I always try to teach people to use their noggins to try to decipher what goes on in the world. Even if they're wrong, this is how you have to train yourself  if you want to become a leader. People read history where everything in the past seems clear, but never train themselves to use the signs in front of them to read the probable future, which is what matters as that's where you're going to live.  Even if you're wrong, you have to start training yourself to think about things. You'll be wrong at times, and may reach different conclusions from others (just as doctors presented with the same facts often reach different diagnoses), but you have to start training yourself anyway.

As an example — and sure I could be wrong –  but here's my take of recent developments in Russia….

Just recently a B-52 bomber was loaded with nuclear weapons and flown over American airspace (against the law and a BIG breach of security and protocols) to land at Barksdale airport base, which is only used for staging operations for Iraq. That base is never used for decommissioning atomic weapons.

http://freeworldsurvey.blogspot.com/2007/09/6-nukes-fly-over-us-big-problems-with.html

The big hubabbaloo is, "How could this have happened as it's against policy, the law, security and protocol? Who screwed up?"

Whether this was a tip off to the American public (by someone high up inside the military) that we're preparing to use nuclear weapons in Iran, or the Chinese are showing us they've gained control of our secure military communications system (from successful cyber attacks), or just an extraordinary  procedural glitch mistake is unknown. We'll never know. Watching "60 Minutes" over the years, you learn that the military rarely ever fesses up to anything, and the people at the bottom of the chain of command typically get blamed for the mistakes/orders of those higher up the chain. Maybe the mistake admission is even a "deliberate leak" intended to serve as a veiled warning to Iran, letting it  conclude the missiles are bound for Iran. If so, such strategies are designed with the word "think" in mind.

But let's proceed, but before we do, a reminder that because of this goof, the US is having a military plane "stand down" on September 14, just as there was a NORAD stand down ordered for 9-11. Strange with all the posturing about not revealing things to potential terrorists that you would publicly announce to terrorists  that all military fighters  will be standing down on day X . Of course, recent terror events, such as London July 7, 2005, have occurred when drills and exercises went live — it's a well used technique of controlling intended operations.

Now, it's no secret the US is preparing to attack Iran and has prepared military plans to that extent. Much has been written on this already in the news and President Bush has shown he just as much wants to go into Iran as he wanted to go into Iraq, with those plans actually having been set well before 911:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inyCkCvqRO0&v3

So the will is there, the planning is done, the stage is set. All you need is an excuse  trigger or just a "go ahead" decision if it's something you've really been planning to do.

Today the Russians explode the world's strongest thermobaric weapon, a mid-air vacuum bomb that creates pressure shockwaves exactly like an atomic weapon without the radiation side effects. It's a mega-bomb.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1155952320070911

Why such timing?

Let's review:  the US wants to attack Iran…known. Possibly the US wants to use nuclear weapons in Iran proactively, and has even changed military policy to allow this to happen.  Preparations are near completion ….commonly known.   Iran talks to Russia. Russia now detonates a non-atomic weapon - the "Dad of all bombs" - with just as much destructive killing power as an atomic blast, without the radiation, to demonstrate its capabilities.

Translation: Russia is saying to the US — if you do X, we can do Y, WITHOUT resorting to nuclear weapons and escalating matters. Be careful. Choose.

Another "think" scenario.

Of course, every nation likes to demonstrate to others its military capabilities as a deterrent. It's just good policy - show you have a strong or unbeatable hand, and no one bothers to challenge you. When new superweapons are unveiled, timing is a critical factor selected to maximize military purposes. It's Strategy 101 - you're stupid if you don't. So with the timing this is yet another plausible way to interpret the tensions brought out by the Mideast.

Everyone has opinions, so I could be wrong. So could you. So could they. So could us. So could them … and what about those guys? So could … you get the point. Who cares — the point is to get the brain working, like playing chess for the mental exercise. As citizens we don't do enough of that mental questioning anymore, especially when trying to figure out the long term consequences of policies we governmentally institute. If you had access to actual military and intelligence reports and communiques on a daily basis, it's more a question of knowing something rather than guessing anything, so thinking is what you have left due to lack of information. Prediction is a game of futility for half of the people in the stock market every day, and yet it must be done even though you're often wrong…the successful are those who outthink the others.  All I want you to do is start thinking with wisdom, even if your conclusion is wrong you have to start training to exercise the noggin and linking the dots. 

For instance, take the plane that hit the Pentagon on 911 — you've seen dozens of plane crash  pictures  on TV news reports over the years, but in this case no plane wings debris was found at all, no plane engines were found, no luggage was found or passengers were found. The hole  in the pentagon's wall was smaller than the nose of the aircraft (just the size of a missile), no windows broken on the side of the impact circle, the videotapes from a hotel across the way were confiscated within 5 minutes of the crash (wow, that was quick) and have never been publicly released (as if it's national security?), expert pilots have testified that THEY could not fly the flight trajectory after years of training and terrorists were supposed to be able to do this after just a few weeks, etc, etc. Exercise your brain — even a teenager can do this to reach a logical conclusion,and you don't want to be embarrassed by the unbiased mental deductive abilities of a teenager. LOL! A teenager can outthink talking heads to arrive at logical conclusiosn simply using the famous Sherlock Holmes saying: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however, improbable, must be the truth. Sometimes the unthinkable is the truth, so you have to start thinking wider, deeper, longer to train to consider the improbable, implausible, and so forth. That's actually how ordinary financial careers are made great careers on Wall Street.

This is wisdom training.

You have to learn geopolitics too. In The Evil Empire, by Alexandre De Marenches (previous head of head of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage  or SDECE, France's external intelligence agency - equivalent to the CIA), he often lamented that people don't look at maps or learn to run such scenarios through their heads as training vehicles. People don't study PAST history, and they don't run scenarios through their heads as plausible future paths either. In Liar's Poker, we learn that this scenario playing (institutionalized by Shell Oil) with the figuring out of lateral consequences is one way  to prepare for successful financial trades. So all I'm doing is reciting three other fields where people say you should try to learn to think this way just as a matter of course in life. The only way you can learn and get better at it is via practice. Humor me and start trying it.Itdoesn'tmatterifyou'rewrong,

As to Iraq and Iran — Winston Churchill pointed out in his histories that this area of the world has been the graveyard of countless empires, something the Romans and so many others have learned time and again. Let us hope we do not have to learn the very same lesson so many others have due to stupidity in foreign policy.