Armchair Generalist

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.

Although Russian officials deny any intentions of returning to Soviet ways, the style and symbolism of Victory Day is heavily redolent of the Communist era.

Posters proclaiming the holiday throughout the city include the hammer-and-sickle insignia, which is also seen on the banners and period uniforms used by some of the regiments, which goose-stepped across the 6-acre (2.5-hectare) square under clear skies.

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov reviewed troops before the parade by standing in the back seat of an open 1980s-era ZIL limousine.

Russian news reports said about 3 million World War II veterans are still alive. Although veterans receive extensive public praise, their pensions are small and many live in poor conditions even as Russia's economy soars.

I certainly respect Russia's desire to honor its veterans, but this plus the bomber runs into NATO and US airspace signals a reopening of the big rivalry that we all thought was over. I don't mind the gamemanship, but you have to wonder why we're still paying to destroy the former Soviet Union's munitions at the same time that they're so busy building new toys.

Colby Buzzell Goes Back To War

Colby Buzzell, who wrote the fantastic first-person perspective "My War" about his time in Iraq, is shipping back to The Suck. This isn't exactly his idea, but the Army's (surprise) pulling him back.

On way out of my building two weeks ago, I checked my mailbox and found a letter from the Department of the Army with "Important Document" printed in all caps on the middle. I immediately felt sick, so I went back to my room, locked the door, grabbed a beer from the fridge and stared out my window for a while. People outside were all wearing sunglasses and walking about enjoying the sun. I took a picture.

I got out of the Army three long years ago, and since then I've never really talked ill of the military, the people in it, or expressed any regrets at all about enlisting. If I had to do it all over again, I honestly would have. Granted, I got lucky and made it back with all my body parts intact. If I hadn't, my answer might be a little bit different than what it is now.

As terrible as this might sound, whenever someone asks me about enlisting, I'm tempted to encourage them. I figure that the more people who enlist, the slimmer the chances that I'll get called back up. But of course this is ridiculous: No one in their right mind would enlist now, whereas I've already signed the papers. I'm now going back to Iraq for a second time because people like me - existing service members - are the only people at the Army's disposal.

I really enjoyed his book (here's my review) and hope he makes it back okay. Just another sign of the Army's manpower challenges, where the Army is pulling back its discharged reservists. This is in addition to the continued "stop-loss" program of stopping active duty soldiers from leaving the service after their enlistment time is up. But take heart - at least SecDef Gates is "troubled" by this issue. Why, I'll bet it will only be a few more years before he feels comfortable in giving up this current policy.

Casual Fridays

Word is that the game "Grand Theft Auto IV" has raked in more than $500 million in the first week of sales across the world. That's pretty phenomenal, and will probably drive the industry to invest more into getting good writers and top entertainment stars into the gaming industry. These games are rivaling movie profits now.

I was a little surprised to not see more movie star names in this release. "GTA: San Andreas"  had Samuel Jackson and Chris Penn prominently in the game as two dirty cops. Similarly, "GTA III: Vice City" had Michael Madsen, Michael Rapaport, Debi Mazar, and others. The wiki entry notes this as well, but also notes that there were some famous voices playing DJs on the car radios. Also noted is the point that this game allows for "moral choices" where you can advance the game without killing everyone in sight (a novel approach). This article in "Gamers with Jobs" has a good discussion on this issue, with some incredibly thoughtful points in the comments.

In those quiet moments when there are no friends to urge us on, we have an opportunity to see which side of the line we fall on. Sitting alone in the living room and gripping the controller lets us play out some of our basest fantasies. It’s an interactive opportunity that no other medium can claim to offer. Just how much is too much? How do we feel while we’re driving through crowds of innocents with the police hot on our tail? Are we still having fun, or just exorcising demons?

The answers are intrinsically personal because we all internalize things differently. It’s for this very reason that non-gamers are horrified at the prospect of having this kind of choice laid before them. There is no goal abstraction for them to get behind – there’s just people being gunned down. They cannot easily confront this aspect of themselves through a safe, interactive experience. It's an avenue largely unexplored by the older generation.

For gamers, Grand Theft Auto IV affords an opportunity to do more than just shock and titillate. By giving us the tools to plan and execute carnage on a grand scale we can learn something about the human experience. We can push further and find out where our primitive, club wielding aggression ends and our reason and compassion begins. We can make choices without the safety blanket of justification or righteous goals.

Something to think about - for us "older" gamers in particular, can we use popular games such as GTA IV to explore ourselves at the same time as having some fun?

You Have to Watch Those Amish

If you're in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania today, you might see a bunch of strangely dressed individuals running around. No, I'm not talking about the Amish, but there is a WMD response drill going on.

he Pennsylvania National Guard will hold a weapons of mass destruction response exercise in Lancaster County on Thursday.

