Originally posted by Ravula
Victor, Hope you don’t mind me adding one more line to yours.

“what does it matter if a cat is black or white? as long as it catches mice” and don’t fall for a flame bait……..:D

i avoided this thread but i think everyone knows what this thread is about… a lame attempt at riposte for the thread regarding Pak and KSA nuke/missile transfer. 😀

The Soviets by all accounts won A’stan and established it as a puppet gov’t rather quickly with some niggling pockets of resistance along the western and eastern borders.

Only after the US started giving diplomatic and moral support to the Islamic fundamentalists did the Soviets encounter the morass that would eventually consume them.

Nope, not new. Cropped version of an earlier pic which showed the APU truck and IIRC, couple of bicycles.

Originally posted by google
Is the money that they spend on acquisitions included in their defense budget? $5 billion a year is quite a significant amount.

Yes and no. 😀
There’s a special fund for bigtime acquisition with long lead times that is over and above the regular budget. But the regular budget also includes CAPEX for modernization as well.

It’s pretty nebulous. Indian budgets don’t hide the numbers, it’s all there, the trick is to root through mountains of other data to find that key nugget that is relevant. 🙂

Regarding the Taiwanese prez, how much of his actions/policies are actually having any impact on the ground as opposed to just vote getting gimmickry?

It seems to me that the major players; China, Taiwan, and the US are under the same or similar set of boundaries and limitations. A lot like a three way gunfight (a flawed analogy, I know but bear with me) where the US doesn’t have a stake at firing the first bullet, and neither does China or Taiwan. Because one bullet fired will be proceeded by two more and at the end everyone gets hurt. Of course this analogy assumes that all the players are rational in behavior. One crazy guy in the loop can upset the balance.

Let’s face it, any country can become peace loving once peace becomes profitable. Right now, for both China and Taiwan, peace is very profitable.

Ultralights and Saudi F-15s and Tornados, along with assorted Russian rejects littering the area.

Cooking the books
Burning of incriminating files (along with the buildings)…

It’s a regular Enron setup they got going over there. Looks like Bush and Pakistan are a perfect match after all 🙂