Month: June 2008

Q: Does anyone believe Joe Lieberman will continue to caucus with the Democratic Party after he says stuff like this?

I hope Barack Obama goes to Iraq and frankly I hope he changes his position because if we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do, for the last couple of years, today Iran and Al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq.

A: No.

Q: Does Lieberman really believe Americans are so stupid that they don’t know the difference between a radical Sunni based fundamentalist terrorist organization which hates Iran because it is controlled by what it views as religious heretics, and a fundamentalist Shi’ite regime in Iran which hates Sunni extremists, and especially Al Qaeda?

A: Yes.

Sometimes I am a little harsh with Dennis Kucinich but there’s a reason that goes far beyond anything having to do with Dennis. Progressives have been down for so long, and have been so marginalized in our political culture, that we have no sophistication, we have no experience in governing, and we have almost no bench to staff Barack Obama’s administration. It’s almost amusing to watch my progressive brothers and sisters wring their hands everytime Obama’s campaign floats the name of a possible member of his cabinet. It almost inevitably results in accusations that Obama isn’t remotely progressive or dislikes progressives or is selling out progressives. Well…let me ask you. Who have we allowed to become the face of progressivism? Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich has a few wacky positions but he’s the one out there talking about single-payer health care, impeachment, and most forcefully advocating an end to the war. He’s a flawed messenger in the exact same way that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been flawed messengers for the black community. You may want to defend them because they’ve at least been talking the talk, but it’s never good to have your interests represented by people that are easily marginalized. Never.

When Obama set out to beat the Clinton Team, he didn’t have the option of tapping into the power and influence of the progressive movement because we have no power and little influence. Very few progressives have served in an administration in our lifetimes. Most progressive politicians serve in very safe seats and don’t even need to raise much money to get reelected. When Obama looked around, the progressive movement was almost useless to him.

There was only one faction of the Democratic Party that had power and experience and influence to rival the Clintons, and they were loosely affiliated around former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. Bill Clinton was unpopular in most of the South and all of the Great Plains and Mountain West. This is where Obama won the vast majority of his delegates and where he got the lion’s share of his most valuable endorsements.

There was no roster of experienced progressive foreign policy hands, so Obama reached out to the foreign policy establishment that had been most alienated by Clinton’s foreign policy. This happens to be people like Sam Nunn, David Boren, and Lee Hamilton, plus a roster of anti-Iraq War Clintonites.

Obama needed the cities (progressives) to win the nomination. And he owes progressives a lot. But when he looks around for progressives to staff his organization, the field is very thin. That’s more a matter of recent political history than any ideological decision making.

The result is that Obama has a coalition that is evenly split between the urban/academic areas and the Plains States and Mountain West (with a little Southern flavor thrown in), but in which the urban/academic Democrats are underrepresented. If Obama is smart, he will build up the progressive field. Most likely, he’ll do this by giving progressives deputy and undersecretary jobs and letting them gain seniority and experience.

But it annoys the hell out of me to listen to progressives complain about how little influence they have. The face of progressivism over the last eight years has been Dennis Kucinich. We won’t be taken seriously until the face of progressivism is less easily marginalized. And the media…oh, the media. We won’t succeed as a movement until we find a way to get the media to treat progressives with some degree of seriousness. Obama needs to show leadership or nothing will change.

No Kidding?

U.S. army study says Iraq occupation was understaffed
DENVER – A nearly 700-page study released Sunday by the army found that “in the euphoria of early 2003,” U.S.-based commanders prematurely believed their goals in Iraq had been reached and did not send enough troops to handle the occupation.

FULL STORY

More below…
While bush was busy strutting around in his little rocket jockey uniform claiming that major combat operations had ended:

Planners in the Iraq headquarters said 300,000 troops would be needed for the occupation. Even before the invasion, some planners had called for 300,000 troops to be sent for the invasion and occupation.

…snip…

Some commanders told the authors they asked about plans for making the country stable and got no answers.

…snip…

Its writers said it was clear in January 2005 that the Army would remain in Iraq for some time, the writers concluded.

That was only about 7 Friedman units ago.

Take heart, dear reader, that our fearless leader took his military commanders advice on troop levels and… Oh wait! he ignored the military, never sent in the 300,000 troops they wanted and lied about the Friedmans too.

I would feel used if I didn’t know this since the day they sacked General Shinseki for telling them, and us, the truth about needed troop levels.

