Armchair Generalist

Casual Fridays

I'm planning on buying into this massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) called "Age of Conan." You may be familiar with World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, or Everquest. This is another swords and sorcery-based online game, but no elves, dwarves, or hobbits. Also no children allowed - this game involves chopping off heads and leering at scantily-clad slave-women. This MMOG was deliberately crafted for the mature gamer.

I am traditionally a first-person shooter enthusiast, and while there were a good few over the last year, I'm drawn to the idea of just paying a monthly subscription to go into the world of Hyboria and engaging a larger, more unpredictable world. I have not been included in the beta, which just completed last week. However, most of the participants have been very enthusiastic about the graphics and the gameplay. It is a very demanding game; people are saying this requires a download of 13 gigs of data that unfolds into 26 gigs of game. Heavy graphics load as well.

From the website, it appears that there are a variety of characters - four base sets - rogues, warriors, clerics, and priests. Each of these have three speciality branches - for instance, the rogues include assassains, rangers, and barbarians, all fast and agile fighters who can't wear heavy armor. There are three races, the Acquilonians, the Cimmarians, and the Stygians. What's also interesting is how guilds of player-characters can invest in building cities, which upon getting large enough, invite sieges from other players. The game starts Tuesday, and while I am sure there will be lots of bugs to face, this really, really looks good.

So why Age of Conan? I am a huge Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons fan, but I tried demos of those games, and I just wasn't hooked. I am also a big, long-time fan of the Conan the Barbarian comic book series and the original Robert Howard books. Ah-nuld the Governator brought the role to the big screen, but this was a popular character way before the movies. There's just something about the character and his ready willingness to take on legions of men arrayed against him, to send them wailing before him, and to hear the lamentation of their women. So we'll see where this goes...

Five Years Ago - Afghan Edition

US forces were doing just swell in locking down Afghanistan five years ago. It was a quiet country, which meant DOD could focus on Iraq and forget about the Taliban.

Coalition forces in Afghanistan have "had a significant impact on the enemy," a military spokesman there said today.

"After almost 24 years of continuous conflict, Afghanistan is more stable today than a year ago by almost any metric one would care to use," said Col. Rodney Davis, public affairs officer for Coalition Joint Task Force 180.

Davis explained during a press conference at Bagram Air Base that "key indicators" numbers of deaths, incidents, firefights and improvised explosive devices are all down. Coalition forces have uncovered "several huge caches of weapons," he added.

"The Taliban is no longer ruling the country, and there have been no major terrorist attacks on America since 9- 11," Davis said, adding, "Hundreds of al Qaeda were killed in fighting."

Other bright points in Afghanistan's security situation include a functioning government, a successful loya jirga, or town council, in June 2002 that "allowed the Afghans at least some measure of democratic expression," and the formation of an Afghan national army.

Five years later, the Marine Corps is pointedly ignoring acres of poppy fields that represent cash crops for the resurgent Taliban, which uses the millions of dollars in drug money to buy weapons and supplies to continue fighting Western military forces.

Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern Helmand province, the world’s largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that produce the main ingredient of heroin.

The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser, derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees — money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the poppies won’t be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans’ only source of income.

Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.

“It’s kind of weird. We’re coming over here to fight the Taliban. We see this. We know it’s bad. But at the same time we know it’s the only way locals can make money,” said 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, of Barnstable, Mass.

Yeah, it's kind of weird. Who could have known we'd be ignoring the goals of the  global war on drugs so that we could take a few more years to negotiate with the support base for the Taliban? Because we sure don't want to piss off the bad guys when we don't have enough troops to succeed in shutting down the Taliban - again. This is progress?

Who Was Mislead?

Quite a few blogs are examining the president's online interview with Politico and his comments about giving up golf "for the troops in Iraq." Now I don't golf, so I'm letting that pass. But let's move on to my favorite subject - the Iraq WMD program.

