blog.Tribulationperiod.com

Is Anyone Really Surprised?

August 24, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I doubt if very many believed any part of the Fatah Palestinian Authority would keep any agreement they made with Isr ael

in the peace sideshow, which was generated by the beating the Hamas put on the Fatah in the Gaza Strip.

Turning the jailed Fatah al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades thugs loose was like letting Count Dracula out of solitary confinement, if he would promise not to go out at night.

I have pointed out many times that Yassar Arafat never had control of all the terrorist groups in Israel, nor has any other man. This has made it a genuine fiasco from Clinton and Arafat at Camp David right up to the present negotiations. Arafat knew he could never keep a peace agreement, even if he wanted to do so. So does Abbas.

So, if they ever do sign an agreement, it cannot possible hold together for very long. The only scenario that can bring world peace is one whale of a war terminating eventually at the greatest battle of all time, the battle of Armageddon. And even that could not possibly cause man to have worldwide peace, unless Messiah returned to end the war at Armageddon, and then enforced

peace for a thousand years.

The bulk of the world’s population think believers are misguided lunatics because many of us believe this situation must eventually end at Armageddon. None of us know exactly when the final great tribulation period will begin, but some of us do speculate it will be soon. As a believer, one thing is certain to me, the only one who can straighten out this mess, after terminating it at Armageddon, is the Messiah, Jesus Christ, at his Second Advent.

The only kind of peace that can come out of this Middle East pot of madness is a very brief false peace of deception before the scenario of Matthew 24:21,22 and Daniel 12:1 kick in.

Matthew 24:21,22 – For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. [22] And except those days should be shortened,

there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

Daniel 12:1 – And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.

This is the peace that will follow this coming time of unbelievable horror.

Zechariah 14:8,9 – And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. [9] And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.

The word “quickly,” used by John in his closing remarks in the last book in the New Testament, is an adjective used as a pronominally adverbial pronoun modifier to the word “come.” It refers to the “manner” of the action performed by the subject (Christ’s coming), rather than the “time” of his coming. At age 75, I am much more anxious for him to come quickly in the blinking of an eye, than I was in my wasted youth.

Revelation 22:20 – He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article

Aksa Martyrs Brigades: We’ll no longer ho

nor agreements with Israel

Khaled Abu Toameh, THE JERUSALEM POST

August 21, 2007

Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, announced Tuesday it would no longer honor understandings reached with Israel, and called on its members to carry weapons to defend themselves against the IDF.

“We call on all our members who handed over their weapons to the Palestinian security forces to report to their commanders so that they can be issued new weapons,” said

a leaflet distributed in Ramallah.

The group said the decision was made after the IDF arrested two Fatah gunmen who had been given amnesty by Israel in line with understandings reached between

Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Israel agreed last month to stop pursuing some 270 Fatah fugitives on condition that they surrender their weapons and sign a pledge to refrain from terrorist activities.

Earlier this week, the PA said Israel had “pardoned” another 110 Fatah fugitives in the West Bank – a claim that Israel denied.

The latest leaflet is seen as a challenge to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s efforts to dismantle the Aksa Martyrs Brigades and other Fatah-linked armed groups in the West Bank.

According to the group, Israel on Monday night arrested Iyad Bisharat and Ahmed Abu Jalboush, two Fatah gunmen whose names had appeared on the first list of pardoned fugitives.

“We call on all our members to display caution and not to be deceived by the so-called amnesty from Israel,” the leaflet read. “We will no longer honor the agreements that were reached with Israel over the issue of the wanted men. We won’t hand over our guns.

This is a lie designed to split the Palestinian resistance.”

The group said it had previously warned against the “plot” aimed at confiscating the weapons of Aksa Martyrs Brigades members in the West Bank. “The Israeli enemy does not respect any commitments or agreements,” it said.

The Fatah group also criticized PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad’s government, holding it responsible for the arrest of its two men.

“Fayad must clarify his position vis-á-vis the arrest of our men, whose names had appeared on the list of wanted men who received amnesty,” it said.

