In an earlier post on an end-of-the-world flutter (Bush Country - Check your salvation), I mentioned that one of the "signs" of the "end" was a huge naval deployment.

I realized that the deployment was unusual, but had no more information on it. Now I know, thanks to Chalmers Johnson in the LA Times.

Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan.

This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster.
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Operation Summer Pulse '04 was almost surely dreamed up at the Pearl Harbor headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command and its commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, and endorsed by neocons in the Pentagon. It is doubtful that Congress was consulted. This only goes to show that our foreign policy is increasingly made by the Pentagon.
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Needless to say, the Chinese are not amused. They say that their naval and air forces, plus their land-based rockets, are capable of taking on one or two carrier strike groups but that combat with seven would overwhelm them. So even before a carrier reaches the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has announced it will embark on a crash project that will enable it to meet and defeat seven U.S. carrier strike groups within a decade. There's every chance the Chinese will succeed if they are not overtaken by war first. [Emphasis mine]

In another post, I wrote of the renewing arms race with the Russians. Cheney and Rumsfeld don't have enough on their plates; now they want a little Chinese action.

If this administration lasts much longer, it may be the end of the world after all. Four more months!

Related posts:
Bush Country - Check your salvation
Russian oil for Europe ...