Were the US to launch a nuclear strike, for any reason, the weapon of choice would most likely be Trident missiles launched from one or more Ohio class ballistic missile submarines. The US Navy has 14 Ohio class submarines in service, 8 assigned to the Pacific Fleet and based in Bangor, Washington and 6 assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, based in Kings Bay, Ga.

The White House announced this morning that British Prime Minister David Cameron will be welcomed to the White House for an official visit and a state dinner, on March 13-14. "The visit will highlight the fundamental importance of the U.S.-U.K.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday delivered a devastating public critique of the European handling of the Greek debt crisis. Speaking at this year's Troika Dialog Russian Forum 2012, Putin said that Greece was deprived of an opportunity to devalue its national currency, and consequently could not improve its liquidity position, since it does not have its own money-issuing center.

In a conversation with the Washington Post's David Ignatius published yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confided that he is most worried that Israel will attack Iran sometime between April and June of this year.

In two hearings this week, and in a lengthy, prepared annual global threat assessment, representing the views of the entire intelligence community, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was very careful not to say that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

A senior U.S. intelligence official has warned that the Inter Alpha Group-centered European private banking system is going to need an estimated 5 trillion euro in zero-interest loans this year, to avert a total crash.

Mental befuddlement or being in a "space fog" is a condition that has apparently been experienced by astronauts and cosmonauts during long-duration orbital missions, although, for understandable reasons, not widely publicized. In extreme cases, the confusion has endangered the safety of the crew.

The British-sponsored war party got a big push, this week, at the annual Herzliya conference in Israel, when numerous Israeli and other speakers practically called for war on Iran, before it's "too late." While the conference covered the whole array of issues of interest in Israel, the subject of whether or not there will be military strikes against Iran garnered the most attention, as was likely

In December, we reported that a main source for UN and media figures on the purported deaths of demonstrators in Syria was the London-based Strategic Research and Communications Center, founded and directed by Ausama Monajed, who was also a founding member of one of the two main opposition factions in that country, the Syrian National Council.

In an extraordinary move, Archbishop Ieronymos, Greece's highest religious authority, today issued an impassioned denunciation of the austerity policies being forced on Greece by the EU-ECB-IMF Troika. The Archbishop, who up until now has only issued guarded statements in an attempt to avoid controversy, openly stated that these policies are destroying the Greek nation and Greek people.