An Israeli official said in response that such a move by Fatah’ s military wing would only e

scalate violence.

“Israel expects the Palestinian Authority to take proper steps to root out terrorism against Israel, and to work with Israel to chart a more promising future for both sides,” an official in the Prime Minister’s Office said. “Incitement such as this only serves to ratchet up the situation, and would only harm the chances for progress between both peoples.”

The IDF declined comment.

Herb Keinon contributed to this report.

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Alarming Findings on Readiness of Israel Armed Forces for War!

Augu

st 24, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The last time I was in Israel, in talking to some of the IDF troops, I noticed how different their attitude was to those I had known in the 1967 War. They were nice young men and women, and I enjoyed talking to them. They were very courteous and seemed pleasantly surprised I could speak conversational Hebrew. I asked about the type of combat they had experienced and, for the most part, it was mostly guard duty or shooting rubber bullets at the rock-throwing Palestinian youth. The patriotic zeal and confidence in their zest to defend seemed much lower that that of their fathers in the 1967 war. They did assure me they could defeat any Arab threat against their country, but I got the impression it was based on the job their fathers had done in the 1948, 56, 67, and 73 conflicts.

They did not seem to have sufficient military training or experience to maintain the character of the military before them.

So I was not surprised at the quagmire in the 2006 conflict with Hizbullah, nor am I surprised at the findings of Ehud Barak in the DEBKAfile article which follows.

Begin DEBKAfile Article

Israel’s Armed Forces Undermanned, Under-equipped for War

August 21, 2007, 10:56 AM (GMT+02:00)

Since the beginning of the week, Israel’s top military commanders have been pouring over the situation of the Israeli Defense Forces in a workshop called by Ehud Barak who took over as defense minister two months ago. Some of their most alarming findings were presented by Barak at his first news conference in Tel Aviv Monday, Aug.

21 in advance of the ministry’s presentation of its budget requirements.

Not all of the findings were news after disastrous deficiencies were brought to light in the ill-managed 2006 Lebanon War against Hizballah. But the negligence was now frankly traced to 1994 and 13 years of budget slashes by one government after another, including the one headed by the defense minister himself. They have left Israel’s armed forces deprived of the three security capabilities which Barak deems essential to Israel’s survival in a hostile environment: deterrence, early warning and victory.

To restore these capabilities, Barak outlined a program, the highlights of which are to reconstitute two disbanded reservist divisions, improve tank armor to withstand armor-piercing missiles and effective, active interception measures to protect the population against enemy rocket fire.

DEBKAfile’s analysts note that, for the present, the IDF offers early warning – but not deterrence; the burning drive to prevail over the enemy was seen wanting in the Lebanon War and missing in dealing with the plague of missile and mortar attacks from Gaza, the daily fare of the neighboring Israeli population.

Senior officers told our sources: “The IDF is not only short of funds to meet its objectives, but also lacks sufficient manpower. It would take at least 10 years to rebuild and retrain the armed forces.

The question is: what do we do in the meantime?”

According to DEBKAfile’s sources in Jerusalem, prime minister Ehud Olmert refuses to approve funding for two additional armored reservist divisions, for accelerating the development of the Iron Dome system against short-range missiles and rockets, for fitting Israeli tanks with an extra layer of armor against anti-tank missiles, and for manufacturing the new Nimrod armored personnel carriers that would make the infantry much more maneuverable in the terrain where combat is foreseen.

The new defense minister is also calling for a long IDF operational arm which can strike deep inside hostile territory in such places as Iran, Syria, Lebanon and, if necessary, beyond.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts report that the continuing budget deficiencies which hobble Israel’s military at large, also deny it the air power, missiles, submarines and specialist training for such long-range capabilities.

The under-training of special operations units was starkly conspicuous in the Lebanon war, in particular the Baalbek raid. Military experts agree that if Barak wants to achieve a swift victory against Syria in the event of war, IDF forces must be able to move very fast and take the battle across the lines deep into hostile territory so as to seize the initiative from Syrian commando forces. They may find they are also up against Iranian Revolutionary Guards flown in to back up the Syrians.