Retired generals speak out to oppose Rumsfeld:
“In this, Powell echoed former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who told Congress just weeks before the 2003 invasion that several hundred thousand US troops would be necessary to secure Iraq after the invasion. For this he was publicly contradicted by then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld named General Shinseki’s replacement a year before he was to retire and broke custom by not attending his retirement ceremony.”
— csmonitor.com

In case you don’t remember exactly what Shinseki said to get pushed out the door by the bush administration:

McCain makes a good point with his “whackamole” comment, but clearly the only other thing that McCain is correct in when he talks about sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq is at the end of the video where he says, “I don’t know where the troops are going to come from.”

He hasn’t a clue that it would take a draft to get enough troops. Firstly, because we already don’t have the troops to spare. And, secondly, because you need to be looking at the several hundred thousand pairs of boots on the ground deemed neccessary by General Shinseki, before he was chased out of the military by the neocons for being honest, if you really want to secure Iraq and you get the idea of how wrong McCain is.

“Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers, are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so, it takes significant ground force presence to maintain safe and secure environment to ensure that the people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.” [Sen. Armed Services Committee testimony, 2/25/03]

Now, of course, several years later we have a bush flack in charge named Petraeus. Nothing more than a yes man for the neocons and eternal war. He took over from a reasonable Admiral that stood in the neocons way when it came to attacking Iran.

All they need is to get their warmongering McCain in to the White House and we can be sure to be playing whackamole in Iran for a hundred years too!

The press is only beginning to pay attention to Sy Hersh’s articles in the New Yorker detailing the secret moves against Iran being carried out by the Bush Administration, and, more specifically, by the Cheney office’s influence over that Administration.

Yale Professor David Bromwich wrote in the Huffington Post:

In late 2007, after winning an election whose central issue was a more prudent and rational policy in the Middle East, congressional Democrats, obedient to the wishes of a Presidential Finding, signed away $400 million for secret operations against Iran. A more craven act of submission would be hard to imagine; and they did this in the glow of victory, in direct contradiction of their mandate. What were they signing for? Sabotage, assassination, covert support for political clients and “destabilization” generally are predictable parts of such a design; but the Democrats, in the months between their capitulation and Hersh’s article, made no mention of dissatisfactions at having been cut off from oversight. The truth seems to be that in this area, as in so many others, only the Office of the Vice President oversees the Office of the President.

Yesterday, Candi Crowley, subbing for Wolf Blitzer on CNN, interviewed Hersh on the subject.

“President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and “do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program,” Hersh said.

“They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program.”

This notion that Bush could get us into a new war (hard to believe, seeing how stretched out our troops are, how equipment-short they have become, and how much we are in debt with the war on Iraq) is more than frightening. That covert operations have been funded by a Democratic controlled Congress is even s carier.

Hersh again:

“We’ve been doing stuff inside Iran since `05 pretty much, pretty heavily, you know, looking at the nuclear facilities, collecting intelligence, trying to undermine the regime, et cetera, et cetera.

“But there was a significant escalation this year. First of all, they got a great deal of authorization to spend up to $400 million. That doesn’t mean he’s spent it all yet, but he’s got that kind of authorization from one of the secret committees.

“Anybody who saw “Charlie Wilson’s War” — you know, Charlie Wilson was able to generate a lot of money secretly. That’s what happens in Congress.

“And the other major thing is, we’ve sent in a special task force that operates out of Afghanistan into Iran. I give notice what Ambassador Crocker said about not cross-border. And I have a lot of respect for him and I don’t want to challenge him. But the fact is, we’re inside; we’re not necessary cross-border. We have teams inside Iran.

“And these include joint special operation forces, our most elite commando unit. And basically, they’re guys that go after high-value targets around the world. You know, they capture them or kill them.”

Asked to comment by the Washington Post, the Administration was noticeably standoffish:

Spokesmen for the intelligence committees declined to comment, citing the strict rules of secrecy governing such documents. The CIA also declined to comment. “The CIA does not, as a rule, comment on allegations regarding covert operations,” agency spokesman George Little said.

So the assumption is that Hersh is onto something.

You can see part of his CNN interview at http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/06/29/us.iran/index.html#cnnSTCVideo.

Now tie all of this in with the involvement of Israel and the concern that Israeli Jets will bomb Iranian nuclear facilities on their own (even though there is also negotiation between Israel and Palestinian groups who are supported by Iran) and we are likely to be drawn in even farther.

From the point of view of this blogger, we are getting into a mess that will make all that we remember of Viet Nam and all that has become of Iraq fade into insignificance as we move toward what could become a World War.

Under The LobsterScope

The LA Times has a pretty interesting article on the effects of $200 a barrel oil on the commuter lifestyle of Southern California, but you could basically apply the effects almost anywhere in the US.