The drill, dubbed Red Rose III, will happen at the Lancaster County Public Safety Training Center in Manheim from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will involve nearly 400 people from 30 different organizations.

The Guard said the exercise will "test such areas as initial response, search and rescue, evacuation, crime scene preservation and mass decontamination."

This story just struck me as bizarre for some reason. I'm trying to entertain the idea of a terrorist splinter group of the Amish using chemical or biological weapons to strike at the encroachment of urban excess into their rural lifestyles. I mean, really. Who's going to hit Lancaster County? But I kid. I guess it's more due to the fact that the Pennsylvania WMD Civil Support Team is located at Fort Indiantown Gap and they don't want to travel far for a day-long exercise.

DHS Funding for 2009

I've been meaning to get around to looking at the DHS proposed budget for FY 2009. The Global Security Newswire has a roll-up, minus any real commentary. Most of the WMD funding is for nuclear and biological programs, which should not be a surprise.

The budget for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office would increase from $484.8 million in this fiscal year to $563.8 million in fiscal 2009, a jump of $79 million.  The office would direct $334.2 million toward continued development of the “global nuclear detection architecture” for interdiction of potential weapons material, the Partnership for Global Security said.

That would include $67.7 million for development of new Advanced Spectroscopic Portal detectors that would be used to scan cargo containers and vehicles for nuclear or radiological material.  Another $20 million would go toward the Securing the Cities Initiative, which is presently preparing a nuclear detection system to safeguard the New York City region.
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The Homeland Security budget would provide $111.6 million for the Biowatch program, which has deployed biological agent sensors in 30 metropolitan areas around the country.  That would be a $35.5 million increase from funding this year and would provide for deployment of 150 sensors and testing of next-generation technology.
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Homeland Security also plans to reduce funding for the Chemical and Biological Countermeasures Division of the Science and Technology Directorate from $208 million to $200.4 million.

In the world of the federal government, chemical hazards are not really in the class of nuke and bio threats, despite the fact that terrorists have successfully used chemical hazards and not nuke or rad materials - yet. The details inside the DHS budget can be found here. Research to counter explosive threats - again, a more common threat to American citizens - is only bankrolled at $96 million. Here's something very odd on page 526 of the detailed budget document:

National Security Integration Center (NSIC): The NSIC request would fund 5 Supervisory Special Agent positions at ICE Headquarters. The NSIC CIP Section will provide support to ASTI’s Operation TECH DEFENSE. NSIC will also initiate another operation to identify Special Interest Aliens (SIA) that allegedly have access to Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) technology and pose a threat to national security of the United States. NSIC, in coordination with IC members, the Department of Defense (DOD) and Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), would work to identify high value targets and develop an appropriate response to mitigate any potential threat to national security or critical infrastructure.

What exactly is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement doing with this project? A special effort to grab al Qaeda supporters who are bringing in CBRN hazards to support terrorist operations? For some reason, I would have thought this to be an FBI area of interest. Everyone has to get into the action, I guess. Wouldn't do to be efficient and let one government office handle this really important responsibility... assuming al Qaeda is stupid enough to bring material and technology across the border when they could just purhase or steal it from a source within the United States.

Pine Bluff Moves Forward in Disposal Ops

The latest news in the chemical demilitarization program is that Pine Bluff's disposal facility is starting to crack open the VX-filled mines for draining and destruction.

The arsenal destroyed its first landmine Saturday. The destruction of the landmine is the third of four stages in disposing of the chemical weapons stockpile in accordance with an international treaty. The arsenal began destroying GB nerve-agent filled rockets in March 2005, and when that was completed, it destroyed a stockpile of VX-filled rockets.

Following completion of VX landmine disposal operations, a changeover period is planned to prepare for destruction of containers holding mustard gas, a blister agent. That will be the last stage of the disposal campaign at the arsenal.

Here's the official CMA announcement. Once they get into the mustard agent campaign, it will be all downhill. The only remarkable thing about this announcement is how it really isn't remarkable to anyone. The Army's incineration technology has been ticking along without incident, without harming anyone, and being pretty damn successful to date. It's a good news story.

Who's Fooling Who?

Leonard Spector of the Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies has an op-ed in the LA Times taking the intelligence community to task for underestimating the threats from Iran and Syria after overestimating the threat of Iraq in 2003.

The key problem has been the intelligence community's astonishing awkwardness in making clear what's a fact and what's an inference. In the case of Iraq, there were few facts on which to build a convincing case that Saddam Hussein was arming himself with weapons of mass destruction. But Hussein's past pursuit of them, coupled with the anxieties unleashed by 9/11, led U.S. intelligence analysts and many policymakers to infer the worst and leap to conclusions unsupported by the facts.

