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DEL.ICIO.USThat fire in the Mideast is getting low. Throw some gasoline on it.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thank goodness that, in his post-candidacy period, Newt Gingrich has decided to mellow. This was his money line during a Thursday speech to the Jewish National Fund in Atlanta:
“Iran produces 60 percent of its own gasoline. It produces lots of crude oil, but only has one refinery. It imports 40 percent of its gasoline. The entire 60 percent is produced at one huge refinery.”
The former U.S. House speaker then explained how, in 1982, the Reagan administration secretly sold the Soviet Union faulty equipment for a gasoline pipeline, causing it to blow up. We hadn’t heard that one before.
But it led Gingrich to this:
“In the 28 years since the Iranians declared war on us, in the six years since 9/11, in the months since General Petraeus said publicly they’re killing young Americans, we have not been able to take down one refinery — covertly, quietly, without overt war.
“We have not been able to figure out how to use the most powerful navy in the world to simply stop the tankers, and say - ‘Look, if you want to kill young Americans, you’ll have to walk to the battlefield. But you’re not going to ride in a car. Your not going to have gasoline.’”
Go here for details.
Comments
By Corrector
November 16, 2007 2:38 PM | Link to this
Actually, it is my understanding that we didn’t sell the Soviets anything. The CIA learned that the Soviets were engaged in corporate espionage in an attempt to stay technically relevant in the 80s. When it was discovered that the USSR was using bush-league hacker attempts to get said information for the pipeline, fake engineering plans that worked somewhat were planted on the supposedly compromised networks. Since the plans were somewhat legitimate, the Soviets bought into the deception hook, line, and sinker.
Unfortunately for them, the engineering plans had a hidden gotcha. If the Soviets attempted anything but normal flow, the pipeline would explode. I think the pipeline was operational for about 6 months before the Kremlin attempted to flood the marketplace with oil and the pipeline exploded.
It didn’t become widely known as a story until after the Communist fall because what could the Soviets do? Claim that the plans that they stole were sabotaged?
Brilliant gamesmanship back when our intelligence community was at the top of their game…..
By Jeff
November 16, 2007 3:23 PM | Link to this
Jim:
Thing is, a modern refinery is a fairly hard target. The larger it is, paradoxically, the harder it is to destroy. (I say paradoxically because one would assume that a large refinery, full of explosive and/ or combustible material, would be EASY to destroy - and that the larger it is, the EASIER it would be.)
Thing is, to destroy a modern refinery covertly, one would need a fairly sizeable and mobile team. As well as both pinpoint accuracy and nanosecond level timing.
To insert and extract such a team - even if it were Marine Recon - without being detected in a country that is almost CONSTANTLY on a war time footing would be hazardus at best, and downright foolhardy at worst.
Which is, I suspect, why it hasn’t been done yet.
(BTW: I don’t know much about the security apparati at our own refineries, but all things being equal, OUR refineries are the easier target BY FAR. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that that same Recon team that one might think to send to Iran on a foolhardy mission could get the job done on one of our own refineries with barely a second thought.)