But with oil closing above $140 a barrel Friday, more experts are taking those predictions seriously — and shuddering at the inflation-fueled chaos that $200-a-barrel crude could bring. They foresee fundamental shifts in the way we work, where we live and how we spend our free time.

“You’d have massive changes going on throughout the economy,” said Robert Wescott, president of Keybridge Research, a Washington economic analysis firm. “Some activities are just plain going to be shut down.”

Besides the obvious effect $7-a-gallon gasoline would have on commuters, automakers, airlines, truckers and shipping firms, $200 oil would drive up the price of a broad spectrum of products: Insecticides and hand lotions, cosmetics and food preservatives, shaving cream and rubber cement, plastic bottles and crayons — all have ingredients derived from oil.

The pain would probably be particularly intense in Southern California, which is known for its long commutes and high cost of living.

“Throughout our history, we have grown on the assumption that energy costs would be low,” said Michael Woo, a former Los Angeles city councilman and a current member of the city Planning Commission. “Now that those assumptions are shifting, it changes assumptions about housing, cars and how cities grow.”

Push prices up fast enough, he said, and “it would be the urban-planning equivalent of an earthquake.”

Personally I think that’s a bit tame.  People still seem to think we’re going to see an orderly transition to the new oil paradigm, and that all Americans will simply grin and bear it.

I do not have quite that much faith in my fellow man.  Heck, the article is even talking about the silver lining.

If any retailers would benefit, it would be those on the Internet. In a recent survey by Harris Interactive, one-third of adults said high gas prices had made them more likely to shop online to avoid driving.

Restaurant operators such as Brinker International, which owns the Chili’s and Romano’s Macaroni Grill chains, are suffering and are likely to struggle even more as consumers look for ways to reduce spending. Fast-food chains wouldn’t be immune, experts say, although they might fare better as families downscale their dining choices.

Vehicle sales, too, would probably continue to tank. Sales of new cars, sport utility vehicles and light trucks fell more than 18% in California in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. Although some consumers have been shopping for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, many dealers are demanding premiums for gas-sipping hybrids, wiping out much of the financial advantage of buying one.

Nationwide, $200 oil and $7 gasoline would force Americans to take 10 million vehicles off the roads over the next four years, Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, wrote in a recent report.

Fewer cars, less of a carbon footprint, right?  Sure, fewer Americans would be driving, but that also means fewer Americans would be spending, working, etc. too.  We’re a mobile society.   Taking away that mobility is going to result in far, far more than a culture shock.  Everything will cost significantly more.

It takes about 7,000 tons of bunker-fuel to fill the tanks of a 5,000-container cargo ship for a trip from Shanghai to Los Angeles. Over the last year and half, the cost of that fuel has jumped 87% to $552 a ton, according to the World Shipping Council, boosting the cost of a fill-up to more than $3.8 million.

“To put things in perspective, today’s extra shipping cost from East Asia is the equivalent of imposing a 9% tariff on East Asian goods entering North America,” said Rubin of CIBC World Markets. “At $200 per barrel, the tariff equivalent rate will rise to 15%.”

If oil continues to rise from current levels, officials at the Port of Los Angeles believe West Coast ports would gain business because they are 10 to 12 days’ sailing time from Asia, versus the 18-to-20-day route from Asia to the East Coast through the Panama Canal.

But local ports could lose business if shipping costs get so out of hand that companies begin shifting production back to North America from Asia — something that’s happening in the steel industry, Rubin said.

America’s long dormant manufacturing sector is being revived out of necessity.  It’s finally gotten to the point where it costs more to ship steel in then to pay union workers.  But there are far more economic sectors where people will be losing jobs instead, because after all if people can’t afford the products steel is found in, the demand for steel will drop back to the point where shipping it in will meet enough of the demand.

Right now, people are anticipating demand continuing to rise for products in the US.  This will not be the case.

Dramatically higher transportation costs would usher in an era of virtual mobility, or zero mobility, for many workers.

“We’re seeing companies go to four-day workweeks, place increased emphasis on working at home, show bigger interest in setting up satellite offices — anything that gets commute times down and gets people off the road,” said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in San Jose.

Videoconferencing, touted as “the next big thing” for years, would finally have its day, thanks to improved technology and a desperation to cut corporate travel budgets.

Telecommuting, or working from home, is easier than ever because of the spread of high-speed Internet access, said Jonathan Spira, chief analyst at Basex Inc., a business research firm in New York. In particular, workers in “knowledge” jobs that can be performed with computers and phones would benefit.

But Gilligan of USC noted that lower-income workers tend to be in jobs that don’t favor telecommuting, such as retail and food service.

“These are the same people who are already being creamed by the mortgage crisis,” he said. “The impacts of energy price increases are highly disparate.”

