hmmm... might want to get those empty fuel cans filled. israel just mobilized a bunch of troops

i started filling my new military fuel cans i recently bought. started with diesel. i only have 4 of the 8 i bought so far, 4 are on backorder to be delivered in the next week or so. i saw where israel did a emergency mobilization of a bunch of troops to their borders with syria and egypt. the only thing i can think of is maybe israel is finally about to mess iran up over their nuke plans. if they did i would expect a lot of angry muslims causing trouble at the borders, and iran getting pissed and causing trouble that could easily run the price of fuel thru the roof.

might just be my tinfoil... but i needed to fill them anyway. figured now was a good time for that.

That would force the US leadership to do something during an election which could benefit them, because anyone in power will have to show they are willing to stand strong and are not weak, forcing O's hand, or lose the election

Barry is gonna attack Iran in October to guarantee he gets re-elected. Of course then we must stick by a sitting president in a time of war.

^ This, but I am guessing it to be sooner........ Two Carrier groups are in position..

He's got that plus the F22's to prevent the IDF from touching Iran.
Remember he wrote that he'd stand by his Moslem brothers.

This would be the perfect time for Obama to promise the Russians he'll cut the US nuclear arsenal by 75% if they stay out of the way in Iran.

Got a link?

Hot

http://www.timesofisrael.com/knesset-approves-call-up-of-22-idf-battalions/

At this point, it is hollow saber rattling.
Every couple weeks, someone on one side of the line in the sand has to puff up his chest and look tough.

It keeps them from getting bored.

Maybe one of the guys here smart on foreign policy can help decipher what if anything this means.

How big is an Israeli battalion? Is this 4-6K troops total? Last I read the IDF was about 600K, but I think that's active + reserve. That'd make this a 1% bump.

There's some fairly serious shit going on in Syria, and Eqypt is getting more hostile by the week. If I were them I'd put some extra ass on both borders too just in case something happened.

I think most of Syria's oil capability is probably offline because of the unrest, and I thought most of it went to Europe anyway. Didn't think they were a huge producer, but could be wrong. I also think the thug that runs the place has his hands full right now. Egypt is much more worrisome because it's a lot larger, and has control of the canal.

While Egypt shutting down the canal would certainly impact oil prices, I think it would also generate an immediate hostile reaction from a lot of the world that they can't endure for long. I could be wrong about this too, tho.

I don't see any Iran play here, or any of the other gulf states for that matter. Syria's gone, but their entire GDP is a little smaller than the annual revenue of Pepsi corp...

I suppose any mid-east tension automagically spikes oil prices a bit, but not over the top crazy.

What's the oil price / gas cost play here? Am I running short of tinfoil?

-Slice

"Meh".

Thanks

Could also be because of what the article states...instability is Syria. In spite of what the mainstream media is feeding the American people, Bashar al-Assad (who we should be supporting) is trying to prevent an Islamic overthrow of Syria, as has already happened in Egypt. Yet we're being fed this propaganda line that the "Arab Spring" is some king of peaceful revolt by the people. Don't believe it, it is a further step towards Islamo-Facism and they are in league with the American left.

Fill them cans all right. Fill as many as you got, and keep 'em rotated, because the day will come...eventually.

Please elaborate on this.

Assad is an Iranian puppet. They're lobbing un-aimed artillery into cities full of civilians. I have a hard time "supporting" this, even if the alternative is a "democratically" elected Islamist state.

I don't disagree that the alternative is Islamist gov't, but doesn't that leave Islamist puppet vs. Islamist something-else as the choices? It's a reality of the geopolitics of the region. It's not going to be Lexington Green 1770's, no matter what we do. Not that it's our choice to make...

I can never "support" the slaughter of civilians by a government. Ever, under any circumstances, regardless of religious beliefs.

I also fail to see a substantial risk to increased oil prices that isn't already priced into $106/bbl.

Please make your case.

Don't mean to pick nits,
-Slice

Don't invading forces wait until the world's attention is focused on something else, like say, the Summer Olympics?

Edited: The Russians invaded Georgia the day the 2008 Summer Olympics started in Beijing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_South_Ossetia_war

Man, a lot of you are just NUTS. Take off your tinfoil hats and stay awhile....

One reason that Israel is sending forces up to the Syrian border (and probably also the eastern Lebanese border) is that Nakba Day in May 15th and they are worried about people trying to cross the border into Israel. 100 succeeded, some others were killed.

As for Egypt, nothing will happen unless it starts with a hostile border incursion from Egypt. Israel isn't going to unilaterally attack into the Sinai unless the border situation gets worse. But it's a fight against Palestinians, "Egyptian Al-Qaeda" and other non-governmental hostiles, not Egypt itself. If it were actually the country of Egypt attacking, well, it isn't really possible in the modern day. They still can't match the IDF in terms of training or equipment and Egypt would have to cross the ENTIRE Sinai to reach Israel and there's probably 20 satellites that would instantly pick that up. And there's radar for any air-based attack.