The intelligence community has now jumped to the opposite extreme with respect to Iran's and Syria's nuclear ambitions, where there are more than a few facts. Yet it has virtually refused to draw any conclusions, no matter how obvious, about the two countries' nuclear programs. The effect has been to seriously understate the dangers Iran and Syria pose and to distort the policy options available to the U.S. to manage them.
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Ever since Dec. 3, the intelligence community has been trying to restore context to its key finding. On Feb. 27, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said the release of the unclassified version was rushed and that it was "an error of judgment on my part." Days later, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples said that "although Iran claims its program is focused on producing commercial electric power, [we assess] with high confidence Iran remains determined to develop nuclear weapons." Then in March, CIA chief Michael Hayden, asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether he thought Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon, replied "Yes," adding this was not based on "court-of-law stuff. ... This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence."

I don't get Leonard's point of view at all. First of all, the policymakers failed in Iraq much, much more than the intelligence community. It wasn't the intel community who leapt to conclusions, that was all on the policymakers in the White House and OSD. Second, after getting slammed with the blame (deserved or undeserved), can anyone blame the intel community for being overly cautious about releasing unclassified judgments on Syria or Iran? As long as neither has taken the step of producing an actual nuclear weapon, as has North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel, it' s not as if the two countries have a nuclear weapons capability.

Third, let's be clear - I'm sure that the intel community, if asked in a non-attributional setting, would agree that Syria and Iran had ambitions for a nuclear weapons program. However, a nuclear power plant, especially if it hasn't started production, isn't a weapons program. The problem I see is that if the intel community agreed that the two countries had nuclear weapons problems, does that give the policymakers free reign to start bombing? What is Spector's angle here? Is he afraid of losing business if the intel community isn't fanning the flames of nuclear proliferation?

This Movie Was Brought to You by...

I did have to see the new "Iron Man" film this past weekend, being a long-time Marvel "true believer." It was a good action flick - Robert Downey Jr was brilliantly entertaining, the special effects were great. Not a great role for Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard played a solid supporting role, Gwyneth Paltrow was passing fair as a Girl Friday. But the amazing thing to me was the blatent product placement by the US Air Force (shamelessly whoring the F-22), Lockheed Martin (see David's post here), Audi, and Burger King.

I mean, seriously. A top weapons manufacturer goes to Afghanistan to pitch his latest surface-to-surface missile, and on top of that, he's driven to the test range by Air Force personnel in regular HMMWVs? No air cover? Noooooo. Too incredible. Of course, Stan "The Man" Lee had his usual cameo - I swear it must be in the rights agreement.

I have to give a shout-out to Clark Gregg, who played Agent Phil Coulson.

Agent Coulson: I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Engagement and Logistics Division.
Pepper Potts: Wow, that's a mouthful. You ought to get a shorter name.
Agent Coulson: Yeah, we  get that a lot.

That's an inside joke to us true believers who know the name of SHIELD, except that the acronym originally stood for Supreme Headquarters International Espionage and Law-enforcement Division. But military and government offices do change their names from time to time.  'Nuff said!

Asshat of the Month

Victor Davis Hanson gets my special "asshat" designation for not only failing to understand the basic leadership structure of the military but also having the temerity to assign blame for the current state of the economy on everyone except the Bush administration. Bravo, VDH, Bravo!

Our armed forces are stretched, but Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and his colonels are quietly transforming a top-heavy conventional colossus into more mobile counterinsurgency forces.

Petraeus' recent nomination to Centcom commander suggests that, like the growing influence of Gens. U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman in 1863, or of George Marshall when he reconfigured the Army in 1940, we at last are beginning to get the right officers in the right places at the right time.

Really? Fascinating. I had no idea that Gen. Petraeus had been nominated to the position of Chief of Staff of the Army. Nor did I realize that Hanson had blamed Rumsfeld for consistently putting bad officers in important leadership positions within the Army. Do tell us more...

In all our major wars - except the present one - Americans have won through a combination of military prowess, correctly identifying the enemy and economic savvy. In the Civil War, the South was blockaded and starved of its cotton revenues, an effort that proved every bit as important as Gettysburg and Sherman's "March to the Sea." Germany was blockaded in both World Wars and cut off from precious metals, oil and food. The Soviet economy collapsed before its military could. Only in this war has our own profligacy empowered our enemies.

After years of learning how to fight an unfamiliar war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to protect us at home, we are finally getting most things right. But if our soldiers and intelligence agencies have learned how to win, our politically correct diplomats and the American consumer haven't - and are doing as much at home to empower radical Islam as those on the front lines are to defeat it.