Although white-collar workers may be able to telecommute, they could also take a serious financial hit because soaring energy prices tend to wreak havoc on the stock market. The explosion of 401(k) plans and similar retirement accounts in the last few decades — and the decline of traditional pensions with guaranteed payouts — have tied workers’ financial futures more closely to stocks than they were during the 1970s oil shocks. A prolonged Wall Street downturn could mean a no-frills retirement, or none at all.

If your “knowledge job” can be telecommuted to working at home or a satellite office, it can be outsourced to India, China, or elsewhere.  Once businesses start seeing the number of people in their ranks that CAN telecommute out of cost savings, the next logical step is to outsource those jobs to people making a third as much.

When the deflationary spiral really sets in, job losses over the next couple of years are going to be staggering.

Does your job involve a computer and a phone, without face to face contact with your company’s customers on a daily basis or physical contact with your company’s product?  A lot of IT, support, accounting, management and customer service jobs these days fall into this category.

If you can honestly say “Yeah, actually I could telecommute a couple days a week” then your job is in a tremendous amount of jeopardy right now, particularly the IT and support jobs.  A lot of white collar jobs are going to go away and not come back, along with a lot of retail and service industry jobs as the spiral continues to rip like a tornado through our economy.

Now is the time to start making a brutally honest assessment of what $200 oil means for you and your loved ones.  It means a lot of people out of work, not buying products and services, further putting more people out of work as more and more businesses shutter their windows and put up SPACE FOR LEASE signs.

If your job was outsourced or eliminated tomorrow, what would you do?

It’s time to ask yourself.

Be prepared.

When you hear the term “Swiftboat” what comes into your mind?

I already know your answer, but it isn’t the meaning for those who served on nor any Navy Personal who served In-Country Vietnam.

Not to far back a small group of misguided Navy personal, who served aboard ‘Swiftboats’ in ‘Nam, took that once proud name and used it for their political purposes and gains, with some others joining them, who not only never served on  swiftboats, and the extremely dangerous missions they were sent into, but some never served at all, in the Military nor In War/Occupations!

They not only Disgraced their own service but the service of all who served on Swiftboats as well as All of us Navy personal who served In-Country as well as the Blue – Water Navy serving off the shores of ‘Nam. They ‘Verbally Spit’ on themselves and their brothers, All their Navy brothers and sisters!

Recently some who served on but did not partake in the slanderous actions have been back in the news, They want their Proud Name and Proud Service to Country back, especially for the brothers who were Lost!

John Kerry, hands on hips, and Roy F. Hoffmann, kneeling, in Vietnam. Mr. Hoffman helped start the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which criticized Mr. Kerry in his 2004 presidential bid.

One of the recent news reports to service was this one:

Vets Say Billionaire is Going Back on His Word.

Some Vietnam veterans are claiming that Texan businessman T. Boone Pickens is going back on his word to pay $1 million to anyone who can find inaccuracies in claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential election. Agreeing with the veterans, oddsmaker Ben Eckstein says that failing to deliver on a bet is “sacrilegious.” “In the world of betting and gambling, your word is your bond,” said Eckstein, president of America’s Line, a sports and entertainment oddsmaking business. “Whether it’s a $7 bet or a $500,000 bet, once it’s made and once you shake on it, it should be done.”

Which carried this:

“We have 11 different falsehoods that the [Swift Boat Veterans for Truth] came out with in 2004. We have documents, videos, editorials and depositions not just by my boat crew but other eyewitnesses who were involved in the operations.”

Sanudsky added that while his group has come up with “everything Pickens asked Kerry for in November,” it has all been for nothing.

Brother Navy ‘Nam Vet Sanudsky added this,

“We’re disappointed because he’s ducking out,” Sanudsky said. “He’s dodging the bullet because we’ve got the ammunition.”

In writing about the above report I placed this in my posts and e’s:

Less was known about the Navy’s role in that Guerilla/Insurgent Occupation. One says ‘Navy’ one thinks Sailors on Naval Ships or stationed on shore bases, which by the way was how I spent my whole four years, on shoreduty. Only ships I went on were ‘Cuban’ cargo vessals riding them through the Panama Canal guarding against them ramming the locks or causing other damage, which was a long running part of the duty down there and was Assinine to say the least, we finally got that practice stopped.

I wasn’t a part of the ‘Brownwater Navy’ in ‘Nam, Swifts, PBR’s, Zippo’s, PACV etc., nor was I a part of the SEAL’s, which is probably the only part of the Navy in ‘Nam some may have known about, still not knowing what they actually did. I did work with some in the ‘Brownwater’, mostly friends from previous duty bases who were there at the same time, and because of what I did some work with the SEAL’s, I was a GunnersMate small arms.