Q Mr. President, I'm going to surprise you -- there's a question from a user, Bruce Becker, and he asks: Do you feel that you were misled on Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: I feel like -- I felt like there were weapons of mass destruction. You know, "mislead" is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional -- I don't think so, I think there was a -- not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.

Q: And so you feel that you didn't have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction -- as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein. And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes. But intelligence communities all across the world felt the same thing. This was kind of a common assessment.

So "mislead" means, do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion.

This is where I do a double-take and say "Whaaaa???" Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert could probably do this more justice. "Ya know, I just felt it in my gut, that Saddam had WMDs... So I just hadda do somethin'." Okay, the intel community thought there were chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. The intel assessments didn't, however, talk about mushroom clouds over New York City, about Iraqi UAVs attacking cities on the East Coast, or Saddam giving CB weapons to terrorists who might use them against Americans. It wasn't the intel community saying that Iraq's WMD program was the greatest threat to the United States. No, those were policy statements uttered by your boys and girls, Mr. President.

The intel community came up with the wrong conclusion. Okay, let's accept that. But you were the one who misled the American people and who continues to insist it was all worth it.

Mission To Burma

The Air Force did good. They moved several tons of bottled water, mosquito netting, and blankets from California by C-17 transport to Thailand, where US aid supplies were marshalled until negotiations were completed with the military junta in Burma. Then C-130s took the aid from Thailand to Yangon International Airport in Burma, where they were off-loaded and (hopefully) put to use.

The Bloggers Roundtable had a chance to talk to one of the C-130 pilots (transcript is here). Captain Trevor Hall, originally stationed in Yokota Air Base in Japan, was supporting a Marine Exercise "Cobra Gold" in Thailand when he got the order to stand fast at Utapao Thai Royal Navy air base and await orders. Ten days later, he was flying Admiral Tim Keating (PACOM) and Henrietta Fore (USAID) as well as supplies into the country.

Hall was the pilot in command of the C-130E Hercules transport aircraft that flew the first U.S. emergency relief supplies into Rangoon International Airport in Burma. The supplies were to assist with the recovery from the devastation that Cyclone Nargis wrought over much of Burma’s Irrawaddy River delta May 2.

“On board the plane, we took about 30,000 pounds of bottled water, mosquito nets and blankets for the first plane in,” Hall said.

He said the offload at the airport took two hours.

“The first hour was spent unloading all the supplies that we brought in, because [the Burmese military] did have to hand-offload all of the cargo,” Hall said. “They offloaded it all directly off our plane and placed it into military trucks and drove it to a different staging area on the airport.

“When we landed, I didn’t exactly know what to expect as far as what else would be on the ramp at the airport,” he added.

When the U.S. aircrew landed, they saw a Hellenic Air Force C-130 plane from Greece, two Malaysian C-130s, and some Indian planes, as well.

Following the first relief flight May 12, Hall said, the U.S. Marine Corps transported similar items yesterday, and more relief flights are continuing today. “The stuff that they were carrying today was medical supplies, plastic sheeting, hygiene kits, some food, and first-aid material,” said Hall.

The Air Force crew, consisting of six basic crew members and two maintainers, flew from the Utapao Royal Thai Navy air base, in Thailand. Navy Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, and Henrietta Fore, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, accompanied the crew on the mission.

Hall told the bloggers on the line that the operation had went much smoother than he had anticipated. The Burmese goverment was very accomodating and gracious, but their infrastructure was badly damaged. Within two hours of his landing, he was taking his VIPs back to Thailand for more talks in support of the relief mission. Ya done good, flyboy.

Five Years Ago

DepSecDef Paul Wolfowitz was deadly serious about finding and eliminating WMDs in Iraq. He was so serious that he endorsed a "pick-up game" of various government agencies to create a 600-person Exploitation Task Force that deployed to Iraq in 2003. They didn't find anything, but by god he was going to ensure that we were ready next time.

Weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands is the "greatest security risk of this decade," said deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz during a symposium at the third annual Conference on Counterproliferation May 13.