^^^^^ this.

relax people.

Uh, they wouldn't need 22 battalions for that.

There is clearly more going on here.

Not really. Israel, after getting their butts kicked in the early days, has made a habit of overkill. Its like they've bought into the American mentality. You know, the "if 5 is good 10 is better" line of thinking? While I DO believe in having a backup, and even a backup to the backup in some occasions, we tend to go overboard. Look around the SF forum for examples. The number of threads concerning weapon overkill alone provides some measure of evidence. Personally, if I ever met the man who could honestly carry the load of their SHTF weapons and ammo stock I would shake his hand....if he had one free!

Not likely to be sabre rattling, I would think. They can only call up their reserves a maximum of ONCE every three years. Knowing they may have an issue with Iran in the future, would they really waste their chance to bring in those 22 battalions for something as costly and useless as sabre rattling?

Any country calling up reserves hurts its' domestic economy, as the people serving in the mil are consuming national resources, and not at their jobs producing money/resources.

I don't claim to know what is going on, but if Israel has called-up an UNUSUAL number of reserves, the situation bears watching. And thinking about.

In any event, if you have safe, secure fuel storage, it is good advice to store fuel, suitably conditioned, against future events. I'd top off my storage, and keep the gas tanks in the cars at no less than 1/2 full at minimum. YMMV.

As a "veteran" of the previous gas shortages/ Arab oil embargoes, I can say that a few cans of safely stored gasoline would have been very helpful.

Well, I was preparing a response to this, but the two previous posts pretty much sum up the points I would have made.

Thanks, Gentlemen!

Just to add a couple points:

This should not be taken lightly. 22 battalions is a significant callup. It's roughly equivalent to 7+ brigades, or 2-3 divisions. If you're one of those folks who hasn't been paying attention to what's going on over there, then it might be time to start .

I thought the article said they called up 6 bat's, with authorization to call up to 22 more if necessary at a later time?

Maybe I misread it.

Looks like your already pretty smart on it.

Actually, it was 6 and 16, for a total of 22.

There may be no more to it than the reasons stated. However, if I was an Israeli planner and knew there were big things in the works, I'd want to make sure there were adequate reserves on standby, and find a reason to have them ready.

I forwarded the link to a buddy in Haifa to get his take on it. He was a Major in the IDF, but his usual response to nearly everything is "fuck it old buddy it's just some stupid bullshit". I'm looking forward to his reply on this one.

We call up our reserve just to do nation building in 3rd world shit holes.

Dude, you've got the avatar I've seen!

Slice, you're not picking nits, I gave an opinion and presented it as if it were factual. I shouldn't have done that. Perhaps support is too strong a word and not what I really mean. I would be content to have Hillary (and the U.N. for that matter) making no statements about his actions. Yes I would prefer our policy be to turn a blind eye to "lobbing shells" or any atrocities reported by Christiane Amanpour at ABC, horrid as that may sound. But like all media reports on this, we are not getting the entire story.

al-Assad is in my opinion the far lesser of two evils. He is a Pinochet style dictator, only not as U.S. friendly unfortunately. I have no information on him being an Iranian puppet, but my admittedly limited research has shown he has no love for the Muslim Brotherhood, who is purported (granted by conservative media) to be the real instigators of this "revolt." The result will be an Islamic regime but nothing about it will be democratic, and it will be far worse than al-Assad in the near and long term. Worse for us, worse for the more secular regional states in the region that have helped us like UAE, Kuwait and to a lesser extent the Saudis, and far far worse for Israel. Israel isn't massing troops on the borders of Egypt and Syria because they think the Arab Spring/Muslim Brotherhood is actually a peaceful revolt. Israel could potentially be looking at conflicts again like the Six Day War, this time with an unfriendly White House.

The Iraq and Afghan wars are simply the opening acts to what will ultimately, and unfortunately, be the next world war. Do we want to defer it by leaving al-Assad (or Hosni Mubarak who was more sympathetic to the U.S. ) in place? Do we want to accelerate it by undertaking the current curse of action? al-Assad has a wife who is English, he has good relations with France (for what that's worth, but it's a diplomatic "in") he has some sense of western sensibilities and could be worked with. He was starting some reforms. He would sit down at the table with you and talk, while the Muslim Brotherhood would rather blow up the table.

Any instability in the region has in the past been demonstrated to be a trigger for higher oil and fuel prices. As long as we are captives of OPEC, shit like this will affect us, but I hope you are correct.

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