Untill Apocalypse Now, the movie, I doubt the knowledge of Navy duty In-Country was a reality to most. My brother Sailors were involved in a whole slew of differing parts of that Occupation.

Do a search of ‘Swiftboat’, ‘PBR’, ‘Brownwater Navy’, ‘COMNAVFORV’, you’ll find numorous sites to learn more about the Naval role in Vietnam.

A few days later this followed:

More on T. Boone – swiftie funder

T. Boone Pickens Says No Deal on Swift Boat Bounty

T. Boone Pickens is not giving up his million dollars

And today there’s another report out that should be hitting Every Major/Minor Newspaper and MSM Outlet, Especially the Talking Heads who backed the Slander, Speaking Apology and putting Present Meaning To Rest!

Give My Brothers Their Proud Service Back!

More “Swiftboat Sailors” are coming out in demanding their Integrity and Service to Country Back.

“I was proud of what I did, and all the guys I was with,” Mr. Miller said. “Now somebody says `Swift boat’ and it’s a whole different meaning. They don’t associate it with the guys we lost. That’s a shame.”

“You would not hear the word `Swift boat’ and think of people that served their country and fought in Vietnam,” said Jim Newell, who spent a year as an officer in charge on one of the small Navy vessels in An Thoi and Qui Nhon. “You think about someone who was involved in a political attack on a member of a different party.

“It is time to ban a word that is at once offensive, demeaning and obscene both to and for anyone serving in the naval profession. That word is `Swiftboating.’ “
This month, a group of veterans who served with Mr. Kerry took up the challenge by Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove anything in the group’s campaign against Mr. Kerry.

Now Billionaire T. Boone never served on a Swiftboat nor did he serve in Vietnam, but felt it was his Political Duty to fund this slanderous attack on someone who served Honorably and not only on Swiftboats but prior to that on a Support Ship for the same Swiftboats off the shores of Vietnam, doing Two tours, untill wounded in the second.

On Swiftboats.net, Larry Wasikowski tends to a crew list, a history of the boats and even archives of newsletters that various crews sent home to their families from 1966 to 1969. Mr. Wasikowski and the sailors’ association grant the designation of “Swiftie” meticulously, requiring extensive official documentation from anyone who claims the title.
By the association’s count, about 3,600 men served aboard Swift boats in Vietnam, 600 officers and 3,000 enlisted.

Some 200, a questionable count, took part in using the proud name “Swiftboat” in a Political Slander Campaign against one of their own. They did so simply because a small handfull can’t stand John Kerry and his Politics, that small handfull can’t even stand John McCain and some are now going after him as well!!

Regardless of what they thought of Mr. Kerry, many Swift boat veterans objected to the attacks.
“It was unconscionable,” said Stan Collier, who served as an officer in charge on a boat based in Qui Nhon. “I thought those boys struck a new low.”
Mr. Collier considers himself a conservative and did not agree with Mr. Kerry’s politics, but he voted for him to protest the Swift boat campaign. “We’ve all been attributed to the sleaziness that those guys assigned to Kerry,” he said. “I think we’ve all been demeaned.”
As Mr. Miller said, “People don’t know about us; they know about those few TV advertisements.”

“It’s taken on a life of its own,” Mr. Wasikowski said. “The problem is, it’s on the wrong side. We would like to be remembered as the one operation in Vietnam that succeeded, totally.”

And there is another group of Very Proud Military Service Members that would like their Honor Back, this covers All Conflicts, All Service Branches, and isn’t making the News. It happened in the same year as the above. Yet after it occurred extremely little has been mentioned since, and especially as we have Two Theaters of Military Operations and Occupations still ongoing. Many died for this Honor, many were Maimed for this Honor, from the start of it’s existance right up to Today and will continue into the forseable future.

Remember this:

This happened at that years Political Convention. A certain Political Party, who claim they are the Party of a Strong National Defense and Supporters of America’s Military Personal found it not only Amusing but Extremely Funny to Pass Out and Wear their Purple Heart Bandaids, many with their Lapel American Flag Pins as well, why the Joke even carried to their talking heads, political spinmeisters, and their legions of Supporters, most who have Never Served In The Military nor do much in our times of Wars Of Choice and Occupations, except to scream they want More. More of making More Hatreds and Enemies of our Country and Us Americans! More of allowing the War Profitteers to rob from our Treasury! More of the Huge Defense Budgets with No Questions Asked about where the moneys going, More of sending the few into Multiple Tours and Stoploss! More of Not Taking Care of those sent when They Return! As long as most of them don’t have to Sacrifice and can continue to call themselves a Party of Moral Americans!