The United States will continue to have a requirement for a "robust WMD elimination capability" even after the discovery and the destruction of Iraq's WMD capabilities, he noted.
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Wolfowitz said the Sept. 11 attacks "awakened" the United States to an era of mass terror that "changed the way we have to think about national security."

They demonstrated in the "clearest terms" that the United States "can't simply wait" for a crisis to develop or for enemies to accumulate the means to harm the country before it acts. He added that another attack on the homeland is likely to happen.

"And yet as great as the impact of Sept. 11th was, it would pale in comparison to a major bio or even chemical attack," he said. "We know that it is no longer a question of whether such an attack might conceivably be attempted, but more likely a matter of when."

Five years later, no attacks on the homeland. But he was right, the job of eliminating WMDs is so important that it took four and a half years to authorize and create a 30-person Joint Elimination Coordination Element (JECE) that will be fully operational - next year. When combined with the 20th Support Command (CBRNE), it will transform into a Joint Task Force for Elimination (JTF-E). WMD elimination isn't important enough, however, to create a standing joint task force as for other missions. But hey, it's not a question of whether, but when... right?

Five Years Ago

Here's another five-year anniversary point that I missed by one week. On May 7, 2003, DOD announced its discovery of mobile Iraqi bioweapon laboratories. Yes, what a great discovery! Vindication at last for the invasion!

Coalition forces have obtained an Iraqi mobile biological weapons production facility, defense officials confirmed today. However, no traces of biological weapons have been found on the trailer.

Coalition forces in Iraq took control of the trailer April 19 at a Kurdish checkpoint near the northern town of Tall Kayf, the Defense Department's undersecretary for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, said in the Pentagon today.

"U.S. and U.K. technical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond production of biological weapons," he said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell had described such facilities during an early February presentation to the United Nations. "The interior layout of that trailer matches closely what was described by the secretary of state," Cambone said.

Powell had said an Iraqi defector provided information about 18 such mobile labs. Cambone today said the same defector now says the trailer found in Iraq seems consistent with the facilities he was familiar with.

The undersecretary said the trailer is painted in a military color scheme and was being carried on a heavy- equipment transporter, typically used to transport tanks.

The trailer is of the same size and type as that described by the defector, and equipment is laid out in a similar fashion. It carried a fermenter, gas cylinders to supply clean air, and a system to capture and compress exhaust "to eliminate any signature of the production."

Biotrailer, hydrogen generator, whatever. Simple enough mistake. I wonder if this entry is explained in Feith's book.

Teh Stupidz! It Burnz Us!

Congressmen Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Denny Rehberg (R-MT) are taking a brave, bipartisan shot at legislation aimed at providing healthcare to veterans. Normally, I would say that this is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, this is not a normal situation.

Today, Congressmen Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Denny Rehberg (R-MT) introduced legislation that would provide healthcare to veterans who were unknowingly subjected to biological and chemical weapons tests conducted in the 1960s and 70s. 

The existence of these tests, known as Project 112, including Project SHAD, was denied by the Department of Defense (DoD), despite reports from participating veterans that they were being stricken with unusual diseases.  The DoD now acknowledges that the tests took place, but the Veterans Administration (VA) will not provide these veterans with health benefits and compensation for their diseases.  The Thompson-Rehberg legislation would require the VA to assume the toxins used in the weapons tests caused injury to the veterans, making them eligible for medical benefits and/or compensation for their conditions. 

“For ten years, I’ve been fighting to get the government to acknowledge that these extremely dangerous tests made some of our brave veterans sick and even caused some of their deaths,” said Thompson.  “These men risked their lives for their country, and in return, their government treated them like guinea pigs and has for years turned its back on them.  This legislation will make sure they don’t have to wait any longer for the help they need and deserve.”

"Project 112" is one test the Department of Defense has undoubtedly flunked,” said Rehberg.  “Now, these brave men and women who served our country have been left to suffer.  These veterans deserve quality healthcare and recognition by their government that it understands what they’ve had to go through.  This bill is a great step toward that.”