The manpower for such missions is in short supply at present.

DEBKAfile’s military sources point to four factors which need to be taken into account in the immediate future:

1. The rapid arming of the Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah armed forces financed by war budgets estimated as threefold or four times that allocated the IDF.

2. The danger of a simultaneous war flare-up on three of Israel’s borders. The IDF is better prepared for a multi-front conflict than it was a year ago, but the population remains defenseless against possible rocket attacks.

3. Israel’s policy-makers have not kept up with the rapid development of weapons technologies in the world, which is drawing on experience in the Iraq War and other conflicts. Hizballah, too, has made great strides forward.

The fact is that interceptor systems for short-range missiles, such as the Iron Dome which Israel has tardily decided to develop, have been proved ineffective for protecting a civilian population. The American and Japanese armies have dropped it and gone back to tactical mobile high-energy laser weapons for countering rockets, artillery shells and mortars. Israel’s military industries began to pioneer this type of weapon a decade ago, but were forced to abandon their work by, yes, loss of government funding.

4. The long neglect of Israel’s military capabilities must be attributed largely to unrealistic fixations at the top of Israeli governments on peace prospects with the Palestinians and Syria and their failure to factor in Iran’s creeping domination over the military and diplomatic strategies of its allies and protégés. Even now, Israel’s leaders are blinding themselves to the fact that Tehran’s undivided focus on annihilating the Jewish state governs the policies of three of its neighbors, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinians.

Barak’s stress on deterrence, early warning and victory is timely and right but unworkable so long as the heads of Israeli government and society refuse to rearrange their priorities.

Soldiers will not be inclined to fight to win in a climate of concessions to active hostile forces, budget cuts and indifference to their needs.

As one high-ranking military source put it, “The IDF is the people’s army. Unfortunately it now mirrors a people whose leaders’ top priority is a strong economy and who allow a select affluent elite to exempt their sons and daughters from military service, while the bulk of the fighting men are put up by the majority low-income classes.”

To make the doctrine held by Barak work, the IDF must be able to call on highly proficient soldiers of all ranks, who can devote their attention wholly to operating complex systems and are not distracted by worry about their impoverished families at home. For high-tech weapons, a sufficiency of high-quality manpower is required.

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The Seams are coming Loose in Iraq

August 23, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Hav ing served actively

in Vietnam, and remembering the final RVN and VC offensive, followed by a confused chaotic pull out, my hope and prayer is that the United States has plans in place which will allow an orderly withdrawal. It appears by the time we decide to pull our troops out, we may have the same Iraqis we trained and armed to fight the numerous terror groups, firing on us along with the terrorists as we try to withdraw. We would be well advised to make it perfectly clear that if our troops are attacked in mass as they attempt to withdraw, massive naval bombardment by shelling, cruise missiles, and air strikes will be unleashed on attacking forces

and the countries that sponsor them. Iran, Syria, and terrorist groups understand force, not agreements.

Begin Article from the Independent Online

Iraq: The vanishing coalition

President Bush invokes Vietnam as splits emerge with Iraq allies

By Leonard Doyle in Washington and Kim Sengupta

Published: 23 August 2007

President George Bush invoked the spectre of Vietnam for the first time yesterday as 15 more American soldiers died and increasing evidence emerged that the coalition of the willing that invaded Iraq four years ago has begun to fracture irreparably.

As the US death toll moved to 3,722, Iraq’s Prime Minister engaged in an angry war of words with his critics in Washington. Meanwhile, a senior US general issued a dark warning that American troops may have to be sent

to the south of the country to fill the vacuum left by a projected British withdrawal.

Amid the chaos, an isolated Mr Bush vowed he would “fight to win”, that the so-called troop “surge” was working and that the lesson from Vietnam was that withdrawal had cost millions of lives.

Speaking to US Army veterans in Kansas, Mr Bush sought to soothe relations with the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who had earlier threatened to “find friends elsewhere”, after US officials suggested he be pushed aside.