I never heard an APOLOGY to the few who Serve and are Awarded Purple Hearts, America’s Highest Honor, for Dying and being Maimed in America’s Wars, Wars mostly of Choice not Need!

In apparent response to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s complaint that the Air Force isn’t providing Central Command with enough unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the Navy is working on a developmental version of the discontinued Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) that it’s calling the Naval Unmanned Combat Air System (N-UCAS).  What makes N-UCAS different and far more special than J-UCAS is that N-UCAS can operate from aircraft carriers, which the Navy has and the Air Force doesn’t.

There’s no special reason that any version of the UCAS needs to operate from an aircraft carrier, but that’s no never mind.  The money’s in the pipeline to develop N-UCAS; so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!
Gee Wizardry

Christian Lowe of Military.com makes N-UCAS sound way cool:

Imagine a Navy strike plane launching off the catapult as its carrier begins steaming out of its San Diego naval base. The jet refuels over Hawaii, then again over Guam; it gets updated targeting data from its mother ship 6,000 miles away and launches its strike on an enemy nuclear missile silo in East Asia — all in one sortie.

That’s “just half” of what the N-UCAS could do, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a prestigious Washington D.C. defense think tank. “Because of its great range, persistence, and stealth, [N-UCAS] would be able to perform missions beyond the capabilities of manned aircraft, and enable US aircraft carriers to perform both their traditional missions better and to undertake completely new missions,” say CSBA’s Tom Ehrhard and Bob Work in their June 18 report “Range, Persistence, Stealth and Networking: The Case for a Carrier-Based Unmanned Combat Air System.”  

The problem with all N-UCAS’s beautiful ugliness is that any airplane that can fly 6,000 miles from an aircraft carrier beginning to steam out of its naval base in San Diego can just as easily take off from the naval base in San Diego, which also happens to be a naval air station.  If the jet can fly 6,000 miles refueled it can fly 12,000 miles refueled, which means it doesn’t have to take off from San Diego.  It can take off from Whitman Air Force Base in Missouri, where we already have bombers that can fly that far called B-2 Spirits that we paid about $2 billion apiece for and that haven’t given us much return on investment yet other than crash in Guam on a routine flight.  Plus, any jet bomber that can get updated targeting data from a mother ship half a world away can get the data directly from wherever the mother ship got its.  

It seems baffling that a respected defense think tank like CSBA, what with all its smart people and resources, couldn’t figure that out how dumb an idea N-UCAS is, until you consider that CSBA wasn’t getting paid to analyze why the N-UCAS is a dumb idea.  It’s the same kind of deal with Northrop Grumman, the defense company that heads the N-UCAS demonstrator program which the Navy has continued to fund.  

Northrop Grumman is also the world’s only manufacturer of catapult aircraft carriers like the current Nimitz class, and any future class of carriers will be developed and manufactured by Northrop Grumman.  If, eventually, someone starts getting the bright idea that the Navy doesn’t need both N-UCAS and aircraft carriers, Northrop Grumman will drop N-UCAS like a radioactive potato.  For now, though, N-UCAS is a moneymaker, so nobody at Northrop Grumman’s going to look up its skirt.    

“It is difficult to imagine that the program would be [cancelled or delayed] because it represents a great success story for Navy acquisition,” an unnamed Northrop Grumman official told Lowe, “and more than $1 billion has been invested in this program.”  As of June 2007, the DoD planned to invest $1.8 billion in a multi-year demonstrator project.  In August 2007 the Navy announced the X-47B as the winner of the UCAS demonstrator (UCAS-D) competition.  The vehicle’s first flight was tentatively scheduled for late 2008.  

So $1 billion into the N-UCAS/UCAS-D project, its most tangible product is the 260-page report that CSBA wrote about it.  

Piled Higher and Deeper

The CSBA report regurgitates the “four key national security challenges of the 21st century” identified in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review:

…defending the homeland in depth; fighting the Long War against radical extremists and defeating terrorist networks; preventing state and non-state actors from acquiring or using weapons of mass destruction; and hedging against the rise of a power or powers capable of competing with the United States militarily.

Here’s what all that militaristic gibberish means in real people talk:

“Defending the homeland in depth” is fighting vaguely rationalized wars halfway across the world that have nothing to do with defending America and seldom if ever advance America’s national interests.

“Fighting the Long War against radical extremists” is sustaining a constant state of low-level conflict against Islamofabulism or some other suitable amorphous enemy for a virtual eternity.  