Yes, it's a great step toward doing absolutely nothing effective other than taking a careless swipe at the Defense Department and rewriting history so that these politicians can get some cheap publicity going into the fall elections. In actuality, most, if not all, of the tests conducted in Project 112 were relatively safe - check out the fact sheets. There may have been personnel exposed to simulants or non-lethal incapacitants, but no military servicemember or DOD civilian died as a result of negligently run CB weapons tests. What we're supposed to believe is that DOD or the VA is refusing care to veterans because of alleged exposure to military CB warfare agents more than 40 years ago.

Now, all these veterans are already receiving care as a result of their service to their nation. If they were exposed to military CB warfare agents, they'd most likely be dead decades ago. There is no clear evidence that any veteran is suffering as a result of exposure to CB warfare agents. It's much more likely that exposure to industrial hazards over one's lifetime in urban settings did the damage. This is a shameless play on the old "blame game" against the DOD offensive CB warfare program and a lazy attempt at appearing sympathetic to veterans.

Start the Witch Trials

Media Matters thinks they have found something substantial in the relentless attempts to make the Pentagon the Evil Empire of Propaganda.

A Media Matters review found that since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in Barstow's article -- many identified as having ties to the defense industry -- collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR in segments covering the Iraq war both before and after the invasion, as well as numerous other national security or government policy issues.

A spreadsheet listing each of the analysts' appearances documented by Media Matters is available here.
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Nexis includes transcripts for all news programs on CNN but for the other cable news networks transcripts are available for only some shows; appearances on programs whose transcripts do not appear in Nexis were not included in this study.

Finally, the Times article reported that some of the analysts "pointed out, accurately, that they did not always agree with the administration or each other" and that "[m]any analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war." In conducting this study, Media Matters did not assess whether individual instances of commentary -- or the analysts themselves -- were supportive of administration policy.

So while wildly throwing the number of 4500 identified media appearances out as some kind of indictment of the Pentagon's briefing process, Media Matters also admits that they really don't know exactly what the analysts said, if they were supportive or critical of the administration's position, or if their comments were supportive of business interests. Other than that, yeah, these retired general officers are guilty as hell.

The Onion, a satirical news source, identified this problem more than two years ago. You see, actual impartial experts are just too boring for television (hat tip to Draconian Observations).

Canton was brought in for a test interview based on a recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, in which he argued that increased reliance on nuclear power is "inevitable." When asked to address nuclear power's potentially disastrous consequences, however, Canton launched into a well-reasoned lecture that balanced modern energy demands against safety and environmental concerns.
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[Cal] Salters was not impressed.

"[Canton] went on like that for six... long... minutes," Salters said. "Fact after mind-numbing fact. Then he started spewing all these statistics about megawatts and the nation's current energy consumption and I don't know what, because my mind just shut off. I tried to lead him in the right direction. I told him to address the fears that the average citizen might have about nuclear power, but he still utterly failed to mention meltdowns, radiation, or mushroom clouds."

"I'm sure he knows what he's talking about," Salters added. "But we have a responsibility to educate and entertain our viewers. In the end, we had to go with someone else."

Get the hell off the Pentagon - Glenn - and back to the truly guilty parties - the news media.

Insane Conservative Logic

Imagine my surprise when I found this LA Times op-ed by Jonah Goldberg, where he actually compares two things of interest to me - long-term nuclear waste storage and long-term enemy combatant confinement. He thinks that liberals treat the two subjects similarly, in that they expect results but consciously block legitimate attempts to get there. Let's find out how this works.

See, Yucca Mountain is where the government wants to keep incredibly dangerous substances -- nuclear waste -- until we figure out a better way to handle it.

And Guantanamo Bay is where the federal government keeps incredibly dangerous people -- jihadi enemy combatants -- until we figure out a better way to handle them.
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Much like Yucca Mountain, lots of things are said about Gitmo that aren't true. Yucca is derided as unsafe, when its biggest shortcoming is that its designers can't promise that in 10,000 years a passerby who digs it up won't be exposed to much more than a few chest X-rays' worth of radiation.