However, in stark language that clearly riled British military leaders, the US general Jack Keane, who has just returned from Iraq, claimed that the security situation in the British-controlled zone had been allowed to deteriorate to “gangland warfare” with civilians at the mercy of rival Shia gunmen.

The general’s comments highlighted the growing rift between the US and UK over Iraq with complaints among American officials over the “inaction” of British forces against militias in Basra. At the same time the UK is resisting American pressure to delay pulling troops out of Basra, the sole remaining area it controls in the country.

A senior Ministry of Defence official in London said “we are not going to get involved in ‘tit-for-tat’ with the Americans” but British commanders insist that the security situation in Basra is being misrepresented by some in the US forces. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said: “Our mission there was to get the place and the people to a state where the Iraqis could run the country if they chose to and we are very nearly there.

“Our mission was not to make the place look somewhere green and peaceful because that was never going to be achievable in that timescale and, in any case, only the Iraqis can fulfill that aspiration.”

The American exasperation, however, is compounded by the perception that British troops are “disengaging” while the US is losing lives daily in the “surge”. The crash of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in northern Iraq is thought to have been due to mechanical failure rather than hostile fire. Meanwhile, east of Baghdad another American soldier was killed in a roadside attack.

General Keane, who is recently retired but is considered to be influential within the Pentagon, said there was “frustration” among US commanders that they may have to send troops to the south while continuing to fight the insurgency in central and northern Iraq. He said: “That situation could arise if the situation gets worse in Basra if and when the British leave. Now the situation has changed in the south, it is considerably worse, certainly with the kind of gangland warfare that is preying on the people in the south.”

General Keane accused the British of being guilty of “general disengagement from the key issues around Basra”. He continued: “The Brits have never had enough troops to truly protect the population.” UK troop numbers are, in fact, due to be further reduced, by 500, to fewer than 5,000 at the end of the year.

Basra Palace, the last British base inside Basra City, was due to be handed over to Iraqi forces at the beginning of August.

This has been delayed at the Americans’ request, but UK officials insist this will take place, along with the passing of control of the city to the Iraqi government, by the end of the year. British troops will then withdraw to the air bridgehead at Basra airport, where a reserve force of about 3,000 will remain when the official withdrawal from Iraq takes place next year.

The dangers in southern Iraq were also illustrated by the assassinations of the governors of two provinces, and the police chief of one.

Moh ammed Ali

al-Hassani, the governor of Muthanna, was killed along with his driver and bodyguard by a roadside bomb as he left his home for his office in the provincial capital Samawah.

It followed the killing of Khalil Jalil Hanza, the governor of Qadisiyah province, along with the police chief, Major General Khalid Hassan, in another roadside attack.

With no end in sight to the bloodletting, Mr Maliki reacted angrily yesterday to what he called the “discourteous” remarks from his US allies. “Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria,” said Mr Maliki. “We will pay no attention.

We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere.”

The message was driven home to President Bush overnight. If he had been reticent in his support for Mr Maliki on Tuesday, he was positively effusive yesterday.

“It’s not up to the politicians in Washington DC to say whether he will remain in his position,” he said. “It is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship.”

On Tuesday President Bush said there was “a certain level of frustration” with the Iraqi government’s failure to unify Sunni, Shia and Kurd factions a few hours after Ryan Crocker, America’s ambassador to Baghdad, described political progress in the country as “extremely disappointing” and said US support for the Maliki government would run out and did not come with a “blank cheque”.

But it was Mr Bush’s comparison of the war in Iraq with Vietnam that raised most eyebrows yesterday. He specifically linked the US defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam to the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

“Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people’, ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields’.” Commentators were quick to point out that the bloodletting of the Khmer Rouge was a consequence

of the US secret war again Cambodia.

“And it was President Bush who got us into the [Iraq] quagmire in the first place,” said David Gergen, a commentator and veteran of several administrations.

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THE RETURN OF

THE BAD GUYS!

Back to Square One of the Sixties Cold War and

the Islamic Hot War!