Well, VDH is a historian, so he must be right in the first paragraph. It's odd, though, that he hasn't figured out that the "politically correct diplomats and the American consumer" aren't the ones responsible for the US government's failure to engage the Middle East and get oil prices under control. That would be the Bush administration's failures, sir.

Our Government Inaction

There's a great story buried in the Washington Post's Business section. Emergent BioSolutions, nee BioPort, bought out VaxGen's anthrax vaccine candidate that failed to reach FDA approval in 2006.

Emergent has paid VaxGen $2 million up front and may pay up to $8 million for meeting various milestones. Emergent must also share an unspecified portion of sales. The acquisition of the vaccine, though striking, is risky, and there is no guarantee that Emergent won't suffer the same scientific problems as VaxGen.

Emergent already sells an older version of the anthrax vaccine that is widely used in the military, but some soldiers have reported serious side effects and it can take up to 18 months and a half-dozen shots to produce immunity. The government wants a faster vaccine to be the cornerstone of the national stockpile, and in 2004 it awarded VaxGen -- a small company that had never successfully developed a product -- a contract for 75 million doses.

As Emergent spent millions of dollars lobbying the government to win support for its vaccine by arguing a sole-source contract was a bad idea, VaxGen struggled with internal problems, including the delisting of its stock. The Food and Drug Administration issued the company a written warning for making unfair comparisons between its vaccine and Emergent's.

Federal health officials were also concerned about how stable the vaccine would be in storage, canceling the contract in December 2006 after VaxGen missed a deadline to start a key test in humans. The company has nearly collapsed. Last month it laid off 75 percent of the 22 employees that remained.

This is an interesting state of affairs. One of BioShield's big priorities was to expand Big Pharma's interest into developing medical CBRN countermeasures for the Feds. Instead, the result of the government's inaction has been to reduce competition and allow the prime manufacturer of the current anthrax vaccine to obtain proprietary rights to develop the next generation anthrax vaccine. And Emergent got the next gen anthrax vaccine for a steal.

Don't expect any overseas pharmaceutical firm to get a DOD contract for anthrax vaccine. It ain't gonna happen - Congress believes that this area ought to be reserved for domestic production. So how's our government's great efforts at biodefense coming? Not so well? Good thing we haven't had a bioterrorist incident in six years.

Analysts Write Letters

Here's an interesting letter from COL (ret) Ken Allard, who was quoted in the NY Times article. Allard was an analyst for NBC news for ten years (before he quit last year) and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Barstow's piece turned out to be 7,800 words long, either a novella or a near record for newsprint. It actually took several readings before I realized that something was missing: any acknowledgment of "Warheads" or the fact that its publication had preceded the Times expose by almost two years.

Also missing from such a lengthy article was the all-important sense of context. Military analysts like David Grange, Barry McCaffrey and Wes Clark had been forthright in criticizing both the Bush administration and the Rumsfeld Pentagon over the issue of troop strength during the Iraq invasion, earning us a very public rebuke from Vice President Cheney.

Throughout the war, we listened carefully to many different briefings, but also relied on our own sources, experiences and beliefs. You don't become either an officer or a TV analyst — two professions requiring high-wire acts without a net — in the absence of a strong sense of who you are. That meant most of us made up our own minds about when the party line was right and when it was not.

Though far from perfect, we also had to brace ourselves to survive the daily carnival of TV journalism. Barstow quoted me correctly as saying that the only conflict of interest there was the networks' lack of interest. That pervasive superficiality was primarily why I resigned last year from NBC News. For the record, I took two Pentagon-supported trips before leaving: one to Baghdad in December, 2005, the other three months earlier in September. After surviving Katrina, I drove from my boarded-up home in Alabama to embed with the 82nd Airborne in New Orleans. The reaction of MSNBC producers following both occasions was identical: "Oh, really? Cool, then we'll try and get you on. No promises, though."

Journalistic ethics is one of the great contradictions — like military intelligence or liberal intellectual. But a particular perversity is required by the Times or anyone else who overlooks the reason why the Warheads were created in the first place. The fact is that military science has never been a graduation requirement in the testosterone-free zones of our journalism schools. When 9-11 forced the networks to confront their long tradition of military illiteracy, they instinctively outsourced informed commentary to the Warheads.

Let's be clear - the military analysts are the professionals here, not the news media. Unless you want to rely on the news media to do anything other than parrot what the Bush administration tells it, unless you think the media can tell the differences between various Shi-ite militias and Sunni militias, you better believe we need people who can summarize what is really going on within the 2-3 minutes time that they're allotted. Or is that just the time limit for the span of attention of the common Joe Citizen?