Gitmo, likewise, is routinely lumped in with the more legitimate outrage over mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and the more complicated controversies about renditions and CIA black sites. In reality, argues Andrew McCarthy in the current National Review, Gitmo "is probably the most scrutinized prison in modern history."
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Nonetheless, Gitmo will soon be closed. President Bush wants it closed, as do all of his likely successors. And that's probably for the best, given the stink it puts on America in the world, deservedly so or not. But here's the thing: If you want to fight a war on terrorism, or any war, you need to put captured combatants someplace -- someplace other than a conventional U.S. prison, where they're treated like any other criminal.

No, you ass, that's not quite an appropriate comparison. You see, Yucca Mountain was actually designed to federal regulations, approved in an open and public fashion, and not implemented due to the political cowardice of state governors and congressional delegations. Whereas the detainment of unaccused prisoners in Gitmo was done in spite of federal and international law, done secretly without public input, and implemented over the protests of lawyers and human rights activists. President Bush made an executive order to open Yucca Mountain, but he doesn't really care enough to force the issue. For Gitmo, he made an executive decision to ignore public laws to take any measure possible to incarcerate potential insurgents without charging them or offering a trial to many for years. I don't think he really wants it closed at all.

I love the way Jonah makes up assumptions to support his theory. Nuclear power is a must-do to defeat the impact of climate change. There's no other option for dealing with captured enemy combatants other than years of incarceration in Gitmo without a trial. It's the fault of Congress, not the president, in failing to resolve these issues (well, okay, maybe he's right there). Other than those details, yeah, sure, Yucca Mountain and Gitmo, exactly the same thing. Idiot.

Feith on The Daily Show

Why, Jon, why? Why give that horse's ass a chance to sell more of his fiction to the public? Do you really need to spar with these conservatives? Are you feeling  strong when you tell them that they're wrong? Because I don't think they really care, other than to get that spotlight.

On Monday night, Doug Feith said more stupid things about WMDs and how the president was really just trying to prevent "the next attack" after 9/11 by invading Iraq.

Useful Idiots

Hey, it's amazing! I found someone who thinks that Doug Feith's new book is actually worth reading! that is, for a purpose other than a warning to future voters on how not to trust "national security" Republican neocons. Michael Barone of US News and World Report (and Faux News commentator) thinks that poor Dougie has been beaten up too much.

One such narrative is "Bush lied, people died." The claim is that "neocons," including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have already concluded. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam's hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.

Unfortunately—and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush—the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem, rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.

Yes, the "liberal fallacy" that guns kill people is an excellent analogy to nations that develop weapons of mass destruction. If only that damnable President Richard Nixon hadn't decided to unilaterally stop the US offensive biological warfare program, and if only that cursed President George H.W. Bush had not worked so hard to stop the US offensive chemical weapons program!! Because it's not the good nations who own WMDs that you have to worry about... It amazes me that there are people like Barone who still want to defend the Iraq WMD issue.

And as for Dougie's hang-up about the Bush administration "allowing" its critics to frame the issue around WMDs, well, let's jump into the magic time machine. Five years ago, what did Mr. Feith say?

Although stability operations are ongoing across post-Saddam Iraq, "much work remains to be done before the coalition's military victory can be confirmed as a strategic victory," Feith acknowledged.

Feith said U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq continue to experience "attacks from scattered, small elements that remain loyal to the former regime."

Yet, former regime leaders on the "most-wanted list" are being rounded up "more or less daily," he pointed out, while the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues.
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Regarding the search for WMDs in Iraq, U.S. and coalition forces have only checked about 20 percent of 600 suspected sites, Feith noted.

"We're learning about new sites every day," Feith said. He asserted his confidence "that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD programs, but the process will take months, and perhaps, years."

Yes, it wasn't the critics framing the issue as much as the Bush administration who kept throwing it up in the news. It only took about eighteen months for the Iraq Survey Group to determine that there were no WMDs to police up, and its leader said "we were all wrong." But hey, I'm sure that Doug Feith is very pleased that there are useful idiots such as Michael Barone willing to make excuses for him.