August 23, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Begin Guardian Article

Re-ordering the world order

World News – The Guardian

Dilip Hiro

August 20, 2007 8:30 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dilip_hiro/2007/08/reordering_the_world_order.html

It was on the sidelines of the military exercise by the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) – codenamed Peace Mission 2007 – in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, that Russian president, Vladimir Putin, announced that at on August 17, at midnight, 14 strategic missile-carrying aircraft took off from seven airfields in different parts of Russia, and that “this combat duty will be held on a regular basis”.

Both Putin’s statement and the SCO’s war games were unprecedented.

The Kremlin had stopped long-range nuclear bomber flights in 1992. “Unfortunately not everybody followed suit,” said Putin. “This creates a strategic risk for Russia.” It was as yet another unmistakable sign of the Kremlin’s growing confidence.

Since its establishment in 1996, at Beijing’s behest, chiefly to settle border problems between China and its post -Soviet neighbours

– Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – the SCO had come a long way.

Three years later it extended its membership to Uzbekistan even though it does not share common frontiers with China or Russia, the two countries at its core.

The regional organisation expanded its mission to countering drug-smuggling and terrorism.

This down-to-earth mission did not inhibit the SCO’s co-leaders, China and Russia, from developing a conceptual doctrine to underscore the fledgling multi-national organisation.

At its summit in August 1999 Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin expressed their belief in a multi-polar world – a concept at variance with the “sole superpower” status of the United States.

In the diplomatic arena, Beijing and Moscow found their interests converging in central Asia. They shared the common aims of curbing Islamist extremism, maintaining and improving their commercial interests, and frustrating Washington’s agenda to dominate the region which had been an integral part of the Soviet Union for three generations.

In 2003, the SCO broadened its scope by including regional economic cooperation in its charter.

This was shorthand for keeping American and other western oil corporations out of central Asia, an aim Russia and China shared. Then they raised the ante.

At the SCO’s annual summit in July 2005, they called on Washington to name the date of its withdrawal of soldiers and military hardware from its bases in Karshi-Khanabad in Uzbekistan and Manas in Kyrgyzstan which it had acquired on the eve of the Afghanistan War in October 2001. Soon after, Uzbekistan, miffed at Washington’s criticism of its human rights violations, terminated the Pentagon’s lease of its Karshi-Khanabad base.

To widen its influence, in 2005, the SCO granted observer status not only to India and Pakistan (sharing frontiers with China), and Mongolia (adjoining both China and Russia) but also Iran since it shares fluvial border with Russia and Kazakhstan in the Caspian Sea.

At the same time the SCO snubbed the Bush administration by rejecting its application for an observer status for the United States, ostensibly due to America’s lack of common borders with China or Russia.

Washington’s argument that it enjoyed an observer status at the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) even though America does not abut any of its members fell on deaf ears at the SCO secretariat in Shanghai.

The SCO’s message to America was plain: “stay out”. Equally plain was the fact that the US was not prepared to share its belief in a multi-polar world order – reiterated in the final communique of the latest SCO summit in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek: “Modern challenges and security threats can only be effectively countered through united efforts of the international community”.

To stress the growing convergence of SCO members’ interests, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that the Pentagon’s planned extension of its missile shield into Poland and the Czech Republic was “a threat to more than one country”, and that it would affect “a large part of Asia and SCO members.” His statement went down particularly well with Putin, fiercely opposed to the Pentagon’s project as he is.

Along with India and Pakistan, Iran has applied for full membership of the SCO.

Once their applications are accepted, the expanded organisation will represent half of the world’s population.

Given this, it is hard to dispute the claim made by Ednan Karabayev, the Kyrgyz foreign minister, that “The SCO is destined to play a vital role in ensuring international security.”

Thus, despite America’s strong disapproval, a multi-polar global order is emerging – slowly but surely.

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No Question Now – Back in Cold War with Russia and Hot War in Middle East!