Preventing other actors from acquiring weapons of mass destruction mainly involves accusing those actors of having them when they don’t (Iraq, Iran) and kissing up to them when they do (Korea).  

Hedging against the rise of a peer military competitor involves spending a lot of money to equip ourselves for wars we’ll never fight against adversaries who will never exist.  

Facing these challenges, the CSBA report states, “will likely require future carrier task forces to stand off and fight from far greater distances than in the past,” but as we’ve already illustrated, by the time the carrier is standing off yards from its pier, the carrier is no longer needed.  Even if it were, standoff capability isn’t necessary against terrorists–at least not the kind that extends from California to Kabul–so all the inference about needing N-UCAS to fight extremists is bull pluck.

That leaves us with “a rising China” as the N-UCAS’s main justification.  In a fight for the Taiwan, the CSBA report argues, the Chinese will focus on sinking U.S. carriers before they can get close enough for their aircraft to strike in the Taiwan Strait, hence the need for standoff range, but the carrier vs. naval base solution applies; the Chinese can’t sink Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego.

Lest you wonder how it is that CSBA can get away making big bucks for producing nonsense like the N-UCAS report, be informed that CSBA’s president is national security guru Andrew Krepinevich.  In September 2005, Dr. Krepinevich wrote the celebrated article in Foreign Affairs modestly titled “How to Win in Iraq.”  Dr. Krepinevich’s “new approach” to win would take “a decade or longer” to succeed but was, he said, far superior to “stay the course” although he didn’t actually describe how his new approach could achieve a better result than stay the course or whether it could achieve it any sooner.  To put a fine point to it, Dr. Krepinevich’s way to win in Iraq was every bit as exquisite a piece of humbug as the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review was and the N-UCAS/UCAS-D is.  

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now.  Also catch Russ Wellen’s interview with Jeff at the The Huffington Post and  Scholars and Rogues.

If it would take a perfect storm for the Democrats to win a senate seat in Idaho, I think our chances are looking better all the time.

People that shoot children and then yell ‘God is Great’ have a serious blind-spot when it comes to public relations. Summary decapitation of adults ain’t that visually pleasing either. It’s the rough self-defeating equivalent of calling the invasion of Muslim nations ‘a crusade’. Sometimes I think the War on Terror is really a battle to see which side can defeat themselves first.

One of Chris Bowers’ pet peeves, and I admire him for it, is when Democrats justify their actions by reference to the political ramifications of their actions. A recent example was provided by Steny Hoyer:

In an interview with Politico on Monday, Hoyer called the FISA legislation a “significant victory” for the Democratic Party – one that neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November while still, in his view, protecting the civil liberties of American citizens.

Bowers cringes whenever he sees Democrats use such nakedly calculating and defensive rationales for their actions. So should we all, because it reeks of weakness. But there is another pet peeve Bowers has, and that is the use of Republican talking points, or ‘framing’ issues in Republican terms. Here is where there is a major divergence in our thinking. And it’s difficult to explain because I agree with the stupidity of using Republican frames. I just think the issue’s importance is grossly exaggerated, particularly by fans of George Lakoff. Too often, how things are phrased is taken to be more important than what is meant. Too often, the careful parsing of words becomes a substitute for a broad-based analysis of the political considerations at play. Bowers does this in his post today.

He takes a look at Obama’s statement explaining his position on FISA:

“The bill has changed. So I don’t think the security threats have changed, I think the security threats are similar. My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people.”

Bowers takes this comment to mean that Barack Obama just isn’t that interested in the Fourth Amendment and that he supports warrantless wiretaps despite having previously stated that he does not support warrantless wiretaps. First of all, Bowers is going beyond what Obama actually said and missing what he meant.

I don’t care whether the telecommunications corporations get immunity per se. I know there is the issue of equal justice and all that, but there can potentially be some forgiveness if the telcos were acting on assurances from the highest reaches of the administration. The big problem with immunity is that it will prevent us from getting the facts about what happened and making a fair judgment about whether the telcos deserve leniency. In all likelihood, once retroactive immunity is granted, the American people will never learn the extent to which our privacy was violated. But that is ultimately up to the next administration. If Obama is elected and we have a Democratic Congress, there is no legal obstacle to hauling the telcos before Congress and having them testify about what happened. There’s no reason that Obama’s Justice Department can’t reveal a declassified version of an internal investigation. In response to that information, Congress can craft new legislation, including legislation that strengthens our privacy rights. I don’t want to get people’s hopes up that this will happen, but it could. That is why retroactive immunity is not the real problem per se. Far bigger problems are involved in the increased spying powers and diminished oversight that is in the FISA law. Bowers jumps to conclusions with this:

Yes, Obama might agree with us, and probably capitulated for political reasons. However, as he said himself, he never really cared about telecom immunity all that much. As such, it is extremely unlikely that he will bother to do anything behind the scenes to fix this. There is no “secret plan.” He just doesn’t care all that much.