Why Do Republicans Hate America?

Interesting article in the Washington Times (yes, if you can stomach it). It seems that al Qaeda's recruiting campaign is actually enhanced when its adversaries talk about it as being "jihadists." Muslims are less likely to assist when they hear about "Islamic terrorists," as it implies that they are all viewed as terrorists. This past Atlantic Monthly article notes:

With the advice of Islamic scholars and think-tank officials, Guirard has assembled an alternative lexicon he thinks U.S. officials should use in both English and Arabic. These include hirabah (“unholy war”) instead of jihad; irhabists (“terrorists”) instead of jihadists; mufsidoon (“evildoers”) instead of mujahideen; and so on. The long-term effect, he says, would be like labeling certain kinds of battle genocide or war crime rather than plain combat—not decisive, but useful. Conceivably President Bush’s frequent use of evildoers to describe terrorists and insurgents represented a deliberate step in this direction, intended to steer the Arabic translation of his comments toward the derogatory terms. (I could not confirm whether there was any such plan behind Bush’s choice of words, or whether it had made much difference in translations. While granting Guirard’s point, for convenience I’ll stick with the familiar terms here.)

So understanding this point, what do the House Republicans do? Insist that no federal funding be spent on changing the currently failed terminology used to discuss al Qaeda.

The leak of Bush administration guidelines urging U.S. officials to avoid using terms such as "jihadi" or "Islamic terrorists" to refer to al Qaeda and similar groups has exposed a fault line in Republican thinking about the U.S. war on terrorism.

On Friday, every Republican member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence voted for an amendment to an intelligence bill that would have banned the use of federal cash to produce documents like the terminology guidelines from the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) that recently were leaked and posted online.

The NCTC guidelines say such shorthand "reinforces the 'U.S. vs. Islam' framework that [al Qaeda] promotes."

The amendment, authored by Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the panel's ranking Republican, was defeated on a party-line vote.

That is to say, only because the Democrats all voted against Hoekstra's idiotic amendment, the counter-terrorist experts can actually develop guidelines that MAKE SENSE due to the cultural norms of the Muslim community. So why do Republican politicians hate America? And hate their mothers, too?

Five Years Ago

I'm a little late on this, but I have to tell you what schadenfreude I get by perusing the news archives in the DefenseLink. It was five years and a week ago that Major General Steve Reeves, JPEO for Chemical and Biological Defense, announced the upcoming debute of Program Guardian. It was sure to be a hit, offering to add networked detectors to the force protection efforts of critical military installations.

The $1 billion effort, named "Guardian," will ultimately bolster anti-terrorism force protection and security at about 200 stateside installations and overseas posts over the next five years, Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Reeves, DoD's program executive officer for chemical and biological defense, said in an interview May 6.

"Guardian," according to Reeves, will provide affected military facilities and their populations with enhanced protection against "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats."

The project will also "integrate that (new) protection capability with the existing force protection measures that are on that installation," he pointed out.

"Guardian," Reeves continued, "is really there to assist commanders in providing force protection for (U.S. military) installations around the world."

Reeves noted the Joint Staff is working on a list of stateside and overseas installations to participate in the project. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz will make the final selections.

This project actually was funded for $1.5 billion, including fenced training and exercise funds for the emergency responders. But you'll never guess what happened. The program office had a hell of a time getting the right details in its contract and awarding it, it started about a year later, and... well... didn't quite get to its lofty goal of enhancing 200 installations with automatic CB detectors, protective suits and masks for essential installation personnel, collective protection for critical areas, and software to link all the detectors to the installation EOC. One base got a full set of equipment, and after spending millions on site surveys of a few dozen installations, the project got bogged down in execution.

