GOOD ENOUGH FOR SADDAM...:

Ukrainian officials are reportedly urging President Joe Biden and NATO to impose a no-fly zone over parts of the country as large numbers of Russian troops approach the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, but top White House officials have ruled out the idea.

A no-fly zone would require "implementation by the U.S. military -- it would essentially mean the U.S. military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes," threatening the outbreak of a larger war involving the U.S., White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

In 1992, just a year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Maj.- Gen. (res.) David Ivri, then-director- general of the Defense Ministry and a former commander of the Israel Air Force, made a visit to the Czech Republic.

"The Czech deputy chief of staff told me that when he was in the National Defense College in Moscow in 1982," Ivri recalls, "he learned that the blow to the Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries [SAM] was a catalyst for glasnost [increased government transparency] in the Soviet Union. The strategic theory that the West lacked the capability to withstand the SAM system had been disproven, and this raised many doubts about Soviet capabilities in general, and the defense sector in particular."

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