It’s actually impossible to tell what aspects of this bill he really cares about and which aspects of this bill he doesn’t really care about. His actions contradict his words to some degree because he promises to ‘work’ to strip the bill of immunity (the part Bowers assures us he doesn’t care about) while he also promises to vote for final passage because “the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people.”

Bowers quotes Obama from last November saying “We are not a nation that wiretaps without warrants.” The problem with that is that Obama is supporting a FISA bill that expands the circumstances under which the government can do just that. Of course, the details of this are complicated and involve things like basket warrants, bulk collections, lack of accountability for violations, and weakened oversight. So, it isn’t a straightforward contradiction for Obama to support this FISA bill because the FISA bill doesn’t come right out and allow warrantless wiretapping.

It’s easier to see what Obama is doing politically than it is to know what he really believes and intends to do about warrantless wiretapping in his administration. Obama is splitting the difference on the FISA bill. He opposes retroactive immunity and will ‘work’ to strip it from the bill. But if the choice comes down to passing FISA or not passing FISA, he is going to vote to pass it. What this indicates is that he’s not willing to let this campaign become a referendum on spying powers, where he takes the side of civil libertarians against the side of fearmongerers. It doesn’t tell us, necessarily, what policy Obama really supports. It tells us what battles he’s willing to fight in this campaign. Bowers frames this issue in the context of the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq (AUMF-Iraq) vote. Of the 29 Democratic senators that voted for the AUMF-Iraq, how many of them did it despite being opposed to the policy because they were afraid of the political consequences of being opposed? And how many voted for the AUMF-Iraq because they actually agreed with the policy? The answer matters because the people that voted out of fear can be expected to vote the right way under more favorable circumstances, but the one’s that actually agreed with the policy are going to be a continual problem.

I think that’s a fair analysis. We know that John Edwards and John Kerry were convinced to vote for the AUMF-Iraq by their consultants that advised them a ‘no’ vote would cripple their electoral chances. That’s quite different from Joe Lieberman, who enthusiastically backed the policy of invasion. And we can see the difference in the way these three senator’s careers have diverged in the ensuring six years.

Barack Obama didn’t have a vote on the AUMF-Iraq, but he did speak out against it at the time and he gave all the right reasons for opposing it. And that already shows that he had better judgment than Edwards and Kerry because even in 2002, Obama had presidential ambitions. In fact, he was in the middle of a campaign for Senate.

I want to be clear that I forcefully disagree with Obama’s FISA decision on the merits because I think the issue at hand is important enough that he really ought to be willing to take on our civil liberties as a major part of the campaign discussion. People think Bob Barr is going to take all his votes from John McCain, but Obama is inviting a good chunk of his potential voters to go over to Barr. He could easily lose more votes to Barr than he avoids losing from independents and disgruntled Republicans. It’s not a clear-cut political advantage for Obama to punt on final passage of the FISA bill.

I would not advise Obama to take on this battle if I thought it had a serious chance of costing him the presidency, precisely because he can come up with other remedies once he is president. But I think he’s safe and may even derive an advantage in taking a stand for civil liberties.

What Bowers fears is that Barack Obama actually agrees with Dick Cheney about FISA, or doesn’t really care much one way or the other. I don’t think there is much evidence to support that fear. Certainly, I don’t think Chris’ narrow parsing of Obama’s rhetoric is convincing.

Obama’s decision here doesn’t tell us whether he’s a progressive or a centrist. It tells us that Obama is not going to make the issue of FISA a centerpiece of this campaign. It’s hard to know all the reasons for that decision. One reason might be that the bill has enough Democratic votes that Obama can’t stop it. I’d like to think he could convince the caucus if he tried hard enough, but I haven’t been privy to those conversations. Russ Feingold has been clear about his disappointment in his colleagues’ attitudes. That is evidence that Obama may not have had the clout to stop this bill even if he had tried. If that’s the case, it may be that Obama just isn’t willing to make a disagreement over FISA a centerpiece of this campaign when it is going to pass anyway. And that speaks to his political instincts (which may be flawed or savvy) more than to his true ideological makeup.

The bottom line is that our choice this fall is going to be between John McCain and Barack Obama. The media, the consultants, the Republican fearmongering, the money people, the need to attract independents and soft Republicans, all conspire to move Obama to the center. That doesn’t mean he isn’t the most progressive candidate for president we’ve seen in thirty-four years. I still believe he is.