2012, an 82-year-old Roman Catholic nun, Megan Rice, and two accomplices cut through fences, splashed blood on the stronghold and sprayed its walls with peace slogans. The security breach set off major investigations, and the nun was sentenced to almost three years in prison.

Now, the site’s woes have deepened. As Oak Ridge prepared for an even bigger upgrade — replacing buildings that process uranium — the price tag soared from $6.5 billion to $19 billion. This year, the Obama administration scuttled the current plan, and the lab is struggling to revise the blueprint.

Robert Alvarez, a policy adviser to the energy secretary during the Clinton administration, recently wrote in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Oak Ridge was the “poster child” of a dysfunctional nuclear complex.

Across the nation, 21 major upgrades have been approved and 36 more proposed, according to the Government Accountability Office. In nearly two dozen reports over five years, the congressional investigators have described the modernization push as poorly managed and financially unaccountable.

They recently warned — in typically understated language — that the managers of the atomic complex had repeatedly omitted and underestimated billions of dollars in costs, leaving the plan with “less funding than will be needed.”

The Military Deployments

The Obama administration says it sees no contradiction between rebuilding the nation’s atomic complex and the president’s vow to make the world less dependent on nuclear arms.

“While we still have weapons, the most important thing is to make sure they are safe, secure and reliable,” said Mr. Poneman, the deputy energy secretary. The improvements, he said, have reassured allies. “It’s important to our extended deterrent,” he said, referring to the American nuclear umbrella over nations in Asia and the Middle East, which has instilled a sense of military security and kept many from building their own arsenals.

The administration has told the Pentagon to plan for 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers and 400 land-based missiles, either new or refurbished. Manufacturing costs for these forces, if approved, will peak between 2024 and 2029, according to a recent study by Dr. Lewis and colleagues at the Monterey Institute.

It estimated the total cost of the nuclear enterprise over the next three decades at roughly $900 billion to $1.1 trillion. Policy makers, the report said, “are only now beginning to appreciate the full scope of these procurement costs.”

Nonetheless, lobbying for the new forces is heating up, with military officials often eager to show off dilapidated gear. In April, a “60 Minutes” segment featured a tour of aging missile silos. Officials pointed out antiquated phones, broken doors, a missile damaged from water leaks and an old computer that relied on enormous diskettes.

The looming crackup between trillion-dollar plans and tight budgets is starting to get Washington’s attention. Modernization delays are multiplying and cost estimates are rising. Panels of experts are bluntly describing the current path as unacceptable.

A new generation of missiles, bombers and submarines “is unaffordable,” a bipartisan, independent panel commissioned by Congress and the Defense Department declared in July. Its 10 experts, including former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, echoed other estimates in putting the cost at up to $1 trillion.

The overall investment, the panel said, “would likely come at the expense of needed improvements in conventional forces.”

In August, the White House announced it was reviewing the atomic spending plans in preparation for next year’s budget request to Congress, which will set federal spending for 2016.

“This is Obama’s legacy budget,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political delicacy. “It’s his last chance to make the hard choices and prioritize.”

Already, the administration has delayed plans for the Navy’s new submarines, the atomic certification of new bombers and a new generation of warheads meant to fit more than one delivery system. And debate is rising on whether to ax production of the air-launched cruise missile, a new nuclear weapon for bombers, its cost estimated at some $30 billion.

One of the most dramatic calls for reductions came from Chuck Hagel shortly before he became defense secretary last year. He signed a study, headed by retired Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that proposed cutting the nuclear arsenal to 900 warheads and eliminating most of the 3,500 weapons in storage. The nation’s military plan, the study concluded, “artificially sustains nuclear stockpiles that are much larger than required for deterrence today.”

In a speech in Berlin last year, the president said he would cut the arsenal to roughly 1,000 weapons — but only as part of a broader deal requiring Russian reductions. So far, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has shown no interest, and Mr. Obama has made clear he will not cut weapons unilaterally. Unless either man changes his approach, the president’s legacy will be one of modest nuclear cuts and a significantly modernized atomic complex.

“I could imagine Putin might well decide it’s in his interest to seek more cuts,” said Rose Gottemoeller, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and the country’s top arms negotiator. “I don’t discard the notion we could do it again.”

Few of her colleagues are so optimistic. They predict that if Mr. Obama is to achieve the kind of vision he entered office with, he will have to act alone.

Iranian talks with Saudi Arabia may signal thaw in relations
Reuters in Dubai
The Guardian, Monday 22 September 2014 05.15 EDT

(In the House of Saud, they now say, “The enemy of my enemy was my friend until they became my enemy and made my other enemy a friend who is still an enemy of my other friend, the USA.”…got it? Good for you. You couldn’t make this crap up.-LS)

Iran and Saudi Arabia have held their first foreign minister-level meeting since the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani, official Iranian media have reported, signalling a possible thaw in relations between the rival Gulf powers.

Shia Muslim Iran and the conservative Sunni kingdom have been engaged in a bitter contest for influence in the region, evident in political and military struggles in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen.

The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested after his meeting in New York with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Saud al-Faisal, that the talks could lead to an improvement in relations.

“Both my Saudi counterpart and I believe that this meeting will be the first page of a new chapter in our two countries’ relations,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted Zarif as saying.

“We hope that this new chapter will be effective in establishing regional and global peace and security and will safeguard the interests of Muslim nations across the world.“

IRNA reported that Prince Saud, in a reference to the advance of Islamic State (Isis) militants in Iraq and Syria, said he was aware of the sensitivity of the situation.

“We are aware of the importance and sensitivity of this crisis and the opportunity we have ahead of us. We believe that by using this precious opportunity and avoid the mistakes of the past, we can deal with this crisis successfully,” he said.

“These two countries are influential in the region and cooperation between them will have clear effects on the establishment of regional and global security.“