August 22, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

We are now watching the end of a brief era which followed the economic collapse of the vast Soviet Union. Now that era is abruptly ending. It was an era keyed to the belief Israel could defeat all the Islamic nations with one hand tied behind her back, that Russia’s former KGB man, President Putin, had become such a fantastic buddy with President Bush surely everything was going to be alright and, finally, the unrealistic dream of believing we would be able to create a democracy in Iraq between Iran and Syria. Our position of being the only world power is ending, and it does not look good for us in the Middle East. I have warned that Iraq would be one of the ten horns of Daniel’s stature for 33 years. The excerpt from BBC article 1 shows how fast the Iraqi President is slipping into the power crescent of Islam, which extends from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Hizbullah tin southern Lebanon and to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Article 2 from the Jerusalem Post shows the return of Russia to fill the void in world power left by the economic collapse of the Soviet Union. The “friends” that the Shiite Iranian President will “seek” elsewhere, will be Russia, China, Syria and Iran.

Begin Excerpt from BBC Article 1

‘Seeking friends elsewhere’

Mr Bush’s speech came as Mr Maliki (Iraqi Shiite President) was moved to defend his administration in the face of US criticism.

“No-one has the right to place timetables” on the Iraqi government’s performance Mr Maliki said, blaming the US presidential election campaign for many of the negative comments being made.

Speaking at the end of a visit to Syria, he said Iraq would pay no attention and could “find friends elsewhere”.

On Tuesday, Mr Bush had appeared to distance himself from Mr Maliki’s government for the first time.

Mr Bush said the people of Iraq had made a great step towards reconciliation.

However he added that there was “a certain level of frustration with the leadership” of Mr Maliki and that his government now had to perform.

End Story from BBC NEWS

Begin Jerusalem Post Article 2

2 RAF jets shadow Russian military plane near UK air space

Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST

August 22, 2007

Two Royal Air Force jets shadowed a Russian strategic bomber that approached British air space, Britain’ s Mini

stry of Defense said Tuesday.

The incident occurred Friday, the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin flexed his military’s muscle by placing strategic bombers back on l

ong-range patrol for the first time since the Soviet breakup.

Britain’s defense ministry issued two photographs on its Web site showing one of the two RAF Typhoon F2s flying near the Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber, nicknamed the Bear, over the North Atlantic Ocean.

The ministry provided few details about where and why this happened, but the Russian warplane apparently was in international air space and approaching Britain’s skies when it was shadowed.
Last month, two Russian bombers briefly entered British air space but turned back after British fighter jets intercepted them.
Typhoon F2s are responsible for carrying out the quick-reaction alert policies of British and NATO air defense in Britain, the ministry said.

Menzies Campbell, leader of Britain’s opposition Liberal Democrats, expressed concern about the photos on the defense ministry Web site.

“These pictures convey disturbing echoes of the Cold War,” he said in a statement.

“They emphasize the importance of vigilance, the protection of our air space and the effectiveness of the response of the Royal Air Force.”

In Russia on Friday, Putin announced that 20 strategic bombers had been sent far over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans – showing off Moscow’s muscular new posture.

“Starting today, such tours of duty will be conducted regularly and on the strategic scale,” Putin said at the time. “Our pilots have been grounded for too long. They are happy to start a new life.”

Putin said halting long-range bombers after the Soviet collapse had hurt Russia’s security because other nations – an oblique reference to the United States – had continued such missions.

Soviet bombers routinely flew missions to areas where nuclear-tipped cruise missiles could be launched at the United States.

They stopped in the post-Soviet economic meltdown. Booming oil prices have allowed Russia to sharply increase its military spending.

Eleven Russian military planes – including strategic bombers and fighter jets – carried out maneuvers west of NATO member Norway on Friday, a military official said.

Norway sent F-16 fighter jets to observe and photograph the Russian planes, which rounded the northern tip of Norway

and flew south over the Norwegian Sea toward the Faeroe Islands before turning back, said Brig. Gen. Ole Asak, chief of the Norwegian Joint Air Operations Center.

A pair of Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers approached the Pacific Island of Guam – home to a major US military base – this month for the first time since the Cold War.

Last month, Norwegian F-16s were also scrambled when Tu-95s headed south along the Norwegian coast in international air space.

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