There was a change-over in OSD leadership, and the new guys took $500 million from Guardian to start the medical program "Transformational Medical Countermeasures Initiative". Instead of executing what they had been directed to do, the acquisition office tried to develop individualized packages for each installation commander (which was unaffordable and unsustainable). The project got downscoped to just giving emergency responders some manual CB detectors, Giant Voice loudspeakers, and some meds at 47 bases to date. That's a little short of 200, by my count. This is to say, the Guardian project, which was intended to provide installations a limited capability to warn and protect personnel against CB terrorist acts, devolved into something that each installation could have done on its own, had its commander seen CB terrorism as a worth-while priority.

This project is still running and has ambitious dreams of expanding (against other competing military projects and without an OSD advocate). I could tell you some real horror stories about how people just watched this project like a train wreck taking place over five years, but let me just leave you with this. The project manager who initiated this failed effort in 2003 ended up with an Army PM of the Year award.

Newport Chemical Disposal Nears End

As a result of being able to send its secondary hazmat waste to Texas for disposal, the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility is nearly out of business.

The Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana as of yesterday had eliminated 90 percent of its stockpile of VX nerve agent, the U.S. Army announced.

Disposal of more than 1,000 tons of liquid warfare agent began in May 2005.  The depot holds only VX stored in bulk containers.

“We are predicting agent neutralization operations to be completed by summer’s end,” Jeff Brubaker, site project manager at the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, said in a press release.  “Reaching the safe destruction of 90 percent of the stockpile makes us realize just how close we are to completing the project.”

Congratulations to the Chemical Materials Agency and its workers in Indiana.

They're Breaking Our Armies

Ray sends me this shocking UK article talking to the difficulties that the British soldiers are having these days. One has to wonder, if this is really the case (assuming the journalist has this story correct), it's beyond abhorrent.

The disturbing findings outlined in the briefing team report written for Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, include an admission that many junior officers are being forced to leave the Army because they simply cannot afford to stay on.

Pressure from an undermanned army is "having a serious impact on retention in infantry battalions", with nearly half of all soldiers unable to take all their annual leave as they try to cover the gaps.

The analysis, described by General Dannatt as "a comprehensive and accurate portrayal of the views and concerns of the Army at large", states: "More and more single-income soldiers in the UK are now close to the UK government definition of poverty." It reveals that "a number of soldiers were not eating properly because they had run out of money by the end of the month". Commanders are attempting to tackle the problem through "Hungry Soldier" schemes, under which destitute soldiers are given loans to enable them to eat.

The scheme symbolises a change from the tradition of soldiers getting three square meals a day for free. Now hard-up soldiers have to fill out a form which entitles them to a voucher. The cost is deducted from their future wages, adding to the problems of soldiers on low pay.

You hear about these things, anecdotal stories about young soldiers having trouble raising a family and going to war, having trouble dealing with the Veterans Administration when they get back, having trouble getting their old jobs back. When the war lasts multiple years and governments focus more on funding operations and modernizing hardware, then the soldiers lose out. It's beyond amazing that our governments (US and UK) can't understand the imperative that if you don't take care of the troops, then you fail your responsibility to maintain the trust and respect of a professional fighting force. We need smart, energized young men and women to fight in an increasingly sophisticated and challenging environment. This isn't the way to get there.

The Good Old Days

Former Russian President Vladmir Putin insists that there was no message intended in the return of the full military parades of the former Soviet Union days.

"For the first time in many years, military hardware will be involved in the parade. This is not saber-rattling. We threaten no one and do not intend to do so," Putin said at his last meeting with Cabinet and Kremlin administration members.

"It is a simple display of our growing defense capability," he added.

Moscow's Red Square hosted on Monday the final rehearsal for the Victory Day parade, which will feature for the first time in almost two decades a formidable display of Russia's military might.

Victory Day marks the final surrender by Nazi Germany to the U.S.S.R. in WWII, often referred to as the Great Patriotic War in Russia and other states in the former Soviet Union.

I just enjoy watching the new hardware roll by the review stands. I think the US government got 80 percent of its official photos of Soviet Union hardware from the May Day parades. CNN noted the heavy symbolism that warmed the hearts of the World War II veterans, in particular.